ALSO i would like to propose right now that she use she/they

okay. So one thing we REALLY NEED!!!! like we need to make our characters have like.... Relations with one another!!!!! even old players!!! Okay so!! I was thinking that maybe Otten is like... Rat Batson's rival

herbo otter originally from Elsewhere, got flooded here and discovered by Batson

Like your rival in Pokemon games Your best friend but also the best fights

I think it would be cute if Otten and Batson came from like... Idk a similar background? depends on how each are written but they became sworn rivals

this is why they're clumsy / spacey, they're always half asleep, but it's like, incredibly charming and positive

otten previously being a ballboy but saying "aw donks this i can do way more with balls" and learning to pitch with no help at all

Otten is Otten is Otten is ballboy? Otten Otten is ballboy? Otten is ballboy? (uses she/they still of course)

Otten is ten otters with a trench coat with ten different personalities and ten different pronouns and they take turns speaking

Otten the ballboy got swept elsewhere at the beginning of the flooding, and then when Batson finally found her she'd learned to pitch

During team tag up before the game: Michelle: BLAH BLAH SPORTS BLAH PLAYS BLAH BLAH PITCHES Otten: wuaht? yeah, i'll do my best! and you will too i'm sure!

otten wears a women want me fish fear me hat

Otten writes short novels about her dreams and they're actually really neat

otten's stats are fine at batting and pitching. they are an all-rounder player just because she does not care about restrictions. she started batting in Elsewhere Little League and then started pitching in the ILB also Otten pitches ambidextrously and cannot explain why

otten constantly narrating her life INCLUDING WHILE ASLEEP

...OTTEN DOES BEST WHEN SLEEP-PITCHING.

HOLD UP YOU KNOW WHEN WE SEE VITO OR WHOEVER DOING BAD WE SAY "WAKE UP" TO MAKE THEM PLAY BETTER WE TELL OTTEN TO GO TO SLEEP

Otten has ADHD and is extremely distracted all the time

Otten uses submarine-style pitching https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_(baseball)

Crowd just chanting "TAKE A NAP"

otten is an otter in the same way that batson is a bat - only when you're looking directly

so here's the timeline right Batson in lore arrives to the league on day 5 of season 15 from Elsewhere. alone, it does not know where anyone else is from the far-away place. has to learn to accept new family if Otten is from Elsewhere as well, we only got Otten into our shadows in S16 playoffs. so she found her way here entirely by force of will. nobody brought her here, she just was bored and lonely and swam through the immateria

one of the best things about this is that McKinley is a street in LA Otten showed up in LAi and needed another name to show up on the stat sheet, she chose McKinley because that's the street she remembers the most

Batson is small in a lot of HCs. i think that means Otten is stupendously tall

Otten got accidentally drafted from atlantis

OTTEN GO TO SLEEP

okay what if we take nomitive determinism backwards Otten is a regular human shaped human, but because of the name they got super into the sea, loves swimming, fish, pirate stories. Lucid dreams about being on the seabed and other fantasy stories like that. Was a fan of the georgias (maybe related to Flannery) until they got faxed in

Lucid dreaming makes me really into the idea that Otten just appeared on the mound asleep with no idea how they got there other than the tax printout that was laying on their face

Otten became her fursona. A terrible curse

she was a kid who loved the sea and had an otter fursona, visited Atlantis, became their ballboy, became an otter, got swept elsewhere, taught herself blaseball, and washed up on the shores of LA

oh my god ok so like otten, is a furry because of their name, loves the sea. Has a fursuit, goes to atlantis. gets adapted, is now actual otter selkie mermaid person. still wears the fursuit cuz it was FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS and the ARTIST WORKED REALLY HARD ON IT DANGIT

okay so there are several events - was a furry - became an otter - was Elsewhere - was in Atlantis - got adapted - became ballboy - became pitcher - became hitter and the sequence of WHEN or HOW they happened is entirely a mystery

can they still have a pet parrot

I also like this idea that they’re sort of dream logic fuzzy shapeshifting. Sometimes they look like a person! Sometimes they look like a regular otter! Sometimes they look like a giant fursuit otter! You look away and you’re pretty sure they didn’t look like that before, but maybe you misremembered?

got the parrot during the pirate phase, turns out parrots live a long friggin time, it's okay because she loves it. it's also her alarm clock

also w/r/t Flattery McKinley i'd say that SIMILARLY to how Rat Batson got their first name from Rat Mason Otten got their first name from Flattery McKinley, who was their mentor and idol as they rose through the ranks there

I would just like to interject and say that both LA and Atlantis have the whole infinite parallel dimension thing going in, if in slightly different ways...that could be something

guys there's feral parrot populations in LA Otten definitely has more than one parrot friend

MCKINLEY OTTEN'S PERSONAL BIRDHOUSES

otten does 'save the otters' charity gigs

LA Taqueria Birdhouses AKA Seating Reserved for McKinley Otten's Fanclub

Flatteny Pannot

Parren

uh yes so. Rat Batson - McKinley Otten rivalry, i think it is absolutely like the rivalries in pokemon games. they are happy to see each other but are going to try and compete at whatever dumb stuff is going on just for fun. batson sleeps on Otten's chest sometimes when they both need a siesta.

otten helps batson with equipment when it needs help carrying large things

Bevan wise has astral projected into one of Otten's dreams, they're good friends now because Otten's dreams are much nicer than LA's astral plane (which is confusing and sometimes scary)

yeah, Otten began in the ILB as a ballboy, but quickly grew ambitious and wanted to do All The Blaseball, All The Time (aka being good at all positions). this is in contrast to batson, who is in bliss being terrible at blaseball and just wants to vibe and take photos and polish up equipment

Otten is a very good listener and problem solver when she's asleep, so the team will share problems and stuff and then later she'll wake up shouting an off-the-wall but effective solution

Bevan set up a door in the clubhouse to walk into Otten's dreams

Does Otten catch balls in the outfield the same way shelled players do? Just, the ball rolls into a large sleeping otter?

oh hell yeah i bet otten loves carrying rocks and stuff

OTTEN USES THE BAJA BLAST CHAMBER

Let me know if I should leave, but McKinley Otten in fishing waders.

im serious y'all think about this dreamscape and you can just go here into otten's dreams by walking through a doorway and it's just motionless and peaceful and quiet

Otten is the only one who enjoys the fishing part of McMason's fishing trips

Otten wears bow ties

she has so many funny novelty hats

"I make my own fish tacos"

in the spirit of this, i think Otten is LOVABLY clumsy

okay so an idea i had for mckinleys backstory is that shes an otter from monterey bay that was trying to join the san francisco lovers but um. got lost

1) They have a parrot 2) They have very bad handwriting these are the only two character traits i have

to loop this back around to the shadows discussion earlier, Otten found a stall in the Shadows that carried every possible "Fish Fear Me" hat in Tacos colors and she cleaned out the whole shop

Otten bats with a kendo sword, because thanks to having some training from the Lovers, they're very good at swordplay

Women want me, fish loathe me Women want me, fish perceive me as their angel of death Women want me, fish desire my untimely demise Women want me, fish hide away in fear of my presence Women want me, fish have nightmares about me. And in their nightmares I strike.

Otten has a super pitch called "Unlimited Parrot Works" She learned it from Dove and got pointers on her form from Sexton before he went to Yellowstone

i imagine otten has no inside voice

she'll wear anything as long as it can carry her stuff, so BMase makes her some cute outfits

i think otten goes through a lot of phases they joined the team on a great note but then give it a few days and they're trying something completely abhorrent and basilio's just like "we were so close..."

but she loves the fun outfits that BMase designs for her, and she likes to sew/crochet/etc. so she makes little accessories

Otten is a continual fashion nightmare, she has so many pouches and pockets, she even wears a fanny pack.

patchwork twee cottagecore work fashion

the fanny pack? it contains parrots

cargoshorts beach lesbian

she has like 13 favorite rocks because she can't decide. only some of them are actual rocks.

idk if we talked about this before and i missed it but can we please please make her another fat character please

for the name thing i was thinking that she ran into flattery while lost and just kinda. stole her name bc she iddnt have a real name to give while signing up for the team

i think it's v cute that otters IRL have favorite rocks otten deserves a v cool favorite rock

flattery always gives awful advice but otten is so tired that they misremember it and end up doing it right by accident

Always gotta have a "short and round, tall and thin" duo

otter mermaid

thats also a very fun dynamic of OG Flattery being annoyed and then the Alternate comes in and is super enthusiastic about it and it's kinda disconcerting to Otten but also now their mentor really wants to be a mentor and its sorta cool?

flattery can not care and still be looked up to which is hilarious

i said otter mermaid earlier but it's not showin up on the board for some reason but I'm on board with this

if memory serves giant otters are this size irl so thats perf

I like otten as like a selkie/mermaid/centaur/whatever cuz that means she's long and can use herself as a pillow and imagine how soft otters are

she names them after Georgias players

she was so excited that the Georgias were visiting LA for this last series

Otten's dreams have a lot of recurring elements: Lighthouses, ships, far away storms, and a little house, simple yet inviting.

Am I drawing the players too early?

i love thinking abt otten flattery interactions pre descent. like otten talking abt this player they really look up to and want to be like and ppl are like 'on what team??' and otten says atlantis georgias 100% cause idk i think water creatures can go to atlantis if they want and ppl are like '... otten that team doesnt exist what??'

She could have even met Batson while she was there - Batson showed up in season 15, and Otten was the season 16 birth, so she could have been swept away from Atlantis during the season 12 catastrophe.

her uniform is fishing waders in taco colors with the women want me fish fear me hat also in taco colors

thinking about how Flattery struck out against Otten when the two went up against one another... i like to think flattery intentionally struck out to Support Her

Otten is like the person who is incredibly into this one movie from the 60s that nobody cares about until it gets a reboot and suddenly everyone loves the original

i like to think Flattery was always a bit endeared by Otten looking up to them but also idk how much Flattery would want to be a Blaseball Mentor until the alt swap if that makes sense?

yeah i'm imagining that they were basically like happy to be looked up to but extremely disinterested in the actual mentoring part so the alt actually getting into that is the surprise

someone earlier said they kinda fuzzily shift into whatever they were dreaming about whikle they're lucid dreaming and i think that ties into this really well

maybe flattery had to just get advice from niq and they just relayed that to otten as their initial mentoring

HMMMM maybe there's someone they're talking to in their dream that's actually like, totally a real person

Maybe they are learning about it from another self that already mastered it

Otten always had a mentor in her dreams and when she met Flattery the resemblance was uncanny and that's why she chose Flattery

ah so she became otter while in Atlantis as a kid through the adaptations, but her human version still exists and happens sometimes

I think there should be human Otten, otter Otten, shapeshifter Otten, and they should all be friends

yeah all the mckinli otten know each other

maybe flattery hitting that 3-run homer was legit just her trying to pull otten out of the shadows so they could have time to shine

So far we've got -Flattery was a begrudging mentor to Otten, gave bad advice and often asked Niq for help -Alternate Flattery was suddenly SUPER enthusiastic about mentoring Otten -Otten knows many of their other selves and they're all besties -Got swept elsewhere at some point and accidentally returned to LA -Met Rat Batson while elsewhere? What am I missing?

there are many mckinli otten but they all are fuzzy

otten: i see you dont have a lifeguard here on your beach the rest of the team: ... this isnt a beach this is a blaseball field

Otten loves movies, and loves reviewing them more via Otten Tomatoes.

Thirst trap version

I think it would be very nice if Chell and merOtten held hands and cuddled

otten showed up at flattery's feet one day wide eyed and ready to learn and flattery is just uhh hello?? yes??? can i help you?

shes outpitching her stars atm because i believe in and love her

ok alternate: lets lean into the ocean theme. mickeys splash hits

Fun Fact: My elementary school was the ocean palm Otters and now I can not stop mentally chanting OTTEROTTEROTTEROTTER- [Link to Twitter Image: Drawing of Mckinley Otten. Her upper body is human and her lower body is an otter. She is stretching an has a sleepy smile.] https://twitter.com/ShorterSneakier/status/1392673643298271233?s=20 Sleepy in the sea #blaseball Does this count as #mermay ? Twitter

oh before i forget. i had a fun idea. since otters have very visible whiskers i think itd be cool if otten did too. facial hair or just plain whisker ass whiskers, doesnt matter

can we lore that mcotter is the giant otter queen that han solo fought in the star wars expanded universe

she has an octopus tattoo to represent flattery

otten likes takoyaki

and uni pasta

ok ok ok here's my timeline hc for otten right -born in California (perhaps San Diego?) -for reasons moved to Atlantis as a teen -Atlantis go up -Atlantis go down -Now an otter/merotter/has otter jammies -Learns blaseball from Flattery -Ends up Elsewhere through sheer coincidence -Follows Batson back to Los Angeli -Joins the Tacos -Gets sports gorlfromnd

moved to Atlantis cuz they're a giant furry who got obsessed with otters after visiting the aquarium when she was five and saw otters and learned they were named the same and fell in love like a 5 year old does

if Otten has bare skin, she would defs have wave or water tattoos. twisting kelp?

Ohhh my god guy's Otten loves Redwall

Otten getting a octopus tattoo because she just loves octopi and then realizes too late that they've just gotten a tattoo of Flattery

Living in Monterey made her love otters, reading Pearls of Lutra turned it into an obsession that led her to going to Atlantis. Yes, she even learned how to use a bow

Otten uses Michelle's full name and Chell uses Mickie's nickname when they're being cute with each other

oh can we spell ottens nickname as mickie instead of mickey reasons for this: -cuter spelling (imo) -doesnt remind me of the disney rat

otten out here like wait she calls yall by your full names?? i dont even know your full names

also otten is an avid nickname user. never uses anybodys real name

after otten got birthed i cracked the joke in fk-stats that they wrote their name backwards on the sign up sheet and thats why theyre mckinley otten and i thought it was a good bit pleas enjoy

She's like, half otter already right? What if she had a fursuit that's just the upper half but seamlessly blends with her lower half

is Otten the first Taco who actually is like. online? internet-fluent? can use a computer? lived on the internet as a teen? drew a webcomic

didn't someone mention that Otten Submarine pitches

Most pitchers: I throw the ball at the box Otten, maybe:

I see flattery as otten's aunt figure

Otten just keeps forgetting how tall she is

S18D97: Early in a game against the Georgias, Tacos pitcher McKinley Otten suffered a devastating Consumer attack, dropping 4.8 stars total and leaving them with 2 stars in pitching. With no home games left in the regular season to invoke Fax Machine and no margin for error in a very tight playoff race, this is a serious blow to the Tacos' postseason chances.

in my mind, Otten is still able to have calm serene dreams. but there's something lurking at all times which can't be shaken, and it wakes her up when she leasts wants it

the gang has to go out of LA a short distance for some reason and everyone packs a lunch for on the bus and ottens is just this and a big bottle of water

she's 26 years old with 50 years of experience

she is a marine biologist, a therapist, an aquatic veterinarian, a rescue diver, a coast guard, a licensed chef, and has a badge that designates her as skilled in "many otter things"

it's because limes and like uh

new lore otten always carries around one of those travel pillows

it's pretty late so i'll probably wait to try and have more fun with her later on but potential design for mcotten lol? having sweet dreams about something sour...