filed by Agent O
Welcome to the final Short Circuit, Agents! We have at least eight elections in this season, a surfeit of lore for what most people are referring to as the .imp department, and a team that is sorta kinda adequate that netted us 5 wins to 4 losses.
Party Planners
We know who’s hosting this party now, and the answer is rather more mundane than many people were expecting.
On Sunday afternoon, the Squid came out to greet us, saying that those of us that were there to spectate on Gods’ Day were “here early”:
i brought goodies
from the boxes
they owed me
General speculation is that the “boxes” in question are Crates. Why would Crates owe Squid a favor? And did the Squid get permission to take all this stuff?
Meanwhile, despite the fact that we left its pocket universe, the Nutling’s tutorial is still available to anyone who cares to go into their Settings tab. Is it hitching a ride with us back to the prime universe? Speaking of Settings, there’s also a new setting about whether to enable or disable “cheering effects”. We have no idea what those are.
And at the beginning of this season’s games, the Squid asked if we brought snacks, and was disappointed at our lack thereof. (Sorry, Squid, we kinda had to use them to steer a bunch of spaceships.)
anyway
you can help
party planning
well uh play ball
Wait, there’s eight of them?
This is also going to be a two-week season, like with last circuit.
This post by the Game Band has more details of how, why, and when. Though large swathes of this schedule are still redacted for some reason.
Opening day was buggy and slow. How nostalgic. Things should be improving soon, though; apparently a lot of the code got completely rewritten and they are still ironing out the kinks there.
Between 162 games in the regular season and a handful of extra prize and championship games, there will be eight elections scattered across this season and possibly more.
These elections are individually fairly small; each day of this week, starting tomorrow, there’s raffles for a variety of fun items. On Tuesday afternoon the League will be unboxing a Limited Edition Confetti Cannon. We are not sure what we will be getting on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
On Saturday, just before the “Midseason Fiesta”, our choice for Guest of Honor will go through, something Wills-like that is supposed to “prepare” a specific player for the rest of the circuit by putting them in party time early. On Sunday we will be holding one of four Parties, boosting certain substats. You read that correctly. The League is guaranteeing us a party. Will wonders never cease?
The Houston Accountants (probably)
This Circuit’s lore process has been that of trying to weld as many competing interpretations together as possible, exercising “yes, and” more extensively than your writer has ever seen before.
As such, this team, depending on what you like, is at least two of:
- the Houston Accountants (as Enron, and its accounting malfeasance, was also based in Houston)
- a bunch of people with superpowers, possibly due to Agency experimentation
- a bunch of people who worked with the Spies in the whole possibly overthrowing the Director thing
- the largest group of Agency-affiliated people left after some sort of organizational shenanigans, such that when the ILB tried to look for the Houston Spies, this was the only group left with enough people to form a regulation-size Blaseball team
- intended to play other games that are not Blaseball, leaving most of them with little in the way of actual Blaseball-relevant skill
- a found family that started a business so that they could stay together despite the collapse of their previous employer
What, or who, the individual players are varies wildly based on interpretation.
I have no idea what .imp is supposed to stand for.
Prize Matches
After every three-game series is a Prize Match – a single game everyone gets to focus on, with glitter weather (unsure if this has a further chance of extra item drops or is just flavor) and an item going to the winner of that game.
The Prized Socks of the Feast were up for grabs in the first match, which was between us and the Baltimore Crabs. After an excessively long game tied at 0-0 for 12 innings, the BaltimoreCrabs eventually scored a single run, shaming the Houston Spies and winning said socks for Doris Hologram. The next prize match was for the Business Ring of Good Vibes, which was lifted by Babka Suplex of the Charleston Shoe Thieves in a sudden upset shame over the Tokyo Lift at the very end of their game. Jokes abound about how we should’ve gotten the Business Ring because, you know, accountants.
Performance
Statswise, our team is nothing worth writing home about.
A screenshot showing the Spies having 3 wins, 3 losses, 3rd in the Dirge Division, and 33 runs scored led to a chain of people posting nothing but the number 3 for hours.
During the 5th game of the season, Miria Fenton night shifted in for Dolores Burns, improving our pitching rotation. Miria’s pitching substat distribution has a terrifyingly high amount of ruthlessness. Also there’s no way to fit this into any of these sections neatly, so I’m just going to dump it here for lack of any better ideas: the Baltimore Crabs had the first incineration of the season on day 11, with Thiago Robbie being replaced by Silas Jeffers.
Bang… bang?
The announcement for this Circuit on Discord says that the Short Circuits are planned to “go out with a bang”. We have been repeatedly adding more and more charge to the Microphone, despite the fact that it keeps shorting out after each Circuit.
I’m not sure the Mic is going to survive this.
Like, to be clear, I think Wyatt Mason is long gone from said microphone. (Then again, I have this sinking feeling that Wyatt Mason is long gone period.) Parker IIIII, though, is still holding it.