#ruffian applesauce

[burningcrab]

the blaseball zine jam is over! i ended up doing quite a lot (and yet still not as much as i hoped to do! same as it ever was.) collected here is every zine i contributed to, and a few bonus little recommendations :)

suns out, guns out (page 55) - a magi ruiz/alaynabella hollywood story for the season 24 zine THE END! it’s about the game where magi used the equal sun to nullify the equal sun. also i wrote it in exactly 26 minutes and 54 seconds, the length of that game, because i wanted enrichment and had a very tight deadline

they turn the light on and it’s burning up the sky (page 48) - another magi/layna piece, because i’m incorrigible. this time it’s my playlist for them, annotated for the playlist zine radio immateria. it has a lot of lyrics that connect to their story and their messed-up relationship, along with some little author’s notes about those connections. i’m really happy with how it turned out.

highway to hell(mouth) (page 6) - a story about alaynabella hollywood and howell franklin’s road trip to the hellmouth when he gets traded for brisket friendo! it’s a silly piece for the travel zine The Open Road - which i also organized and very hastily assembled last night. it’s a sweet zine with lots of great pieces from friends of mine. check it out!

look at me (page 46) - a new IRM for deceased core mechanics player ruffian applesauce, made for the letters from the rumour mill zine. she’s a horrible teenager who wants to kiss fellow horrible teenager york silk and it’s about coming back home and realizing everyone you’ve hurt is still there. and then dying without fixing it. i love her very much.

the smallest gap (page 14) - an interpretation of feedback weather for REALITY FLICKERS, a do-this-in-your-style zine. it was vaguely EEAAO-inspired and is about two unnamed players who meet over and over again in the time it takes to run to second base. it’s funky and weird and i like it a lot!

time and time again (page 30) - a shortish piece for the fanteam zine The Yourplace Ourfolks. it’s about two players for the Nevada Timekeepers, unwilling maintenance people for the temporal anomaly that swallowed their home. it’s also about not wanting to talk about work until you’ve had your coffee. it’s also about geological eras with respect to dinosaurs. i like them :)

the garages section (page 14) of the tales from the short circuits zine! the garages went through several iterations in the circuits — some folk-punk musicians in an orchard with crashed spaceships, apocalypse survivors navigating a wasteland on an endless train, and space pirate radio DJs who broke the universe! read about them and many other teams here.

that’s everything i contributed to, but if you want even more zines to read, i recommend these!

the kansas city dispatches, a hilarious postmortem look at jon halifax’s time in the ILB. imagine if agent 47 from hitman had hair, sucked at his job, and died when a cowboy tried to shoot him and missed. now go read this zine because it’s even better than that!

The Salt, a truly incredible alternate-universe work set in a lost circuit, where the halifax region has become a massive salt flat. it’s got amazing character work, worldbuilding, art, and so much writing that all tells a beautiful story. i can’t recommend it enough.

Salmon and Snake, the product of months of work by my dear friend sonder. it’s a season 25 1 AU where everything (well, not everything) resets to season 1, the rosters shuffle, and the game proceeds just like it did. it’s more than i can possibly explain here, just check it out!

and of course, every other zine (over fifty! holy shit!) in the blaseball zine jam 2022 deserves your love. it’s been buckwild and i can’t believe how much stuff we all made

#so this was a lot but i think i got everything lmao #uhhh yeah not much else to say. congrats zineys #blaseball #blaseball zine jam #alaynabella hollywood #magi ruiz #seattle garages #hellmouth sunbeams #ruffian applesauce #core mechanics #ok i think thats everyone who features enough for a tag #my writing #chatter

[wooshofficial]

hi woosh i have a lot of ships.

- alaynabella hollywood/magi ruiz. i call it moviemagic bc i am a loser who likes puns too much. idk they’re so. they are so girls who necromance together (struggle to) stay together. trips and spills my pile of wips where magi ruiz does something really unethical or dangerous to make people proud of her. i have a whole moviemagic tag for them

- alaynabella hollywood/goodwin morin. what if we were the best batter and the worst pitcher and we didn’t understand each other for most of a season, until suddenly we did. what if we got together right before the game pulled us apart and we tried for so long to make it work. and it did, until it didn’t.

- york silk/oliver loofah/magi ruiz. absolute fucking disaster polycule. york shells olive and takes away one of the only people magi has really connected to. she gets pecked out and they reconnect even though liv has to travel up from charleston. york comes to seattle and olive skips town for a few weeks to get away from him (she can’t stop remembering that MaX is still in the shell xe echoed.) magi is mad that york has fucked up her friendcrush AGAIN. magi “world’s most hypocritical necromancer” ruiz says why didn’t you stay dead. york “necromanced former child star” silk says is what what you said to chorby (chorby who just died for a third time). they fight fight kiss kiss. simultaneously york and olive have very similar weird complexes about growing up. also york is aware his time is running out and he wants to make some sort of amends. they also fight fight kiss kiss. the three of them together are like. york needs people who don’t just constantly praise him like he’s still that can-do-no-wrong kid in hawai’i. magi needs people who can be her shoulder angel and devil (they trade who’s who often). olive needs people who understand the pressure of being new to adulthood and trying to shake off people’s expectations. wow this one got long ANYWAY they’re so fucked up

- york silk/ruffian applesauce. this is a dumbass teenage romance sparking from a game where they both hit a bunch of home runs. it ends abruptly when ruffian fucking dies. it awkwardly continues when york also dies. it ends abruptly AGAIN when york un-dies and ruffian just sits in the hall forever. if romeo and juliet were also orpheus and eurydice. you know?

- SO many short circuits garages ships.

ajax black/nevaeh flapper is “romantic tension over a blackjack game while the universe explodes”

didi müller/oliver mueller is “quit your job. join my punk band. explore space with me”

cravel larue/alice day is “loser boyfriend x loser girlfriend”

francois fisher/ygritte valdrada is “weird bisexual goth power couple”

i have more. i have so many more. i don’t have time to write blurbs for them all but there’s magi ruiz/clare ballard ii, sparks beans/carmelo plums, penelope mathews/liquid friend vi (aka “vienna”), probably more i’m forgetting lmao

Hooooooooooooooooooly shit okay let’s get into it

Layna and Magi - well known and loved. Absolute fucking disasters. Absolutely end game. It’s movie magic, baby! It all works out in the end! (aka, it Never fucking works out because there is no end)

Goodwin and Layna - OHOHOHOHOHO. I like the interp where ego affects everyone with it differently but by stage 4 you’re pretty much a walking stereotype, with Goodwin becoming more and more of a shell of herself (“isn’t this what everyone wanted? Isn’t this the dream? Don’t you love me? I’m a star player!!!!!!!!” vibes) and losing her personality to the ego. Layna “I love you and I forgive you but I will never forget” Hollywood, who values family and trust over literally everything (see: movie magic) would not take kindly to this, but also she knows that this is not Goodwin, but also can’t she fight back, but also she’s doing the best she can, but also Layna Hollywood Never Forgets. And it’s too late by the time Layna decides to forgive and Goodwin is gone, because fuck you Layna you get nothing

York and Olive and Magi - Brendan Urie sucks but when he said “make up sex! break up sex!” he was talking about these three. It’s all revenge! It’s all passion! It’s all dangerous! It’s all wrong! York just wants to be human again and regain the life he built from the ground up in Halifax, Liv just wants her family to be okay, and Magi just wants her crushes to stop being given the finger. None of their intentions are pure but god are all of them cute as hell and in this world where you don’t know when the end is might as well kiss the pretty ones.

At this point I think Magi Ruiz has had a crush on every girl on the active roster (and some of the shadows) (and York Silk when he was experimenting with gender presentation). Also The Fall by Lovejoy is a Magi song, specifically a MovieMagic song.

Ruffian and York - what if in a very long and intense game you got obsessed over someone you used to know in a kind of fucked up way and he just wants a nap, oh my god but you saw the passion in his eyes as he threw that last pitch you absolutely slammed with your own passion and your teammates are looking at you funny again arent they. You are So Normal about this dude. So Normal, in fact, that you fucking explode! Also he never loved you sorry

God the SCs got gay didn’t they

Ajax and Naveah - you are the very thing I hate but that makes you hot, and it’s the end of the world so fuck it (literally)

Didi Ollie and Mike polycule when

Cravel and Alice - the world is going to end. I know exactly when it will. I cannot stop it. I cannot tell anyone. You are the only other person who knows. Kiss me.

Love me some goths

I mean my asks are open for a reason, but also you have my discord so feel free to infodump there! I enjoy your brain thoughts very much.

#woosh answers #burningcrab #blaseball #alaynabella hollywood #magi ruiz #goodwin morin #york silk #oliver loofah #ruffian applesauce #ajax black #naveah flapper #Alice day #I’m not tagging everyone I’m sorry #but I love these

[bread--quest]

hey everyone i thought the zine (which is great btw) would saturate my need for content about this extremely complex roster shuffle au but it in fact only increased it! so i MADE MY OWN CONTENT starting with some Mills :) starring ruffian applesauce (@burningcrab's fantastic irm edition)

#sonder scribbles #yaaay yippe yay #this is also technically advertising my zine again #blaseball #fan: gnym!! #au: shuffle

[leonstamatis]

How about 7, 11, 16, 21?

7. my favorite fic from the grand siesta

OOF. WHAT A QUESTION. i’m going to go with a classic answer here actually and say “elephant joke” from marn baliset. this was one that i was just. full stop obsessed with for much of the grand siesta. the first time I read it i had to keep taking breaks because i was so !!! about it. we all know about derrick krueger NOW, but like, at the time? this smacked me in the face with all kinds of unexpected emotions about a player i’d never heard of, which is peak blb fic to me.

11. a fic that wasn’t about my team but i read it anyway and fell in love

yes lovely!! okay. “the things we take off for each other” by bloodsweatspit is just so good. i think about this fic so often. the moist talkers and their penchant for giving away parts of themselves to the people they love, and revealing even larger pieces of themselves in the process. foundational lore here, truly. i love them.

16. my favorite fic about alternation

“saint augustine” by hayden waveridden offers a kind of different take on alternate polkadot that i do in fact love a lot. dottie is a diver, not a pitcher, and she is not at all happy to be here. luckily, there are plenty of nice players on the mechs to help her out. like… eve mcblase. apparently. (it’s charming and funny and sweet and i love this dynamic a lot.)

21. a fic about a little-known player

i’m cheating again and giving you another hayden fic. i’m sorry. ve’s just so good at the words and writing about saint augustine reminded me of another very good mechs fic. “smoke and paper” is about adelaide judochop, ruffian applesauce, and incinerations. this is the version of both adelaide and ruffian that lives in my head. i love their friendship so dearly, and this fic just breaks my heart in half. it’s so good.

#blb fic recs #candidateofloyalty #ask meme #tam.ask #THANK YOU 💖💖💖

[coremechs]

u ever think abt how the Core is just all that was left after Ruffian Applesauce was made?

#shelledposting

[waveridden]

The Core defies singularity, something that Adelaide has always appreciated about it. When she decided she wanted to be a librarian, she knew that it was pointless to try and define that in any singular way.

On life, death, family, and books. 3.5k, cw for major character death.

#blaseball fic #core mechanics #adelaide judochop #polkadot patterson #ruffian applesauce #blaseball #waveridden.fic #sometimes an origin story just materializes in your head and you have to roll with it

[faeirs]

not even blaseball fans have context for the blagonballs. btw if you think liquid friend is a good blaseball name wait until you hear about walton sports, muse scantron, ruffian applesauce (riv), and jaylen hotdogfingers. (jaylen is kind of a main character of blaseball as much as blaseball can have main characters, she got necromancied, caused LOTS OF PROBLEMS WITH HAVING BEEN NEROMANCIED, died again, and led the hall stars in fighting the angry discipline obsessed peanut)

WGSJDH OH, FUCK, NOW WE HAVE MAIN CHARACTERS? THERE IS NECROMANCY? THE HALL STARS FOUGHT THE ANGRY PEANUT GOD? HUH.

#SO IS SHE. ALIVE RIGHT NOW? DID SHE ONLY DIE TWO TIMES? #imagine being fought by someone named fucking Jayden HOTDOGFINGERS. #asks #splorts tag #Michael tag

[orthgodlove]

riv ruffian applesauce, a great name gone

#forte whispers #blseball liveblog

[weaseltotheface]

Much belatedly, I too rep the Mechanics! RIV Ruffian Applesauce, they will be missed

I was so sad about ruffian. RIV 😔✊

[burningcrab]

hey i put some of my zine pieces on ao3 wheee

kid with a chainsaw and a whole lot to say is about ruffian applesauce and york silk and being an awful teenager who never got to grow up. it has bonus content that wasnt in the zine piece :)

and the smallest gap is about feedback. like what if feedback was like falling in love over and over again. and also it was horrible. this one is weird but i like it

feel free to leave a lil kudos or comment if u liked. ok cool love u all bye. mwah

#blaseball #blaseball zine jam #ruffian applesauce #york silk #core mechanics #feedback weather #uhhhh yeah thats prolly it #my writing

[burningcrab]

ALSO for kiss writing ask. 44 + ruffian/york . if u want

oh hell yes i love stupid teenagers. (this ruffian uses he/she and is an interp from my piece for dasy’s zine! she is an angry little teen and i love him. pspsps read it…)

44. public kisses

Ruffian is absolutely losing his fucking mind down here. Body-thieving some poor Shoe Thief for long enough to strike out isn’t enough. He needs to lift her own bat and feel the breeze on her (not through) and touch some fucking grass.

She’s been sulking for… an indeterminate period of time… when someone splashes out of the dark towards her. “What do you want,” he grumbles. “I don’t want another deathday party.”

“New arrival,” mumbles Hands. Ruffian feels a twinge of regret. She’ll grudgingly admit it’s nice not being the only Mechanic down here. Hands is… alright. Sie doesn’t deserve that. “Thought you’d wanna see him. Going now.”

Ruffian flops around in her own private tantrum for a minute, then gets up. At least a new dead guy is something. Fuck. Off he shuffles, to the big doors that don’t let people out. (Except when they do, but Ruffian hasn’t been one of them yet. Why should he care?)

The latest splashdown is short, and they’re clutching something. Weird. Most people show up with nothing but the shirt on their backs and the smell of smo—

“York?” Ruffian says, stopping short. A dead star coughs up his final lungful of Trench-black not-water and looks up at her.

“Oh, hey,” he wheezes. “Ruffian.”

“You fucking asshole,” Ruffian manages to say. He drags York to his feet and dips him low — and nearly drops him back down again, holy shit how does this look so easy in movies — and he kisses York Silk.

um

A squid the size of the Core floats over them.

gonna give you a minute

i guess

hey there york silk

ill go check the snacks

York doesn’t technically need to breathe, but he’s still got the hardwiring of a living guy with oxygen requirements. He finally gets himself together enough to break away from her. There’s a hot flush creeping up his neck even in the chill of the Hall, and he’s dropped the Vibe Check into the shallow water they stand in.

“You seriously never got up the courage to kiss me before I bit it?!” Ruffian says. She stands York back up and brushes him off a bit. “You jerk.”

“I didn’t know how to ask,” complains York.

Ruffian groans. “Maybe hey there my main Mech man mister Ruffian Applesauce you’re hot can we make out or something would have worked! I dunno, I’m not the one who invited his buddies over for Mario Party and then said whoever gets shot out of the Goomba cannon first has to kiss the winner. You used a Slowgo Candy instead of just turning to the left and kissing me right there.”

“You would have won if it wasn’t for the bonus stars.”

“They’re part of the game, York. Plan around them!”

“Can I kiss you back now?”

Ruffian waves to the crowd of other dead surrounding them. Some politely avert their eyes, others grin in the smug, knowing way adults do, and some just look eager to talk to York. Hands gives Ruffian a little thumbs-up.

“You don’t mind everyone looking?” she asks.

York shrugs. “I’m used to it,” he says, and flashes his beautiful little evening-news grin.

#love to write about a couple dead kids. stammery teenage crushes my beloved #this was extremely fun and self indulgent i love u ruffian #blaseball #york silk #ruffian applesauce #kisses ask game

[burningcrab]

🍌🍒⚡️🫐? <3

hiiiii woagh theres lots to answer here. wip time

🍌 favorite funny quote from a wip

[pages through my many many wips] woe. hops greene be upon you. i want to finish this actually

“Damn it, Hops,” ae mutters. Lila walks the path towards first base like a model, flipping long white hair over one shoulder. The two of you lock eyes. “Groundouts are boring.”

“That one had some air on it. I’d bet it’s a flyout.” You look to the outfield briefly, squinting through the harsh light and cloying darkness. “Mugs might have it.”

“Aren’t they a ghost?”

“Yeah, but they’re like, our best batter. Don’t ask me how it works.”

🍒 favorite sweet quote from a wip

hmm. a while back i wrote some stuff with venti and vinny (the garages’ detective replicas) preparing for their return to Dust. i was inspired by the breckenridge case files and wanted to play with some letter-style writing. maybe itll get done someday?

I’m sorry we didn’t talk more. Vinny speaks very well of you, and though my investigations haven’t been hardly as detailed, I couldn’t agree more with his assessments. He thinks you’re “a real crackerjack fellow,” not that I could make heads or tails of that. But it was in a very positive tone! And he really — heh — lights up when he talks about you. I hope you can recognize the impressions you leave on people, because you haven’t yet left a bad one.

⚡️ wild card: dealer’s choice of quote from a completed work

hi. read my ruffian applesauce pls and ty

When Ruffian turns fourteen he makes a bat and demands to join. It’s a screaming bit of chainsaw and tungsten that glows and rattles and leaves gouges in the dirt because she’s still trying to lift it. The Mechanics just grin. They hand her a jacket, some patches, and a can of WD-40. Swing for the fences, kiddo.

🫐 a line from a published work that you’re proud of, but no one’s mentioned yet - or if you can’t think of one, an underrated line in general

ok uhhhh also from my ruffian fic: i like giving her a taste of being a Normal Kid instead of a huge public figure and it being way healthier for him without him fully realizing it. like giving a dog medicine by putting it in peanut butter

Ruffian likes shop class and he likes being the center of attention at lunch. As for the rest… she puts up with it, day after day, and doesn’t notice when it stops being something to put up with. Ruffian makes varsity. He scrapes by with low Cs and lots of detention. He kisses a few people and dumps them when they ask her to take them to the Core. There’s so many selfies and parties and beers in the bed of someone’s truck, and it’s not the Core — it never could be — but there’s something a little more human in the way people want him.

thaaaaaanks <3

#blaseball #fic quote ask game

[burningcrab]

11 and 21!

11. a fic that wasn't about my team but i read it anyway and fell in love

hey cynda! oh i have one for this. now idk if youve heard of this thing called The Salt—

ok but full serious i love the salt. it is always salt saturday in my heart. simply one of the coolest things to come out of this fandom ever

21. a fic about a little-known player

okay i am going to be extremely biased and say sonder’s shuffle au drabbles because it is so extremely niche and yet so extremely cool to me personally. awful teen ruffian applesauce irm my beloved

#blaseball #blaseball fic rec ask game