A Blaseball drabble request thingy?

[liquidcitrus]

Okay, so I don't use my Tumblr account(s) for this kind of thing, but I figured, why not do drabble prompts here instead?

Leave me a comment with some Blaseball players (you can request anyone, but I'm most likely to be able to work with characters I've already written), and also a... well, technically you can give me any prompt you like, but a number from this list is probably best.

I... guess this is a little bit like an anon meme? Only I'm the only one filling everything. I won't guarantee that I can do any particular one, but I'll fill in what I can.

(Generalized content warning for blaseball-typical horror, themes of trauma/mental illness, you know, the usual. More specific content warnings than that, if there are any, will be in the subject lines of relevant comments. Also, comments screened so you might not be able to see them after you post them - rest assured, I do see them!)
 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

2 + character of your choice?

[liquidcitrus]

(season 8-ish)

Karato is attempting skateboarding, as a substitute for surfing, and they're finding that not that many of the skills transfer - which is, one presumes, why they're currently facedown on the pavement.

"You okay?" Teddy says, offering a hand up.

Karato pushes it away.

Teddy sits down next to them. "I mean... we could try something else, if you'd rather. Not sure if we have rollerskates in your size right now, but we can get them."

"Mnh."

"Or... how about a bicycle? I think we've got a couple in storage, Son tried -"

"You're not helping."

"Okay, I'll stop."

Silence.

"It's..." Karato stops; starts again. "You're not the first one to try distracting me like this. Denzel tried to give me a season pass to the local waterpark yesterday."

Teddy tries, and fails, to suppress a giggle.

"I said I was missing the water, but that's not the kind of water I meant." Karato rolls over to prop themselves up on one elbow. "You know what got to me? The other day I saw a mirage. I thought it was water, I mentally prepared myself for having to walk through a puddle, but when I got there? Nothing but asphalt."

"Oh, is that why... when we..."

"Yeah."

Teddy looks into the distance, at the buildings speckled with the occasional square of light from someone's office. "I'm sorry."

"None of this is your fault." Karato sighs. "Let's just... go."

"Yes. Let's."

(Marco, 83)

[liquidcitrus]

(sometime early in season 5)

Morrow swings open the door of the bathroom and finds Marco arguing with... themselves?

"Well, if you're not going to clean up after yourself, I'll make someone lock the oak-gall away," Marco says.

Marco grunts at themself in some obscure language that Morrow doesn't understand.

In a more normal voice, Marco continues: "Yes, yes, but I also drain the bathtub after using it. Clean your own damn -"

Morrow clears their throat, and Marco looks up, startled.

"Yeah?" Marco says.

"What... was that?"

"Nothing."

Morrow steps inside, closing the door behind them, and raises their eyebrows.

"Look. I didn't want you to see this. But everyone else already knows, so screw it, I guess." Marco sighs. "I've got a headmate. J'lmieltk helps me with Blaseball technique."

Morrow stares. "And that's a secret... why?"

"Ever since I summoned them, nobody trusts me! Nobody tells me anything anymore, I'm locked out of the loop, I've been" - and here Marco makes air-quotes - "'excused', and nobody even wants to talk to me because what if I let their secrets slip?"

"I'm not trusted with anything either."

Marco looks down at their ink-stained hands. "Oh. You wouldn't, would you. Too new on the team."

"Yeah. So maybe, if you want someone to talk to about this stuff..."

"You know," Marco says, "while we're here, I'm - I was - the only mage on the team. Your approach seems... very different from mine."

"Oh! You want to compare notes. Sure."

"I thought you'd take longer to convince..."

Valentine Games is new to consensus systems

[liquidcitrus]

(Not actually prompted, I just sorta wrote this by accident while trying to explain something else entirely)

(Shortly after the feedback swap)

The spies run their internal affairs according to this system that is about 90% consensus and 10% "yes, Jordan, we know you've self-appointed yourself as the devil's advocate, but if we considered every argument of yours we still wouldn't have a name for our stadium, let alone being able to decide anything else, please shut up and maybe let us actually make a decision sometime in the next ten years"

Which means that Val's experience would be being sat down by one of the existing Spies (probably Alex, though given that Comfort just joined the team a few days before, Alex might have been busy) and told about this system. They fill out paperwork about what kind of needs aren't being met, and so on and so forth. Then at the end of the week they all do a democracy. For everything. Seat at the table, equal importance, "hey you raised a good point", "you okay with that?", etc etc

Val looks at all that and goes "..........wait, you can have a system that's this organized and this bureaucratic while still not having a set leader? What the hell are you?"

"We're the Spies."

"...No, I meant, where did you get all this... stuff from, these procedures -"

Jordan comes back in and dumps a massive stack of books on the table and says to read the damn theory. There is an argument about whether or not it's fair to make someone new do all that reading.

Val looks sideways at Reese, who grins and says "Welcome to the real Spies."

(CLAUSTROPHOBIA WARNING) what if Math was trapped in a Peanut shell?

[liquidcitrus]

The others may have experienced shelling as isolation, deprivation, cutoff. Math could easily have survived that: hallucinations. But the shell is designed to break people, and so instead of trapping Math without input, the shell could have shoved Math into an all too physical and limited form.

Math is not used to having skin that itches, or a mouth that goes dry, or legs that tremble. Input. Constant input. Trapped in a form this small...

"IS THIS NOT WHAT YOU WANTED?" the Peanut might have said. "TO BE LIKE THESE MORTALS?"

Math swallows. Imagines everting the Peanut, pulling it into absurd shapes like topological taffy, shoving it just far enough into a higher dimension to tie it in knots and then stranding it in 3-space. Math cannot talk, cannot figure out how to make the tongue and the voicebox work together correctly, but this doesn't matter to the Peanut. It can understand the intent of Math's mental and conceptual taunt just fine.

It turns Math's senses up further, shoves a constant proprioceptive feed into Math's sensorium. An utterly pointless sense to have, in a place where Math cannot so much as lift a hand. "I CAN KEEP DOING THIS", it says.

Math remembers the advice that was supposed to be for the others, and tries to follow it. Breathe. Imagine. Hope.

But even the birds cannot free Math from being trapped in embodiment.

Morrow and Marco, S12, after seeing incineration again

[liquidcitrus]

Morrow stares at the wall. "I used to be so good at this."

"So good at what?" Marco says, not looking up from their enormous jigsaw puzzle.

"At not caring. At being able to pick myself up the next day and going on."

"You weren't good at it," Marco says. "You were trapped by it. I remember how long it took you to realize that you didn't have to hide your food everywhere like a squirrel."

"But that wasn't Blaseball, that was Ruslan." The reality television show Morrow had been trapped in for years, My Roomie Ruslan, about how they dealt with the 'hilarious' antics of someone who moved onto their couch one day and refused to leave. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"It's like that. Except that what you got good at hiding was your feelings." Marco picks through a pile of blue-and-white pieces - bits of clouds - and chews their lip. "You shouldn't have had to learn that. None of us should have had to learn that."

"What does that matter? We're back in hell again now."

"We know that it's possible for them to do better by us. Blaseball can be like 11, like the Cup. It doesn't have to scrape us raw to be entertaining to people."

"We can't do anything about it, though. We can't make it stop."

"Maybe we can't. But -" Marco jabs a thumb at the fourth wall. "They can."

"Who's 'they'?"

"...Never mind."

s13 - Knight Triumphant, a Siphon

[liquidcitrus]

Fitz catches Knight by the upper arm as they walk back inside. "Hey. Uh. We don't do blooddrain that way here."

"I believeth thee means that thee doth not do blooddrain that way."

"Don't you have the standard-issue crazy straw in your trenchcoat pockets? Why aren't you -"

"The sword, 'tis how I have always done 't. I shan't cease f'r thy 'policies'."

"Do you know why we have that policy?"

"...Nay?"

"Using the kit makes the wound as small as possible, so it heals easily. We try to cause as little suffering as possible here."

Knight tilts their head, skeptical.

"Also, the Lift are already a terrible team. Why are you making them worse?"

"Such are the wanderings of fate."

"See, now you're just reminding me of Valentine."

Reese Clark, s13

[liquidcitrus]

They keep playing against the Lift.

Reese knows that the Commissioner must, definitionally, be doing a great job. Has to be. That's the second definition of commissioner in the dlictionary: "one who does a great job". But sometimes Reese has to wonder. Why are they playing the Lift again? Why do they keep having to stare at each other, all knowing exactly what Quitter did and knowing that Quitter could do it again?

Right now Reese sees Quitter, eyes distant and expression blank, coming up to bat. Dissociating, Alex would say, if they were here. Alex has a thousand different words for the thousand different ways that someone can fall apart. Reese doesn't.

Reese won't read the books about trauma Alex keeps recommending, for fear of it catching from the pages. Like how medical students learn about new diseases and then are immediately convinced that they have them. If Reese doesn't know how to suffer, they'll be fine.

Then again, Alex seems to always know what someone needs, and Reese had to learn that attaching party poppers to someone's locker, so that they all went off when the locker was opened, was not an appropriate way to celebrate someone's birthday.

The ball sails up and over and clunks against Denzel's peanut shell, which has been rolled in to rest at first base. Someone scores on the sacrifice fly. Quitter doesn't even try to run to first: they just walk off the field and disappear into the dugout.

Alex would know what to do about that. Reese doesn't. Reese's role in the Spies is pratfalls and distractions and sleight-of-hand, not maintaining social cohesion, and certainly not caring. They aren't good at it anyway. They'll leave it to someone who is.

Reese just watches, and hopes that the Lift have someone like Alex, because Quitter looks like someone who needs the kind of help Reese can't provide.

Math, on fragility. end of s13-ish

[liquidcitrus]

to: stijn
from: math

> Hey.
> Are you there?

< yeah
< it's late where u are
< bad thoughts?

> Yeah.
> I don't know what's happening.
> I don't know why it had to be now.
> Or why it had to be us.
> I tried to bang my head against the statistics for a while, but there's just not enough data.

< well
< thx 4 asking 4 help
< proud of u

> I shouldn't have done this.

< done what?

> I shouldn't have come here.
> I thought a single point in time would be good to experience.
> But I'm stuck in the present, and in the present you're all so fragile.
> It hurts when you shatter.

< yeah
< it does

> How do you stand it?

< it?

> The mortality thing.
> Knowing that anything and everything slips away into the abyss.
> And that you can never, ever do it all.

< being in the present

> What?

< u want 2 know what happens next
< looking 4 the omniscience u don't have

> I just want to know whether I'm supposed to stop hoping or not.

< hoping?
< worrying

> ...
> You're right.
> Worrying.

< worrying doesn't make things stop happening
< 2morrow's winds blow 2morrow

on impending necromancy

[liquidcitrus]

"Do I get a choice?"

"No," Jaylen says.

"So I'm going to have to be like you. With all the killing. And all the people hating me."

"Yep."

"Why?"

Jaylen kicks back in the chair; rests her feet on the table in front of her. "They always want to see what stupid s*** they can make us do. You just drew the short stick, is all."

"That's not fair."

"The Coin can say anything she likes, but Blaseball has never been fair. And it never will be."

there was an interleague Mills-Spies series in s14

[liquidcitrus]

Someone stands on the roof of Battin' Island, trenchcoat and hat silhouetted by the city.

Andrew calls out, "Hey."

Alexandria turns; tips their hat. "Been a while."

"Alex! Thought you'd gone back to the hotel."

"I wanted to talk, and I knew I'd meet you here. You always did find a roof to brood on."

Andrew smacks his forehead. "Of course you'd remember."

"So," Alex says. "How've you been holding up?"

"Fine, I guess."

"Okay, now give me your actual answer. Not the one where you're trying to make me stop worrying."

Andrew slumps. "I didn't sign up for this. For any of this. Not like you. I just wanted to play ball. And now they're... now they're... they..."

"And now Teddy and Son are dead."

Andrew flinches at the names, eyes welling up with tears. "Why - why did it have to be them?"

"I don't know," Alex says, quietly, folding Andrew into a hug. "I wish I could tell you."

"I never wanted to be in this world. I should have refused. I should have - before I lost a family for the second time -"

"I have my own regrets," Alex mutters into Andrew's shoulder. "But you don't want to hear about those."

"No, go ahead. It's not like I have anything better to do."