so in 2020 i joined a cult.
there's a lot more backstory to SWIM than that, and just leaving the description there leaves a much more dim view of the community than what it was, but most of the surrounding context isn't relevant to this. what matters is that it amounted to a discord server full of plural trans creatures obsessed with Narrative and chaos magic, i.e. the main target audience of blaseball.
so, of course, they had a channel dedicated to the splort, and in the midst of my multiple life-changing revelations that vastly changed how we conceive of ourselves in our spirituality and in general, i also got to glance at a channel where they talked about crabs destroying the sun or something, the kind of thing that immediately lands you some interest. the circumstances of SWIM and its subsequent collapse meant that despite being exposed to the tail end of the discipline era like that, i was a bit too distracted to get into it right then, but it stuck in the back of my mind because how does "the crabs blew up the sun and a new sun rose" not stick in your mind.
so when the grand siesta ended, i was right there excited for this weird thing i had only barely heard about, picked the LA Unlimited Tacos because they had a funny-sounding name, and found ourselves in arguably the most important game we've ever played.
i stuck with the expansion era basically all the way through, it was a proper hyperfixation trying to absorb every little bit of information about it, but most of all just watching. the cultural event of blaseball had me hooked, and it felt nice to have something to watch, to kind of reclaim the concept of sports from the parental trauma it had been kind of poisoned with, to have something to stave off the depression in the few month gap before i got to move away.
i got attached to the names of these little blorbos, i helped with the lore of Nicholas Vincent before he got incinerated a season later, i watched as everyone exploded over the second wyatt masoning and the subsequent explosions, i found more music to like which is a boon for my music taste that still effectively consists of only four bands. but most of all i found a thing to just vibe around, a background detail i could chat minor things about, always there to get excited about a game or the elections or whatever, it was nice to see the plot build and everything.
even as i moved out during that year, i still was glued to it, i remember keeping my housemate up going wild in a discord call over the semi-centennial, i remember being glued to the screen during season 24 while everything burned down around us, and then...
nothing.
the game got consumed by a black hole on july 30th, 2021, and it was over.
and i've been coasting on memories ever since.
i think the most obvious way blaseball impacted me is right up there with that name of Wyatt in the display name slot. and while yeah, that's true (i don't consider π€ symbolic of me for nothing) it's certainly far from all of it, and not the start.
i missed most of the story with the mic on account of joining blaseball at the beginning of expansion, but the way everyone (rightly so) went wild for Wyatt Mason made sure i was immersed right into it. the first real thing i got to see though was season 14, and watching the flurry of activity over the second Wyatt Masoning stuck with me, the symbolism of echoing away into static, cancelling out like they were never really there. i barely knew her, but i cried for Wyatt Quitter with the rest of the tacos fans.
a headmate of mine broke a little bit after that time, for unrelated reasons. it wasn't immediate death, but out of guilt for something deeply personal and deeply internal that happened, she collapsed into a cacophony of the word "sorry" over and over again. she echoed away into static in an endless cacophony of apologies, like she was never really there at all.
a successor to her formed months later, long after blaseball had ended and we were well into coasting on memories. given the circumstances, they grabbed onto symbolism to describe themself, and they still have the icons for Alternate and Receiver on their pluralkit profile. it's a symbolism that's important to them, reborn from static, an Alternate, all very evocative ideas that stick.
and really, that most of all is what blaseball left with us, evocative ideas that stick. symbolism to pull upon, stories to see ourselves in.
a headmate identifying with a rare masculinity in our system that felt unimportant and sacrificial? of course he started identifying with Mike Townsend and Derrick Krueger, new ideas to pick up on, see himself in, Narratives to present himself under. and when he went from feeling sacrificial to trying to live for himself, of course he drew on the symbolism of "transitioning from a fire protector to a fire eater".
and when i broke early into 2022, exploded from things i don't want to go through again, identity collapse... i fixated on a garages lyric.
i can feel myself going, but i don't wanna let go.
and as i made it through that, i kind of broke in half, and what would the other half be but some weird form of the mic, of Wyatt Mason, the name we took to represent the change, picking up the microphone.
it's funny, despite it all, we never really got fictives of blaseball, except for a short-lived Halexandrey Walton (still best player), we instead got degrees of "kinning" to use the term loosely. seeing a character and drawing connections, becoming immersed, feeling that story and the similarities to our own stories and letting that be a point of definition.
and i know for certain we're not the only system that's been so touched by blaseball and its ideas, the blaseball community is one of the largest we've ever seen be so plural accepting, so fictive accepting, and it's no wonder why with how much of an impact it leaves.
blaseball left us with stories. more than the nuances of the elections or the anxiety of incinerations or any single game, blaseball's biggest pull was emergent narrative. stories you could feel, stories you could see yourself in, but most of all stories to tell. no one's ever going to be able to live through ruby tuesday or day x or the semi-centennial or season 24 again, but they'll sure be able to hear your stories of it, hear all the characters talked about, see how much came from a bunch of silly names playing fake baseball. even in its inglorious death, blaseball still has that, that was its memory already, and that is its memory now.
the cultural event of blaseball doesn't die with the game. it lives on through the stories it created, the memories we all made, and how it touched everyone who watched it.
that was blaseball, thank you for participating.
