Blaseball Cares

(Intro music plays)

Kimberly: hello listeners you're listening to take me out to the blallgame the world's most thrill seeking blaseball podcast. I'm your host Kimberly Dauber and I use She/her pronouns. there's no bigotry in blaseball but outside of blaseball... let's just say the world still needs improvement. today we're going to talk with Q about Blaseball Cares an artist collective and online merch shop run by blaseball fans with all profits going to charity. but first a word from our splonsors.

Kimberly (Splonsorship Segment) this episode of take me out to the blallgame was splonsored by Blaseball Cares.

Q: hello there! say do you like blaseball? no wait no don't actually say it, it was just a question. I'm assuming that since you're listening to this wonderful podcast that you are indeed a fan. do you like supporting your favorite team? do you like making a difference in the world? Pfft, ha, of course you do! Now come check out blaseballcares.com . we've got merchandise for your favorite team and all of the proceeds go to charity. now if you're a fan of the Seattle Garages we've just launched a special merch collection for your team including more cursed booty shorts. isn't that awesome? now go! go buy to your heart's content and feel good while doing it. again that's blaseballcares.com .

Kimberly: hello listeners welcome back! today we are talking to a very special guest this is Q from Blaseball Cares. Hey Q it's great to have you on the show.

Q: Hey Kim how's it going I'm very excited to be here.

Kimberly: Fantastic. Q can you introduce yourself? what should we call you? what are your pronouns? and also is the Commissioner doing a great job?

Q: you can call me Q. just the letter. I go by They/them pronouns typically but any pronouns at any time. and this might be an unpopular opinion as of the time of this recording but I think the Commissioner Parker who I am on a first name basis with is doing a great job.

Kimberly: so Q just to get us started off can you tell us what is Blaseball Cares?

Q: so Blaseball Cares has a couple of meanings in the community. first off and I want to make sure I include this because it's very important - it originally started as a community movement to organize donations to many different charities which each of the teams with select every week. today in its current incarnation blaseballcares.com is a merchandise store where all the profits go to charity. our goal right now is to get every single team in the internet blaseball league merch and we're currently supporting the California wildfire relief fund.

Kimberly: all right fantastic. so what exactly do you personally do for Blaseball Cares?

Q: so me personally a lot of what I do is content creation and graphic design for the website. specifically being that I'm in charge of the blog the first post of which should have gone up this week. and I am in charge of talking to a lot of the artists getting their designs together critiquing and working with them to make sure that everything looks finalized and polished and beautiful to get on whatever T-shirt or hat we decided to make at the time. I also do a little bit of discord community moderation and finally I make some of the products that go up on the store.

Kimberly: wow so you work with artists. where do the artists come from?

Q: pretty much anywhere. we have an open invitation out on the blaseball discord the official one. we also have an invitation link on our Twitter account @BlaseballCares . pretty much anyone is available to join not just artists. we also love getting people from the community who are willing to put in the time to do things like outreach and interest checks for different kinds of new merchandise that we might be putting up on the store. everybody's got a valuable position and a valuable role to put in to the community as a whole.

Kimberly: okay so just to get this totally clear. Blaseball Cares is is a charity that raises money by selling blaseball merchandise and it's entirely run by fans.

Q: exactly.

Kimberly: that is astounding how did something like this even get started in the first place?

Q: so it all started in discord direct messages

Kimberly: of course like everything.

Both: (laughter)

Q: like everything blaseball it starts in the discord direct messages. J who runs the Moist Talkers Twitter. by the way I'm a Moist Talker hit me up one time and asked me if we would be willing to put my logo for the Moist Talkers up on some shirts some hats some different designs that sort of thing. we originally just started talking stickers and we all linked up together me J and Nicole who is the really the brains behind the operation. we all got together in a group chat and we started talking over what kinds of merchandise we could put together. and so we started talking like okay so why don't we get this on a hat? why don't we get this on a shirt? why don't we get some other teams in? well why don't we make a discord server? and all of a sudden people started joining pretty much one or two every day until it became you know ten or twenty every week and now we have over a hundred folks in the community right now just talking things over working through designs being out reach people you know doing their own thing.

Kimberly: Wow.

Q: grass roots starting from the first starting from the bottom and making our way up.

Kimberly: Wow that's... so many people to come together and do something this cool. what, what has Blaseball Cares managed to accomplish since it started?

Q: one of the big things that we've managed to accomplish is getting merchandise out for a significant majority of the teams. there is definitely like a big empty opening for you know people to create and put together sort of like official quote unquote fan merchandise for the different teams. we've managed to raise so far we've donated six hundred ninety dollars to the Milwaukee freedom bail fund. and currently we're working on raising money somewhere in the four digits for the California wildfire relief fund.

Kimberly: Wow, i'm just absorbing this right now because I think you know there's no bigotry in blaseball but I love that the fan base is also being actively anti bigotry.

Q: yeah and putting together just like huge community movements to benefit the world in a big way. I think that well so the original starting of Blaseball Cares was as a community movement on Twitter #Blaseball Cares somewhere around season three or four where all the team Twitter accounts selected a charity to donate to on Sunday election day and just raised money among like the small like channels in the discord community and that movement has kept going today. we just picked up the name I decided to open up a merch store under it.

Kimberly: Well, I'm gonna have to get tuned into this. I actually full disclosure just bought a shirt from the Blaseball Cares store. I got a a defy the gods T. shirt in a red. I'm very excited for it to arrive.

Q: it's a beautiful design.

Kimberly: I literally bought it right before this interview.

Both: (laughter)

Kimberly: well that sounds amazing thank you so much for talking about that Q. listeners we'll be right back. when we come back we're gonna learn how if you're interested how you can support Blaseball Cares and if you're an artist or you want help with some of the things that Q was talking about earlier how you can get involved. so stay tuned we'll be right back.

(Music begins to play)

Kimberly (Intermission): hello fellow fans today we'd like to encourage you to join Blaseball Cares in supporting the California wildfire relief fund. here's a little information from their website. over eighteen thousand seven hundred firefighters continue to battle twenty seven major wildfires in California. yesterday firefighters were able to contain the fifty acre Shackleford fire in Siskiyou county as well as eighteen new initial attack wild fires elsewhere in the state. in the aftermath of a disaster immediate needs for victims can include shelter food cash and other basic needs. a community's recovery is often more complex and depends on the scope of the disaster and affected community's specific context and needs. for these reasons the California community foundations wildfire relief fund supports both mid term to long term recovery efforts for those affected by California wildfires. since the wildfire relief fund opened in 2003 we have granted more than twenty four million dollars to support relief and recovery efforts in the aftermath of these devastating wildfires. to support the fund go to www.calfund.org/wildfire-relief-fund or find the link in the show notes. thank you.

(Music stops playing)

Kimberly: Hey there blaseball fans we are back. talking with Q about Blaseball Cares. before the break we talked a little bit about what is blaseball cares and what do they do. they're a fan run merch store that sells blaseball merchandise in order to raise money for charities. They've got a little more history than that but if you wanna learn more about that listen to the beginning of the episode. so for now I have totally fallen in love with Blaseball Cares. this is one of my favorite parts of the blaseball community as a whole. actually when I first discovered blaseball Blaseball Cares was one of the first parts of the fandom that I encountered and it just blew me away and made me realize okay this is my people. so if I want to support Blaseball Cares or even maybe get involved with it what do I need to do? where do I go? how can I offer you and the rest of the team my support?

Q: if you'd like to support Blaseball Cares you can head over to our website blaseballcares.com . check out any of our merchandise hopefully buy some and raise some money for charity. and you can also spread the word: tell your friends about our store tell your friends about the great merch that we have and just get more people looking at it.

Kimberly: fantastic. Well I will be doing both of those things buying merchandise and it's telling everyone who listens to this podcast about Blaseball Cares.

Both: (laughter)

Kimberly: okay so that's how I can support you all but what if I'm really, really inspired by this and I want to get involved then what do I do?

Q: if you want to get involved with Blaseball Cares you can come to our discord server which is linked on or Twitter and come join the community. come talk to the artists come talk to us. you know we're always looking for more folks to come in and show off what skills they have talk to us about like their different ideas for new designs pull up requests do interest checks. if you come into the discord server I guarantee you there will be something for you to do and help us get involved with Blaseball cares.

Kimberly: Cool, cool. one quick follow up since this happens a lot of the time when people go into discord servers. where do I start in your discord server once I go in?

Q: so in the discord server we have all the channels pretty much available right off the bat. you would just pop right into intros put your name and pronouns down and talk to us and we would just probably wave hi and say hi and welcome. after that we give you a team and then you're ready to roam free pretty much. you know you could pop into any of the channels that are going on we have apparel channels and we have our critique channels. you know come join the conversation.

Kimberly: all right awesome. we are almost out of time for today but before we go I want to ask Q one final question. Q what are you love about blaseball?

Q: there are so many things that I love. that I am love about blaseball excuse me.

Kimberly: (laughter)

Q: there are so many things I am love about baseball. you know I'm gonna shout out the blaseball fan artists community I love them so much. I love Blaseball Cares and Niole who is a huge workhorse for the website and for the store. and I love, love my family the Moist Talkers they have been an incredible inspiring community of diverse creators who are just outstanding at creating. just a wonderful team a wonderful group to support to cheer on. they have been a serious home for me in the past few weeks and I really don't know where I would be without them.

Kimberly: that is wonderful. alright thank you Q so much. alright everyone that's all the time we've got for today. before we wrap up Q if people want to find you or Blaseball Cares where do they go?

Q: you can find me on Twitter at @longhairQ. you find Blaseball Cares on Twitter at @BlaseballCares. find our website at blaseballcares.com in any browser of your choice. we've got a new blog post that has come out on Wednesday with the Garages band manager rain and one of the drummers mucus queen about community creation.

Kimberly: What?!

Q: right?

Kimberly: You're interviewing the Garages?!

Q: yeah and you know we've got a new Garages merch line going up shirts hats and special collectible guitar picks hopefully.

Kimberly: Wow.

Q: so you can go ahead and look forward to those in the store.

Kimberly: all right listeners this has been take me out to the blallgame. remember to follow us on Twitter at @blaseball_pod . send us your blaseball questions opinions and soul screams. we love to hear your reactions to the latest blaseball events and suggestions for topics that we should cover. we especially like to get recordings of your voices since this is indeed a podcast. email them to us at blaseballpodcast@gmail.com . I'm Kimberly Dauber you've been listening to take me out to the blallgame and thank you for participating in the cultural event of blaseball.

Woo!