Hey I love your Pennsylvania fakemon!! Iceeshaddow is obviously Phil the groundhog and Heetpeep/Cindertrailia are woodgrouse--but what are Doublefynk and Huskerhex/Huskervex? I can't figure it out ;-;

Hey thanks for the message! I have been meaning to explain the PA Fakemon. You’re right about Iceeshaddow.

Doublefynk is based on a Distelfink, a lucky goldfinch that appears on PA Dutch hex signs. Some hex signs have a two-headed eagle (a sign of marriage.) The name is competently unclever, just double + distelfink + Y. (Names are really an afterthought for me.)

Huskerhex and Huskervex are also based on hex signs mixed with corn husk dolls. I think they’re actually a Native American thing, but where I grew up people made corn husk dolls that looked like the Amish? I’m not sure how authentic that really is but I always associated them with the fake-tourism mythos around the Amish. (Lots of PA tourism just makes stuff up about the Amish in order to sell things.) I wanted huskerhex and huskervex to be like little haunted dolls that bring either good or bad luck.



You’re right Heetpeep and Cindertralia are based on a woodgrouse.

Heetpeep is also modeled off of PA Dutch pickled beet eggs. I was too afraid to eat these as a kid because eggs seriously gross me out. (They’re not actually spicy I just liked the visual.)

And Cindertralia is a woodgrouse mixed with Centralia PA, a near ghost town on top of a coal mine that caught on fire in the 60s. They thought it was too expensive to put the fires out, and its still burning underground.

(You didn’t ask but to be thorough: Pennergy based on the story of Ben Franklin’s kite, Condenserpent based on Three Mile Island, Foundrymove and Synapsezzle based on PA’s nearly dead steel industry.)



Link to PA Fakemon

Thanks for the ask!