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What if they made shelly the most basic through design and the worst main through her abilities and stats because it would make more sense to her lore? Like think about it, out of all the mains, a colorful flower, the blue moon, a robot,a rock dog, and a shell, which one would the kids be uninterested in when compared to the others? The shell, the only reason why she's even special/a main is because of the fact that she's a fossil, and her basic design makes her blend into the crowd even more...
And her twisted form isn't even that horrifying or hard to escape, that only thing that made her stand out was the fact that she was half dinosaur now, despite the fact that she is a fossilized shell which is more marine related than they are related to dinosaurs, the only reason why we even love shelly isn't because of her design, but rather her lore, because tell me:
if you didn't know anything about her, would you even have cared about her?...
Like if you didn't know the shelly behind the show, if you only knew her through the tv-show if you were in the universe.