Election Special: Season 11

Kimberly: What's up listeners, you're listening to Take Me Out To The Blall Game, the world's most destructive blaseball podcast. My name is Kimberly Dauber and I use she/her pronouns.

K: Once again, it is election season, and if you've looked at what's on the ballot this week, you'd know it's kinda wild. We've got Benson Nutty Newton of the blaseball news network here to talk to us about blessing and decrees again, but since Benson and I aren't exactly experts in the mystical arts, I've brought in an expert first to tell us all about tarot.

K: So, before we get into the interview first please welcome Scores Baserunner of the Boston Flowers, a literal stlats witch.

[mystical sounding flute music begins to play]

Scores Baserunner: Suuup blaseball nerds! It's your favorite nuisance and Boston Flowers star player Scores Baserunner, here to explain what the hex is going with these tarot-themed blessings. As a stlats witch, I use tarot often for divination and general advice. With several interpretations, tarot cards are more than meets the eye.

These cards depict the journey of a soul, from life to death to the afterlife, and do well to symbolize each part of a person's journey.

[the music shifts to a romantic spanish guitar]

SB: The Magician symbolizes creation and manifestation as life begins anew.

The High Priestess then symbolizes how one begins to learn about themselves through intuition and the inner voice.

The Empress and the Emperor are the matron and patron whose love and structure help the soul grow.

The Pope provides traditional values and conformity as the structure of life makes a person fall into place. Whereas The Lover provides the chaos of choice and emotion.

Now grown, the soul is in control of its willpower as The Chariot races forward, and its strength provides bravery, compassion, and focus.

The Hermit teaches us to look inward and reflect as we travel on toward the end of life.

The Wheel of Fortune teaches us of the ups and downs of fate, and the unpredictability of life, and Justice shows us truth and clarity.

Finally, The Hanged Man teaches us the hardest lesson of all: when to let go and sacrifice what is needed, as the journey of a living soul ends with thirteen.

[music stops]

SB: But, death is not the end! The soul has a long way to travel and many more lessons to learn in the great beyond.

[a drum and bass beat with a dark organ and angelic chorus overlaid begins to play]

SB: Temperance shows how being prudent and taking the middle road is beneficial, whereas The Devil shows the wonders of excess and materialism.

It all comes tumbling down with The Tower, which shows how the best laid plans will crumble to dust inevitably!

On to the celestial bodies: The Star symbolizes hope and rejuvenation; and the Moon shadows and mystery; and The Sun's light brings joys and positivity to all who are lucky to be blessed with its rays.

The final destination is inevitably Judgment. A card of reckoning, the soul's actions are weighted and their choices made throughout life are brought to the light. It is a card of fair and balanced reflection, all good and bad deeds will be weighed.

How these cards will translate to blessings are ... [exasperated sigh] unfortunately beyond my preternatural eye. I have my theories but none can be confirmed till seen.

I wonder how much the blaseball gods will differ from the interpretations of these cards, but ultimately that is the point to tarot. The cards meanings are loose and intentionally vague, so as to allow the reader to interpret them how they will. The power in tarot is not in the cards, but you the one reading them just as all power is.

Remember, dear listener, that the gods and magic are within you and you have the power to change this splort and even the world. Do not let anyone try to rob you of this power or tell you it is not there.

[the initial whimsical flute music plays again]

SB: With that I bid you all farewell! If you are interested in a reading from yours truly, or have questions about what I think might happen, be sure to follow me on twitter @bofscores for more garbage tweets and mystical reflections! Thanks for listening and stay wicked!

[music stops]

Kimberly: Hello there listeners, welcome back! You are listening to Take Me Out To The Blall Game, I am your host Kimberly Dauber. I am here to talk about season 11 elections we just heard a bit about blessing from Scores Baserunner but now I'm here in the studio with Benson Nutty Newton of the Blaseball News Network to finish up talking about blessings and talk about some decrees! So, hello Benson and welcome back to the Show

Benson: Hey it's great to be here.

K: It's great to have you back. Can you just reiterate for our viewers .. -listeners- what should we call you, what are your pronouns, and is The Commissioner doing a great job?

B: Hey I'm Benson Newton of the BNN, I use he/him pronouns, and of course The Commissioner CEO prime minister of blaseball is always doing a great job, legal issues withstanding.

K: Ah yes the legal issues, those are a thing right now aren't they.

B: Always seems to be that way these days.

K: I was so surprised when I logged into Twitter. I was so surprised when I started, you know, listening to Twitter earlier and discovered that there were apparently three blaseball lawsuits?

B: Yeah, this is the third major one, the second one was more of a murder trial actually.

K: Oh yeah.

B: But the first one was as part of the high filter decree being passed in an election, The Mexico City Wild Wings were moved to the mild league in a league-wide shakeup. Of course a legal team representing the Wild Wings, they sued The Commissioner for misrepresentation of character and, I believe the quote was, "some grade-A bull" for putting such a wild team in the mild league.

K: Mm-hm, yeah, now someone's suing The Commissioner for eat the rich not happening.

B: Yeah, eat the rich didn't happen at the conclusion of season 10 and now the New York Millenials are, being represented by the same legal team as the Wild Wings were before, are in fact suing The Commissioner for not following the eat the rich provision that was passed, I believe, back in season 3 and is now enshrined in the forbidden book that guarantees that at the end of every season, the wealth of the 1% of blaseball fans and gamblers will be distributed to the 99% equally.

K: Yeah, and it just didn't happen.

B: It just didn't happen at the end of season 10 so the Millenials are taking The Commissioner to court over it.

K: Yeah, so The Commissioner is still doing a great job but is being sued by the fanbase so that's fun.

B: It happens.

K: But anyway, even in the midst of all this turmoil we still have elections going for season 11 so .. Benson what do you think of these blessings?

B: Well, these blessings are, in a single word, cryptic. There are 20 of them, one for every team due to the new fair play that's gonna be going on in blaseball under the new ownership. This season every team is just gonna get one blessing. There are 20 different ones here, one for each team. They have a title that all happen to be named after a certain kind of card and we have no description about them -- that's all. That's all we know, we know the title!

K: Yup.

B: [emphatic] They have a number on them!

K: That's right. Hey, Benson though if you want to know more just listen to the thing that was on the podcast like just a couple minutes ago 'cause we just went over it all.

B: Oh alright, was someone else on here, did I miss that?

K: Ehh, don't worry about it! Alright listeners that's all the time we have to talk about blessings for today, so don't go away we'll be right back after this short break to talk about season 11 election decrees.

K: [selling it] This episode of Take Me Out To The Blall Game was brought to you by The Blaseball News Network.

[jaunty horn music]

K: Hey there listeners, you probably already knew that you could find the Blaseball News Network on twitter @blaseballnews and at their website www.blaseball.news but did you know the BN also has youtube channel?> That's right you can find recaps of seasons and a complete history of blaseball up through the end of season 8. And I will admit I've got a bit of an ulterior motive for asking you to go look at this youtube channel because I may be part of creating some of these videos. So go check it out go over to youtube.com and find the blaseball news network youtube channel. Enjoy the videos there and let us know what you think! Alright thanks for listening and now back to the episode.

[music fades]

Kimberly: Hello there listeners, welcome back! You are listening to Take Me Out To The Blall Game, I am your host Kimberly Dauber.and I'm here in the studio with Benson Nutty Newton of the Blaseball News Network. We're talking about season 11 elections, we've just talked how the blessings are .. rather cryptic this season so Benson the decrees have got to be better, right?

Benson: Well the degrees do have a little more information for us and we can maybe ..uhh.. get a little more information by deduction.

K: A little more -- a little more information?

B: A little more information. Okay so let's just take a look at the decrees.

K: Okay okay let's take a look!

B: So decrees! The three decrees with the most vote from the community will go into effect. It's a nice change of pace, we haven't had a multiple decree season in a while the last few seasons its just been one or maybe two. But we're back to three decrees going into effect and here is a list of the decrees for you. They don't have any descriptions beyond what I'm about to say.

-Bury! The Forbidden Book
-Burn! [The Forbidden Book]
-Close! ..
-Deface! ..
-Eat! ..
-Freeze! ..
-Shred! ..
-Sink! ..
-Trash! ..

All of them for The Forbidden Book, that of course being what was opened by decree in season 1 which caused incinerations and now almost all of the rules that we have voted into effect over the last 10 seasons are all enshrined and enforced by being put in The Forbidden Book so if we're going to be doing these strange things to The Forbidden Book uh who knows what's going to happen to blaseball in the coming seasons.

K: So what do you think we're going to do with The Forbidden Book this season?

B: Well form what I have seen all over twitter, all over the discord, all over blaseball fandom everywhere, "Eat!" is definitely going to win.

K: [Hooting giggle]

B: Eating The Forbidden Book is all any seems to have any interest in doing. Everyone seems to be forgetting the fact that we- three of these things are going to be happening.

K: [continues laughing]

B: I fully anticipate "Eat!" is going to carry probably over 50% of the vote-

K: At least.

B: -and then I don't know, some random other stuff. "Shred!" and "Trash!" maybe pulling up second and third. Maybe some "Deface!"-ing. Maybe people will "Close!" it for a little- you know, a nice little closure after we opened it, just nicely close it before we eat it and throw it into the ocean.

K: [back to giggling]

B: I don't know how it would work in that order but .. it's gonna be- it's gonna be a weird one. We just don't know what these things do and they're all really weird and it's all happening to the one document that tells us how blaseball is supposed to be played.

K: That's right .. I've been wondering a couple of things on what's gonna happen based on these decrees, like for one thing is The Book gonna stick around afterwards? If we choose to "Shred!" and "Deface!" and "Freeze!" will we still have a book but it will be scribbled all over and made of ice but also shredded into pieces? I don't even know. I'm so intrigued to see how this is gonna play out, it's gonna be really interesting.

B: It's one of the beautiful parts of elections in blaseball, we never know how everything is going to turn out.

K: We literally never know how almost anything is gonna turn out.

B: We really do try our best every Friday but, y'know?

K: Iunno, I just kinda coast. [giggles]

B: I try my best every Friday.

K: You do a great job.

B: It's my job.

K: You're doing a fantastic job.

B: Thank you.

K: Actually, one of the things I actually have been wondering is: what effect will each of these potential decrees have on the future of blaseball? Because usually even if we have a bunch of things that looks similar they actually do different things-

B: [sagely] Mhm.

K: -so there's gotta be something behind each of these boxes on this screen that does something specific. I fully believe that the blaseball gods know what's going to happen in any particular one of these gets chosen but we definitely don't know what any of those are. All we know is that we're gonna eat it [laughs].

B: Yeah we have no clue at all. I really wish we could figure it out but y'know .. maybe someday. We'll figure it out on Sunday.

K: Alright, well now listeners, now you know everything that we know about the decrees this season so let's wrap up the show with out traditional final question and that is: "Benson Nutty Newton, as you all know, we are all love blaseball, so tell me: what are you love about blaseball?"

B: Well, this season I am love The Tokyo Lift. They are the newest team in blaseball-

K: Aw yissss.

B: -they replaced the ascended Crabs and they're doing their best to uh, be friendly, be swole, get those gains in -- they're currently getting a lot of gains because they tied the record for fastest to party time for day 73 and have been partying very hard ever since. That's what I am love about blaseball.

K: Alright well party hard Tokyo Lift, best of luck next season and have a wonderful time at your parties. Alright listeners that is all we have got for today. Mr. Newton, where can our listeners find you?

[upbeat jazzy rock music fades in]

B: You can find me @bnnintern on twitter, I don't tweet a whole much but I'm there. You can find my bosses @blaseballnews on twitter and on the website www.blaseball.news where lots of me and my incredible coworkers write lots of fun articles about blaseball, especially power rankings, people love arbitrary power rankings. And then we also have a youtube channel -- Blaseball News Network on youtube. I'm barely involved with it but you've [Kimberly] been there!

K: Yeah I have! I've been on there a couple times!

B: We have some great people there doing some great things.

K: Thank you Benson. Listeners remember to subscribe to this show "Take Me Out To The Blall Game", wherever podcasts are found, follow us on twitter @blaseballpod, check out our website at www.blaseballpodcast.com, and email us at blaseballpodcast@gmail.com, a REAL email that I do check. You can send in a question, dedicate a soulscream, or suggest something we should interview you about! Finally if you know someone who would enjoy this podcast, do them a BIG favor and tell them about the show 'cause I bet they'll be glad that you did.

K: I am Kimberly Dauber, this has been Take Me Out To The Blall Game. Thank you all for participating in the cultural event of blaseball.

[music fades out]

[laughing cuts in, clearly an outtake]

K: [audibly losing it] Okay listeners-[breaks down laughing]

B: [also audibly LOSING IT] W-w-was-was someone else in here?! [a long drawn out chuckle
followed by a sigh]

K: [hooting laugh that goes on for like 5 seconds] That was perfect.

B: [fading out] Thank you, thank you.