#velasquez alstott

[salthien]

when all was said and done, Coronation ended up leaving kind of a bad taste in my mouth, so I didn't really plan to make anything further for blball and especially not for Coronation. that being said, I did have some stuff I kind of liked from before it broke bad, so on request here's a kind-of wip amnesty for one of them.

hands, 1.4k. gen. blaseball does not leave much time for leisure, especially for its captains. elip dean of the hades tigers makes do with what they can get.

“have you thought about picking up a hobby?”

elip’s attention is slow to leave their notebook, still scribbling postgame notes at one of the empty clubhouse tables. their head lifts, eventually, then tilts, one brow arching.

“something small,” mehdi elaborates. “to keep your hands busy.”

they maintain the look, brows furrowing in a challenge.

“you fidget, eli. a lot.” a pause, and mehdi lifts a palm defensively. “don’t look at me like that. i just think it would be good for you. you don’t need to be in captain mode all the time.”

elip ducks their ears as if admonished, but their eyes are smiling as they tip their head in another unspoken question.

“you’ve got options. just something to keep your hands busy - i wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve got needles and yarn stashed away around here somewhere, or beads. paper’s not hard to come by either.”

something clicks, then, and elip’s eyes go wide as they nod excitedly.

----

it starts like this: little paper animals, folded and strewn about the clubhouse. they are imperfect; the white underside of the bright squares peeks out around uneven folds on cranes with wings that won’t sit right, crabs with lopsided pincers, frogs with short bodies and too-long legs.

there have been a few casualties, too, accidentally swept to the floor and caught by wayward heels. elip trashes the crushed ones as readily as anyone else.

“oh– shit.” vela says, prying a bright yellow crane from her cleat one day. “cap, you gotta be more careful with these little guys.”

elip looks across the dugout, shrugs once. later, though, they see vela tuck the crane under a magnet in her locker, its crumpled wing carefully smoothed out. it fills them with a warmth they can’t name long after they’ve left the stadium.

----

they don’t limit themself to paper. as the season goes on, elip swaps craft paper for colored twine, carrying beads in a hidden pocket of their skirt. despite mehdi’s protests, they unwind the first three lumpy, uneven bracelets they make to save material - no use being wasteful.

the fourth, elip presents to stevie with little fanfare. they press it into his hand - a simple thing, pale blue twine, small green beads strung into the weave - as he comes in from striking out in the top of the ninth.

“for me?” he asks, even as elip is beginning to step away. they nod, only half-looking at him, but pause as the crow’s feet around his eyes crinkle with a smile.

“captain dean, you’re too kind.”

they notice it after that sometimes, the twine fastened snugly beneath his glove. it makes them smile no matter how far they’re down on the scoreboard.

----

in the off-season, they throw themself even further into mehdi’s suggestion, whenever training and their duties as captain allow for it. one day in late summer, amaya arrives at the clubhouse to elip, awaiting them expectantly, hands behind their back and eyes bright.

“morning to you too, elle.”

when elip finally reveals their gift on outstretched palms, amaya pauses, surprised, her eyes flickering from elip’s face to the painted clay pieces cradled in their hands.

“you made these?” elip answers their question with a firm nod and lifts the little clay armaments further, gesturing to amaya with both palms.

“seriously–? they’re so cute, are you sure?”

elip rolls their eyes exaggeratedly, and amaya finally acquiesces, taking the miniature silver-and-rose painted sword and shield from their palms with a kind of fond reverence that elip won’t soon forget.

----

by the beginning of season 2, more gifts have found their way into the hands of their team, each stripe carrying a token from their captain’s creative spree. elip abandons their more complex endeavors as the season begins and they turn their focus to the game.

they wonder, perhaps too much at first, about wandering zephyr - cursed and, they hope, making the best of it. he seems happy, no matter what color jersey he wears when they see clips of him online, and that’s what matters.

but pragmatism is the name of the game, especially as players start going up in flames: they stop letting themself worry if he misses Hades, unsure if a yes or a no would bring them more peace.

when they catch one of his interviews, scrounging for news on the rest of the league as much as they dare, they linger on it just enough to notice the beaded corner of an ash-gray keychain hanging out of his pocket. a lump rises in their throat, bittersweet.

----

you only keep what you had on you when you died, say the long-dead as they fill the hall of flame with space and color and depth. 

there are ways of contacting the living, but not reliably. 

we’re here for you, they offer, but you’ll have to get used to this. chances are you’ll be here a very long time.

leandra doesn’t mind. she’d heard the stories of the hall and still chosen it willingly the day she’d taken the field after mondegreen’s incineration. that does not make the physical adjustment any easier - the dampness, the way her fur clings to her flanks, the way her chest aches for breath that won’t come - but she’s made her peace with that, too.

what does ease her mind is the scrap of maroon cloth she discovers in her breast pocket, surfacing a memory - elip, closing it into her hands the morning of day 79. sewn into it is a sun, pale yellow and filled in with hasty stitches. the captain had not been clear what it was for, only that she was meant to have it. they’d been quite insistent.

leandra finds herself glad for it now, running her thumb gently over the stitchwork. it is, if nothing else, an affirmation of her decision. she cannot imagine elip in the dark of the trench.

----

they don’t talk, much. derrick is fine with that. the silence is comfortingly familiar, and elip seems equally unbothered by it. they commiserate over bad games, elip might ask a question or two about the hall or about derrick himself, but mostly they seem happy to simply have him around as quiet company while they read or study games or make things, sequestered for a handful of hours in elip’s hades flat or derrick’s tiny new apartment.

on one occasion - post-finals, when elip’s in charleston for vela’s memorial - they bring a bright sheaf of paper and seat themself on the floor with it, one cowled ear tipped toward where he sits on the couch. it’s a kind of quiet intensity he hasn’t seen from them much.

aren’t those good luck? he asks in sign, the quiet too comfortable to break with his voice - it's easier, sometimes, and elip's fluency in the common languages of the league makes up for his spotty hall-earned education. elip looks up between cranes, a brightly-colored row of them lined up in a semicircle on the rug. elip's ears tip back in confusion, and derrick repeats himself.

their expression doesn’t change; if anything, they grow more confused.

“those’re good luck, right?” he says, out loud this time, and the understanding that dawns over their face is quickly replaced by amusement, their shoulders shaking with quiet laughter.

lucky, they sign with a smile, middle finger lifting off their chin, and derrick realizes his mistake before their hand can even make it back to their face to demonstrate what he’d said instead.

“y’know– fuck it. maybe i do want to know if they taste good.” he grouses with a lopsided smile, leaning back to stare up at the ceiling. once elip’s laughter subsides, they nod, signing lucky again as they set the newest crane with its fellows.

“gonna need a lot more cranes than that to help either of us, i think.”

elip’s ear flicks dismissively beneath their tichel, and they pull another piece of paper from the sheaf to their careful creases anew.

derrick doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes later to find his apartment empty. the only evidence of elip’s departure is a text comprised entirely of emojis - happy face, shushing face, waving hand, sleeping face - and a small navy blue crane they’ve left in his upturned palms. he smiles faintly, leans to set it on the side table and only jumps a little bit when something crunches softly behind him.

he starts upright, turning halfway, but there’s nothing behind him except the back of the couch and another crane. a third falls into his lap with his movement, and he connects the dots at last, pulls the collar of his sweater around to find that elip has in fact filled his hood with yet more palm-sized paper birds.

derrick doesn’t believe in luck, really – but he gathers the little pile of birds onto the old side table and carefully slides the blue one into his phone case for good measure.

[manderleydesign]

Vela is the character I've drawn the most. I hope to draw her again one day. 

[lokrow]

My first blaseball animatic

[ditto-not-on-discord]

RIV Velasquez Alstott

A member of the Charleston Shoe Thieves when this sport first returned July 20th, 2020, They once had Fire Eater as a modification, but lost it during Fall Ball. They landed on the Hades Tigers during Fall Ball and were the first Eclipse related incineration of this NEW eon of Blaseball. RIV. However, also welcome Hana Wildebeest to this wild splort.

[hadesblaseball]

And third in our lineup... Velasquez Alstott!

[ID: A screenshot of the Blaseball.com page for Velazquez Alstott, that shows a break down of their stats. They are as follows: OVERALL RATING (2.5 stars), BATTING (2 stars), PITCHING (3 stars), DEFENSE (1.5 stars), RUNNING (3.5 stars), and VIBES (1 star). End ID. ]

[polkadotpatterson]

ok it’s been a while since I did some late-night reblase-fuelled fic-rotating unhinged angstposting so here’s some of that. which ended up almost veering into Actual Fic Territory whoops

thinking about. abner and parker. what if you were part of the team that cursed a guy and then you died because of it. what if you were both dragged back into this hell to face each other in a pointless showcase game and then you both got thrown back in the league and were even on the same team for a while and watched the coin melt and maybe sort of almost forgave each other for a moment before the world ended.

what if you fell to some weird moist team and made some weird friends in a weird garden and just when things felt almost okay he fell to a new team too and you waited for the league to burn again. and then you didn’t face each other all season but at the end of it they opened the book like they always do because there’s no escape from this game, not ever, not even after you all killed a god. you’ll always be here playing and burning and being puppeted around on their little stage for everyone’s amusement.

and what if back when you fell you had said to yourself no, I’m not doing this again, I’m not going to be their star. maybe some part of you was afraid you couldn’t live up to that anymore, but you buried that deep beneath the part of yourself that was so tired and angry, so it became easy to say no, you’ll pitch how you want. not terrible, but bad enough to be off their radar. you’ll put on a show, but not the kind they want.

but the gods can’t be so easily defied, not even after you’ve proven they can be killed. they love to forge stars, design their pretty little constellations. they look at you on the day the book opens and they set you alight in a new way, different from your first team’s spark that still burns inside you, different from the flames that consumed you when you died.

they say you’re a star again. they say he isn’t. he’s just some guy. not a firewalker. just a batter for the crabs. you can be just some guy, too. watch! you barely win your first two games. you give up ten runs to the millennials. the gods have given you something, some new understanding of the game, something stranger than your own magic, but you do not let it rule you. you will never stop fighting with all that you have.

you did not know velasquez alstott, but donna did. there was no one to protect her this time, no trace of her fire eater ability left to save her. on tv, you watch the firewalker step up to bat. you watch vela burn. you watch the firewalker hit a home run before her ashes have time to settle. donna is crying. she’s dead, and donna is crying, and the firewalker is being the perfect golden boy again, hitting his little home runs as everything burns around him.

you said you wouldn’t be a star again, but that doesn’t mean you won’t stand on the mound two days later and stare him down and do your damndest to strike him the fuck out.

he’s spent so long looking away from you. he’s looking at you this time. maybe remembering how you cursed him. maybe remembering how you burned. you’d throw the ball right at his perfect little face if you could. maybe you try to. it sure doesn’t land anywhere near the strike zone.

(he was just a kid)

he swings weakly.

(he’s still just a kid, even after two thousand years)

he swings again. 1-2. you can almost taste the strikeout. 

(it wasn’t your team. not really. it was the fans. they voted for it)

it tastes like ashes.

(that’s what you tell yourself, sometimes)

he hits the pitch. he always hits the fucking pitch. that’s what he does. star player. burned brighter than you ever could, while you were burning in the background.

vela burned, too, and he still hit the fucking pitch.

donna’s thinking about her. she misses the ball when Winters hits it. she lets him score. you don’t blame her for it.

(who do you blame, Abner Pothos?)

if he’s going to look at you, you’re going to look back. you’ll stare him down until one of you breaks.

(maybe both of you)

[nullteam]

1

Hey Velasquez Alstott! How are you Holding up?

PRETTY FUCKIN BAD

[waveridden]

i've crossposted some of my zine jam fics to ao3! here's what we've got:

death after life, part of @bread--quest's shuffle au zine, wherein flowers batter enid marlow muses on death, decay, and being on a cursed team

triptych, wherein richardson games, jaylen hotdogfingers, and velasquez alstott are given gifts (or curses)

imprinting, wherein salmon and solar eclipses are combined, and death is no longer a permanent guarantee (cw for major character death, undeath, and redeath)

[viciathief]

some of my fav thieves!

[theunsubtleknife]

[sl33pyperson]

hey have yall heard of blaseball??? i sure have

im trying to draw Every player that has ever been on the Charleston Shoe Thieves. very slowly getting there, but im learning as i go!!! love this funny sport a little too much

[sunkencharlestonpost]

July 11 - Daily News Update

It's Sunday Sunday Sunday and here is your daily news update from your beloved Maincord reps!

Top Stories

Back today after a frozen day of no Maincord and you were all missed very much! Hope you had a nice break and got good rest!

Dr J has been putting out some interesting updates on the Library as lines become unredacted! Check it out on twitter account for WSHU, voice of the Charleston Shoe Thieves!

Rogue's Gallery Rundown

The Steaks will be joining us in the Rouge's Gallery today at 1pm EST to talk about their beloved Conner Haley joining our team! Whether you join in the jam or not, let's give them a warm welcome and share a few dad jokes wih good pals! If you can't make the jam or want to get some ideas out now, you may use this form here to submit your ideas!

Wiki Update Jam for Choux Stadium will be ongoing today in the Rogue's Gallery! Drop in any time (exept for during the Conner Haley lore jam above) and share ideas of how to update/change the wiki entry for Choux Stadium! Please use the tag _lorejam_update_Choux to help find ideas easier!

Tomorrow's Wiki Update Jam will be Simon Haley! See the calendar for more upcoming events!

Heist Planning Hoopla

Heist Planning is still closed to help with a brain break. Can't wait for Blaseball to start again and the stratigizing to continue! In the meantime, please stop by the Thieves' Guild and chat about your favorite moments from previous seasons, theories about stats, hopes for future seasons, or even to just spam +simba!

Thieves Home!

Today's Art from the Gallery is from Manderley (@manderleydesign on Twitter) of another great take on Negative Alt Velasquez Alstott!

[ourkicks]

Dramatic sketches of the shoe thieves hitters

Art by @lizzybutt 

[lokrow]

Animatic shots part 1 - CW: Death, Incineration

Velasquez Alstott Chae Deshields Ramirez Winters

[pinkspaceprincess]

daleween doodles ever get the feeling your art’s getting progressively worse?

[hadesblaseball]

NEW ERA, NEW TEAM

To celebrate the start of the new (and hopefully improved?) BLASEBALL, let's start by showcasing the new team members that make up our TEAM.

[ID: A screenshot of the Blaseball.com Hades Tiger's page, that shows all the team members and their star rating. They are as follows: For the LINEUP - Zephyr McCloud (three stars), Stevenson Heat (two and a half stars), Velasquez Alstott (two and a half stars), Steals Mondegreen (two and a half stars), Gloria Bugsnax (two stars), Eddie Tumblehome (two stars), Adrian Melon (two and a half stars), Clyde Fetch (three stars), Isla Solo (two and a half stars). For the ROTATION - Elip Dean (two and a half stars), Amaya Jackson (three and a half stars), Grit Freeman (two and a half stars), Mehdi Caper (three stars), Sage Kuroki (two and a half stars). End ID]