A long time ago, in the far-flung future past of Christmas 2000, a teenage Pokémon fan stumbled across a Pokémon parody fanfiction site called PokéBattles. By the end of January 2001, he had started writing a version of it called Sandy. And eventually started collaborating with other writers on another version. Or two. Or too. Many, that is. Then, one day, life happened, and he fell out of the routine of writing, and never quite managed to get back into it, despite multiple attempts.
Two decades later, in December 2021, he was linked to Foxfire Version, a PokéBattles Version that started in 2021, was actively written, and contained an attempt at archiving as much of the old PokéBattles as could be found. And he started reading the new stuff being put up, liked what he was reading, and went to bed.
...Before getting up about 30 minutes later, unable to sleep, due to Ideas flowing through his mind, which he then wrote down. And then when there were half a dozen basic ideas written down, wrote a battle to test if there were battles in at least one of those ideas. And then started to use that battle to play around with CSS. And then wrote a second battle.
And so Sandy Version rose once more, rebirthed in the fire of a fox. Like a phoenix. But grainier. More coarse. And getting everywhere. The glitter of phoenixes. Hopefully this attempt to resurrect Sandy Version will last a little longer than prior attempts.
But what even is a PokéBattle?
In case you're new here and have neither come from the old community nor the new Foxfire Version, I'll try and explain. PokéBattles are a form of Pokémon Parody fiction with a format attempting to emulate the battle text in the games - "X used Y! It's super effective!" and all that. As a result, the format winds up resembling scripts that consist of a dialogue between a Narrator, which traditionally uses red text and has a tendency of talking in capitals, and a player, who traditionally uses aqua text. Sometimes the player will be unaware of the Narrator, other times the player will be very aware of them. Different writers have different preferences for how to handle this, while some just go with whatever's funnier for the battle in question.
Traditional topics for PokéBattles include pop culture parodies, technology gone wrong, the hell that existence must be like in a world where everything is a Pokémon, everything wants to fight, and god is a capricious, cruel, loud red text who loves puns and the suffering of mortals, and sometimes - rarely - even normal Pokémon battles.
The easiest way of figuring out what's going on is to read some of them. Click the Home button on the navbar if you want to read the latest battle I wrote, the archive to read older, modern, battles by myself or Foxfire Version which has more modern battles, and is trying to build an archive of as much of what us lot were writing two decades ago as can be salvaged.
What are the rules of PokéBattles?
Fundamentally, the rules can be summed up in two words - Whatever's funniest. Obviously, that's subjective, and different authors could be given the exact same concept and write vastly different battles based on it, or even the exact same joke set up and take it in very different directions, and this is fine. However, there are some trends that are almost always the case regardless of version. The Narrator is omnipotent (unless it's funnier or part of the plot to limit the Narrator's powers somehow), and whatever the Narrator narrates happens; the Narrator enjoys puns; everything could be a Pokémon with everything that entails.
Can I write a PokéBattle?
Almost certainly. PokéBattles are relatively easy to write, and more importantly enjoyable to write as well. Even if you don't consider yourself good at comedy writing, the basics of the format steer towards some natural elements of surrealism and surprise which can help to create funny moments. Your battles might not be good to start with, but most people get better at things with practice, so keep trying. If any of them turn out to be something you think is worth seeing by others, I believe Foxfire Version's Phantom Version accepts fan battles.
But if diving in headfirst is more your speed, Neocities is a free host that offers up to 1 Gig of storage, which for something as text based as PokéBattles are, is more than enough. It's what both Sandy Version and Foxfire version are currently hosted on. Dozens of people back in the day taught themselves some basics of HTML by starting their own PokéBattles versions, so even if you're a complete novice at HTML, that's an obstacle that can be overcome - The tools for teaching yourself HTML are far better now than they were in our day, as are the automated HTML generators.