Activity from cortex

[I have amended it thus!]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:00 AM on April 8, 2022

[Fixed the title.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 1:05 PM on February 26, 2022

[Heya, this is an unanticipated use-case for FanFare; I don't mind leaving this thread here just to see if it pulls in an answer for you, but I'd suggest posting it over on AskMe since that's a better fit for the "ask a question" situation, media or otherwise.]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 4:17 PM on January 18, 2022

Foundation: The First Crisis

[Fixed!]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 3:02 PM on November 12, 2021

Now and Again: The Only Season

[Hopefully good now, carry on.]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 3:34 PM on September 21, 2021

Movie: Pig

[Couple comments removed. Let's aim to have FanFare be about talking about stuff you've seen and not so much about griping about either things you haven't or one another.]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 11:02 AM on July 31, 2021

Loki: Journey Into Mystery

[Comment and a few replies removed. Let's please make a consistent effort to not drag in unaired stuff for the purposes of plot speculation etc; better to err on the side of caution on that stuff, let people enjoy the show as it proceeds. There'll be a thread for the last episode and "well here's what I was theorizing a few episodes ago and why..." bragging rights.]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 7:05 PM on July 13, 2021

Special Event: Blaseball Season 14

Another loss for the Charleston Shoe Thieves family: long-time player Sebastian "Pine" Woodman was incinerated overnight. Rest In Violence, Seb. He was replaced by newcomer Beckett Bluesky who has apparently in turn been swept Elsewhere by a flood and is currently still MIA.

Woodman, a static but somehow also mobile and skillful life-size wooden statue, replaced brief shining star Atlas Jonbois (who was big and strong and my friend) who in turn played only… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:19 AM on March 16, 2021

Yeah, Squid came back with a chef hat on and Coin has peaced out? Curious.

The core Shoe Thieves fandom on the discord has turned, over the last couple seasons, to a fairly robust embrace of being a badly losing team, which we certainly accomplished last season and have a good start on this season as well. Getting to Party Time as quickly as possible certainly does help with ambient buffs as our players have more chances to Party, and we might scrape up some pity bonuses while we're at it.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 11:15 AM on March 16, 2021

I think that happens sometimes when they come back from Elsewhere after being swept away in a Flood, though I'm not entirely clear on that.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 1:22 PM on March 18, 2021

here's Season 15, play blall!
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:17 AM on April 5, 2021

Special Event: Blaseball Season 13

The whole schedule just pushed back an hour while that spillover game played out. (The book also had some redacted details of what happened if that happened again, but we never found out because there's been no 2+ hour game on the books.)

Back when spillovers did happen, we didn't have a week-long schedule posted on the blaseball main page, though, so it's unclear whether that implies some difference in this new calendrical era or if that whole… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 7:54 AM on March 9, 2021

Also, in some sad Shoe Thieves news: long-time player and sentient cloud of smoke and vapor Hotbox Sato (it/its), shortly after returning from an 11-game absence after being swept Away by Flooding, was incinerated by a rogue umpire this morning. I personally question whether Hotbox (also known as Single Sato for its ability to produce clutch singles in times of need) was in any way actually physically harmed or transformed by the process of incineration or if it merely felt unwelcome and chose… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:01 AM on March 9, 2021

Mystery Science Theater 3000: I ACCUSE MY PARENTS

[Fixed!]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 4:43 PM on December 16, 2020

Special Event: Blaseball Season 11

After the Shelled One's Pods one-shot the Crabs and he resumed his typical hurtful trash-talking, the Hall Monitor showed up with (hey now, you're) The Hall Stars, who had one hit point originally but then swelled in Team Spirit as each of the fourteen most peanut-tributed dead players at the top of the Hall of Flame board joined the team. They proceeded to stomp the Pods, and those players were subsequently Released from Blaseball, something we had never seen before and might mean the escape… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:01 AM on October 19, 2020

Yeah, the fact that a team can get an extra win mid-game by scoring 10 runs during the right sort of weather has got all sorts of weird implications!

Like, what about Party Time? If you get mathematically eliminated from the playoffs before the end of the season, your team goes into Party Time, but what if you then pick up some extra mid-game wins by having a big scoring run? Do you stay in Party Time, or are you kicked back out until/unless you manage to lose your… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 10:46 AM on October 19, 2020

So there's Black Holes now and one of them just swallowed a Shoe Thieves win, which means we're undefeated in the first three games of the season with a record of...2-0.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 11:36 AM on October 19, 2020

Tacos are now 5-3 after five games. Shoe Thieves are now undefeated in five games and 4-0. Hrm. HRRMMMM.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 1:35 PM on October 19, 2020

Man, game day 36 was pretty goofy.

Shoes vs. Breath Mints went long and was topsy-turvy because of the weather: I ended up livetweeting some of it, but the summary is we were up 9-1 and so were deeply hoping we would stop scoring runs, but then we got three more runs and ended up 2-1 with a win scored; then the Mints managed to get themselves some points and it was 2-6 and looking bad for us; in the 9th it was 4-9 with the Mints in the lead and our pitcher Fitz… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 10:11 PM on October 20, 2020

The weird thing there (which hardly disqualifies it from being the truth) is that while Sun 2 and Black Hole don't directly modify Loss counts, they do generate losses that wouldn't have been there for teams with the higher run count and 10+ runs. So it's indirect but not very indirect; the weather is producing paradoxical losses in a pretty direct way, while also messing even more actively with wins.

I genuinely love that we have no idea how it's going to work.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:16 AM on October 21, 2020

Shoe Thieves have both Cornelius Games and Richardson Games on our team, so there's also a possible Games per games per game metric.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:03 PM on October 23, 2020

Yeah! They did the wildcard AND the quarters yesterday in succession after the post-season, which may be part of a long-term bid to carve out a little more rest in the weekend for the dev team. Really curious to see how they've reworked the weekly flow after the Grand Siesta, which I hope for basically everybody's sake won't end until at least the second week of November. I will miss blaseball during the peak stress of the election but I certainly don't mind not contaminating it with all that… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:57 AM on October 24, 2020

And the Tigers and Sunbeams may be a while if this keeps up: they just started game six of a five game series and if the games continue to be just the right sort of lopsided (team A scores n runs where n > 10 but n % 10 < m where m is team B's runs) it'll be game 7, and game 8, and by induction will take infinitely long.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 2:04 PM on October 24, 2020

Sunbeams manage to score less than ten runs and win game five and hence their first championship! The Boss showed up in her coiny way and talked about how we're all winners and we'll write the future, together, starting tomorrow, and it was ominous because everything is kind of ominous when a faceless god is talking but honestly it wasn't scenery-chewing ominous and maybe things won't be Terrible? I don't know.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:38 PM on October 24, 2020

With today's election (and an appearance by the squid), we're done with Season 11 and Blaseball is officially on Grand Siesta, which the website's Bulletin page says will be at least a month. There may be Blaseball related things of some sort happening in the interim? Not clear? But play presumably won't resume until late November. So this will probably be the last thread for a while and would work as a roundup of tidbits.

The election itself did… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 2:51 PM on October 25, 2020

Special Event: Blaseball Season 10

I need to go get some breakfast but mayhap other folks can fill in some of the "what happened last week" stuff.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:18 AM on October 12, 2020

Also, Sexton Wheerer of the Unlimited Tacos is currently at the top of the idol board because he's now the only pitcher on the Tacos. Not, like Pitching Machine in a previous season, the only unshelled pitcher: literally the only pitcher on their team because the rest were stolen (along with all other shelled players in the league, I guess?) to make up The Shelled One's Pods.

So if you want your easy idle Idol income, Sexton's your guy. He's a middling pitcher but he's… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 11:45 AM on October 12, 2020

Shoe Thieves just lost to the Pies 8-6...in the bottom of the 19th, after more than an hour of game time, causing a spillover and delaying day 28 by an hour for everyone else in the league. That was a hell of a nailbiter. We lost the game, but we stole TIME.

Because we got cursed after our fight with god, all the Shoe Thieves batters have Flinch, which says that a batter can't bat until a strike has been thrown. This is bad, obviously! But less obviously, maybe it's… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 12:12 PM on October 13, 2020

Like, making a lot of incorrect assumptions just to ballpark (ha) some figures:

There were 19 innings, and at least 3 plate appearances by the Shoe Thieves each inning. So that's at least 57 occasions on which 2 or more pitches were thrown, if it was a no-hitter. This wasn't, so it's got to more than that because we scored points; even if all six points we scored were solo homers, that'd raise the number of plate appearances to 63. It's more than that because we… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 12:29 PM on October 13, 2020

It's been kind of an uneventful season in game-shaking developments! A lot of little things happening but no big shakeups. Closing out the regular season in a few hours, most of the playoff spots are clinched (and my Shoe Thieves, Peanut God curses and all, are solidly in the post season), and after game 99 is over we'll see who ends up being the 4th seed in each league and who the wildcard teams will be who will get their last-ditch shot at beating out those league 4ths for a chance at the… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 7:50 AM on October 16, 2020

Yeah, the very short sketch is:

1. Peanut God one-shotted the Crabs in the Final Fantasy battle after the Crabs won the championship.
2. Hall Monitor showed up with a Hall of Flame team and beat the Peanut God's team.
3. Hall Monitor ATE the Peanut God.
4. Hall Monitor said "Boss is here".
5. An ancient Roman coin showed up and talked (in yellow text) about how Blaseball is a mess and is unfair and she was going… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:20 AM on October 21, 2020

Special Event: Blaseball Season 8

The most immediate question for me is: what's going to happen with the Tacos? On the one hand, it'd be a bit of a let down for the devs to respond to the Tacos' deeply satisfyingly weird stunt of having no viable pitchers by just somehow blandly saying "nah" and having them pitch anyway somehow. On the other hand...what would happen? Tacos just don't pitch and the game stops? Tacos auto-walk the opposition to infinity? It's a real rock-and-a-hard-blase situation and I am hoping… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:25 AM on September 21, 2020

So the Tacos have a new player on their team, a sixth pitcher in their rotation. The player's name is Pitching Machine, and it is a better pitcher than most of their currently-shelled pitchers.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:02 AM on September 21, 2020

I have my own theory that "Pitching" is just 73-year-old Elmer Machine's nickname.

Also in game one Gunther O'Brian has swallowed a peanut and had a yummy reaction and is now a 3.5 star pitcher. I love this bird.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:09 AM on September 21, 2020

Also, Jaylen Hotdogfingers does indeed still have a debt but apparently it is a "Refinanced Debt" now and boy howdy I wonder how soon we'll figure out what that means.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:21 AM on September 21, 2020

I was about 8.5 and safe as well; my guess based on past seasons is probably somewhere upward of $14K but there's folks who have been actually tracking it in more detail in SIBR so there may be a fairly definitive answer available somewhere.

Also: turns out that with the refinancing, Jaylen is now giving people a "Flickering" status instead of "Unstable"; Marquez Clark on the Breath Mints is the first person with that status, and nothing new has… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 2:12 PM on September 21, 2020

So, during game 12, Pitching Machine drank Ortiz Lopez's blood and got better at pitching. Now a 3.5 star pitcher.
Gonna be a wild season.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:28 PM on September 21, 2020

Can't believe I forgot to post about Season 9, but here's a new thread for 10.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:17 AM on October 12, 2020

Special Event: Blaseball Season 7

Welp, someone in the discord posted some parody Dolly Parton lyrics this morning about the whole Hotdogfingers situation, and it made me laugh, so: Jaylen (Please Don't Bean My Man)
posted to FanFare by cortex at 12:10 PM on September 17, 2020

I am legitimately sad about Workman. I like, very specifically, that Blaseball is a chaotic and deadly mess of a game, but I'm still sad.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 7:01 PM on September 17, 2020

Ha, yes! I was very confused at first that when I'd see Blaseball screenshots/video from someone else the logos were wrong, and then I realized that it's just that its whatever the platform-specific emoji set was. The Canada Moist Talkers are to this day just a white circle for me.

Really curious how the idol situation is going to play out today. All of the Tacos pitchers are last I looked above the big red line, which is tremendous and I'm so curious what'll happen… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:06 AM on September 18, 2020

Also between being in my feels about Workman and some general thoughts I've had about the uniquely fast and chaotic daily pace of loss in burgeoning fandom, I ended up writing up a sort of philosophical take on the nature of Blaseball from the perspective of a janitor at the Shoe Thieves stadium: Between Place.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:19 AM on September 18, 2020

Shoe Thieves are currently tied for third in the entire ILB right now with 53-42, four games left to play. Given that all three possible Decrees in this upcoming election do something bad two the top four teams in the league at the end of the regular season, the current discussion in the Shoe Thieves discord channel is the ways in which, with a little luck, we might manage to lose enough to duck down to fifth (or thanks to Divine Favor just lose a tie for fourth).

This… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 9:39 AM on September 18, 2020

Known issue, yeah. The ticker is pretty reliably out of date, might be just literally once a season update.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 12:08 PM on September 18, 2020

Yeah the last hour was kind of A Lot.

The Snackrifice was successful: all five Tacos pitchers were in the top ten of the idol list, and so were all three Peanut players, as were (filling the whomever slots) PolkaDot Patterson and Axel Trololol. As a result, the Tacos pitchers, PDP, and Axel were shelled, like Jessica Telephone and Nagomi Mcdaniels were last season. The three Peanut players (Peanuts Holloway and Bong, Peanutiel Duffy) were instead...Honey-Roasted?… [more]
posted to FanFare by cortex at 2:48 PM on September 18, 2020

Welp, Shoe Thieves took the Garages to five games but lost 7-5 in the fifth one, so we're out of the playoffs. Jaylen beaned three of our players in game 1 but we got out alive, and that's a comfort.

Now it's Lovers at Crabs, Mild Wings at Garages, game one of the semis. Hoping the Wings get out of it without too much if any damage; Jaylen pitching during an eclipse is an especially scary proposition.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 11:11 AM on September 19, 2020

Next game in the semis, game 3 Garages at Mild Wings, is eclipse whether. I hope everybody gets out.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 12:35 PM on September 19, 2020

Someone just noted the possibility that by some turn of blessings the Tacos could end up acquiring Jaylen Hotdogfingers and she'd be their only unshelled pitcher. Bean rain, total league-wide terror all season.
posted to FanFare by cortex at 10:44 AM on September 20, 2020

I made the right call and sat on my votes since Shoes were somehow #3 in the league and I thought Bless Off would pass, but I'm let down that we didn't get Fifth Base. I want more weirdness, not defensive votes!
posted to FanFare by cortex at 6:48 PM on September 20, 2020

Season 8 thread is up!
posted to FanFare by cortex at 8:19 AM on September 21, 2020

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