#nervouscited

So, I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I've decided on a couple of things.

Twiggy, I'm pretty sure, already thinks he's a Leafeon, and I think that's the way I'm going to help him evolve.

Mel, I think that Flareon is a good path for her, and that I'm going to help her evolve that direction.

Max though I'm... hesitant. I don't know what feels right yet.

Now, I'm sure someone reading this (OTHER THAN YOU MOM) is wondering why I wrote that as "help them evolve". That's a thing I discovered while working on my degree in Eeveology.

You see, the way an Eevee's genes are structured, they are very prone to evolving on their own, with no influence from trainers whatsoever. The current theory is that environmental evolution is a thing for Eevees that live in the wild, and that their natural exposure to one influence or another over a long period of time is sufficient to induce evolution.

We continually see evolution stones being used, and while they are absolutely one method for Eevees to evolve, they are (again, according to current theory) effectively concentrated exposure - concentrated enough to trigger a particular evolution based on the influence of the stone used. Previous theory was that wild Eeveelutions would seek out these stones and expose their offspring to them, but this has fallen out of favor for several reasons.

So the reason I say "help them evolve" is because there's been a lot of research done on wild Eevee populations, and one of the most groundbreaking things that has been observed is that Eevee will very often (not a majority, but a very large minority) migrate out of the areas they were born in after reaching at least physical maturity. Pokéempaths that have found these tracked Eevee after their migration to new areas have consistently seen that they are there because they are happier there than they were in their original environment. Moreso, those Eevee that migrated from areas that are notably strong with one influence (for example, fire influence near volcanic activity), when discovering a stone of that influence introduced into their new envronment, visibly recoiled from that stone or fled its area entirely.

So "helping them evolve" is really the proper way to say it, because if you're able to discern what influence makes an Eevee comfortable, using an evolution stone is basically just concentrating its exposure to that influence and speeding up the process. And yes, exposure to a stone will trigger evolution whether an Eevee is comfortable with it or not.

You don't want to miss this.