#mike townsend (feels the shadows call)
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The light is faden fast, and though this too shall pass..
‘mike townsend (feels the shadows call)‘, the garages, (we are the garages (vol 2))
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mike townsend quintology monday
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Alright I was asked to make a list of all the The Garages songs I associate with life series things so I have done that
A few notes:
Songs are in no particular order (mostly just sorted by album as I was going through listening to them all)
All song titles (in color) are links to the respective songs, so you can listen to them :3
These songs are all worth listening to but my absolute favorites are marked in orange
Let me know what you think! I’ve been waiting so long to talk extensively about this :)))))) <- going to explode
list is below the cut because this got loooong
Astro Astronomodome’s Garages Life Series Playlist:
Eyes in the Dark- *gestures vaguely* how am I gonna live with these eyes in the dark when they’re following me around and they’re following you around 👍 and there’s nowhere you can go that they’re not there 👍
Jaylen Hotdogfingers Settles The Score- limited life winner martyn in thy little wood I am so normal about you <- lie
Godspeed- TIES sending off Skizz… see you space cowboy
Curse of Crows- third life grian-core, you know, when he was green and couldn’t actually kill but he and scar were going around being vaguely threatening. You could maybe use the crows in this as a metaphor for red life scar. Also birds
Relief Pitcher (Leave It On The Field)- Extremely strong vibes but I’m not sure of what. Maybe last life martyn? In the final battle? Idk. Maybe every martyn. I ljke him. (anyway this song changed my brain chemistry permanently so it deserves a place in the list regardless)
rooting for you- I’m delusional, bdubs is a species of plant, and ethubs is wlw. what is a nature wives
we had a season- ok this is THE desert duo song. No song will ever end of double life we’ve-spent-so-much-time-dancing-around-each-other-and-now-we-have-nothing-left-but-each-other desert duo as hard as this song. I have a very detailed AMV in my head of this so you know I’m right. It’s even a duet… ‘we had a season, we had a year/between when I died and when I reappeared’ (there’s almost exactly a year between grian’s last third life episode and scar’s first double life episode. I checked for this reason specifically and it killed me instantly) PLEASE just listen to this one ‘I had my reasons, I had my fears/I had my pride (I still had tears in my eyes as I died)’
dead ringer- just as the previous song is The desert duo song, this is The red king ren song. It slaps and the vibes are perfect. ‘my skin is made of energy, my blood is made of fire/I am what will happen when your best-made plans backfire’
hexed- very much post-3rd life watcher grian. pretty self-explanatory
The Alternate- ‘I’m new but I’ve seen so much/I’m old but I was not there’ do I even need to say it. Gem-as-Cleo and Lizzie-as-Pearl (‘I’ve done this once before’)
gamer grindset- yeah this is The Life Series Joel Song. you can fight me on this but you don’t have to because I know I’m right
a leap of faith- reminds me of scar. nothing in particular it just has similar vibes
haunted- ok now this is a Real watcher grian kind of song. ‘my body is a temple/for the gods of other men/wielded as a weapon by foes I swore I’d never be again’ ok. edgy bird moment
she’s dead and i’m someone else- this one requires some interpretation but I’ve always seen it was team BEST mourning the loss of bdubs. However it could also be applied to almost every ten in the life series that lost a member early lol
Mike Townsend (feels the shadows call)- specifically last life shadow alliance martyn but any martyn in general fits. he’s having a bad time
INCINERATE- just like. Being on your red life in general and the bloodlust and manic energy that brings. 😛 (edit after the finale: OKAY I KNOW THERES SO MANY LIMITED LIFE MARTYN SONGS BUT THIS IS ALSO ONE OF THEM ‘I know how to win this/I don’t need to play your games/I’m just gonna dance now/I’ll show you how to deal with pain’ ‘every day’s getting worse and we’re starting to choke/‘cause the water in the air is getting stuck in our throats’ LIKE COME ON MAN)
Sidelined- limited life skizz you will always be famous ‘am I just another wash-out/am I damned to go out swinging/I can’t hear you from the dugout/is there anyone else singing for me’ I am singing! I am singing for you skizzleman!!!!!!!!!
Firewalker With Me- the song. The myth. The legend. It’s just such a great song and it’s about life series grian’s curse of killing the people he cares most about. Grian is a parker if you think about it <- mentally ill (special note- ‘nobody deserves to be called a curse/but if you’re gonna resist I’m happy to make things worse’ is grian accidentally getting jimmy final-killed first in limited life btw)
We’ve Got History- not to be that guy but desert duo. Ok
New Year, Same Me- martyn.
The Return- the start of a new life series! Seeing old friends again! Missing friends who couldn’t make it (cough cough martyn missing ren in limited life cough cough)! Playing the game! Living and loving despite the horrors!
A Horrible Mistake We Will Make Again And Again- grian grian grian. Grain. The bird boy. Also easily one of my favorite Garages song titles. ‘If I don’t know the limits, how am I gonna break them?/If you think that we’re kidding well then you’re sorely mistaken’
The First Ain’t The Last- canary curse activated! Honestly the entirety of this album is just the average life series lmao ‘and one day you’ll wake up/and from the ashes a phoenix will rise/and she’ll hit like a champ/and burn out bright before your eyes’
The Ballad of Unremarkable Derrick Krueger- another one that definitely has life series vibes (and is just a really good song) but that I just can’t place. I want to say Tango honestly because he always has been somewhat painfully mediocre and has famously always final-deathed in underwhelming and meaningless ways
Rise- this is the Cleo song. Epic. Thank you Cleo :) Joe can be the monitor in this scenario I think he’d be good at it
RIV- does anyone still remember that part of martyn’s last life lore where the mysterious voice was promising that he would get to see jimmy mumbo and impulse again if he followed its instructions? Well……
Hell’s Game- Blaseball is a death game and this song leans into that so naturally it fits pretty well with the life series as a whole. Would make a great AMV
5am Shift- Ok bear with me here. This doesn’t really fit Pearl other than the song title (lol) and maybe you can make some parallels to cleaning lady Pearl but it gives me her vibes. Plus it’s just a whole jazzy banger and one of my favorite songs so it’s going here anyway :)
Nullified- for the end of limited life. pretty self-explanatory ‘wasted all my minutes/trying to stay alive/and look where it got me/I’m just the last one nullified’ honestly worked better before the actual finale because martyn was more manic about it than this song would imply
STRIKEOUT!- life series mumbo my horrible wet cat. this song is a little weird but it suits him I think
The Tug- they never left the desert.
SUN 2- obligatory flower husbands song for all the flower husbands enjoyers out there. Time to go cry I guess
flooding/drowning- big impdubs moment. Or honestly just any of bdubs’s life series exes reminiscing… ‘and you’re angry when the energy rises to meet you/like the life rafts are disrespectful to the sea’ is the most life series bdubs thing I’ve ever heard
REMEMBERTHEM- very good and classic anti-watcher song. If c!martyn was just a little more aware of his situation I think this would fit better (honestly a lot of good garages songs just don’t fit very well because we haven’t quite reached the ‘let’s kill the watchers’ stage of the lore yet lmaooo)
Nothing Happens Every Day- tfw when no life series 🥺 could also be martyn because he loves to kill <3
historic season nine party time speedrun and associated records- mean gills vibes. a nice quiet evening in the coral isles, reminiscing
Mike Townsend Is A Disappointment- I’m so sorry Jimmy but it fits too well
Bonus! Hermitcraft-adjacent songs:
Storm’s Raging- moon big. the long, slow, inevitable end of the world. Bdubs looking up at the sky as it falls on him. the lyrics kick ass as well: ‘there were days when it all seemed never ending/when all you could hear was the forecasts, the fear/and the sound of the cloudline bending’ (and the way it speeds up at the end……. omg)
howling at twin moons- s8 scar. I will not elaborate
alaynabella hollywood- ariana griande <- wait who said that
golden- rentheking arc I love you :3 viva la revolution
Sincerely, The Collateral- hermitcitizen song tbh
Beep or Bleat- despite the EXTREMELY zedaph-coded song title this is actually end-of-season 8 tango moon landing-core. ‘do we possess a soul/does it exceed the speed of light/can it escape black holes/do we still have a chance to fight’
Nut Economy- another rentheking arc song. You can tell when I started watching HC from this can’t you. Well. Royal emeralds I miss you :(
Morning is Coming- HONESTLY if I had the ability to make AMVs this would be top of my list. It’s just so… so much. Escaping moon big at the end of season 8… I know it’s overdone at this point but it’s rotating around in my head all the time. What does it say about me that there are two moon big songs here and they’re both my favorites…
fourteen days is not enough for my screams to reach your ears- another tango lost in space at the end of season 8 song. it messed me up ok
psychoacoustics- I love convex* *DISCLAIMER: 99% of the convex knowledge I have comes from fan interpretation alone. Alternatively I could just be really trying to manifest a zedaph villain arc
oliver mueller (is a hero)- docm77 for several reasons which will become apparent almost immediately
hello world- grumbot I love you :] (putting in a different version so you can tell what the lyrics are without subtitles and I’m sorry because this version of the song is somewhat worse. they just start singing godspeed in the middle of it for some reason and like I’m not complaining I love that song but also why) (here’s the original version)
the entire kansas city breath mints team failed the bar exam- hermitcraft. no elaboration is necessary
#trafficblr#limited life spoilers#life series spoilers#sillyposting#astro's garages brainrot#life series
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[id: six set of lyrics from various Garages songs. the first is from 'RememberThem' and it reads "Remember those who died in flame, If it's me next, don't forget my name". the second is from 'Mike Townsend (Feels The Shadows Call)' and reads "the only thing i know is after, when i go, i hope the ones i love remember me". the third is from 'The Ballad of Unremarkable Derrick Krueger' and reads "I was funny and kind, please don't let them forget". the fourth is from 'solar eclipse' and reads "don't want to be forgotten, don't want to forgive, is it so bad that i just want to live?". the fifth is from 'sidelined' and reads "And I don't want to be forgotten if my luck cannot avail me". the sixth is from 'the unlikely resurrection of chorby soul' and reads "i'd screamed my last, i died in flame, but this time around you won't forget my name"/end id]
rememberthem / mike townsend (feels the shadows call) / the ballad of unremarkable derrick krueger / solar eclipse / sidelined / the unlikely resurrection of chorby soul
#entries#its about blaseball & wanting to be remembered & not wanting to be forgotten#blaseball#the garages
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i think ive listened to mike townsend (feels the shadows call) like 46 times within the last 3 days. its just so. gjh. destroying me emotionally.
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i love the C#m chord on guitar. and i think part of that comes from the fact that probably less than a week after i learned it i found a song that i knew already that uses it and has no other chords i couldn't play yet. so i played it a lot + it's just a genuinely beautiful chord. this singlehandedly elevated mike townsend feels the shadows call to be one of my favorite blaseball songs because it's so personal to me because it taught me to love this beautiful chord even more
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townsend in deadland
( mike goes to find jaylen and bring her back from the dead, and makes some friends along the way. this is several scenes for an au i never finished based on the musical “jasper in deadland.” i am posting it as part of the @blaseballwipamnesty event running this weeked! scenes are missing, it has not been touched since february, it will never be completed - but i do like what i’ve had. so here!)
CW for memory loss.
Mike is standing in the Big Garage. He’s staring at the wall behind home plate, the stack of cement blocks mottled with dents and cracks. There’s a door there, one that he’s never noticed before. It swings open to greet him, and from within, someone calls his name.
It tugs on something deep in his gut, a hook in his ribcage that yanks and pulls until he’s stumbling off the pitcher’s mound to follow. The lights overhead flicker; the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears is almost like roaring applause as he disappears into a cavern so dark and deep he almost forgets what the sun looks like.
That’s one of the stories, anyway.
In another, Mike is standing in the middle of the street. He hadn’t meant to come here, to this part of town. If he looks to his left, he’ll see Jaylen’s old apartment. The café underneath has a drink named after her, and the record store has a mural of her face on the exterior brick wall.
He’s so busy staring, he doesn’t even notice the car coming. But it doesn’t matter; somehow, the vehicle passes right through him like he isn’t even there.
But that one’s kind of boring. Try again.
Mike is standing at the edge of a cliff, staring at the ocean stretching out to the horizon. The waves are in a frenzy under a storm-black sky, and the wind blows so hard his eyes water. The air is cold enough that every breath turns into mist, carrying away the warmth in Mike’s body until there is nothing left but a cold, aching part of him. Until no amount of sunlight will bring him back, until he’s barely anything but a sliver of gray shivering under endless clouds.
The bluffs break apart in small avalanches below, sending rock and dirt and roots into the ocean. Everything is moving, everything is so alive, and Mike feels in the pit of his stomach that he is not. He’s not dead, either; he’s something else.
Except that’s not quite right, either, because Mike is not actually standing. He’s falling. The waters below rise to meet him and, from this angle, the waves almost look like hands.
The Shadows don’t mean dying. But it still feels like death when he hits the water.
----
A hulking beast hovers in front of Mike. He’s caught in the gaze of eyes big enough to be moons, shining like headlights. Shadowy tentacles drift in the water around him and send errant currents across his skin.
The thing blinks. Inside Mike’s head, a voice echoes without any mouth to speak it. He gasps, letting loose a stream of air bubbles that float hurriedly away.
oh
you’re not supposed to come down here
it isn’t ready yet
well
have fun i guess
i’ll check in with you later
The saltwater stings Mike’s eyes and fills his lungs; he tries to breathe, but there’s nothing, no air to take in. The edges of his vision start to fade out.
He doesn’t remember much after that.
----
One.
++
The thing about Jaylen Hotdogfingers is that she was a pretty good politician. Not in the conniving, slick way, with business suits and sharp stilettos. No, just that she was nice to be around, and people wanted to make her happy.
She keeps everyone’s preferred beer stocked in her garage for the afterparties. She can play bass better than anyone, and she’ll play the electric cello if she gets enough alcohol in her system. There’s always a spare couch to sleep on and always leftovers in the fridge to steal.
She is, in short, everything that Mike Townsend is not. He’s not even sure why he comes to these things anymore, other than to feel sorry for himself.
“Townsend!” Jaylen groans, playfully looping her arm around his neck and ruffling his hair. “You came!”
If Mike were a worse person, he’d roll his eyes and shrug her off in favor of continuing his trek to the kitchen. If he were better, he’d shove her in the ribs and ask where else she thought he’d be.
As is, he barely reacts at all. “Hey, Jay.”
“Well jeez, you could at least pretend you’re happy to see me,” she says, steering him away from the kitchen and toward the door to the back porch. “Everybody’s outside, go hang out and I’ll get you a drink. Any requests?”
Mike shakes his head. “Whatever’s fine.”
“That’s why I like you, Townsend. Real easy to please.”
She ushers him out the door to where the team has gathered around a shitty card table decorated with half-assed stick and poke designs. Teddy’s got his fucking guitar out, so he must be a few drinks in already. Mike wants to go home.
----
Mike does wake up, somehow, spread out on the damp stone floor of a dark hallway. His chest aches and there’s a chill set deep into his bones. He wants nothing more than to close his eyes and go back to sleep, but something nudges insistently at the space below his ribcage. He reaches down to swat it away.
“Oh, great,” someone says, and Mike finds himself surprised to hear a human voice. “You can move. Wanna try getting out of the way?”
It takes everything in Mike’s power to push himself onto his side to make more space in the hallway. Doing so lets him get a good look at the person responsible for waking him up. It’s a tall man, towering so high over Mike it almost seems like a trick of the shadows around them. He’s covered in piercings; the silver of his lip ring catches the light of the torches on the wall as he tilts his head.
Mike’s head is pounding. He feels like his brain was swapped out for cotton when he wasn’t looking. Words are hard to come by, but something flickers in the back of his mind. Something familiar. The feeling of cold water against his skin.
“Cool,” the guy says. “You look like shit, by the way. First time?”
The torches on the wall cast everything in a strange, watery glow. The stranger’s skin is tinted blue and looks nearly iridescent. Even the stone walls seem to waver and glisten.
Mike licks his lips. His throat is so dry it feels like sandpaper when he speaks. “Where am I?”
“Hell.” The man shoves his hands in his pockets, sneaker coming once again to prod at Mike’s ribs. He doesn’t even sound sad about it. “We call it the Trench. Welcome home, and sorry for your loss.”
It doesn’t feel right, somehow. Mike doesn’t have any reason to disagree or to argue, other than not wanting to believe it. But there’s something in the back of his mind that makes him think he shouldn’t be here, and not just because he doesn’t remember how it happened.
He sits up just in time for the stranger to step over him. His knee barely misses Mike’s head. It doesn’t stop him; he steps over Mike with his other leg and starts to walk away.
“Wait,” Mike says, struggling to push himself off the ground. “That doesn’t make any sense. Who – who are you?”
“None of your business,” the guy says, long legs carrying him languidly across the stone floor. “Consider me unremarkable; I’m pretty sure everyone else does.”
The torches around Mike waver, growing weaker with every step the man takes. Shadows grow longer on the floor, stretching toward Mike’s feet. Something in him grows sharp with fear; he knows, without understanding why, that he should not be left in the darkness of this place. He stumbles to his feet and chases after the stranger, every footstep sending a jolt of pain through his sternum.
“Please,” Mike starts, when he gets close enough. He reaches out without thinking, grabbing onto the man’s hand.
++
Derrick is standing on the pitcher’s mound. He doesn’t even know what stadium he’s in. It can’t be the Big Garage, because there’s actual, honest-to-God sunlight overhead. No fluorescent bulbs buzzing and flickering to give him headaches later, just uninterrupted blue.
The stitching on the ball is fraying under his fingernail. He runs over it again and again, worrying at the thread as he waits for everyone else to make their way onto the field.
He hasn’t had to do this yet. Pitching in front of everyone like this, where announcers will call the shots and fans will analyze his every move. It’s kind of exhilarating; he finds himself bouncing on the toes of his feet impatiently, wondering what everyone will have to say about the new guy on the Garages.
God, he hopes it’s good.
++
Derrick – and it is Derrick, Mike knows that now, although the name means next to nothing – jerks his hand away, jumping back like Mike’s slapped him. “What the hell was that?”
“I need your help,” Mike says. His head is still pounding, but something resurfaces. A name. “I’m trying to find someone. A woman named Jaylen.”
It doesn’t answer the question. But then, Mike isn’t sure he knows how to answer the question anyway. He hadn’t done anything. He’d grabbed Derrick’s hand, and his mind had provided the memory of Derrick pitching like it was a movie on a television screen.
“You shouldn’t be here. Whatever that was, whatever you did to make me… remember,” Derrick says the word like it’s taboo, eyes flickering to either side instead of looking at Mike. He pokes at his piercing with his tongue. “It’s not supposed to happen. I didn’t – I can’t help you.”
Mike is hyperaware of the shadows, the way they hover at the edges of their pool of light. Wherever Derrick goes, the light will follow. And Mike can’t be left behind.
“You don’t have to,” Mike says. “Just let me walk with you until I find someone who can."
The desperation must be clear in his voice, because Derrick’s expression softens. He doesn’t look any less afraid, but Mike knows pity when he sees it.
“Okay,” Derrick mutters. He turns away and shoves his hands into the pocket of his hoodie and starts walking. “But don’t touch me again. I don’t want any part of that.”
Mike mimics Derrick’s posture, hands firmly seated in his pockets. They start off down the hall, Derrick whistling tunelessly through his teeth. Blue flames follow alongside them, hopping from one torch to the next to keep pace with Derrick’s long stride.
----
Two.
++
The Big Garage is completely cleared out for the elections. There’s no crowd to bolster them on, no other team to play. All eyes are tied to the Jumbotron as results roll in, announcing blessings one after the other in an endless stream.
Most of it, Mike doesn’t bother with. It’s not going to affect him; he’s here because it’s mandatory, because he has to have some level of awareness as to what they’re up against. It’s boring, right up until the very end.
“Well,” Jaylen says, and everyone turns to her like plants toward sunshine, “that was anticlimactic.”
No one notices the flames growing behind home plate.
She dies so suddenly that no one has time to react. One moment, she’s standing there in the middle of them with a lopsided smile and a ball held idly in one hand. Then, faster than Mike can make sense of, she becomes a pillar of flame. Then, a pile of ash.
The chaos that follows is deafening, everyone calling out in alarm and sprinting for cover wherever they can find it. The first incineration, the first time a player is torn from them and reduced to blackened sand, what else is there to do but run?
It takes an hour, at least, for Mike to believe it’s safe to leave the dugout. And even then it’s more because others are doing it, making their way back onto the field with red eyes and heaving chests. He’d rather be with them than alone.
----
The tunnels twist and run back on themselves endlessly. Every new twist looks nearly identical to Mike, black obsidian shining in the pale blue light of the torches. But Derrick’s steps never falter.
“So who’s this Jaylen person?” he asks. “She important?”
The answer, obviously, is yes. Mike knows that. He starts to respond, but can’t seem to find the right words to say. There’s a blank space in his mind where something else should be, an awareness of more without the context of what it is.
“I don’t know,” he says instead, though the words don’t sit right on his tongue. He does know, or he did. He thinks he did.
Derrick clicks his tongue against his front teeth. “Welcome to the Trench,” he says. “You’ll get used to that eventually. The whole memory thing.”
“What do you mean?”
Derrick waves a hand. “The Trench fucks with your brain. You can try writing things down and whatever, but after a while, it’s not going to matter much. It doesn’t stick.”
It shouldn’t be that way for Mike, though. He remembers something, even now. A large shadow and two eyes the size of moons, telling him he doesn’t belong. He isn’t supposed to be in the Trench; it shouldn’t affect him this much.
“How long have you been down here, then?” Mike asks. “What do you remember?”
When they started the walk, Mike could hear their footsteps echoing off the narrow stone hall. Over time, It’s been supplanted by the sounds of other people. Somewhere up ahead, silverware is clinking against plates and someone is tuning a guitar.
“Not much.” Derrick shrugs. He looks over at Mike out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t think I was all that memorable, up there.”
Unremarkable, he’d said. But Mike knows he’d been a pitcher, had been on a blaseball team with other people and played plenty of games. The memory he’d seen had been short, but it was descriptive enough in that regard.
He doesn’t get the chance to ask about it. The hallway they’re walking through suddenly turns into a wide room, full of people gathered at tables and sitting on couches. Like Derrick, they’re all painted in shades of blue and green and shadow.
“Someone here should be able to help you,” Derrick says.
----
Five.
++
The Garages locker room is unusually quiet. They all sit solemnly on their benches, unwilling to meet each other in the eye. It feels like they shouldn’t be having this conversation now, in the middle of the day before a standard game. This is the kind of thing you talk about in the middle of the night, in hushed whispers, hoping no one will overhear.
“So if we want to get her out,” Teddy says slowly, “we’re going to have to give someone else up?”
One hand is playing with the end of his beard, a nervous tick Mike knows well enough to recognize. He twists and worries it between two fingers, eyes trained on a crack in the cement flooring.
“Sounds like it,” Ron answers. His heavy head hangs low, limp head covering his eyes almost completely. “A pitcher would be best.”
That narrows it down significantly. And the thing is, Mike knows exactly what they’re all thinking. He knows who the team is willing to give up in exchange. It’s not exactly a mystery. He grinds his teeth together, fighting to keep himself from lashing out at them all.
“I’ll do it,” he says, instead of what he’s actually thinking. “Tell me where I have to go.”
It’s easier. It’s better, even. Mike gets out, and they all get exactly what they want: a star pitcher, back from the dead like some kind of demigod.
No one protests. Mike can’t even find it in himself to be surprised.
----
“Who are you supposed to be?” she asks. The ball in her hand glows blue and turns her features sharp.
His name was there, a moment ago. It isn’t anymore. The best he can remember is one word lingering in the back of his mind; he says that instead. “I’m… a disappointment.”
Her grin glints like the blade of a knife. “Yeah. You sure are.”
----
Six.
++
There’s something a little too real, a little too honest in the idea that the best thing Mike Townsend can do for the team is to leave it behind. Or, really, to let them leave him behind. But that’s getting into semantics.
Mike hadn’t loved Jaylen the way so many of them did. No, Mike had been a little too busy hating himself to feel anything but jealousy for the other pitchers. It’s a secret he keeps to himself, a little ball of guilt locked up tight somewhere deep inside him.
He wasn’t happy to see Jaylen die. But he doesn’t miss her all that much, either.
When he packs up his things from the locker room, one or two people make an awkward attempt to say goodbye. Mike doesn’t want to hear it, so he doesn’t listen. He picks up his backpack and walks out the door without saying a word. He hopes they have the decency to understand why.
The Shadows don’t mean dying. It is not that simple, nor has it ever been. The Shadows are too much and too little all at once, a cold breeze down a hall without light to see by and no shelter to protect from it. The Shadows are lonely, and damp, and staring out into the deep blue that surrounds them brings some element of peace but it will never bring closure.
Sometimes, though. Sometimes Mike will stand in the empty halls, and he will hear footsteps. He will hear someone else calling his name, and the ghost of a hand on his cheek. A brief reminder that there is someone out there searching for him, after all.
#blaseball wip amnesty#blaseball#blaseball fic#mine#mike townsend#derrick krueger#jaylen hotdogfingers#it's such a mess. it's so messy and disjointed#but hey! have at it
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You know, there’s something to Mike Townsend (Is A Disappointment) and Mike Townsend (Is A Credit To The Team) both being entirely in third person, Mike Townsend (Knows What He’s Gotta Do) being in third person until the end when it switches from “Mike Townsend knows what he’s gotta do” to “I’m Mike Townsend and I know what to do”, and then Mike Townsend (Is Back) and Mike Townsend (Feels The Shadows Call) being entirely in first person.
But I don’t know what that something is.
#blaseball#mike townsend#and the fact that mtftsc doesn’t even have his name in it#there’s something to it
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mike townsend (feels the shadows call) (alt version) is my best friend
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@fourteenfifteen replied:
hmmmm this is making me think abt mike and jaylen having been friends s1 and not being friends anymore bc mike is actively avoiding the plot and the spotlight and doesn’t want to hang around Blaseball Protagonist Jaylen Hdf™️
mike shadowing 1: i want to earn respect and help someone i care abt
mike shadowing 2: i want people to stop giving a shit abt Seattle Garages Pitcher Mike Townsend
YES YES EXACTLY...... like mike is gone for a while and he comes back and jaylen still makes all the same inside jokes like nothing’s changed but the thing is she’s not jaylen his friend who can play wonderwall blindfolded and she’s not even jaylen the tragic figure from the garages, she is Jaylen Who Caused Ruby Tuesday And Fought God Once Already, she is a legend on a level that he never ever wants to be on
(and i wonder like... jaylen probably wants someone she can be normal around, someone who can balance her back out into the person who had a shitty used cello that she played sometimes during band practice as a bit, but the thing is, mike doesn’t want to balance her out because he doesn’t want her to balance him out. he doesn’t want it to be one-sided because he’s sick of his friendships being one-sided and he doesn’t want it to be two-sided because he just wants to be a person and so the only thing that’s left is... nothing)
also it makes me sad that just by the existence of mike townsend (feels the shadows call) he is denied the opportunity for a quiet exit. he becomes a story again. there’s a fifth song, there’s another part to the tragedy that he didn’t ask for and was trying his fucking hardest to avoid
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aaaand any of the tigers + 23?
23. Darting shadows in the corner of your eyes
Mummy only knows she’s tripped into the vicinity of another shade when a feeling like being plunged into an ice bath hits her out of the blue and a brutal shiver snakes up her back.
“Sorry!” She squeaks, waving her hands apologetically. She takes a couple more steps forward before giving herself a quick shake, trying to clear away the chills. Hands down, the hardest part about living in Hades is getting used to the sheer amount of ghosts that reside all over Tartarus. The long-time Tigers players treat them like old friends—Hiroto has conversations with passing shades on the regular, Dunlap uses them as a makeshift audience when practicing their monologues, Zion swears they make good company for all-nighters—but Mummy just can’t get the hang of living with them. Her eyes tend to glaze over the translucent shapes of wandering shades and more often than not, she finds herself sliding through their cold shadows when she isn’t paying attention.
She really, really hopes it doesn’t cause them any pain. Otherwise, she has a lot more apologies to give out. Maybe she can ask Hiroto about it once she finds her.
Randy had said that if Hiroto wasn’t in her hole or on the field, she would likely be near the Styx, so that’s where Mummy’s headed now. Hypothetically, the River should be easy enough for her to locate. It’s kind of hard to miss. Finding Hiroto, on the other hand, might be the more challenging part, but Mummy’s just hoping she can make it out of town without getting lost in the alleys first.
Thankfully, the city seems to be willing to work with her today. It doesn’t take long for her to find the outskirts of Tartarus, where the buildings give way to barren landscape, and to her surprise, it takes even less time to find Hiroto. Mummy hardly needs to walk more than a few feet forward before she spies the outline of her Captain through the thin veil of fog, sat at the edge of the riverbank. She breathes a sigh of relief. Luck must be on her side.
She’s in the middle of trying to figure out how to get Hiroto’s attention when she registers a shadowy image at the edge of her vision, dark and flickering, and stumbles over her own feet to side-step in the other direction. She remembers being told once that shades like to linger near the Styx; hopefully, she can manage to avoid a repeat of earlier.
“Hello?” Hiroto calls out, clearly having heard Mummy’s fumbling footsteps. Mummy waves in greeting when she meets Hiroto’s eyes and Hiroto gives a big smile, slowly rising from the ground.
“Hey, Mummy! What’s going on?”
She had come here to remind Hiroto about pitching practice, but the shadow in her peripherals suddenly appears again and Mummy startles, stepping aside.
“Is there a shade hanging around here?” Mummy asks. She turns her head to see if she can pinpoint the figure in the fog, but only catches glimpses of something in the farthest corners of her sight. Hiroto furrows her brows and looks around, opening her mouth to reply just as a look of recognition washes over her face. Her confusion quickly melts into fond exasperation.
“No. Just a shitty pitcher who won’t leave my players alone,” she quips at the empty air around them, crooked smirk pulling at her lips. Mummy’s worried she missed the joke and the punchline until she hears a faint sound behind her head. It’s gargled, like a recording of someone talking underwater turned down to the lowest volume, but she swears she hears somebody laugh.
“Well? If you’re going to loiter, you should at least introduce yourself,” Hiroto continues, gesturing to Mummy. Mummy freezes at the sudden acknowledgement, but, finally starting to piece together how this might work, maneuvers herself ever-so slightly until she catches the figure in her peripherals again and waits for her vision to adjust. When the visage of a person appears, Mummy can’t stop herself from letting out a small gasp.
“’Sup,” says Mike Townsend, raising a shadowy hand in greeting.
Send me a character and a number and I’ll write a short fic!
#continuing the saga of 'nicole spends 17 hours writing a ''short'' fic'#anyways have some extremely hot takes on how the shadows work#this is basically formed from nothing but the knowledge that the styx is the 'in-between' for life and death and thus it's a little easier#for the shadow players to be seen in the overworld in this specific area#I made up this lore for this fic alone I just wanted Hiroto and Mike banter#okay I'm borderline delirious at this point so if there are any grammar/spelling errors pls ignore them <3 I am going to sleep#my writing#blaseball#hiroto wilcox#also THANK YOU TAM ily this was extremely fun <33
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Why Evil is the Only TV Procedural Worth Watching
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
This Evil article contains spoilers. You can read a spoiler-free review of the show here.
Who knows what evils lie at the heart of CBS’s Evil? Shadows know. We consulted a book of shadows (not the one Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson) skims, too many spoilers there) to cut into the left ventricle of the darkness feeding the network’s supernatural series, now in production for season 2. The blood of the police procedural pumps through the veins of the paranormal investigation show, but Evil transcends the statutes of those limitations. Occasionally by papal decree. The series is intelligent, filled with symbolism, and its main character, who is training to be a priest, drops acid on a semi-regular basis. And he’s not microdosing. Look at those baggies.
Evil doesn’t debunk demonic possession, which is the main thrust of the team’s investigations. It never treats it as campy. The series believes demons are real, even giving the audience a breakdown of the six different forms possession take. But it deliciously stops short of giving full commitment. The show also explores how to parse out personal responsibility when there’s a supernatural being to blame. In episode 7, “Vatican 3,” we learn “the court does not acknowledge demonic possession” in determining guilt or innocence. The series further muddies the waters when the crew has to take a hard look at a murder committed by someone who wasn’t possessed, such as when the parents of what they believed is a demonically possessed child kill him. The series further turns the screw because the kid they killed to save their other children was born evil. It was literally in his genes.
Evil shares DNA with The X-Files, and David Acosta, played with charisma and empathy by Mike Colter (Luke Cage), is the new show’s Fox “Spooky” Mulder. He is looking for answers beyond the veil, which has the same letters as evil, and he is putting the pieces together like a hidden map of old Manhattan. There’s a truth out there and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to understand it. He’s not in it to solve any crimes against venal sins. He is looking for deeper meaning, and this alone puts the series above most procedurals. David’s got a bit of the scientist Dodge from original The Planet of the Apes film in his cinematic character. One of the first astronauts to delve so deep into the outer reaches of space, “He’d walk naked into a live volcano if he thought he could learn something no other man knew.” David is the same. He was a foreign correspondent in war-ravaged Afghanistan who got to know the soldiers whose stories he reported. Truth and knowledge are the most noble of callings, and ultimately come before his religious calling.
While the basic premise of a spiritual believer teamed with a dissenting psychologist is procedural trope, Evil is out to debunk the law of its diminishing returns. First, the show teams David with not just one skeptical voice, but two. Katja Herbers’ Dr. Kristen Bouchard plays the same role Agent Dana Scully played to Mulder, and with a similar arsenal. She comes from a different perspective, though. Bouchard does indeed believe in miracles, but thinks they all have scientific explanations. She is confident the only reason something might defy natural principles is because science hasn’t been applied properly yet. Scully, who wore a cross and took her faith seriously, accepted miracles on faith. David and Kristen rarely come to the same conclusion.
Ben Shakir, played by Aasif Mandvi, brings common knowledge, and shades his skepticism with cynicism. The former Daily Show correspondent takes on the weight of all three Lone Gunmen but with more constructive skills. Before joining the paranormal team, he was a carpenter, just like Jesus. Ben knows how things work, and when everyday mechanisms like sinks or faulty wiring are the root cause of supernatural phenomena, he can turn the screws, and spot the mold. Ben, “the Magnificent,” as Kristen’s children call him, is also tech savvy, and quite capable of hacking hackers.
Evil also throws things at Ben which he can’t easily spackle over with even the best of tests. Try as he may, and he tries, he can’t explain the light of an angel in the frame of a surveillance video. There is no evidence of doctoring, even at the most expert levels. “The world is weird,” David passes off as dating advice when Ben asks about potential girlfriend Vanessa (Nicole Shalhoub), who wants to know she if she should detach from her dead sister before committing to a new relationship. Vanessa thinks she is “tethered” to her phantom sister by the right arm.
Supernatural science is bizarre, creators Robert and Michelle King (The Good Wife, Braindead) believe. They push the show to diagnose causes the external evidence of exorcisms and stigmata, the bleeding wounds which correspond to the wounds on Christ’s hands when he was nailed to the cross. Because stigmatics display their wounds as they are portrayed artistically, rather than how the Romans historically would have done the crucifixion, it proves it comes from a psychological source. Internal belief causes the phenomena, not external spiritual forces. Evil explains that, allowing ample room for skepticism, belief, and even poetic reasons for spiritual incursions. David quotes Shakespeare to enunciate his faith. The concept of free will doesn’t come up in most procedurals. Neither does the way sociopolitical issues are turned into supernatural questions and tied to the origins of evil.
Evil is almost a character in Evil, and has relatable entry points. Real demons first get to Kristen’s four young daughters through an augmented reality videogame. A little girl who never takes off her Halloween mask almost gets the sisters to bury one alive. We don’t know how much of the characters’ perceptions is the result of a demon character’s influence on them. Each character is slowly being tempted by the dark side.
Kristen joined the team as a rational thinker but has had to accommodate uncomfortable ideas and adjust her comfort zone accordingly. In her usual line of work, she’s analyzed the criminally insane, but the show has pushed her into close contact with people who are evil in the Biblical sense. She is being pushed incrementally by forces in and out of her control. Her own mother Sheryl (Christine Lahti) sides with a manipulative competitor, Leland, over her daughter, and he’s made direct threats. The first season can be seen as Kristen’s slow corruption. The second season may see Kirsten apply her skills to her own situation, which will delve further into the dichotomy between the spiritual and pragmatic.
This is because Kristen may have already fallen. The final episode includes a telltale blood stain, which she wills Ben to unsee. On any procedural this is considered a clue, but here on Evil, the evidence actually points further than a mere homicide. It is the first sign that a main character has gone to the dark side. It is confirmed when the touch of a crucifix blisters her hand. There’s no such thing as an original sin and Kristen has been flirting with temptation long before this.
Kristen is a married nonpracticing Catholic who lost her faith. She’s sexually attracted to David, a man on his way to becoming a priest. When this subject was broached on the classic 1970s cop comedy Barney Miller, a prostitute who was supposed to be a young priest’s last fling before he entered a monastery said “I break laws, not commandments.” It feels like Kristen reminds herself of this every time the two of them are on screen alone together. Their sexual chemistry is that palpable. Yes, this is very similar to the long-gesticulating romance between Mulder and Scully, but he was no priest and she wasn’t married. Not only is Kristen married, but she’s got half a brood of daughters. Annoying things, really, but at least one of them has an excuse. Another reason Evil is the only procedural worth watching is because everyone on it just might be cursed. That’s not found in the manuals.
Evil towers over contemporary procedurals in how it’s going dark. Most procedurals chase a morally compromised arc, but Evil treats it like an encroaching corruption. Kristen, who is sworn to uphold the law, may have gone more than rogue vigilante. Besides the crucifix-burning season closing, David has visions of a goat demon waiting for Kristen with a scythe. She’d been tormented by her own personal demon throughout the season but when the George, the demon-like creature who visits Kristen during sleep paralysis, falls on the knife, it changes nothing. He is just one of many demons. One of them set up practice and is taking office hours with Leland.
The Demon Therapist is an all-male Goat of Mendes, or Baphomet. The show gets into how different biblical angels look from how they’re perceived artistically and by the contemporary faithful, but won’t present a faithful representation of Baphomet. It’s as patriarchal as Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Evil keeps it vague whether the goat demon is real or in Leland’s head. The Demon therapist appears in Kristen’s dreams as well. Lexis (Maddy Crocco) disabled the house alarm for the visiting devil therapist when he invites her to “the next level,” making it seem she is at least susceptible to underworldly influence. The kids are irritating, but they are a bargaining chip and their father, Adam, put them up for grabs when they chanted together offering an exchange of souls. Kristen was co-opted into evil through protective motherly instinct. She doesn’t see the mark of the devil as a badge of honor. When Kristen puts the cross in her palm, she doesn’t look like she expected it as much as feared it.
While the network show will never have the freedoms afforded cable series, the acting is top notch all around. Series like HBO’s Perry Mason or even Showtime’s reimagined second incarnation of Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, provide a wider range of emotion and carnality. But Evil gives us muted, for the most part believable performances, very often underplayed. As are the special effects and use of technology as a narrative device. Too many procedurals treat high tech surveillance and other investigative tools like they are all-seeing eyes which can count nostril hairs. It has become normalized. Evil doesn’t waste intellectual space with unreasonable gadgets. The tools Ben or Leland use to their computerized ends are believable. At one point, Kristen asks Ben to record a cell phone conversation which is already halfway over. She is surprised he can’t with all his special skills.
The series incorporates real world horrors into mundane life. Even some of the most normal looking settings carry a sense of unease, to underscore the show’s thesis that the supernatural is natural but never quite normalized. Many of the scenes are shot vertically, drawing the viewers’ eyes upward and inferring something is always going on above. The series’ many wide-angle shots put a distance between characters even in close-ups.
The show isn’t afraid to wear its influences on its sleeves, and on several occasions has a lot of fun with it. For Dr. Kurt Boggs’ (Kurt Fuller) arrival at an exorcism, they recreated Father Merrin’s introductory scene in the horror classic The Exorcist, shot for shot, even getting an exact replica of the light post and the same make car, though different year, from the film. They gave nods to Rosemary’s Baby, Misery, Cabin in the Woods, and Children of the Corn. The climbing ax which Kirsten grabs on her way out to do damage on the serial killer Orson looks like it has teeth. As did the walking stick Lon Chaney’s Larry Talbot carried in The Wolfman. The demon George looks like Freddy Krueger’s good-looking cousin. The tonality of the show is reminiscent of Charles Laughton’s immeasurably influential Night of the Hunter.
The main reason Evil shines above most procedurals is because it is scary, and those scares have been building slowly and deliberately. Commonplace settings feel off, and the world around is filled with conspiracies and coverup. The Vatican asks the team to determine whether a woman who knows the hidden history of the church is a false prophet. The fertility clinic Kristen and her husband Andy used when conceiving Lexis corrupts fetuses with satanic insemination. A witty but innocuous internet meme, Puddy’s Christmas song, is a hummably foreboding earworm. Anything can go evil on Evil.
cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });
Evil season 2 is currently in production. Read more about that here.
The post Why Evil is the Only TV Procedural Worth Watching appeared first on Den of Geek.
from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3fRxopa
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#the garages#blaseball#skipping some of the live shows covers and community albums for now#especially the ones that need more than one poll
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Who’s mike Townsend ?
I HAVE BEEN PROVOKED
ok so
mike townsend is a character from blaseball, which is a baseball simulation if baseball was fucked up and evil!
in order to really talk about him properly we gotta talk about jaylen hotdogfingers. jaylen was the star pitcher of the seattle garages (blaseball team/band), but after the opening of the Forbidden Book jaylen was incinerated, and mike townsend appeared to replace her
townsend, unlike hotdogfingers, was not a good pitcher. the garages fanbase despised him, and the chant “mike townsend is a disappointment” became very common =( they wrote a whole song about it! it slaps but it makes me super Sad (listen to it here!! it’s important)
this fucked up mike! he doesn’t want to be a disappointment... he wants to be a part of the band, he wants to have fun. he talks about this in “my name is mike” (this one makes me cry. please listen)
after a while the chant “mike townsend is a credit to the team” popped up though!! to combat the other mean one! and they made a song about that one too! (listen to it!!!)
pretty soon after this newfound support, the fans of blaseball pulled some Shenanigans and through game mechanics managed to resurrect jaylen hotdogfingers.
in return, mike townsend sacrificed himself, and was sent into the shadows. they wrote a song about that too, (i know all the words, and i scream sing them.) the whole situation was. sad. mike was in the shadows, alone, after finally starting to get the respect he deserved. but it was his choice, he knew what he had to do. (edit: this song is also very important to this)
he had a quiet peaceful existence in the shadows. he baked his bread that he loves so much, he started a restaurant with another blaseball player, and generally just like vibed? but at the end of season 9 he was called back out of the shadows! our mike had returned! a song about THAT dropped literally YESTERDAY (AND GUESS WHAT! IT GOES FUCKING HARD!!!)
but then at the end of season 10 he was sent back into the shadows lmao. im laughing to hide the tears. i miss him so much.
idk the songs (imho) are absolutely essential to his story and they need to be listened to. mike also has a wiki (here) that talks about a lot of stuff that i left out so please read it if you’re interested in him, and also feel free to hmu to talk about him or literally anything blaseball
thanks for coming to my ted talk =)
#kitten kries#blaseball#mike townsend#also im just noticing that you capitalised townsend but not mike????#mike is the only word in that sentence that isnt capitalised???#lmao#Anonymous#ask
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I'm curious about Yusef & Zaida and/or We Are All Love Blaseball (I'm impressed with people who write Blaseball fic; the canon/fanon/whatever changes so dramatically every week! which team is yours? I'm with the SF Lovers)
Yay! Thanks for playing! (Title Meme)
Upon rereading, Yusef & Zaida seems to be prompted by one of those “ideas for warlock patrons” posts, where the warlock’s patron is their very powerful kid that they are utterly devoted to. in hindsight it looks like it was going to very much be a baby yoda situation. I’m trying to remember why I chose Arabic names; I think I must’ve just finished reading The Golem and the Djinni. The excerpt I chose is pre-kid.
Blaseball! I’m so not up to speed on what’s going on right now, but this is an existentially flavored ~romance~ that takes place in season two between two fictional players. It needs a better name. (My team is the Breckenridge Jazz Hands, cuz you gotta root for the home team. We have winning to do! Just for you!)
Excerpts from both below the cut!
Yusef & Zaida
It took a moment before Yusef realized what was happening, but it was hard to ignore to tiny gray buds that sprouted from her forehead, slithering like snakes into the air, or the way her hands were changing shape against his palms, the feeling of claws against his skin past her fingertips. And suddenly he saw that though the change was gradual, her skin wasn’t honey-brown anymore but a dark scarlet, that her already statuesque features were outlined on her face in even sharper relief. She opened her eyes, and they were no longer black pools in white, but a solid, fiery orange.
He dropped her hands. “Dimme, you’re...I…”
“Go on,” she said, her voice with a strange double quality now, unearthly.
“You’re a demon,” Yusef whispered hoarsely.
She nodded, nonplussed.
“Then the...the crops, and the cattle—the drought—”
“All me,” she said, and she was almost amused.
“You have to stop,” Yusef said with sudden urgency. “People are going to die.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she said thoughtfully.
“Can’t you try?” He caught her eye. “Please, Dimme.”
She considered this. He couldn’t tell where she was looking exactly, now, with neither iris nor pupil to indicate where her gaze was pointed.
“What if it’s my nature?” she said. It was a challenge. “I am a demon. We only destroy.”
Yusef swallowed, and shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”
“You think there’s good in me?” she said scornfully.
“I think your nature isn’t the same as your fate.”
“Hm.” Dimme leaned forward, lips close to his. “Do you love this form, Yusef, the way you loved me minutes ago?”
“You are still Dimme,” Yusef said firmly.
“You would marry me even now?”
Yusef reached up to move a lock of hair behind one of her horns, and kissed her gently. “In an instant.”
“And this is what you ask of me, that this town be allowed their rain and their food again?”
“Yes,” Yusef said. “Please.”
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, kissed him passionately, as if it was the first time they’d done it, kissed him as if it’d be the last time, until they surfaced for air panting.
“If there is any truth in that, any evidence that you are right, let it be this,” she murmured.
“Let it be what?” he mumbled, dazzled.
She leaned in and whispered in his ear, “I love you, Yusef.”
And in that instant, words still lingering in the air, she dissolved into shadow.
“Dimme?” Yusef looked wildly around the room. “Dimme!”
There was no answer.
He leapt to his feet, tearing around his house, calling her name, to no avail.
Outside, it began to rain.
We Are All Love Blaseball
Madge Wisely watched Allison Abbot on the plate, tapping her nail bat in the dust. Madge had never met Abbot, but definitely considered her xeir rival for the day, seeing as they were both right fielders. Madge flexed xeir unspeakably long fingers—there was no way for xir to wear a glove—in preparation.
The bases were loaded and the Garages were just two runs down. Bottom of the ninth. If Abbot channeled her considerable rage into this hit, this could be it for the Magic.
Madge prepared.
Yeong-ho Garcia wound up for the pitch, and served Abbot a fastball—
Crack went the nail bat, and Abbot took off from the plate, but Madge’s eye was on the ball, and xe was running with all xeir strength—
The ball was out of reach. For any other player, that is.
Madge extended xeir arm and plucked the ball out of the air.
“OUT,” intoned the umpire, and Abbot shrieked furiously and chucked her hat onto the ground. Madge brought the ball on its long journey back toward xeir face, and grinned.
“Looks like someone’s buying drinks!” Penelope Mathews rumbled volcanically from center field.
“Damn you!” Abbot screamed, being dragged away by her teammates. “Damn you, you slenderman-ass clown!”
“The umpires!” Mike Townsend was hissing. “Don’t draw their attention! Remember what happened to Jaylen!”
Madge ignored the underdog Garages in favor of high-fiving Penelope. “After that game, we deserve more than one drink.”
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