NOT EVERYTHING FEELS LIKE SOMETHING ELSE.

[ UNPITCH. ] low-effort roleplay blog for jaylen hdf from the video game blaseball. by yr pal rosemary (she/her, ze/hir, xe/xem). private, mutuals-only, no personals, etc etc. you know the drill.

STRIKE ONE. absurdist horror baseball simulator. don't worry, you don't have to understand it to write w me here. here's a good video explainer, if you're curious.

STRIKE TWO. jaylen hidaka hotdogfingers, blaseball pitcher, formerly for the seattle garages. bass player, also formerly for the seattle garages. in blaseball, players are incinerated, and jaylen was the first. in blaseball, players can be brought back from the dead, and jaylen was the first. she then murdered a dozen other players to be allowed to stay.

sometimes  there’s  just  larger  things  in  life  and  it’s  like,  why  worry  about  the  thing  that’s  been  irking  you  all  day  when  you  bring  it  up  to  someone  and  they  talk  about  a  rabbit  lost  in  a  baseball  field?   

                ‘ well… ’    he  starts  with  such  hesitancy  it’s  a  wonder  he  opened  his  mouth  at  all.  danny’s  breath  has  the  presence  of,  god,  is  expelling  any  of  this  air  worth  it  at  all?  no.  probably  not.  but  he  will.     ‘ no. ’    

                correction: no.  he  won’t.    ‘ i  don’t  think  that  matters  so  much  now.  you’ve  added  more  shit  to  my  confusion  pile  and  i’m  considering  not  questioning  things  anymore. ’    and  then  it’s  like  a  resolute  ignorance  for  a  few  seconds  and  he  thinks  of  turning  on  his  heel  and  heading  straight  from  where  they  are  and  going  to  bed,  but  he  doesn’t  stick  with  that.  resolute  isn’t  really  resolute  if  you  don’t  know  what  it  means.  he  cocks  his  head.  (warning,  warning:  new  inquisition  ahead.)    ‘ who  sold  the  blaseball  ticket  to  the  rabbit? ’

“what?” congratulations, danny, your confusion is contagious. jaylen’s caught it more like the flu than like a blaseball in a glove, and now she’s squinting at him, trying to decide if he’s serious. 

“are you —” serious? an idiot? fucking with me? ding ding ding, all of the above? not like a rabbit on the field is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened in blaseball. it was only weird by season one’s standards, and — well, those have been wildly surpassed at this point. (goddamn necromancy, for fuck’s sake!)

so here's the thing about dying: jaylen's here, sitting in the shittiest diner san francisco has to offer across from elliot, loudly slurping a milkshake that the waiter will end up giving her for free because they recognize her face and are afraid of her. at the same time, jaylen's somewhere in seattle — ashes scooped up from a field and put under the tombstone that still stands with her name, jaylen hidaka because like fuck were mike and allison letting her be buried under the dumbass stage surname she'd given the league. whatever the big garage's janitors salvaged of her is in a grave next to her mother's and her father's, the whole family in a neat little row.

she hasn't been to see it. too fucking morbid, even for her. it's just what mike'd told her, when she'd asked.

do you see what she's saying? she can't move on. half of her is here: rolling her eyes, watching her own reflection in the window, tearing her straw wrapper into bits until the pieces are too small to rip any further. half is / will always be back in seattle.

it's not some poetic home is where the heart is bullshit. it's just true. even when she wishes it wasn't — her wishes have never meant shit in this world.

"fuck forgiveness," she says. "fuck moving on. like it's that fucking easy — gimme a fucking break, alderson, jesus christ."

jaylen's been in san francisco the whole first year of the long siesta, and it's not because she's moving on, making herself a home here, but because she doesn't know how to go back to seattle when it's no longer the city she died in. (a lot can change in seven years. in seven years, every cell of a place can flake off and be replaced by something new. both she and seattle are unrecognizable, especially to each other.) she can't go back when she's still so fucking angry — at the city for having changed, at her team (even if she's technically a lover now, she'll always be a garage at her core) for too many things to count. she can't forgive any of them. and she can't move on, because —

well, who the fuck is she without all that anger? if she sets it down, has to face her empty hands — then what?

"fuck that," jaylen says, easy, immediate. rolls her eyes for maximum effect. what the fuck counts as an illusion, anyway? everything's fucked up enough; if she can see it, it's real, she's decided. simplified her life that way.

"us." she's making air quotes with her fingers. because she knows, everyone fucking knows, that kind of shit doesn't touch the people behind the scenes of the game. earth could open up at any moment and swallow up someone on the field; just look at the secret base bullshit, the people soul or silk bean entering a tunnel below second and never coming back out.

(she's afraid of this a way she isn't afraid of burning anymore. because it's unknown. it is not the familiar fear she's carried on her back since being dragged from the grave; it's fresh like a wound.)

jaylen chews on the inside of her cheek a moment, letting words boil up in her throat before she lets them free. "i mean, i guess regular ol' sinkholes are still a thing, so, not totally impossible for that to happen to you, too, but — let's face it, dude, pretty fuckin' unlikely. unless you know something about next season that i don't —" and she squints at him here, like that'll get him to break whatever semimagical nda the commissioner's had him sign. players don't get spoilers, that'd ruin the fun of it all. (if any of them'd known about the burning at the start, would anyone have stayed?)

the time between seasons stretches on for eons. sharp change from the usual blink-and-you-miss-it siestas — this shit’s practically eternal, two years and still going. coffee cup’s announced, but that’s only gonna be a few days a year. other three hundred sixty whatever days are still empty-empty-empty, and jaylen’s alive, really and truly, and has nothing left to fight for.

she doesn’t really remember how to not fight. it’s been six years since she came back, now. longer back than she was dead. it’s been three years since the hall stars fought and killed a god and saved the league — so they say. (new boss, same as the old boss. coin hasn’t spoken up in a while, but jaylen has a thrumming paranoia under her skin. the shares of her debt were sold to someone. she has a bad feeling, and her bad feeling has a bad feeling, and she’s an endless sea of wrongness that’s only partially the fault of necromancy.) no games, just free time, and jaylen doesn’t know what to do with it all. her hands are empty without a ball in them. they curl into fists but it’s not enough.

so she ends up at elliot’s place. long way from san francisco, but being there for three years doesn’t mean it feels like a home; the only place that does is seattle, and half the garages still hate her — or worse, pity her, look at her like it’s such a shame she’s here instead of the happy-go-lucky jaylen she’d been when she was alive the first time, like if they just said the right thing she’d be back to normal. (what the fuck is normal anymore?) 

she’s been thinking about baltimore. she’s been thinking about the hall stars fight. thinking about how every time she forced herself to shift back between teams, swapping with that shelled pitcher guy from the crabs, it was death all over again. to be on a team of ghosts, one must be something less than alive. (common sense. still. everyone looked at her like she was being overdramatic when she collapsed on the mound the moment the game was over.)

the newspapers afterwards hailed her as the twice-dead jaylen, but she thinks it must be more than that.

and elliot knows the behind-the-scenes shit. elliot’s easier to talk to than most, for her. doesn’t judge or pity her for the things she’s done to stay alive. doesn’t really get the experience of being a blaseball player, either, but sometimes that’s better — she hangs out with mike and the elephant in the room is always whether the next eclipse is gonna lead to one of them dying again; hangs out with the lovers and it’s always them strategizing about inter-team relationships. hanging out with elliot is different. she can just show up, say some shit, and — well, he doesn’t know how everything works, but he knows more than she does about the behind-the-scenes, and she knows more about what it’s like on the field.

and besides. it’s siesta. it doesn’t actually have to be constant splorts talk, now.