Joelki B. Aka The Real Lore Behind Joel’s Bug Antenna /silly

thisss a million times this! The thing that people forget about the secret soulmates ordeal is that Grian chose BigB, but he did not choose to be paired with Scar. He made it clear from the beginning how he didn’t want to be with Scar. (Interjection: this is all c!s, and not hating on scarian also a valid ship just me rambling about how I like to interpret it and also it’s very grammatically incorrect and probably pretty repetitive because I didn’t really read through it lol) He was forced to team with him by their shared health, but the term “cheating” implies that Grian chose to be with Scar and then later went back on that. Secret Soulmates, meanwhile, was purely for Grian’s emotional benefit. They gave each other hearts and cookies and there was nothing in particular about the two of them that screamed alliance made for practical reasons. They were just kind of keeping each other company, BigB needing it because his soulmate was away so often that the guy had joined a singles support group, and Grian needing it because well if I write all my thoughts on why in this one sentence it’ll go on forever. Even from third life, Grian shows bias toward Bigb, commenting that if it comes down to it he doesn’t think he’ll be able to kill him even though Bigb is on the opposite side.

But back to my point about why I think Grian is lonely: in double life, Scar behaves with Grian the same way that he behaves with him in third life, where he was reckless and Grian just had to go along with whatever scar said because he was indebted. This in contrast to double life, where the soul bound puts each partner on equal standing, but Scar, probably without realizing, takes the lead, but Grian is no longer content to follow. Scar takes for granted that Grian will always follow him, hence the reason he seems more inclined towards petty vengeance than actual anger or even worry when he finds out about BigB. He is confident that Grian will always come back to him, which, when Grian doesn’t want to, makes things. Complicated. Really, he builds himself a panda reserve, Grian made it very clear that he’s not super fond of the pandas, but Scar is operating on how he knew Grian in third life, before Grian joined the south lands where equality (sometimes rather than equity even when thats not really good, but that’s it whole own shebang) was like their whole shtick, so he thinks that everything he builds for him is for both of them, because in the past he was in charge and had to take the lead. So Grian seeks out someone he wanted from the beginning of both that season and of the series who is, as prev stated, very calm. Scar wanders off to go do something dangerous expecting Grian to follow because that’s what he would have done in third life, but Grian is like okay, you go do that, and goes over to go do arts n’ crafts with BigB. BigB, also, has been constantly on the outside of groups and rarely having an alliance of his own because other people find him creepy or scary or unnerving, which is something he encourages, and even seems to enjoy, but Grian is usually the only one to not be scared off by BigB’s bigbness, like in secret life when he was like this base is scary but it’s also cool, hey is that your initial in the roof and he is literally the only one to notice that and Bigb is just so excited that someone noticed something about his base that wasn’t hey this place is terrifying. They just genuinely enjoy each other company. They can just be silly and definitely not bossy together and have fun! They, for all their fanon characterization, and actually probably one of the healthiest c!relationships in the whole series, because they actually like each other, chose each others company out of their own free will and for no other reason than their affection for the other, and are not toxicly codependent. Idk this is a pretty long and probably incoherent ramble, but I felt compelled because please for the love of all that is sculk someone put some biggri on ao3 that is literally anything other than cheating in scarian angst fics. Thank you prev for reminding me how much I love this pairing.

I know that Grian said “Bigb treated me right” just to get a rise out of Scar but I feel like this is a good opportunity to talk about how much (in my opinion) Grian and Bigb as a pairing are slept on

They both have this chaotic energy that feels complimentary, Grian’s pesky bird-ness and BigB’s whimsy. They both have this quiet rebellion or discontent against the games. BigB knows that it’s all for nothing and doesn’t play into the Watchers’ emotional manipulation, whereas Grian (up until wild life) tries to escape and fight the Watchers’ hold on him.

I feel like BigB’s calm energy is a sigh of relief for Grian. That he can trust someone, and be trusted, without it being another game. That he doesn’t need to constantly worry about survival, and can just enjoy existing. They just want to frolic in a meadow and have a nice picnic your honor

I feel like there’s so much more to this pairing beyond the secret soulmates thing and that their chemistry is actually reall nice! And have a lot of potential for AUs and fanfics!

It’s another of the artimators!! Cherri!!!!!!!!!! I had to draw @cherrifire of course, because Cherri’s artwork was what first introduced me into the idea of fanart and the concept of being a commission artist, as well as the first person who streams I started watching and whose blog I started following. I love your art Cherri!!! (Also your music taste)

It’s kinda messy cause I was on a time crunch and trying out some different brushes, and also Cherri is surprisingly hard to find a reference of. Like, Cherri what shoes do you wear. Cause I have never seen them. I ended up going with a fanart I found of her for the rest of the outfit that I couldn’t piece together via stream thumbnails, but Cherri please give us a reference of your sona it’s so pretty and I wanna draw it properly! Anyways yeah. Also as I was drawing this I noticed that Cherri just. Like. Has pointy teeth. I did not notice this before. How have I never noticed this before? Am I the only who just, like missed that the pink flower magic fire eyeball lady has extra sharp danger biteys? Anyway sorry for rambling I love your art Cherri and I love watching your streams and seeing all the stuff you draw in YouTube thumbnails and being like “I know who drew that!” and singing along to the crane wives during your streams and drawing along to your vods!! I’m so excited to see you in mccr! Good luck!

(Also I don’t know how the coaches get assigned but if it’s random then that’s absolutely hilarious that out of everyone available you just so happened to get Martyn!)

I think I’m just gonna go through and relocate half your blog onto mine because your art is too good ^^ ( <- that’s a face right? I’m not insane?) this Joel is so pweetyy! I don’t know what markers u use but you must have sold your soul to the sculk for them because wow I didn’t know they made ‘em that yummy.

uhhh dunno what to say here honestly. usually have smth...i miss boat boys ;*-*; also lizzie and cleo should stabby stab each other in fantasy smp. joel's in twitch con, so that's exciting, maybe well see shane and joel being mean to each other. uhh that is all. end of news segment. like comment subscribe lol

my mildly unintelligible incoherent rambling headcannons on the life series but primarily wild life and I had more to say but I had to cut it down lol and I’m mainly posting this for personal reference: (be wary, it is a long post)

Wild life is so fascinating from a lore perspective like in the past it was everyone against everyone else, friendly survival but things were just a little bit off, a little bit desperate, felt a little bit out of control, like maybe something bigger was at work here, but you could look the threat in the eyes and kill it and go home…until you couldn’t. As the strings being pulled turned from invisible twine to neon shoelaces and the hand in the shadows was suddenly the title character and every thing seemed to connect, seemed to end. But it didn’t. The watchers were the center the thumbnail the logo the everything mercilessly piloting the story towards the conclusion they desired, and then it was done, the loop back to the very beginning was made, it was finished. But then it wasn’t. What Real Life and Wild Life have in common is this sort of sense of storytelling absurdity, everything is cut short and brief and it’s silly and horrifying and painful (just to intulude here, I am still discussing everything purely lore wise. The only pain I experienced watching either of those things was sadness when they ended) and suffering doesn’t seem to have a meaning a purpose a quiet dignity anymore it’s April fools and everyone is throwing up and dead their bodies won’t listen won’t function can’t fight cant run but it’s a joke haha there’s no story no rhyme or reason it’s just torture and now the ultimate of random purposeless suffering wild cards they can’t kill each other can’t fight each other because every moment is a struggle to survive as the world itself has turned against them as their bodies betray them as they die in humiliating horrifying ways the very fiber of their being the very core of their world something is terribly terribly wrong it is like the order and rules that bound the life series have broken and the chaos of the void is pouring through drowning the code of the world as the players are ripped to shreds by the avalanche, watching their bodies crumble. It’s like the watchers finished telling their story of perfect and purposeful suffering and then pulled the string holding the knot together. It’s like the life series is a pane of glass that they polished to perfection, punched, and walked away, leaving the shards to slowly shatter as the beauty and horror and chaos and glory that makes up the world spews forth to tear it’s broken remains apart. There will still be the games, but now there is nothing pulling the strings, nothing holding it together. Suffering no longer has a meaning, a purpose, a goal, it is simply suffering. How terrifying must that be to have everything that you are shattering, pieces of you like broken glass strewn about as the void bursts forth to consume the ruins and the wreckage of the world.

We know that life series players are alternate versions of themselves, because while Hermitcraft scar is happily building his zoo in season ten, secret life scar is still out there wandering among the sunflowers. I don’t remember if real life Cleo lived or not, and we don’t know if this season’s winner will live on, but let’s pretend for the sake of this ramble being almost somewhat coherent that both cleo and the new winner live. What happens to the new winner (I’ll get to what happens to Cleo later)? The world is breaking, coming apart at the seams. Each new day brings a fresh horror from the void to try to wipe them out. And what about memories? This is where this strays firmly into headcannon territory, but my personal way of imagining it starts at a fairly ubiquitous jumping off point, the idea that lifers during the games do not have access to their memories, but going upon the alternate versions thing they do not remember the games at all. There is the original player, journeying through smps and servers, and then there is a version of them for each separate life series, shadow copies that they are completely unaware of and unconnected to created by the watchers to play puppets with in their perfect dark fairytale. Each life series is a new copy, because every game the copies all died. Up until secret life. They had had their fun, there was no reason for them to kill off the last one, scar, the winner left alive and alone. The og scar and the secret life scar are not aware of each other because og has no idea about the copy and copy wrongly assumes he is the real scar. He regained all the memories from before of Hermitcraft when he won and the watchers broke the game but the way he understands it is, because again the other life series were other versions of scar, he was on Hermitcraft uninterrupted up until suddenly they were all abducted into this game called secret life and they all were driven insane and killed each other and now he is alone. He can’t leave because the copies are bound to their worlds and doesn’t try to leave because as far as he knows there is no where for him to go. Crucially, again, secret life scar and Hermitcraft scar are two entirely different people.

So let’s imagine for this new winner, living in this horrifying shattered world, there are no more watchers to police memories. The copies are still made, the code is still there, the games carry on, becoming more garbled and twisted with each broken game, so that the copies don’t come out quite right, which explains the movement issues and nausea in real life and the way the wild cards go to the very data of the player and twist it in wild life. So this broken copy wins, and suddenly remembers, just as secret life scar did, all that came before, but the game is even more broken so they remember so much more than that. They see all the lives, every version of themselves. They see themselves after, the version that was never in the games, with their friends, living on. The versions of the friends they know are dead, but alternate, happier, more carefree versions live on with an alternate, happier, more carefree version of themselves. Their friends don’t miss them, don’t know they are gone, because they aren’t. They are alone and trapped on a world doomed to slowly fracture into oblivion. Everything is broken. But they refuse this, perhaps. They rebel. There is nothing tying the world together? Then they will escape through the cracks. They will find this world with the other copies. Real life Cleo, who remembers enough to know that they are are a copy, but the game hasn’t fully broken by real life so she is unaware there were other games. Also I’m realizing now that I haven’t really talked a lot about Cleo but tbh that’s mostly because their character strikes me as someone who is unshakable, pragmatic (this is why I think she and Scott got along so well, they both go at the games with eyes on the prize) who would of course be upset but also be rational, and simply try to make the best out of their life) secret life scar, who still believes that he is the only version of scar out there and that he murdered all of his friends. Both stuck on these worlds alone, but this new winner will break through the walls on these servers, and say come on, we’re here, we’re our own gosh dang people, so let’s go take back our lives. Idk where this goes from there but I headcannon that every real life version of all the players had mobility issues, hence the movement problems, but Cleo is the only real life player left so she’s the only one still experiencing these problems. I also headcannon that the new winner has, well, I haven’t actually figured out the specifics but some sort of residual issues relating to the wild cards and broken code.

this headcannon also introduces some interesting lore ties for Grian, and tbh I haven’t thought to much about how the watcher lore would work in this, well ig this is an au at this point, but if you think about his panic at the end of the most recent session, and that he was able to freeze time, it could be a sort of thing like he is unintentionally the one causing the games to continue being a watcher, but in the past he had no control but now he’s been handed the reins with no instructions and has no idea what to do. All the power and no clue how to use it. This also could lead to some interesting things about watching, because maybe in the past he could watch, could see that they were copies, and played accordingly. He knew the other versions would live on so he resigned himself to a certain extent to death, but now there is no path no clear cut story no string to follow through the dark he can’t see beyond the games and he’s terrified.

anyway that’s like kinda my headcannons idk if anyone will actually read this far but if you did thanks. Also I really wanna write/draw something for this, maybe turn it into a proper au, so if u person who is still reading would like to join me on that endeavor I would love to work with u.

Ian dinner dune dynamo?

hitting me with the full name okay then

It’s like this video was tailor made to cater to my interests specifically.

i can't even caption this clip from jimmy's video rn. why can he not be normal. why are all of joel and etho's friends borderline shipping them. why aren't They normal. I'm DONE

I’m bringing this back even though I drew it forever ago because I think it’s funny, and I’m still kind of proud of it. I forgot I used to draw noses like that lol. And also Ethos. I forgot I used to give him a little, like, swoopy thing. Hah.

I was listening to How to Be a Heartbreaker by MARINA and I realized it fit the boat boys perfectly

I might go back and add color later, but for now; behold…whatever the hell this is. Go listen to the song please this will make more sense I think?

This is, of course, all in silliness, I just thought it was funny. Also it’s a fun song.

I’ve been in the art block trenches y’all, so if my last two piece for Joel week ever get done then it’ll probably be a while from now so in the meantime here’s some sketchbook brainstorming I did a while ago for them

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