Talk:Jon Halifax

Hi! I'm proposing an update to the IRM entry I wrote a while back for Jon Halifax, IF 08.185. The update is in the style of the other IRM I wrote for Arturo Huerta, which you can check out here for an example of what the formatting would look like.

The idea is this would be added in to the bottom of the existing IRM entry as a sort of supplementary found document.

It is written like a missing persons report, and further explains the joke that this interpretation of Jon was an incompetent hitman sent from Dark Seattle to take out the CEO of Crab LLC.

It also goes into more detail about his infamous tied game, which I don’t think has been covered in his other entries, and his time as a Breath Mint.

Check it out here!

Proposing to format this as a File Box IRM due to the nature of the content and the new guidelines for the IRM

Hello! This is an IRM proposal for Jon that basically makes him a cranky uncle of Ankle Halifax! Doc here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/168Ab6HXAtG1tv-SQHMKS24rhZ2NfvcsDFTxrCGd--wU/edit?usp=sharing

Hi! I have an IRM proposal for Jon Halifax which I have linked here

A short summary of my idea:

Jon Halifax:

-Moved to Baltimore from Up North And A Little Bit West

-Pitches with a bazooka

-Wears knit arm warmers on his forearms

-Has a lot of suspicious habits

-Is absolutely, definitely not a hitman tasked with bringing upon the downfall of CRAB LLC who got here several years late.

Hi! Sorry for any inconvenience, but I feel it's uncomfortable how involved in Garages lore (and more specifically, Dark Seattle, which has caused discomfort in the Crabitat before) this page is, rather than Crabs lore, especially without any of it being brought to the Crabitat for discussion before this post? Along with the fact that none of that involvement was put in the general summary of the IRM, which I feel is important to be transparent about, even if the page itself isn't. I really like the IRM as a concept, I just think that those parts are a bit weird.

I think it might help to pull out some specific examples of what you're worried about Paopuleaf - would you mind going though it in detail? something like "this part might be an issue because of this, could we maybe change it to something like this"

Hi, Paopuleaf. I would like to remind you that we have a framework for critiquing proposals that this comment doesn't fall under, which can be viewed here. Likewise, discussion of the proposal can and should happen here; there is no requirement that any discord server is involved, including the main Blaseball discord server.

Sorry, just saw this specifically. I'll keep it in mind.

Sure, I can do that!

Pretty clearly is the overt hyperlinks to various Dark Seattle pages; in addition to that, the following bits are pretty embedded/are allusions to Dark Seattle lore specifically, as far as I can tell:

- "hand-knit orange arm warmers that cover his forearms from wrist to elbow. (that he is rarely seen without)" The Dark Seattle Corporates all have arrows in this area to identify them that are what the warmers are assumedly hiding. I believe that their eyes also have something with them, but I'm not sure, so I didn't pick that out.

- Both bits about the Sun & Sun 2 (but specifically "Halifax has been known to glare up at the [Sun 2] as if it has personally insulted him. When asked if this is “a [HELIOLATRY] thing” Halifax responded “No???....A what??”") are references to the sun in Dark Seattle having an arrow through it and not having been destroyed.

- "Halifax is also known to scowl and grumble whenever [Garages] music is playing. When asked why he doesn’t like the Garages, he replied: “Who??”" This is a reference to the fact that the Seattle Garages are the Dark Seattle Corporates in the Dark Seattle universe. I also remember something along the lines of that the Garages' music was a part of their barricade of some kind against the Corporations, which failed.

- "Halifax has blue blood. You know, like a normal horseshoe crab. No other reason." This, like the arm warmers thing, is a reference to the fact that the Dark Seattle Corporates have "Synergy" blood, which is blue.

I feel like I need to state again that I am made most uncomfortable by the fact that the Dark Seattle content was not stated at all in the Talk Page summary; this in addition to the fact that Dark Seattle has a lot of content that goes beyond the content warnings scope of Blaseball, and the fact that it was not brought up in the Crabitat at all.

I do want to point out the Crabitat bit is not as much of an issue - there is no requirement to go through the discord for lore and that's something we want to keep separate from this.

Hi, original IRM writer here. I wanted to clear a few things up. First off, the Dark Seattle references in this text are intentional, but were not meant to be something that was “slipped by” anyone--I apologize if it wasn’t clear on the quick summary on the talk page, but I was of the understanding that people tend to click through to the full document in order to read the IRM text if they are curious about the concept, and I tried to summarize the idea as best I could with the understanding that people would click through to the text. The concept was meant to be a somewhat tongue in cheek funny idea--similar to Thomas Dracaena not being a vampire, and Oliver Notarobot not being a robot, my Jon Halifax is not a poorly disguised hitman from another dimension.

Additionally, to your point about this IRM being “not connected to Crabs lore”, I specifically created it as inspired by tweets on the Crabs’ twitter account about Halifax (1) (2) as well as by the CRAB LLC storyline done over the siesta, which I already see that there is an IRM for Halifax which connects to similar themes. My idea was inspired as well by the fact that Halifax replaced Luis Acevedo who had started as a season 1 Garages player, and I thought it could be cool, funny, and interesting to have a headcanon IRM which referenced some aspects of Garages lore as well as Crabs lore.

As a third part, I was under the impression that the Crabs are heavily invested in IRM  and that Crabs IRM policy allows for off-discorders and people from other teams to submit IRM without entering the Crabitat by posting to talk pages. I’ve even seen Crabs wiki writers in particular push for this policy on other teams and request to discuss potential IRM policies solely on talk pages as opposed to in sidecords or maincord channels. I am personally not comfortable going to the Crabitat to present my IRM for approval as I didn’t think that was how the IRM process worked and it feels unfair to ask me to do that when someone who isn’t in the discord wouldn’t be required to do so.

As a final point, I’m unsure as to why an IRM proposal, which again I had previously thought the Crabs were supportive of, is being treated like something I needed to get full team approval on and that it’s taboo to reference things from other teams on. I will also say that the Dark Seattle pages linked in the article are hosted on the same Blaseball wiki as the rest of these pages and weren’t at the time of posting deemed to be too dark or disturbing to be posted on the Wiki at all. If there is a rule I’m not aware of about referencing Dark Seattle on the wiki, which, to be honest, is about a similar level of content warning as media like Welcome to Night Vale, I’m glad to include a content warning; however, nothing in this article is actively referencing the darker elements of the backstory of Dark Seattle--the comments referenced above are referencing things that are in similar tone as existing Crabs lore (destroying the sun/killing a god, having a weird tattoo or body modification associated with one’s team, et cetera.)

another admin note here: the guide page on which this will be hosted is incomplete, but here are some temporary guidelines with regard to content warnings:

Expected content:

• death, including death of queer & queer-coded characters
• personal injury
• violence
• body horror
• mind control
• mentions of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana
• mentions of food

CW'd content

• death of children or animals
• murder & attempted murder
• suicide
• alcohol, tobacco, marijuana use
• illegal use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana
• extended descriptions of food
• mental illness, mental health crises, & effects of trauma

I don't think this is a this has to change kind of request, more of a concern about the way some of the content sounds?

I think the inclusion of the Garages lore without mentioning in the summary has raised some hackles here and that should be corrected going forward, and we also all agree that lore doesn't need to go through discord, and that has been corrected here.

Paopuleaf would you mind giving some detail for what about these references feels uncomfortable, and if there are any changes you would like to see? And then Peaksykid you could respond to those requests specifically. (once again you don't have to change anything, no rules are being violated here, but there is something to be said for being open to working together for new lore)

Hey so we chatted a little to feel this out and we wanted to see how you felt about the following edits to the article:

*not hyperlink directly to Dark Seattle, so removing the link in the Tinder joke (maybe swap it for LinkedIn? technically you can't text in that but that's just part of the bit imo) and removing the link in the Trivia section, or just linking to regular Seattle

*remove the overt hating on the Garages since it might just be misconstrued as just the Crabs fans being mean to The Garages and we'd rather avoid that altogether (even if it's fine now, I suspect it would feel bad for some unsuspecting Garage to stumble on)

*soften and reword the bit about having lots of pitchers since that's also directly targeting the Garages (something like "more pitchers is better" since Jon is an awful pitcher so it's funny to make him be wrong about strategy, or a joke about him just complaining that the Crabs only have 4 pitchers, ignoring how fairly normal that makes our rotation these days)

*the sun thing is overshadowed by heliolatry and the fact that we killed the sun already so it's decentered enough to be a nod rather than a direct reference, so that's fine

*the armwarmers thing is like, he knits, so that actually fits fine as well

This way it keeps the nods to Dark Seattle in the IRM and avoids making direct links to some content that some folks aren't comfortable with.

Let me know what you think, and if that's something you would be willing to accommodate!

Hi! So as it's been 24 hours I'm going to go ahead and put the page up, and I'm definitely going to take you up on some of these edits as they're good points to make. I didn't realize that the Garages jokes could be construed as hating on the Garages (they were made lovingly as someone who is a Garage and with the approval of some friends who are Garages) so I'm going to take out the bit about "hating the Garages music" altogether, and have clarified the part about the pitchers to show that it is a joke about Dark Seattle (the Corporates are often described in lore to have like, fifty players on their team due to how Synergy Blood is said to work) and not a joke at the expense of the Garages actual team.

I removed the link and reference referring to Tinder but I have decided not to remove the single link attached to the "Up North and A Little Bit West" part because I think it's important to have an explanation of the joke somewhere in the article so that an outside reader who isn't familiar with the lore could discover this part of the wiki on their own, and so that the article doesn't become self-referential.

I wanted to thank you for hearing me out on this and for being willing to accept a fun IRM entry like this one.

Mod here. You seem to have misunderstood the 24h rule in our contribution policies - it is not that "all feedback must be submitted within 24 hours," it is that "you must wait at least 24 hours to ensure there are no red flags." While you may have attempted to address UnabashedlyRose's critique in your live version, you still need to wait to ensure that the changes are acceptable. We're leaving the article live for now, but if anyone comes back to this thread and says they still aren't satisfied (w/in a reasonable timeframe) we'll be deleting the entry so you can continue to work on it.

Hi! As the person who originally brought up concerns, I'm happy with most of the changes made, although since one of the specific things UnabashedlyRose pointed out as a change was to take out all direct hyperlinks to Dark Seattle, leaving the one in feels bad? I think that the "Up North and A Little Bit West" is genuinely funny as a standalone piece of the article, even without the Dark Seattle context, and I don't think it would make it "self-referential."

I'd like to apologize for my unclear wording and talk regarding coming to the Crabitat; I'm aware that isn't policy, I was unsettled by the heavy use of another team's lore without any collaboration with the Crabs, but I should've found a much better way to phrase that. Thank you for being willing to make changes! It's appreciated.

Admins & mods have discussed, and we've decided to remove the entry (IF-08.185) pending resolution of this discussion. From our perspective, this seems to be a situation where Peaksykid specifically wants to retain the link to Dark Seattle to make this IRM entry a part of the Dark Seattle wiki oeuvre, while Paopuleaf specifically doesn't want any link to Dark Seattle. We'd like to see confirmation (and, ideally, an explanation) of both stances, and want to remind you both that It’s Okay to Not Like Things and Not Liking Things Is Not Justification To Block Compromise are in our critique guide. We're withholding further opinions on the matter until you both have an opportunity to respond, but should this explicitly become a stalemate we will weigh in and resolve the situation.

Hi, this is my official response to this message. First of all I want to apologize for misunderstanding the rules for putting up the page, and I absolutely understand your decision to take it down. If the ruling ends up being that this page is not really helpful or conducive to a good lore environment to keep up, I would understand if you kept it down as well, as I really don't want to make this into a big battle. It was an idea that I had that I had fun writing and wanted to try my hand at posting as an IRM, but I don't want it to cause undue stress on the part of wiki moderators or crabs team members.

As of now I still am not really willing to remove the link or references to Dark Seattle because to me that is part of the joke, and it's an essential part to me of the idea I had when I wrote this IRM entry, which only really represents my headcanon for this character and isn't really intended to be a prescriptive thing for the rest of the world to accept as their Jon Halifax. Like I said before I was under the impression that this type of thing is what the IRM is for, and I had been excited to write up this take on Jon which combined a really creative setting that exists in collaborative Blaseball lore (Dark Seattle) with some equally interesting and fun lore that was attached to the Crabs (CRAB LLC and the idea of Jon as a sleazy businessman).

I personally am not willing to back down about having something linked to Dark Seattle because I don't think there's anything scandalous or harmful about Dark Seattle as a concept or as a background setting. This particular article, like I said, doesn't even include any references to any of the material in the Dark Seattle context that could be potentially upsetting to people from what I understand (the idea of it being an alternate universe with villain characters that sometimes involves mind control related concepts, which, again, exist in canon game lore with the PODS for example, and the idea of it involving catastrophic events associated with the killing of a god, which, again, is also a part of Crabs lore.) I understand that there is dislike of Dark Seattle as a setting, and I offered to put a content warning up but I still don't think there's really anything in this article worth warning about based on the guidelines posted above? So that's my position on that, though I'll say again I don't want this to be something that leaves bad feelings or feels hostile as a writing exercise and creative idea.

I would like to say that I think that there are enough subtle references to Dark Seattle to get across that it's Dark Seattle related to people who know of it. I'm uncomfortable having direct links there, and I know a lot of folks who feel similarly, due to content surrounding the lore that isn't directly on the wiki but is easily accessible if looked for cursorily, and that the topic was not clearly present and accessible on the talk page summary to begin with. I don't feel that taking away those links would make the article any less good.

If this is something the wiki mods and admins are okay with having on the wiki after this discussion and the voiced discomfort, that's the end of it, and I'm alright with that. I thought it better to register this discomfort then let it sit unsaid.

I don’t really have anything further to contribute and am leaving this in the wiki mods’ court to decide on—whatever you end up deciding is the best way to handle this I’ll be glad to listen to. Thank you all for hearing me out and for discussing this.

Hello, all. We've been reviewing this talk page and the surrounding information. First I'm going to tell you what decision we've made and then go into detail about why we made this decision.

We've decided to allow the page to go up with the changes that were made around approximately 12:00 PM US EDT on 2020-05-11. Essentially our decision boils down to 3 things: 1) most of the requested changes were made happily; 2) we do not want to set a precedent of removing a link to content that is already on this wiki and fairly integral to the plot; 3) we rarely concern ourselves with off-wiki lore and even after reviewing it, we feel the off-wiki repositories have an appropriate CW/tagging system in place for users to make their own decisions.

To the first point: since some of the actions taken were not documented in this talk page, I wanted to take the time to lay out which changes were made and which changes were not, using UnabashedlyRose's list from above:

• not hyperlink directly to Dark Seattle, so removing the link in the Tinder joke (maybe swap it for LinkedIn? technically you can't text in that but that's just part of the bit imo) and removing the link in the Trivia section, or just linking to regular Seattle
  • partially changed; the link to Dark Seattle from Up North and a Little Bit West remains
• remove the overt hating on the Garages since it might just be misconstrued as just the Crabs fans being mean to The Garages and we'd rather avoid that altogether (even if it's fine now, I suspect it would feel bad for some unsuspecting Garage to stumble on)
  • Changed
• soften and reword the bit about having lots of pitchers since that's also directly targeting the Garages (something like "more pitchers is better" since Jon is an awful pitcher so it's funny to make him be wrong about strategy, or a joke about him just complaining that the Crabs only have 4 pitchers, ignoring how fairly normal that makes our rotation these days)
  • Changed
• the sun thing is overshadowed by heliolatry and the fact that we killed the sun already so it's decentered enough to be a nod rather than a direct reference, so that's fine
  • not necessary to change
• the armwarmers thing is like, he knits, so that actually fits fine as well
  • not necessary to change

To the second and third points: Dark Seattle content has been on this wiki for a while. We've reviewed it and nothing here breaks our guidelines or CW requirements, including PG-13 content guidelines. Further, the link is integral to understanding this writing. When making administrative decisions, we have to assume our readers do not know implicit references because often this is the first place a prospective Blaseball fan is led. Likewise, the wiki software and model is better served by having as many things as possible (within reason--link spamming is bad) interlinked for search and findability reasons. We feel, therefore, that removing this link would undermine the entirety of the page for the sake of off-wiki content not linked here. Typically we do not even consider off-wiki content such as AO3 when making administrative decisions, but in this case we made a special exception to understand the heart of the issue. Even after reviewing what is there, we feel that the off-site mechanisms for content warnings are robust and appropriately applied. One cannot accidentally access this material; it is generally deliberate.

I appreciate that people here are using the talk page for the intended purpose and you can contact the moderators or administrators with any questions or feedback.

Posting 2 initial IRM options for Jon:

1) Vampire hunter chasing Luis who took up their place when they died

2) Amoral company man who took advantage of Luis' death to push his way onto the Crabs

Full text for both entries can be found here