User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Nightshade Paolumu/@comment-5020152-20200127221833

Ah yes, the slightly cooler flying scrotum.

Love Stellaluna's black/dark purple coat, with the peacock-esque eyespots being a great addition - they definitely look like an intimidation tactic when combined with the inflation. Also the addition of Sleep feels like a natural extension of Paolumu's existing abilities - the vanilla Bat-Blimp is already filled with gas, so the logical step up from that would be a form of harmful gas. It's also one of the only monsters where Sleep is the primary gimmick instead of being tacked on as a secondary (the only other two I can think of are Baggi and Hypnock).

Speaking of logical extensions of a monster's abilities, Flightmare puts greater emphasis on aerial combat than the original does, which is nice. Not only does it only require one SUCC to inflate, but it can also fly without inflating and has a bunch of brand-new aerial attacks too, including the additional ability of spreading its gas clouds around like Chameleos.

Now, complaints. (I do have them, despite not having played Iceborne.) First, it's still a Paolumu, and Paolumu sucks. Second of all... it eats ants? I'm guessing the logic behind that is that it can SUCC them up instead of using a long tongue? And finally, "Nightshade" is a terrible title for a monster without any sort of poisonous properties (unless you consider sleeping gas a type of poison).