Add Shaymin avatar, please

Answered your own question.

The forums have been around a couple of years, initially as a TCG Live beta forum. They expanded to be franchise-wide later on.

When I joined they only had Unite avatars. Those disappeared when they added Kanto avatars. Johto came next, implying other generations and regions will come in the future. Whether they will replace or append the existing selection is yet to be seen.

But legendaries and mythical Pokémon do not seem to be available, presumably so that we don't have to pick apart a few dozen Mewtwo and Darkrai avatars.

It's a whole can of worms. I would like the feature, but I understand why it's not available, especially on a children's forum.

Not only do you have to worry about someone uploading something explicit, someone might upload something copyrighted or illegal in a certain part of the world.

Then there is the security risk of allowing users to upload files directly to your server, which can potentially exploit vulnerabilities to gain access to or change parts of the site, including admin privileges.

All of this ignores the extra work it creates for mods to approve them.

Maybe you could allow it only for accounts of a certain age, trust level, or points, and limit avatar changes to once a week or once month.

But even then, is the juice worth the squeeze?

I think if we get the full Pokédex (would be nice in the games, too) and maybe a few human characters as avatars, I think the majority will be happy.

At least we can pick starters