User:Ch4zm/July 2025/Boylston Lore Jam

Alewife-Boylston Rivalry

motto

BB: Ex Medio Omnia

Translation: "From the Center, Everything."

AA: Ex finibus ignis

Translation: "From the Ends, Fire."

alewife originals

The Pirate Radio Jam: In a pivotal match for the MTA Crown, the Boogers, appalled by the low-fidelity nature of the Arsonists' fan culture, attempted to "jam" The Brakeman's pirate radio signal. They didn't use technology; they broadcasted a live, avant-garde poetry reading on the same frequency. The plan backfired spectacularly. The discordant noise and abstract imagery of the poetry only fed the Arsonists' chaotic gestalt, causing their patterns to evolve in beautiful, terrifyingly unpredictable ways, leading to an infamous victory known to Alewife fans as "The Howl."

An Echo of Shared Trauma: Their linked origin in the great 90s blackout defines their interactions. The Arsonists were born of heat and rage in a stalled train. The Boogers were born of cold and dread in a damp tunnel. When they play, this polarity manifests on the grid. Arsonist patterns raise the metaphysical "temperature" of the game, causing opponents' patterns to become brittle. Booger patterns generate a "dampness," causing opponents to become sluggish and bogged down in a virtual slime.

The "Cartographical Defamation": The modern rivalry’s "First Burn" was not ignited by a match, but by a mosaic. In a grand act of civic arrogance, the Boylston Boogers unveiled a massive, permanent tile map in their station. Commissioned from Bartholomew Peabody Finch, a celebrated (and notoriously smug) artist from Wellesley, the piece was a masterpiece of passive aggression. It depicted the Green Line as a thick, vibrant artery of emerald and gold tile, pulsing with life. In stark contrast, the Red Line was rendered as a thin, pathetic capillary of cracked crimson ceramic that withered and fizzled into a gray, featureless smudge at Alewife. This public insult, the "Cartographical Defamation," was the moment the "GO BACK TO WELLESLEY!" chant was first spat in fury.

alewife lore

• GO BACK TO WELLESLEY
• The Cartographic Defamation
• The Wellesley Heresy
• War of the Pothole
• Coattail Pennant
• Rainbow Burn

boylston lore

• The Cartographic Defamation

Goober Boylston (no relation) is an architecture critic for the Boston Tribune and the unofficial spokesperson for the Boylston Boogers. Goober primarily writes sports columns for the Boston Tribune, but insists that "architecture critic" is his "real" title.

mta crown backstory

The Architectural Heresy: The rivalry is an aesthetic holy war. Boylston, one of the oldest stations, is a landmark of historic tile and wrought iron. Alewife is a modern (1985) concrete cathedral of Brutalism. The Boogers see Alewife as a soulless, monstrous parking garage with a subway attached. The Arsonists see Boylston as a cramped, crumbling, inefficient relic for tourists. This feud exploded when a Booger-sympathizing architecture critic called Alewife "a monument to despair," and in retaliation, the Arsonists' patterns began mimicking the cracks in Boylston's ancient tilework, a deep and personal insult.

End of the Line vs. Center of the Universe: This is the core of their philosophical divide. The Arsonists are "End-of-the-Liners," their identity forged at the terminal point where the city frays into swampland. Their patterns start at the grid's edge and burn inward. The Boogers, whose station opens onto the Boston Common, are "Centrists" who believe they are the hub of existence. Their patterns emerge in the center and expand outward, often collapsing when they touch the "unimportant" edges of the grid.

Hellmouth Cup

The First Miracle: The flip side of the Arsonists story about The Cartographic Defamation is the Boylston Boogers doing what they do so well: getting under their cross-town rivals' skin and getting into their heads, living there rent-free throughout the pre-season, regular season, and postseason. The Boogers flawlessly executed a campaign of psychological warfare designed to set the tone.

The Boogers couldn't believe their luck when they landed their dream matchup against the Arsonists in their first season of existence. The Arsonists, who had already been in existence for 14 seasons of the Hellmouth Cup and know the Boogers when the Boogers were still in grade school, resented the matchup and saw it as an insult - they were a major league team, being forced to match up against a troupe of minor leaguers, in their first year of existence, on the biggest stage. They resented the Boogers because the Boogers had successfully gotten into their heads.

That's exactly how the Boogers ended up winning the first-ever postseason matchup between the two bitter rivals, lighting the match of the bitterest rivalry in Golly.

...

The Ghost Run and The Sauna

Season 23: The Ghost Run: The Boylston Boogers had been not just beaten but swept by the Delaware Corporate Shells in their Season 15 postseason exit, so the Boogers came prepared this time. They tapped into an unusual source of power for their Division Series match: the abandoned outer track at Boylston station. Legend says the collective reactivated dormant, chaotic automata left decaying in those tunnels since the station's opening in 1897. They unleashed unpredictable "ghost train" spaceships that the hyper-focused Shells never noticed until it was too late. It was a dangerous gamble that paid off for Boylston, drawing on the city's forgotten underbelly to power through the Shells.

The Boogers' ghost train spaceship magic continued against the Albuquerque Solarpunks , another recent Hellmouth Cup expansion team that had shown great promise in their early years, only to be bushwhacked by the ghost train spaceship patterns that Boylston let loose (or rather, that let themselves loose, as Boylston no longer had control of the spirits driving the ghost trains). The high-and-dry Punks were swamped.

Season 23: The Sauna: The championship victory against the Long Beach Flightless Birds was not clean. Both teams agreed ahead of time to hold the match in a sauna, allowing the Boogers to tap into their natural "moist" aura, while giving the Flightless Birds the chance to smooth talk their way around the Boogers and to a Hellmouth Cup. The Boogers, thriving int he damp, high-pressure environment, were a slippery opponent, but so were the slick Birds - known throughout the league for their fast thinking and smooth talking, it was nearly impossible to corner them.

But as the series wore on, the air grew thick, the patterns slowed, and the Flightless Birds were too waterlogged to go on. The Boogers didn't outplay them, they seeped into every crack in their defenses, a victory of pervasive dampness that was both triumphant and vaguely unsettling - like finding mold in a beautiful painting.