Atlantis Georgias: A Deep Dive

by Sydney

Season 12 of Blaseball saw the introduction of three new teams, as well as one returning team, in an event that came to be known as the Breach. Three brand new teams, empty slates with nothing but some snappy names and unique emojis, thrown into a league with twenty-one other well-established teams. Some said that the league didn’t have space or time for such unexpected additions, but they could not have been more wrong.

The Atlantis Georgias were one such Breach team. They arrived on the scene not quite as bad as the team with the record-setting awful season, the Ohio Worms, but not quite as good as the Core Mechanics, both of which have since managed a place in the Postseason. In addition to being the smallest team in the entire ILB, it got me thinking: why are people drawn to the Georgias?

Now that Atlantis has had a bit of time to settle as a team, I asked some of my fellow Georgias a few questions about what exactly made them choose the Georgias over the nearly two dozen other options. 

The first question I asked was directed at those who had been fans of Blaseball since before the Breach, and went as such: “If you were previously a fan of an existing team before transferring over to the Atlantis Georgias what was the driving force behind that decision or supporting two teams?”

Present at the Start

Turns out, the responses would start a common theme with many Breach teams: many people were attracted by the opportunity to be a start of something new. With Blaseball’s long and storied history, the chance to have a hand in the beginning of a brand new culture was attractive to many, and for good reason. In addition, the general “small team vibe” attracted a lot of new attention from members of bigger teams who often felt their voice drowned out by the larger community.

“That brief flash of creative energy, as everyone joined together to figure out who we were, what the players on the team were like, what our team identity it would be, it was so energizing and exciting to me.” – Jasmine Wright

“Being on a smaller team makes it easier to participate in the community and makes my votes feel more important.” – Anonymous

Secondly, I decided to ask players who had chosen the Georgias as their first team, simply asking what drew new players to the team over any other. These answers tended to be much simpler; turns out many people were simply drawn by the name!

“The name was the first thing. It’s just a fun name. Blaseball is an imaginary sport, where better to have a team than an imaginary city?” – Cimram

“I loved the name and colour scheme.” – Plunderbear

Moving on, I went a bit beyond simply what drew fans to the team in the first place. Instead, I asked what struck fans most about the Atlantis Georgias, and what aspects of the team had encouraged people to stay.

The very first theme that emerged here was that of the passion of the community. The Georgias have never been good, or big, or really notably anything in regards to the game of Blaseball. But the community, the team, is what sticks with people, how open and friendly the Georgias really are.

“The team has really good vibes, feels like a place you can be without expectations but also you can participate without feeling uncomfortable” – treesponge

“Though we’re a tiny li’l team, I feel like there is such an amazingly active and welcoming sense of community. We all collaborate in such a fun way within the team when it comes to lore or just goofy stuff, like our hour-long billboard takeover. For a bunch of dorks online obsessed with a pretty damn bad splorts team, I think there’s a lovely sense of friendship.” – Cal

“The optimism and determined-ness of the community! We may have been kinda bad for a long time, but nobody on the Discord has been disparaging of that fact, we all believe in our team and doing better.” – Blake

These quotes were just a few from the scattering of people that submitted answers, but they serve well to illustrate how much of the Georgias’ identity comes from its community, even among many similar teams.

Plumbing the Lore

The second emergent theme that kept people on the team was the lore and players of Atlantis. So many Georgias have an intense passion for the team, its lore, and its players, and they show that every day through art, fanfiction, and the fact that our lore channel is constantly in use. Even the fact that the Georgias can be described as the “middle child” of the three new Breach teams helps lend to a fun underdog narrative that can be enticing to many fans.

“I love the character ideas that can come from an undersea theme. I also like being the underdog smallest team.” – Jared B

“I want to say we’re very funny, supportive and inclusive, but I bet every team says that. I do like the cast of players we have, a lot of the commonly used designs for our player have unique silhouettes and stand out.”

“People joke about Atlantis being bad, and they had all rights to we were not good at all, and  for some, it was not a point of pride, but I loved it.  Being on the bottom? Party time speedruns? The underdog story? It’s all amazing.  The other breach teams hit the ground running, but we sank into the depths, and now we’re starting to rise up, and it’s fun. Where’s BNN?” – Sunder#9618

Next, I proposed what I feel to be a very vital question to such a small team, asking fans what part of the Georgias’ lore or culture that they felt more people should know.

An overwhelming amount of people gave what boiled down to the same answer, that being that the Georgias are more than just “the ocean team”! The Georgias have a very strong connection to science and the eldritch, which is difficult to see from the outside but deeply ingrained into the team’s culture. Atlantis isn’t just one place, it’s thousands, all overlaid on top of each other to form the place commonly viewed as Atlantis. That’s why so many different interpretations of players and lore can coexist!

“If I was talking to someone who doesn’t know us, I would say there’s the whole eldritch, eerie, ‘hey a bunch of our players are lost souls adrift at sea’ nature of our lore that we haven’t really touched on outside of vaguely referencing in our psychic blood prop (and if people knew about it, I think our case probably would have been more compelling).” – @moliwogs

“More people need to be aware of the threat that is Rigby Friedrich. He is a menace, stay alert.” – Cal

“I think it’s hard for us to communicate exactly how fluid our lore is, and that literally anyone could just pop in and say ‘Slosh Truk is a turkey wearing a pair of night vision goggles’ and that would then be an extant version of Slosh Truk.” – Lahiik

The idea of lore being fluid is extremely prevalent among the Georgias. It lets anyone join the team, suggest an idea, and have it be true without overwriting any preexisting lore or identify of the character. Ex-Mafia Frankie Hambone and Loving Dad Frankie Hambone aren’t two separate characters, they’re two existing versions of the same character, and they could high-five if they wanted to. This open interpretation to lore helps a lot of people feel more welcome in the community.

The Atlantis Georgias aren’t the best team in Blaseball. They aren’t even the worst. At best, they’re below average, perfectly able to be overlooked. However, to those who do look, they’ll find an extraordinarily passionate community, one with infinite dedication to the game and the team. 

The community is welcoming, and open, and accepting. Anyone can join and feel like their voice is being heard in whatever decision is being made, any far-off idea can be recognized in Atlantis. In the end, this extreme openness is what sets the Georgias apart from the rest of the teams in the ILB, what really makes them special, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

Playing Favorites

Finally, because I’ve so frequently made note of how dedicated Georgias fans are to the team, I decided to simply round up some of our fanbase’s favorite characters, and hopefully all of the varied responses will show off our team’s dedication to them.

“My favorite character is definitely jan Canberra, and I have no idea why! Maybe it’s the name, maybe it’s the chants, maybe something about skeletons resonated with me?” – Rennie

“Neerie because she’s the first tragic player we’ve had on the team. She’s trapped elsewhere, and she’s in the shadows so not coming out. The rest of the team is just waiting for her to come back, and the years are going past.” – Aled

“My favorite character is Geraldine Frost. I latched on to her immediately after I joined the Georgias because of the name. I mean. Come on. What a good name. I love cold-themed characters, and ice magic is the coolest kind of magic (do not @ me).” – canti

“I gotta say jan for crimes, but Flattery and Rigby are also amazing.” – Yvette

“Slosh Truk. Came out of the shadows right after my first season and I had many a hearty chuckle over the name.” – nicmoiseyev

“Simple answer, jan Canberra. Our skeleton pirate queen, enticed me with her strong baserunning, and took my heart with her many crimes.” – ComiTurtle

“Mint Shupe! We love an unhinged ex-mad-scientist type” – Bird Cheshire

“Yurts Buttercup because he’s just a wholesome person, and is the team’s shanty man and I’m a sucker for sea shanties.” – Squid

“Flattery McKinley, because on the initial lorejam doc someone wrote down “lesbian scientist with tentacle arm” and that is about as much my jam as a character concept can get.” – Jasmine Wright

“Rigby Friedrich, after his 18 inning fearless eclipse game in season 13 I grew to really love him and his chant, rig em up Rigby!” – Blake