Thread by @maxbsird2

Starting a thread about The Reader, don't expect me to be coherent, consistent, or to draw distinction between lore, story, mechanics or philosophy. because #blaseball is a mess. as of when this thread is starting we have just ended the expansion era

This is rambling and incoherent and is basically 20ish tweets of tangents and freeform thought theory and analysis of the reader

Starting at the absolute basics it appears that the reader is, by glossary definition, a Fan. they also appears to be a god, or entity of significant influence if they are able to get its blessings, will, and decrees on the ballot.

From pure conjecture it appears that the reader is "old". In The First Day, Zeroth Edition: Rules are Read, even before The Book is Found and Opened. If The Reader is the one doing the Reading they appear to be about as old as it gets, as far as we know.

During the navigation event at the end of the expansion era The Reader appeared to be affiliated with the desert/Blaseball0. this matches the Waves Crashed/Sands Shifted/[Tumbleweed Sound] of the books that we can see in Root, and matches when the first team reached blaseball0.

A desert can also be defined as a location or situation that is boring, dull or uninteresting.

Our first, and many subsequent, interactions with The Reader are with them as a tarot reader, the name fits perfectly. which would perfectly describe the world prior to blaseball as it appears to contain no content outside of blaseball itself.

The readers first three appearances to us are during the delivery of tarot readings. regardless of what you believe or know about tarot: it is a tool used to play a game, read fortunes, reflect on oneself, and as a tool by scammers. all of these elements are present in The Reader

lets go down the line: The Reader as playing games: the reader refers to many game titles in its readings, shows us the depth chart from football reference and states types of plays from many sports in its later communications with us.

The reader as a method of fortune telling: the reader shows us tarot cards and actionably changes our future by applying modifiers to players or teams, as well as showing a 3 card spread with the reigning champion as the center card, representing the present.

Reflection on oneself: as said above the reader allows fans to buy a 3 card spread and reorganize it at will to reflect their beliefs. you can buy as many as you want, as long as you can afford that 9 coin fee to reroll your hand. you always get what you want.

As a tool for cheating people you run into what i have said above in many ways, the reader does just that, cold readings, just 9 coins each. vague statements that you can read almost any meaning in the world into.

The guaranteed champion in the earlsiesta readings, as well as in personal spreads, calls back to "Readers" which are decks of marked cards. credit to @NinjaDuckiee for that particular definition i missed.

The reader has a stacked deck which it used in its cold reads, providing modifiers to teams who dont want or need them and framing them as important or part of their future.

They reader has never helped anyone, only convinced fans that it is helping and acted as a con man overall, acting as a hero and putting forward vague statements which it can take credit for when people look back on.

Even the readers blessing, wills, and decrees seem like they do good but dont really do much.
With both the underbracket and turntables active it becomes what is effectively a normal season but you want you want to lose in the playoffs, where you will have just gained party stats

Purple alternate trust, and its many many blessing iterations, alternate batters to become worse in general due to how it affects their pathetaicism. many people call this a "path bug" but has never been confirmed to be a bug, and is thematically consistent with the reader ...

... offering solutions and innovations that make players worse in general. pushing people to mediocrity or even to being bad. The reader is a conman who has convinced many people that it is the little guy or disadvantaged despite being a god and an ancient entity.

I haven't even touched on how at the start of season 20 the purple variation of alternate trust disappeared, replaced by Magnify. in addition two mass alternate trust blessings appeared on the ballot, these were not in reader purple but were instead in standard site text.

The Coin had said at the start of the season that:
"We have Bridged our divide
We are Unified
We are Unanimous"
which to me implies that they have come to an understanding or deal. rather than going on their own the reader now can add blessings to the roster with authorization.

The reader now has the best of both situations, they get to put blessings that fit their agenda on the ballot without having to put their personal stamp on it and the general public is on their side because they "stood up" to the coin.

The reader is a rules lawyer, they follow the rules as written and push for the game to return to the way they believe it should be. The reader is the one who Read the rules, projected onto them as they became the book and feels ownership over them.

the Reader pushes rules and blessings which accelerated the games collapse, pushing it towards a reset as it has see before.

The reader and lootcrates also appear to be directly opposed. lootcrates domain, and its actual form, appear to be The Vault/blaseball2. while the desert/blaseball0 appear to be the form of the reader. they make snipes and insults at eachother and interrupting eachothers speaches

twitter wont let me add any more posts till i publish these so i may return to this at some point. there is significant further analysis to be done
overall:
The Reader is a conman who tricked the public into trusting it.
The reader has done no good
the book came from the reader.

Appologies, correct person to credit is @NinjaDuckie. twitter simply decided i would tag the wrong person for no discernsble reason.

gonna plug this thread from my colleague and fellow massive brain genius keeper_sins that expounds its read on an interaction between these entities.

https://twitter.com/aminmaximus/status/1421859704431591429

wow this tweet blew up. who are you people