Tiana Takahashi/IF-67.137

Rumor / Community Lore
This article contains lore created collaboratively by the Blaseball community. It is just one of many Rumors that we've found in the Interdimensional Rumor Mill. You can find more Rumors about Tiana Takahashi at their Rumor Registry.

History

Tiana Takahashi is a pitcher for the Philly Pies and the 3-time Tloppsball CCG Mid-Atlantic regional champion. Takahashi was discovered by the pies when she took in Beasley Day after they were swept elsewhere, believing he was just an ordinary community dog wearing cosplay. Day noticed the absolutely killer pitching arm she had while playing catch with her, and instructed the pies to recruit her as quickly as possible. Up until her first season on the team, she was unaware that blaseball was a real thing rather than an invention to sell Tlopps cards. This is despite the fact that:

She grew up in Trenton, New Jersey, within walking distance of the stadium for the pies feeder team the Trenton Centerists but never got around to going as a child
The philling entertained at several of her childhood birthday parties (One can love the philling without understanding it)
She attended Temple University with Yusef Puddles, and helped them with several hacking schemes ( Puddles helped her develop an online schedule and in return she didn’t ask them questions about what they were hacking)
She played sloftball all through college. However In order to better remember her own games, she only looked at that page on the intramural splorts page)
The Pies sent large quantities of mail to both her campus mailbox and parent’s house neither of which got forwarded to her after graduation
The Pies bought a billboard outside her room begging her to be on the team. (She kept the window closed to avoid distracting noises)
While tabling PLAX Ohio, Pies sent letters to recruit Takahashi to help find Day, but instead found two worms on a string.
The Pies sent management an email from an event describing her that got corrupted into a single sentence that said FREE NERD.
The Pies went to her apartment, to discover that she had moved and Jessica Telephone smoking weed (it was actually oregeno) with Takahashi’s old roommate.

The Pies eventually lured Takahashi to the stadium by collecting nearly every Tlopps card in the city and piling them up in the stadium. Once she arrived at the oven she was immediately recruited to the team, allowing Doc Anice to finally retire. Takahashi blames her bad luck and chronic memory problems for these wacky coincidences, but is happy to finally be on the team.

Tloppsball: The Blaseball TCG

Due to her deep interest in both Tlopps cards and trading card games (TCGs), Tiana Takahashi found herself wanting a way to play with the massive amount of purely collectible Tlopps cards that she had in her possession. To this end, she invented a game called “Tloppsball” based on the statistical and visual information presented on the Tlopps cards and her experience in designing tabletop games. The rules for the game of Tloppsball and the game of Blaseball are identical, only differing in terminology used. In order for the game to function better, Takahashi created packs of cards meant to represent different hitting and pitching techniques, though the cards themselves did not reference the words “hitting” or “pitching”. Interestingly, the information contained within the “Attack Move” (Pitching) and “Guard Move” (Batting) cards would prove to be high level theoretical blaseball game theory. Takahashi also has used her skills in physical crafting to make special diamond-shaped playmats and playboards for the Tloppsball game.

When Takahashi pitches, she brings a Tloppsball board out to the field with her, as well as a deck of cards specific to the team that she is playing against. During games, she plays out a recreation of the Blaseball game she is playing on the Tlopppsball board. She does this both to help with strategic decisions, and to help her remember the strengths and weaknesses of her opponents, which she often has trouble with due to chronic memory issues. Her more strategic approach to the gameplay is only augmented by her familiarity to the rules of the game (due to recreating them from scratch), and the overall athletic and pitching skills that she possesses.

Near the end of the Grand Siesta, the Tlopps company officially sanctioned the game of Tloppsball and took over production for Takahashi, who had become overwhelmed by its popularity. Since this point she has been deeply critical of their choices when it comes to balancing the game. After joining the ILB with the pies, she has continued this trend, oftentimes complaining to players about the “balance” of the cards that represent them. At one point, during a series with the Magic, Takahashi was heard complaining to an opposing pitcher. “Why did they even make Curry Aliciakeyes STRONGER? What were they thinking?!” and “I can’t believe they came up with this “O No” mechanic for the Magic Guild, old blaseball balance decisions sure were weird”. Aliciakeyes was bewildered by this interaction according to an interview after the game. Despite these complaints, Takahashi has been known in the past for playing Yellowstone Magic decks.

Takahashi often insists on using Tloppsball terminology during live games, and will refer to players who have been caught or struck out as “sent to the graveyard” or “exiled”. She will even go so far as to talk about other players as if they are Tloppsball cards. Having been overheard saying before a game. “Why don’t we sideboard in Elvis?”. When Takahashi was told that Elvis Figueroa was currently working with the Hellmouth Sunbeams, she simply replied. “I didn’t know Elvis was banned in our format!” Despite being asked multiple times about this habit, she refused to answer how much of it was a bit, she did however acknowledge that she didn’t feel that it was necessary to learn a whole new set of terms for the same rules that she already knew so well.

Personal Life and Hobbies

Takahashi describes herself as a “weird nerd girl” without a trace of irony, and is known for wearing an excessive number of stylish gaming accessories on and off the field. She continues to be an active member of the Philadelphia collectible card game scene. In her free time Takahashi continues to develop Tloppsball and keep it up to date with the changes happening in blaseball. She plans to debut the latest Tloppsball expansion – Peanut’s Requiem: Rise of the Basewalkers – at her booth at PLAX: Unplugged.

Since Takahashi joined the Pies she has become fast friends with the players she once thought were fictional. She even offered to run the Pies RPG group, after previous GM Elvis Figueroa transferred to the Sunbeams. Unfortunately Lang Richardson had called dibs on being GM next, which led to a long chain of passive aggressive emails between the players. A compromise was eventually reached where the two take turns as GM, with Takahashi running her homebrew hard-sci-fi GURPS campaign one week, and Richardson running whatever oneshot he found on itch.io the next.

Takahashi is a second generation Japanese-American. Her parents don't understand exactly what Takahashi does for a living and she has given up on trying to explain blaseball after that one grueling day where she attempted to playtest the Japanese language version of tloppsball with them. Her parents insist that they are happy as long as she is happy. Since joining the Pies Takahashi has become something of an idol to her younger cousins living in Kobe, Japan. They’ve frequently expressed a wish for her to be transferred to the Tokyo Lift, so that she’ll be able to visit and prove to their disbelieving classmates that they really do have a professional Blaseball pitcher cousin.

For the most part, Takahashi has taken her conscription into a bloodsplort with good humor. “Sure there are murderous umpires out to incinerate me,” said Takahashi. “But last game I got to see a cyborg cowboy pop a 360 off a grind rail while riding a hlorse. So, y’know, it’s all worth it.”