filed by Agent O
audio version
So, tomorrow (or your localized equivalent) is the beginning of Season 20 of Blaseball. Here’s some things I missed, and some things that happened over siesta.
Frinary
So, those hot fries and cold fries that were introduced at the end of Season 18 actually replaced two snacks that already existed, but that nobody was using: Lemonade and Taffy, the two snacks that paid out if your team shamed/was shamed by another team. Just as I suspected, back when the Chum replaced the Tarot Spread, snacks are being discontinued. If you still have lemonade and/or taffy in your snack pack, congratulations – you now have a collectible! One that won’t turn into dust at the end of the season! I think. Probably.
One of the best moneymaking strategies in Season 19 was to equip Cold Fries, and then switch one’s idol every hour to a pitcher who is likely to lose their game. It plays a bit like snake oil, except you only have to pick one game to bet on rather than all of them.
Following closely behind, though, is a strategy that relies on Adalberto Tosser, a pitcher who is a Credit to Team and thus pays out 5x. If you were doing the fries thing, you could idle on them, or even pitcher-switch during the day and then idle-idol them overnight. However, a complication arises: since Adalberto Tosser is actually not that bad of a player, cold fries would not be the best thing. Not by themselves.
Having both hot fries and cold fries – meaning that you get paid when your pitcher wins a game, and when your pitcher loses a game, and there are no ties in Blaseball – ensures that you get some sort of payout no matter what happens. This strategy, having two sets of fries at the same time, has been dubbed “frinary”.
This being said –
I don’t think frinary is going to be the best of strategies next season. Why, you might ask? Because Paula Turnip, an excellent batter and base-stealer, now has the 5x payout multiplier. And batters play every single game. She’s Elsewhere right now, so she can’t do anything at the moment, but when she comes back, she is going to break the economy.
Also We Partied
Also, due to being at the bottom of the bracket last season, we actually managed to get a couple of parties in. Fitz, Yeong-Ho, Denzel, and Alex, specifically. Which is cool.
The Squid’s Tentacles Are Full
The Blaseball Beat for Season 19 has commented on Pudge Nakamoto’s roaming out of the Hall:
When pressed on the escape, league officials noted that responsibility for the Hall falls squarely on the shoulders of the Monitor […] Some are wondering if the necromantic oversight might be the result of too much recent success, that the cephalopod’s lengthy CV might be wearing the squid thin, and that for all of the Monitor’s effort, attention to detail appears to be slipping.
Which is to say, the Squid is being so overworked that they can no longer perform their original job: monitoring the entrance of the Hall of Flame.
It is difficult for me to say “unionize the Monitor” because – as I once said – “I see the squid’s level of godhood as being closest to being a shift leader in a fast food restaurant. Barely any more job security than us, and desperately trying to shield us from upper management, but ultimately still a stick in the hands of people higher up on the ladder.”
Because of the Squid having a position of power, we must save it for last. There needs to already be a union to back its demands up, so as to bolster its negotiating leverage. Otherwise, the Coin will isolate and punish it, and then through it punish us.
The Roundup
In the most recent Blaseball Roundup, the Anchor has scrupulously avoided mentioning the Houston Spies, owing to the threat in the previous episode. He avoided having the Spies’ emoji visible on the screen at all in that one shot of all the other team emoji stacked on top of each other, and avoided mentioning Pudge Nakamoto roaming out of the Hall (despite the fact that that should have been a huge news item).
The Anchor mentioned the Coin by her proper name – and even though it was blacked out, people think he was probably saying Aequitas, the fans’ most common name for the entity. Also, the list of Blaseball entities was notably missing the Microphone. This being said, the Roundup is deuterocanon, created by someone who is not The Game Band and does not have access to the primary worldbuilding, so reading too much into it may be dangerous.
Also, the Anchor is becoming increasingly unhinged – as you may be able to tell from the Hearin’ from the Teams segment – and that’s not a good thing from the person who’s supposed to be (at least semi-accurately) summing up and relaying news from the League.
A Conspiracy Theory
There’s mounting suspicion that the season after 20 may not in fact be 21, but 12 – again. Here’s some of the evidence for that:
Salmon have already demonstrated that the fabric of time in Blaseball has come loose in some places.
The “under/over” theme that has become prominent in recent seasons, the flipping upside-down, could well be applied to the season number itself. Reverse, transpose the two numbers: 21 may also be 12.
A calendar was posted to the Discord explaining how exactly this siesta was three weeks long. It has “Season 20” written on it. And then it has “Whatever comes after season 20”.
The Ticker says “HYPED FOR SEASON 12” on it. Which had to be added manually, because the ticker was previously excited for season 18.
Stephen Bell of The Game Band just retweeted iliana’s tweet from a few months ago about how the exact words of the Coffee Cup’s not having effects on the ILB was actually phrased as “minimal bearing on season 12”.
Finally: Joel Clark, also of The Game Band, tweeted “happy new year”. Clearly this is not the usual Gregorian calendar’s new year. I decided to check most of the other major possibilities before assuming this was nonsensical ominousness, though: the Chinese calendar year begins somewhere around February-March, the Jewish calendar year begins somewhere in September-October, the Hindu calendar year begins in April or May, the Islamic calendar‘s new year wanders throughout the solar calendar but is presently in September, and Blaseball was publicly launched in July.
None of these are the middle of June.