the thought that players are going to be incinerated next season and new fans won’t even know to say RIV or know what it means is physically viscerally horrifying to me so. here’s a story.
it was season 3. for two seasons, players had been being incinerated in alarming numbers. the hades tigers were one of a few teams to have not yet lost a player to the flames.
the tigers had many good batters, but a particular fan-favorite was landry violence. we only have one season of stats for him by SIBR’s records, but those stats say that in that one season he had a 0.301 batting average and hit 27 home runs. he was on several leaderboards. the tigers lore for him was that he was the spirit of Violence itself.
it was game 2 of the final series. tigers vs. millennials. (in the millennials stadium. not that anyone remembers.) 1-1. the tigers were so close to victory, and they still hadn’t lost a single player.
except. then. at the bottom of inning 5.
[ID: A screenshot of a Blaseball game between the Tigers and the Millennials. The weather is Solar Eclipse. The Tigers have 5 runs, and the Millennials have 2 Famous Owens is pitching, Richardson Games is batting. The Game Log reads “Rogue Umpire incinerated Tigers hitter Landry Violence! Replaced by Paula Turnip”. End ID.]
the tigers went on to win the game. 12-5. they won the next one, too. they won the championship. but they lost landry.
saying “rest in peace” wasn’t enough. the tigers didn’t want peace. players getting incinerated left and right wasn’t peace.
instead, they started saying rest in violence.
[ID: A series of messages from the blaseball discord. They are all sent on June 8th of 2020. They read (in all caps) “Rest in Violence Landry”, “Paula will bring about great violence”, “Never Look Back”, “Boom”, and “Vengeance for Violence!” End ID.]
[ID: A screenshot showing 9130 results for the search “Rest in Violence” in a discord server. End ID.]
it caught on so much, in fact, that the developers made it the official game subtitle for the beta Season 8.
[ID: The old Blaseball header, with the beta tag attached to the end of it. The subheader is “The Discipline Era”, and the subheader of that is “Rest in Violence”. End ID.]
and when the Hall Stars rose….
[ID: A screenshot from the Season 10 Day X game. It shows the Hall Stars team HP bar gaining HP, and the Game Log reading “Landry Violence rises…Their spirit is added to The Hall Stars.” End ID.]
and that is why we say Rest In Violence. RIV Anastasia Isarobot: a horrible mistake we will make again and again.