@Gymnotide: @JakeCrowd: @Other various people in this topic:
Some people seem to be not getting what this topic is about. It's about stereotypes, not political correctness. Hippos are not stereotyped as blowing bubbles when they yawn. Americans do have war stereotypes.
You can't just make up a stereotype like "all goldfish look like Magikarp" and then say that that is a real stereotype and thus Magikarp plays off stereotypes, that's ridiculous.
Only a few people have ever properly complained about Pokemon being politically incorrect (you can find a list at Bulbapedia). As dogasu put it:
I am aware of the thread topic and I don't believe I've said anything about political correctness, only attributes to stereotypes which cause controversy.
My original standpoint is still that even though a Pokemon resembles something, doesn't mean it represents it.
As for the "make up a stereotype" of your argument -- You absolutely can. As long as there's something being attributed to another thing, anyone viewing it from any standpoint can then generalize. That's playing off the basic definition. It's still going to be a stereotype, but maybe
not to you. As long as something has a special meaning or value about something else, can be construed in that way, and has a person or group who believes it to be "standard," then something in a "stereotype." Furthermore, I still have a problem with "stereotype" as a word, since it's subjective and one thing could be a stereotype to one group of people but not to another.
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EDIT
And if you want me to extrapolate, well, almost all stereotypes are generalizations. Moreover, I think it's a bit silly to debate over it, but my first example of being a hippo wasn't that yawning bubbles was the stereotype, but that Hippopotas was a stereotype for hippopotamuses in general (it very well is because it takes the form of a hippopotamus and shares its moniker as set forth into definition
by human perception and taxonomy) and that the yawning bubbles was a created, but misperceived and therefore "derogatory" remark.