secretmason

[secretmason]

okay before the fandom simmers down I need y'all to be extra insufferable (I say that lovingly) about blaseball for a bit.

get your teams lore on the wiki, publish that fic you've been meaning to finish. post that art that you're not quite happy with but I promise everyone will love. theorise about what was, what could have been and what wasn't.

this game's history- it's very existence, will only exist as much as we write it down. so write down *everything*. for the sake of people who want to reminisce years from now, when the sites are gone save for archives and disparate thoughts on message boards and social media.

[secretmason]

i'm just saying season 11 spies would've loved the underbracket

[secretmason]

for those of you that aren’t on twitter

[secretmason]

This was originally going to be a vent post but instead I'll keep it more positive - I just finished work on Clean and Light Blaseball, a light mode on-site that also removes a lot of the gradients that would otherwise look strange given their design for the site's base appearance.

From what I can tell of the site's code, maintenance of this sheet is going to be a giant hassle, so I'm still very much hoping we get a light mode built into the site sooner rather than later. That said, right now I believe I caught everything and if you need or want light mode until then I hope it's useful to you!

[secretmason]

something nobody told me would happen as a result of editing the blaseball wiki is the amount of extra appreciation that I have for wikipedia.

obviously i already adored wikipedia, right - it's the closest thing we have to a single place to store the collective knowledge of humanity freely and openly, all that jazz. but the amount of work that goes into maintaining that knowledge is vast and the undertaking that website must be for it's moderation team is unfathomable.

but they've clearly spent the last two decades figuring out a process by which this stuff can be worked on. every page needs the same basic stuff, so they have a big task center where you can go to a random page lacking a basic feature (like categorization, for example) and add it yourself. that task center isn't just for basic stuff though- it's got everything, anything you think wikipedia editors need to do from formalizing the language to make the entire site internally consistent through to checking that any and all images posted to the site are legally able to be there, as well as conflict management by involving mediators or third opinions.

how do i know this task center exists? i changed a single spacebar on one page because it was nestled two references into a set of four and was annoying me, and someone on the site sent me a message welcoming me to the site and giving me some places to look to get started making heavier changes than a single spacebar. never let anyone tell you "anyone can edit wikipedia" again. these people are wild. /pos

there's also tools on wikipedia for how to actually use it and i've been rifling through their help pages whenever i need to figure out what something added to the blaseball wiki does, because adding to the blaseball wiki and adding to wikipedia is the same basic stuff just with different templates and styles and stuff. but those help pages are clearly written with people like me, that have no idea what they're doing, at least sort of in mind. it gives you tips on how to do it but also where and how it should be used to keep it professional.

i don't really have a way to sign this post off beyond "please thank the people who do the work to maintain wikis, especially wikipedia."

[secretmason]

I wonder how Rivers reacted to blaseball’s weather for the first time…

[secretmason]

blaseball is more accessible unless you:

- use a screen reader (i'm told old site had good alt text)

- have trouble reading inverted numbers (new font)

- don't own/can't use a pc (no mobile support, admittedly apple's fault not theirs)

- have to use light mode (doesn't exist)

- more I'm sure I'm forgetting and people are welcome to tell me about

And sure a few of these are fixable with stylesheets but they shouldn't have to be? The site just needed to not get actively worse over the redesign.

[secretmason]

blaseball is finally back for real! it's been a while and new people have joined, so let's do one of those again: please put in the tags what team(s) you support and how long you've been with them!

[secretmason]

It’s the on season, you know what that means!

[updates the userstyle doc] [updates the userstyle doc] [updates the userstyle doc] [updates the userstyle doc] [updates th

[secretmason]

my hot take of the day is that "i just think it would be fun/be cool/be nice to see/mesh well with the existing lore" is a more valid reason for suggesting that a character is gay/has a gender/has neopronouns/is disabled/is neurodivergent then "We Need More Representation Of This" (with the implication of If You Don't Agree You Are Causing Diversity Loss). i think you will also find that people are a lot more receptive to your ideas this way. ok NOW i'm going to do homework

[secretmason]

[secretmason]

Just to fully word out what I think - I think The Coronation Era will be about the cyclical nature of Blaseball- we’re going to repeat it’s most original history, as detailed in the Root section of the Library.

Look at The First Day, Zeroth Edition, Section 1 of Root. Seem familliar?

Sure, we haven’t seen any Strange Attractors Evolving, but the Umpires are imploring us to Read the Rules. On it’s own, this wouldn’t be enough though, except that Root Section 2 is named An Ascension.

“A Raise”, “An Ascension”, early in blaseball’s history, centering around some kind of wager. This was so early in blaseball’s history that I’d imagine this Ascension was to determine the seat of power, but I’d need proof. Let’s see what this Era’s main plot thread seems to be right now:

A Tournament of Champions, to allow one victor to be named the “Ace” and “claim the Mound”. Wait, where have I heard about the Mound before?

The Reader, telling us to charge it, in this case so we could hit the Coin.

So the Mound refers to the seat of power upon which Blaseball rests. Previously held by Coin, and The Shelled One before that. In the event the seat is unclaimed, the best team in the league is invited to become the Ace, and claim it for themselves. But to what end? Reader held off on that detail.

But I think we’re about to find out. And given we see nothing written about Blaseball after that in Root, instead leaving it empty until The First Day, 1st Edition, I suspect it’s nothing good.

[secretmason]

cant comment on sideblogs so reblogging to say that specific section was me!

i hope it was succinct enough from a readability perspective - that hour of describing the feed on the wiki was a lot of "oh no how do i make this less than a college essay in length" lmao

i love how dedicated the blaseball fans are to putting stuff on the wiki. i’m so glad they are able to give me a play by play of this since i wasnt there

[secretmason]

The decision between the Decrees is actually really simple

Relegation sucks, it appears to just flat out delete players from the Sim and replace them with... new guys, given it doesn't detail the Black Hole. It doesn't relegate the team itself so no fun lore about getting a new team each week, it just erases beloved players from existence and replaces them with the same mediocre statlines that you tend to get out of new player births. If I had to guess, Relegation would hit the same team over and over again, leaving an ever-rotating cast of players a niche group of people care about.

Redistribute Wealth seems like a fun spite option, but it's trades. Trades means it will likely scatter the team across the league, and not every player on any winning team is good. Losing your Star Hitter for the worst player on the victor's team would feel shitty absolutely every time it happens.

Open the Forbidden Book is probably going to reintroduce Incineration, a known and manageable evil. We've done necromancy before and we will probably be able to again, and it's also clearly what the narrative wants out of us. Additionally, it's the fun unknown of not actually knowing what it'll add for sure - some people are theorizing it'll be the Eclipse Team Incins we got in Season 24 (which has the appeal the people that want to vote for Relegation actually want) or some strange new reader-themed twist (like say, Redaction, which pushes the plot towards the Baristas, an obvious foe we can then band together and defeat.)

Obviously you can vote how you like, but I feel like I should throw in some extra thoughts to consider before Election Day tomorrow.

[secretmason]

(◡‿◡✿)

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

(ʘ‿ʘ)ノ✿ “hold my flower”

[secretmason]

fall ball happens every week and maincord just:

[secretmason]

my "we banned parker from tumblr" shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt