Talk:Jessica Telephone/Archive S8/Archive

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Flat-Earther Drive-by

After reviewing the edit history, I am removing the flat earth joke. It was a drive-by edit not made by someone who collaborated with the Pies discord community and shouldn't be on here. Nesblitt (talk) 19:15, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Jessica Telephone Conflict Over "Dirtbag Jessica"

Not to be that guy, but can we talk about editing pretty much everything under "Peanut Shells and Rap God?"

On the shallower end, it doesn't fit with the tone/flow of the wiki. It's very prosaic and sounds more like fanfiction than the 'faux Wikipedia' aesthetic of everything else. Fanfiction is cool, but there's a style guide for a reason. Also, none of her previous characterization/content slots in with the goofy vape skateboard meme thing? It's funny, but it's out of the blue and doesn't match the rest of the page. Can we add that stuff to any of the 20 other players who have vape bro energy? Or even to players who don't have a lot of personality already?

The main thing that bothered me though is the similarly out of the blue dirtbag thing. Nothing so far would suggest that she's awful to her partners/women in general, so it seems incongruous with everything else. More importantly, there's a persistent and harmful stereotype in media characterizing trans lesbians as abusers/dirtbags/sleezy, and this seems like it's leaning very far in that direction. Not that trans lesbians can't be flawed characters of course, but in that particular way it falls into the same camp as having a black father be a deadbeat dad or having a Jewish character's fatal flaw be greed. In a vacuum it's okay, but altogether the implication isn't. Good.

I don't want to say that it's intentionally malicious, but I think that it's close enough to a damaging caricature that I uh. Would not want to touch that area. So while of course I'm not the King Of The Wiki (I made an account just for this post, actually) as a trans lesbian I'd like to beg you folks to rework this. (from Quickfix00)

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Thanks for starting the conversation, this is a good opening. Just a small thing, please sign off your posts with four tildes (~~~~) which will post your username for easy identification. You can indent messages with colons, one for each indent you wish to make. BlaseballSteve || Admin, Founder || Steven_#3235 (talk) 16:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
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So the thing that is not necessarily clear here is that the "dirtbag" conception of JT is not in the abuser/sleazy/deadbeat way. "Dirtbag JT" as conceived is specifically a dirtbag teen. She wore a tuxedo t-shirt and JNCO jeans to Hlomecoming. She dropped two No-Doz into a can of jolt and calls it SKATE JUICE. She's into Eminem and Mindless Self Indulgence. She vapes and skateboards wherever she's not allowed to, and she stays up til 4 AM breaking glass bottles against the side of a barn. Maybe we could stand to make this vision of Jess a bit clearer in this section, but this is something that we [the Philly Pies segment of the official Blaseball discord, who incidentally came up with the conception of JT as a time-travelling poly trans lesbian in the first place] have been workshopping for several weeks now and feel very strongly about. Something we have been considering, but haven't quite nailed down yet, is potentially adding a section to JT's page that provides details about her different 80s decade iterations. Dirtbag JT is (tentatively) the 2080s iteration. Maybe you feel more connected to her 1980s iteration. That said - we also want to avoid making an infinitely expanding list of different JT iterations that anyone can fill in with whatever, because they're not actually alternate versions. We feel very strongly that these are all the same person, but at different points in her life. Anyway, I hope this helps you understand where we're coming from, and I strongly encourage you to come to the discord and collaborate with us! We're very friendly and love welcoming in new people (and we have quite a few trans lesbians FWIW, myself included). Like you, we are not the Kings of the Wiki, and we are very invested in coming up with a solution to this that makes everybody happy. --Hayley Kpaxxxxx (talk) 16:53, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
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Aha! Yeah, I definitely do understand where you're coming from now, I didn't get it from just reading the wiki. I will totally go talk to you folks on the discord, and now that I understand your ideas/changes I do really like them. I just want them to be less confusing if they're also confusing people other than me lmao. Thank you for taking the time to explain! Quickfix00 (talk) 17:23, 29 September 2020 (UTC)


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The problem I see is that what you describe and how that particular section is written are not the same thing. 'Dirtbag' is not being used for code as 'haha look at what a goofy skater kid teenaged jerk she was', it's being used as 'ah, look at the inherent scumminess of JT as she always was and has been, now on full display'. To the extent that she is actively causing problems which her relationships by being that way and then actively refusing to change or improve. At the very least the wording is not well phrased.
I don't think that saying it's just a different iteration/different era of the character really cuts it with the page as it stands and with how it's written is a pretty sharp veer from what had already been established. Why is it necessary and essential to include? Why is it something that is felt strongly about? Even if it's 'lore you came up with in the first place' it's now established and ingrained and this subsequently damages the consistency and perception of the character. What is wrong with JT just being the cool older sister to the league and time travelling lesbian which most everyone seems to love as an interpretation?

Izzyclu (talk) 17:26, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

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I can't speak for others, but I've felt extremely uncomfortable with the character being most commonly depicted as a pretty, skinny, white woman without flaws or rough edges. The way fans have defended the purity of this image by contesting any interpretations of the character that veers from "good and pure" feels like a defense of the white supremacist ideological sanctity of white womanhood.
Dirtbag Jessica Telephone is an established, collaborative reinterpretation of the character by a group of fans who have, for one reason or another, felt uncomfortable with the existing lore. I don't think it should exist to the exclusion of contradictory fanons, but I do think it has a right to exist on this wiki. Speaking for myself, it has made me feel comfortable with a character who had previously made me feel very uncomfortable with Blaseball fandom at large.
There is a larger conversation to be had about allowing characters to be messy, about whether fictional depictions of harm constitute real harm, about who is allowed to create what, but I think that's probably outside the scope of this wiki talk page. In the meantime, it's probably okay for conflicting interpretations to coexist without necessitating conflict over control of canon, even if different interpretations might make different people uncomfortable for different reasons. Which is to say I think the "good and pure" Jessica Telephone and the "dirtbag" Jessica Telephone can coexist without conflict. Solanaceae314 (talk) 18:06, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
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Jessica is very frequently depicted as a person of colour. Do not evoke accusations of white supremacy because other members of community don't like the idea of making a really cool character have secretly been a scumbag all along. There is nothing in what was stated above about wanting her to be a perfect paragon.
Nobody is trying to say that characters can't be nuanced or flawed, but this 'established' reinterpretation which I use in HEAVY quotes because I do not think it is established at all, actively damages other peoples' enjoyment of the character. It is a harmful and hurtful retcon, not a reimagining.
Izzyclu (talk) 18:21, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
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We are willing to concede that the line about how JT's dirtbagginess is now straining her relationships was poorly conceived. Making JT out to just be a totally scummy person was never our intention. I believe that detail was written in that way because, at the time, the page had a very long list of JT's "wives", which just kept getting longer and hornier, and we were growing increasingly uncomfortable with it, especially because people were adding a lot of real people to the list. At this point, I think we should get rid of that line.
Dirtbag JT is not a scumbag. She's a rowdy teen. And when she's a little older and more mature, she's also the cool aunt/older sister that was very embarrassed when she lost to York Silk when they were playing DDR at the arcade, but then bought him a big stuffed animal with her tickets. They're the same person.
Our development of Dirtbag JT happened collaboratively between several hundred people in a public space over the course of a few weeks. You weren't there to see it happening and to participate, so I'm sorry if it feels like it came suddenly and from out of nowhere, but it didn't, and we would love to have you there to collaborate with us in the future.
--Hayley, Kpaxxxxx (talk)
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Either relegate 'Dirtbag' Jess to an IRM or remove it entirely. It's clearly contentious material that members of the community have repeatedly found uncomfortable, and incongruous with how the character is popularly perceived. Kerascene (talk) 17:35, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
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Hi there! I think that there are certainly improvements we could make to the framing of the shelled section, but to be perfectly honest, there's a substantial contingent (of a few hundred people who have actively collaborated on all parts of Jessica's lore) that find the "dirtbag" version of her as the most beloved interpretation, and that we think it's compatible with previous lore. All of the discussions we've had about her character and wiki updates have been agreed upon, workshopped, and done in a relatively public space everyone has access to.
We balk at the idea that there is one popular perception of Jessica Telephone that is being damaged by this interpretation. What is established for Blaseball as a fandom is that no fan interpretation is canon, and different fans and artists have created their own versions of Jessica Telephone with great results. We do not agree that a communally created and extensively workshopped development of the character, by fans of Jessica Telephone’s current team, is a less valid candidate for inclusion on the wiki than any other.
We want this to exist alongside existing interpretations of Jessica, and to be fully integrated with the existing lore on the wiki. To that end, we welcome constructive criticism on how to allow this new contribution to exist alongside the rest of Jessica Telephone’s lore. That said, characterizing this interpretation as “harmful” due to personal discomfort with it seems like a non-starter to us, because many of the fans who workshopped our version have also expressed discomfort at other interpretations of Jessica. We aren’t sure how to resolve this fundamental clash, except by allowing these interpretations to coexist. We also reiterate that we are not trying to create a “scumbag” Jess who is intentionally cruel or problematic, but simply a messier and differently relatable Jess.
We would like to collaborate with you all to find a way to work this into the page in a way that makes sense, but the character arc where she has a skater/vape/attention-seeking phase as a result of being trapped in the peanut is really important to us. We actually have some creative ideas regarding how getting trapped in the peanut interrupted the temporal field that she was used to existing in, which may have brought on some of these changes - we'd like to work on that sort of thing, but we need to get past this first. We ask you to meet us halfway. None of us are able to speak for the Blaseball fandom as a whole, but we are able to try and understand, or at least accept, that differences will exist (and can coexist!) in such a massive community.
Abs0luti0n11 (talk) 18:49, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
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As someone who was around when the Pies Discord worked on the "original lore," that is, what was originally on the wiki about her being an ephemeral time-traveling being, that lore was supposed to allow for numerous iterations of Jess. The idea that there is "one true Jessica Telephone" is contradictory to that original notion. As for her having "multiple wives throughout history," this may be true on some other universe or on the Jessica-plane-of-existence for some or many Jessicas, but that there is a Jessica who is permanently around in our (the blaseball) universe contradicts the original lore. This is, of course, equally true of dirtbag Jessica.
As a trans lesbian, I understand the appeal of being represented in media, but as a Pies captain, I deeply want the characters of blaseball players, particularly Pies players, to be accessible for all fans. The popular incarnation on Twitter is not accessible for me, and the calcification of Jessica Telephone as "whatever is most appealing to roleplayers and fanart creators" has been troubling to many Pies fans. This is a player that has been on our team for 5.5 of the 8 seasons of blaseball, but we felt more removed from her than some players that had been around for less than a full season. We were afraid to talk about Jessica Telephone in public areas because we feared a backlash--fears which have proven all too warranted.
Pies fans want to like our player. We don't want her to be a superstar who wants to hang out with her fans in Hawaii. We want her to hang out in the Wawa parking lot practicing her ollie. These incarnations are able to be reconciled through the origina lore, of course--perhaps Twitter JT is the one that most commonly came out of the telephone to bat for Philly pre-shelling (just as the ancient ones typically came out for Hades), but the version that happened to come out during the shelling was the dirtbag version. Maybe the shelling caused some sort of rift with the phoneverse that led her to be a Philly dirtbag for a season and a half before she ended up being shelled again? After she emerges from the second shelling, maybe the rift can be repaired and we can go on with our separate JTs (and as many more as other fans want). After all, we are all love blaseball and we all want to participate in this cultural event.
Would the compromise brought up in the last paragraph be acceptable to everyone? My goal is for everyone to have a Jess they are happy with. Cassiterine (talk) 18:59, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
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I keep seeing the "we workshopped this in a public space" thing being floated around. I'm not calling anyone liars, but it'd be helpful to some of us to maybe have a discord message link to where this public space was? I'm not a hardcore JT fan or anything, but the first I heard about it was maybe a week ago when some drama popped up in #fan-lore, where both wiki admins and players thought somebody was trolling the Jessica Telephone account with an IRM page. If this was workshopped with several hundred people, how in the heck were the wiki admins unaware of this? They pretty much see every single post in #fan-lore. If this was done in the #pies channel, that's NOT a public space because only Pies are privy to it. So, what might be making perfect sense to Pies fans with long thought out discussions about pretty much everything said above... none of that appears to be reflected in the page or the IRM? If people mistook it as trolling or vandalism, then you've failed at your mission/intent. I think a lot of the IRM stuff with problematic things like Flat Earth and Chuck Norris and other things is... well, it painted people a picture and it painted JT in a negative light and against the spirit of Blaseball itself in regards to problematic content.
If it's a work in progress, maybe it's best to assemble it all in a word document first instead of piecemeal adding to the JT page and confusing people out of the loop? Maybe share that document with #fan-lore and be like "Hey, this is our goal/intent, what does everyone think?" I understand being afraid of messing with a beloved blaseball star/critical darling/whatever, but I think despite 5.5 seasons of JT being a Pie doesn't "make her the Pies" JT transcends Blaseball and belongs to everyone she's arguably one of the "mascots" for the game so to speak (the way Tracer is for Overwatch, for example.) But, you are right, you're not going to make everyone happy, but hopefully we can make all interpretations of JT feel valid.
Anyways, I'm not trying to lecture anyone here or anything. Obviously there's two camps, one that thinks these changes were handled properly and workshopped with the community and another that feels they were made poorly and without thought. I think this Talk page is a step in the right direction for everything. I hope that we can all work together and get things on the same page where everyone can be happy.
I also think people need to layoff the IRM creation and editing while we talk this out as mature adults. Let's not get into "wiki wars" here.
MEMANIAsama (talk) 20:33, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
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Just to address the IRM a bit more... someone mentioned this rule for the IRM:
Requirements
There only one main requirement for writing Rumors.
The very first thing on the page needs to be a Sub-heading 1 title for the page. This could be anything you might normally use, like 'History' or 'Personality' or 'Favorite Blaseball Pitching Techniques.' The reason this needs to be Sub-heading 1 is that on the main page, the 'Interdimensional Rumor Mill' heading is a regular Heading, and having two regular headings immediately next to each other implies they are fully different sections. Any consecutive headings you use must be Sub-heading 1 or lower to maintain a proper hierarchy.

So... honestly I think the IRM entries also need reworked to fit a better styleguide (and maybe also not be so numerous overall, I think having so many rumors really waters down any rumors that may not be in line with the new "dirtbag jess" direction if they have a 1 in 50 chance of appearing, and I don't think the answer there is for that differing idea of Jess to also "flood" the IRM with their interpretation. MEMANIAsama (talk) 21:14, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposed Changes to the Wiki 2020-09-29

For historical and clerical purposes: I have made the proposed changes below collapsible and dated them to disambiguate from future proposals. Nesblitt (talk) 02:21, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Player History

Jessica Telephone sprang fully formed from a payphone a few years ago, seconds before her brother Sebastian Telephone.  Jessica's emergence from the payphone is no accident. She exists as synchronous quantum waveform in the 80s decade of every century of human history - and possibly beyond. Each at-bat for Jessica Telephone, she emerges from her phone booth as a particular century's incarnation of the Eternal Jessica. This time it may be the classic 1980s Jessica, carefully teased and feathered hair tucked under her helmet. In another inning, the plate is graced with 980s Jessica, fresh from the viking raids on the hapless Anglo-Saxons. Her next appearance may come in a spray of lasers and 4-D holograms as 2380s Jessica Telephopne takes her turn at bat.


Telephone remembers every moment of the countless 80s decades that she's lived through. Her past is constantly in flux, however. While primary aspects of her identity remain constant, everything she lived through is subject to change as she grows as a person. What she remembers shifts — except in the unique pocket of time that blaseball sits, where she often finds herself remembering multiple versions of events. The unique temporal effects of blaseball have resulted in Telephone being rendered unable to see her future, a unique circumstance for her that she reportedly finds liberating.


Visiting fans and flans have asked for her number in the past. None have been successful, but there is still hope. That phantom buzz in your pocket when you don't have your phone on you? That's a missed call from Jessica Telephone and you're lucky you didn't answer.


First Stint with the Pies

As Telephone grew to fame as statistically the greatest player in blaseball in season 2, her popularity skyrocketed. Many fans were particularly enthralled with her love life. Many times throughout the various 80s, she had been married to any number of women, often at the same time. A cult following developed around this aspect of her life, and many of the Telephones that emerged from the payphone to bat were happy to indulge questions and bask in the love of fans. Others quickly and quietly retreated to the phone booth after batting.


Career as a Tiger

Telephone's arrival to Hades began with a communication error, when general manager Fearful Symmetry demanded a phone for her office, and pitching coach Kick Rocks instead called upon an ancient pact to summon Jessica Telephone. According to legend, at that moment a blood-drenched payphone appeared before 480 BCE Spartan Jessica. saying "YOU ARE RECEIVING A COLLECT CALL FROM [a chorus of shrieking souls, thousands of angry teeth gnashing in unison, the cosmic blood of a broken moon.] DO YOU ACCEPT THE CHARGES?" She smiled slyly, revealing a mouth of razor-sharp teeth, before stepping into the phone booth and vanishing with a thunderous crack.


While in Hades, Telephone picked up the nickname "Jessica Persephone". Due to peculiarities of the Hadean local dialect, the nickname is pronounced [ˈpɚsəfoʊn], as an overcorrection for pronouncing her surname as [təˈlɛfəniː]. It's been noticed that the tangible forms of Eternal Telephone seem to be skewing somewhat older in history while she resides in Hades; ancient Greece and Rome have been especially common.


Several fans who were in the audience of game 2 of the Season 3 championship claim that moments after the incineration of Landry Violence, Telephone answered a call on the Dial Tone.


Jessica Phones Home - Return to the Pies

by @Nicole_alt_del

During a Season 4 match against the Tigers, Phillies shortstop Spears Taylor called Telephone from the Tastykake Stadium payphone to ask if she wanted to carpool to the local BLM rally after the game. The phone call inadvertently triggered Feedback, causing Telephone to emerge from the payphone and take over their position on the Pies team.


Both the Tigers and Pies were sad to see their teammates go, but wished them well in their future careers. The Pies for their part held a “Jessica Phones Home” parade in center city; featuring all the Philly players on floats, flaky crust confetti, and the Philadelphia Philling leading the Drexel University marching band in a jazz rendition of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe.” The incarnation of Jessica in attendance called the city’s response to her return “very sweet” and “honestly a little much.”


The Shelling

After the Season 6 regular season, one incarnation of Telephone was condemned to the inside of a peanut shell, where she remained for several months. This impressionable young Telephone was unaccustomed to staying on the blaseball field for long, typically batting and returning to the phone. While in the shell, her boredom overtook her and she passed the time by practicing rapping Eminem's song "Rap God," the only song that the groundskeeper played every night. Upon emerging from the shell after being pecked out by birds, she put on an impromptu performance for her teammates and all of the Blaseball news media, sending them into a frenzy.


Telephone tried to return to her phone, but she was shocked to find that her connection had been severed. She tried to live up to the "cool" image that many seemed to have of her, but her Internet research for "cool" instead led to images of skateboarding and vaping. She dedicated herself to these things in an attempt to be seen as effortlessly cool, though many of her former fans were turned off by her new image.


Jessica was a little relieved when she found herself in a shell at the end of season 8, both tired from the effort of trying to seem cool and hoping that this new shelling would restore her connection to the telephone.

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I hope this seems like an acceptable compromise. I would also like to see either the IRM deleted or changed so that each rumor contains the story of one Jessica Telephone. This would involve condensing all the current "dirtbag" rumors and allowing others to build their own Telephones, e.g. a wholesome Telephone, 480 BCE Spartan Telephone, etc. Let me know what you all think! Cassiterine (talk) 21:17, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

+1 to the IRM being less flooded with Dirtbag rumors and allowing room for the randomization process to present us with different mini-historys/ideas of various xx80s Jessica Telephones. For a character that has infinite possibilities, it really does feel like we can ALL share the stage here and that DBJT can exist alongside any other incarnation of JT with no issue.MEMANIAsama (talk) 21:22, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
+1 This seems like an incredibly reasonable compromise to propose, fits as believable character development, and I think the wording of the new section is a substantial improvement. Kerascene (talk) 21:27, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
This is significantly better in how it's set up and phrased than the existing version of this segment and communicates the intent better. Izzyclu (talk) 21:37, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
I've updated the page with these changes, with a few changes to integrate more of the text already present. Pies fans on the discord are currently working to compile the current IRM rumors into a single iteration of Jessica. Ian Gitax (talk) 22:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned Rumors

The below rumors were cut from the IRM in its old incarnation, as they did not fit the new intent of the IRM and were not incorporated into the Pies' IRM entry in its initial form for reasons explained below each entry. If/when these rumors get incorporated into any IRM entry, please remove them; if you are removing the last rumor, please delete this section:

  • IF-18.285: "Jessica Telephone thinks she's 3 years older than she is because she got drunk and hit her head and got amnesia and the only document she had on her is her fake ID."
    • The Pies felt like it minimized the actual terror of traumatic brain injury and amnesia. They did enjoy the idea of Telephone insisting she's 3 years older than she actually is, but revision considerations were outside the scope of their IRM re-write.
  • IF-43.559: "Jessica Telephone really liked Rage Against The Machine as a teenager. She likes them even more now she knows the social and political context of their lyrics."
    • The Pies felt this was out of place in the context of the rest of Dirtbag JT lore, as they consider her "libcenter if anything." In particular, they felt it was written under the assumption that the Pies are a right-wing community, in a misguided attempt to irritate them.

Inumo (talk) 00:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

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Thank you everyone for your collaborative work on this. I know that it was hard, but it was a long time coming.
I will continue to have this main JT page locked, as well as the JT/IF-326.26 entry, which contains the new page for the Dirtbag rumors, now consolidated. I think we can unlock them about two days from now, after we have had some time to cool down and new ideas to flourish.
I have also reformatted this page a little bit to keep all this conversation tidy and make room for new conversation in the future.
We will be watching this space and pages very carefully. This has been very tense and we have a pretty short fuse for disciplinary action. Use you're best judgement, and use this page for collaboration on further changes to JT going forward. BlaseballSteve || Admin, Founder || Steven_#3235 (talk) 01:23, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
Not sure if this is against style guide, but would it make readability easier if there was some kind of style treatment for the different categories on the IRM article? Like maybe just bold text where it's like "Music" "Entertainment Skills" etc.
Also, this looks like such a cleaner/better page. I think even though this was a painful process it opened up the JT page for a lot of creative potential for everyone. Great job all! MEMANIAsama (talk) 16:34, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
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