Jess sweetie! What’s the most difficult part of raising misdreavus and mismagius? You’ve talked a lot about how they need to spook people to feed, but do their cloth bodies or gems or anything else require any special attention? What about regional variants?
@ladyzee-oddityhunter
Oh gosh, thank you so much for asking about them! I spend so much time doing this in my daily life... Where do I even begin?!
Edit: okay, this got pretty long! So basically, their bodies are easy to clean, their gems DO need special care, especially in the developemental stage when they're babies and if they get injured (they're very important!), behavioral training is a delicate thing, and the hardest part for me is saying goodbye when they find a new home.
So, first, this is interesting. I think you're the third person I've seen describe their bodies as "cloth"... I thought it was a weird metaphor, but now I'm not so sure. Are Misdreavus and Mismagius really made of cloth for you? Mine are a very smooth cool-feeling sort of skin! Sure, looser in some places than others, , and often they're smoky or misty instead of physical, but... They're never cloth. Banette are the only ghosts I can think of that feel like cloth. Huh.
Anyways, that is SUCH a tangent! They do need careful care of their gems, particularly nutritionally when they're babies to make sure they develope well, kind of like how human kids need fluoride to develope healthy teeth. Those gems are a primary organ for metabolizing fear, an essential part of their diet, and it has a high ghostly equivalent of energy "vascularity" and sensitivity, so if the gems get cracked or broken, besides being very painful for them, they can't metabolize fear!
Now, the gems do function independently of each other, so one being cracked won't completely prevent them from absorbing fear. But it DOES require medical attention. I've never heard of a Misdreavus getting an infection from that, not a microbial one anyways (energy infections are another problem altogether), but mostly it means taking careful care of it until it heals. It might also mean helping them obtain more fear and feeding a more calorie-dense diet, if you supplement their nutrition with physical food. Extra calcium especially helps in this case because it helps them remineralize the physical part of the pearl!
Regular maintenance of the pearls is a lot easier. You just want to wipe them down with a non-abrasive cloth and MAYBE some mild, energetically-neutral soap every once in awhile. You don't want to scratch or weaken it with strong cleaners! The pearls typically have a Moh's hardness of 5, so they're not SUPER easy to damage, but it's still possible, especially if you use a brush with steel bristles or a material that can weaken minerals like vinegar or baking soda.
(I would not recommend cleaning them with cursed or blessed soap unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing. That can get very messy with a ghost type very fast.)
Their bodies are a lot easier to clean! Their intangibility can be used to get sticky berry paste or poffin crumbs out of their "hair", thank goodness! Some like baths more than others. Most of them will at least tolerate it begrudgingly in my experience, but that might be the personality and behavioral training of my own coven more than representative of the entire species...
Behavioral training is something to pay attention to, while I'm on the subject! Ghosts are mischievous. They're smart, they know how to push a human's buttons, especially a species that's as hard-wired to mess with human emotions as Misdreavus!
But you can teach them boundaries and train them in preferred behaviors the same as any other creature. It might take more time with a ghost (it's hard to punish a creature that can go invisible and slip away through a wall any time they want), but they do respond well to positive reinforcement and making the training More Fun! Redirection works SO much better with them than punishment.
I don't believe training should extinguish any natural behaviors. That causes undue stress. Unfortunately, with a Misdreavus, you can't train them out of needing fear. Like I said, it is ESSENTIAL for them. But you can redirect their startling behavior to wild pokemon, find fear sources that are more fun for you like amusement parks and horror movies, and work WITH the behavior instead of working AGAINST it!
The same goes for Mismagius casting curses; you can train them WHEN to do it, WHERE to aim, it, and, if you're particularly prickly, WHO to aim it AT. Mistress (my ace Mismagius!) used to sleep-talk and give me awful nightmares, but we trained her into the habit of chanting for pleasant dreams instead, and now if she sleep-talks, it's usually a nice chant instead of a curse.
Regional variants are usually a lot less dramatic in Misdreavus than you see in certain other species! A lot of the differences are in the subtle differences of individuals' personalities (Johtoan Misdreavus are more stern loners and Alolan Misdreavus are SO carefree and social), the subtle differences in their hue (Sinnohan Misdreavus tend to have more green and mottled hues to blend in with the forest than dusty-gray Paldean Misdreavus, which rely more on invisibility to blend in), and you get some instinctive behavioral quirks like where they prefer to sleep during the day or how expressive their "hair" tendrils are. Paldean Mismagius wander a lot more than I've heard Unovan ones do!
The overall care for their gems and such is all the same though, there don't seem to be many drastic differences in their physiology.
Except... Well. I once saw the evolution of a Galarian Misdreavus, which... Arc, I didn't even know there WERE Misdreavus in Galar. But it was quite an old individual, so maybe there USED to be...? Anyways, when they evolved, they took a dramatically different form, still a Mismagius but they were mostly white and red, and fed on LAUGHTER! That's the only one I've ever seen though. It completely blew my mind.
But the care, all that's pretty easy to manage with preventative treatment. The hardest part of raising them isn't the nutrition, or medical care, or even behavior training.
It's really having to say goodbye. <:} The thing about being a breeder is, once I match a ghost in my care with someone else to take home forever, I have to say goodbye. That's the hardest part for me. I miss them. I always request my client keeps me updated on how they're growing, but unfortunately it's kind of rare for them to actually follow through...
