Circus You Create

While the current Silph League Arena season is still young with the first of what will be a number of themes, I'd also like to discuss something that essentially became a prelude to the season. In September, the SLA allowed voting on a "Player's Choice" cup or theme, and the result became the (semi-)official cup or theme for the rest of the month, though obviously it wouldn't qualify for rankings. After the voting concluded, one cup or theme came out on top, and that one is called "Circus".

Like all cups or themes, this one also has criteria on what is included and excluded. For the inclusions, they are simple in that they consist of Pokémon of any of five types. The types involved are Fighting, Poison, Psychic, Flying, and Fire. It's a unique mix of types that represent all the things that can be present at a circus - the strong people, tricksters, jugglers, high wire actors, and fire breathers. The collection of types also have some relations, in that Psychic plays into Fighting and Poison, and Flying plays into Fighting as well. But being that they're not many, it's obvious that the secondary types will remain important in many ways.

For the exclusions, there are also quite a few. No Legendary or Mythical Pokémon are allowed, which forces battles to replicate a Premier Cup style and locks out a few Pokémon that could predominate, like Moltres and Cresselia, as well as Mew and Victini. Alolan Forms are not allowed likely for the very same reason, as some in the past have been known to take over themes, like Alolan Marowak. There is also one specific species ban directed at Altaria, as it is an all-around Pokémon even in open Great League battles with no restrictions, such as for the Go Battle League. That's a good amount of exclusions, but they are necessary and have to be workable.

As noted, this cup or theme is a prelude, and therefore it's a preseason cup as well. I didn't take note of it until I browsed the SLA web site for information about the first cup or theme for this season. It also seemed to escape the radar of the ones who are keen with PvP among the members of my raid group, but then it's my raid group for a reason, and we've been busy with all the events all last month. Furthermore, it does not allow the possibility of ranking anyway, and for some, that alone may provide little point in proceeding with it, instead preferring to go all out when the season starts. Whatever the reason, there is an apparent sense of unimportance.

As unimportant as it may be, it's still a cup or theme that is part of the corpus of SLA and therefore deserves at least a bit of discussion. It has complexity like the regular season cups or themes, even if that complexity doesn't show themselves in actual rankings due to being a preseason cup or theme. Moreover, the fact that it results from community voting still makes it unique: it is, for all intents and purposes, a "circus you create", by those who conceived the idea and who made their choice upon it. 

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