#more versatile information from a wider array of pokémon and trainers than you would usually see doing the gym challenge

[crystalprofessor]

headcanon; rewriting an old one I lost in the purge. (It actually does still exist on my headcanon sideblog but it's old and stinky so we're replacing it anyway.) Battling! League Rules, Pokemon Moves, and Street Battling!

All battles fall into one of two categories: League, which is anything officially regulated by the League itself, and Street, what we as players of pokémon would refer to as random trainer encounters. At least, that's the surface level definition of it. In actuality, Street Battling is more of a subculture within pokémon trainers.

"Street Battling" as a term was coined around when the modern Pokémon League and Gym System was first established, but as it encompasses basically all battles prior to that point, it goes without saying that it had existed for about as long as people have been doing competitive pokémon battling. In fact, the League—or at least the Gym and Championship system, which we'll just assume is what I mean when I say 'League' from here on out—was sort of established in response to Street Battling.

As competitive battling became more and more popular among trainers and organized competition began to take off, the League was born out of a necessity to regulate it, mainly to mitigate possible damage and injuries to participants. These standards have changed a lot since the old days, but broadly, what they define are the limits of a battlefield, definitions of what constitutes a "legal" move, restrictions on how many pokémon could battle at a time, what counts as a pokémon being incapable of battle, and so forth. You know, sports stuff. A lot of that is self explanatory, so we're gonna focus on the one that sounds the most confusing: Moves.

"Abby, don't pokémon just Inherently Know Moves?" Well, yeah, sure, but that's abstraction for the sake of a video game. (Pokémon but with Nintendogs rules where you have to reinforce what you mean by "vine whip" by saying it into the crappy little speaker repeatedly and praying your bulbasaur understands would probably get old fast.) In reality, trainers have to... well, train their pokémon. They're all capable of doing those things, obviously, but the exact conditions and circumstances under which they use them are the matter of League regulation. Basically: you can use your bulbasaur's vines to whack the other guy's pokémon, and that's a legal move called Vine Whip, but you can't use them as a tripwire. Using Ice Beam to attack another pokémon directly is fine, but using it to create a slippery surface? Illegal until relatively recently. It also puts some limits on how intense certain moves are allowed to be, such as Earthquake, in the interest of making sure spectators and trainers don't come to any harm. (Fun fact! 'Dig' was not a legal move for a surprisingly long time. It was pretty controversial when it was finally added, but nowadays you wouldn't know as it's basically a staple.)

So, in short, the league defined a number of "legal" moves usable in official battles, mainly defined by the capabilities of pokémon native to whatever region they were regulating, so on and so forth. It was pretty rudimentary in the early days, honestly, and so it didn't really take off much at first. At least not until the League started cracking down a bit more on enforcing these regulations outside of official battles in order to normalize them. Trainers battling outside of League Facilities could be hit with strikes on their trainer cards or even fines and jail time depending on the "severity". You know, like how jaywalking was a made up crime to make cars the norm. There is something to be said for the reduction of injuries after these practices became standard, but most experts nowadays agree it was pretty excessive.

Anyway, moving on, the League Standard would eventually become the accepted norm and very rarely would you see trainers deviating from them. One vs. one battles, with a restricted selection of usable moves, limitations on how much you could alter the battlefield, and predetermined boundaries for battling within. Which, in turn, made the league way more popular, because—duh, everybody already knows the rules! It lowered the barrier to entry and made the Gym Battle a standard challenge.

But you know who hates being told what to do? That's right, punk-ass teens! Well, alright, the trainers who popularized the modern Street Battle format were not, in fact, all teens, but it was associated with that sort of counterculture in the same way skateboarding was for a long time. Trainers who were frustrated with the restrictive and oftentimes repetitive nature of League Battles would host unsanctioned tournaments with looser rules (in varying degrees), oftentimes hosted in "non-standard" battlefields, such as densely forested areas, steep cliffs, back streets, and other areas with more obstacles and challenges than the League Standard open battlefield. This counterculture of "Street Trainers," as they were called, became pretty popular, even as League regulations loosened somewhat with the advancement of research and technology.

Street Battling remains a pretty popular trainer subculture and has been able to make the move to be less "underground" in the years since it originated. While the image associated with it still tends to be reckless teens breaking the rules for fun, the Street Battle scene is actually most popular with very experienced trainers looking to shake the "meta" of what does and doesn't work in League Battles and get to test the limits of their pokémons' abilities and their own skills as a trainer. Formats like double, triple, and rotation battles were officially added to most leagues after being popularized by the Street Battling community, and several facilities, like the Battle Towers, were established by the league in an interest of catering to such trainers.

Now, most Street Battle rules are completely determined by the individuals organizing tournaments, preferences of the trainers involved, the actual limitations of where they are, etc.—but there are two pretty universally accepted rules that the community abides by.

First—don't do anything that'll get you arrested and/or killed, stupid. You'd think it would go without saying, but some people need reminding. Causing any major property damage (that you'll get caught for), trespassing in actively dangerous locations (such as active construction sites), and doing any permanent harm to the other party are all examples of taboos that most seasoned street trainers will give you the boot for. (Trespassing on the whole can be a bit controversial, but most will ignore it as long as the location is confirmed to be safe. Nobody's really going to get mad for hosting your tournament in the empty husk of an old shopping mall or something as long as you keep it subtle enough that nobody's getting caught.)

Second—the only League regulation that is universally abided by is the definition of a "faint," the point at which a pokémon is no longer fit to battle. This is because the League Standard is, 100%, a pretty thoroughly-researched safety regulation. While most pokémon can, in theory, continue battling beyond the point of a faint, they absolutely should not as it risks severe and permanent harm. This is one that, if you break, you will almost certainly immediately be ejected from the group and not welcomed back. Trainers who do this are more or less blacklisted from local Street Battling communities.