filed by Agent O
Good whatever it is this time, Agents; and welcome to Season 2. As of this time of day the Houston Spies have won 2 games and lost 3.
Wait, How is this Season 2?
I mean, this is totally season 26 chronologically, but the ILB has consistently been referring to the previous season as season 1, so we’re going to have to do so if we want to remain in step with official messaging.
Some people are calling this Season N1 and Season N2, or Season γ1 and γ2 (using γ, the Greek letter gamma). The Debriefings will dispense with the N and refer to seasons from pre-Black-Hole Blaseball as β1, β2, etc (β is the Greek letter Beta). Writers may also use the letter B rather than the Greek letter β, but the point is made regardless.
Beat Reporter
The Beat Reporter put a recap of Season 1 into the messages tab; the contents of this recap have already been covered in the Debriefings, so there is no need for me to elaborate further.
Before games started this week (an hour later than usual?), the Umpires appeared:
THE TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS IS COMING
THE REVIEW BEGINS NOW
MAKE YOUR APPEALS
NAME YOUR CREW CHIEF
AWAIT JUDGMENT
This has been syndicated to the Messages tab verbatim.
Also, the Squid thinks the umpires this time around are “a little intense”. A very common sentiment!
In-Game
“Can’t Lose” does, indeed, send Zephyr McCloud to whatever team happens to win the game they are playing in; at the end of a losing game, they deserted the Hades Tigers to join the Tokyo Lift (leaving said Tigers with one less batter). Then they went back to the Hades Tigers. Then they returned to the Tokyo Lift. The Beat Reporter has furthermore specified that this Curse was given by the Bard Umpire.
Ayanna Dumpington has fallen onto the Kansas City Breath Mints, crashing into Mindy Kugel.
Color Coded For Your Convenience
What is in the Decrees slot this week is… four Umpires? Of which we are supposed to elect a Crew Chief “to Review and Enforce the Rules next Season”.
Rogue Umpires have been joined by Bard Umpires, Mage Umpires, and Knight Umpires: all of which are Homestuck D&D classes. Each has also been associated with a color: the Bard Umpire with gold, the Knight Umpire with silver, the Mage Umpire with red, and the Rogue Umpire with blue.
Furthermore, the weather this week contains four matching colors of solar eclipses. It appears that they may have different effects, as during a Red Eclipse:
A Mage Umpire calls Haruta Byrd’s Alternate!
So. The Mage Umpire does Alternations, the Bard Umpire presumably Curses, the Knight Umpire might have something to do with the Shadows, and one assumes that Rogue Umpires are associated – as always – with incinerations.
Win One for the Team
Blessings look roughly the same: though there is a slightly modified interface, in which one is urged to “win one for the team” – the three most-popular blessings are at the top, and “the stragglers” are located below. So far so good.
Here’s the thing. This time, contained within the Blessings, there are four different Strikes. Each contains the name of an umpire (as described above); each reads:
The [NAME] Umpire will Strike one of your Division Rivals.
This wording seems to be ambiguous – I really think that it means that if we want to receive a Strike, another team must be doing the Striking. But other people are suggesting that Strikes are going to be given to the team who voted for the Strike for “bad behavior”. It’s… possible enough to be concerning.
Now. In ordinary circumstances, campaigning for other teams to win specific Blessings would be totally unheard-of.
But this appears to be a way to earn more Strikes, and if we want to Strike Out, we may need to have the Strikes thrown at us.
If we are to pull this off, we must create an evil mirror version of Wild Low Solidarity. But – as evidenced by the fact that I can refer to Wild Low Solidarity – we have done this kind of organization before.
We can do it again.
But:
There is just one problem.
If we want to receive Strikes, we must be very clear – not just to us, but to everyone else in the entire Awful Evil Division – that we fully expect that they will be caught in the crossfire, as Blessings cannot be targeted.
They have not yet agreed to do so.
We cannot tell other teams what to do with themselves, and we will not do so until they have their own consensus.
We Have Created a Poll
But how do we even know if we want to Strike Out?
As a way to make sure we have everyone on board, not just a handful of very active Discord members, we have created a poll. Furthermore, we are also using this opportunity to evaluate whether and where we should be performing further outreach; for example, if there is social media we need more of a presence on. We would like any Spies fans (current, former, dual-teaming, or otherwise) to fill out this survey. (People who are not Spies can also fill it out, I guess?)
Furthermore, as this is also outreach, please distribute it as far and wide as possible, to anyone and everyone who might be affiliated with the Houston Spies, including people from other Blaseball and non-Blaseball Discord servers and on whatever social media you might have.