It's Spooky Month! Last year I did a bunch of classic horror story characters as pokemon: Count Dracula, Victor Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, etc...

I decided I wanted to do something like that again this year but with a little twist. First of all, instead of horror I decided to go a different direction capturing another side of Halloween: Fun (with some scariness mixed in)
This year the theme is Fairytales.

I had an idea I wanted to explore:
These pokemon are NOT meant to be taken as the characters from their respective fairy tales, these are kids who are wearing costumes that allow them to embody the story for which they are dressed as and gain abilities associated with their character/story, so a character might not just be the character who they resemble but a culmination of the entire story, and stories can be very powerful!

Gnarl appears to be a just an animated Nuzleaf puppet, but their story is much stranger. The one who calls themself Gnarl is actually 2 unfortunate souls bound together though some dark craft: a Phantump reborn from the soul of a young child that died lost in the woods, possessing the vengeance filled revenant of a Nuzleaf who's body was mutilated and turned into a puppet.

Naturally they embody the spirit of the story Pinnochio, the Wooden Puppet that wanted to be a real boy. Perhaps it gives them hope that if they play their cards right they can restore their life, though they can never go back to the individual lives they once lived, their fates are forever intertwined. Being children however they still have much to learn, making Gnarl act immature, unwilling to compromise, and often in conflict with their two halves. They are both still possessive of the memories they cherished from their individual lives and want some degree of their old lives back, even if it gets in the way of their true goal.