#thank you @nitewcat for the help with the wording and other stuff

[letyhide]

Hi just a random person who saw the fanart of princezam and mapicc and never watched lifesteal smp but was aware of it i guess? Anyway i wanna ask what's the meaning behind and it symbolise of mapicc eating prince zam's heart? Is this a canon thing on lifesteal or just a fan headcanon? Sorry for the question just curious.

There is no real "in canon" direct reference to cannibalism on the server (other than maybe 1 or 2 one-off-comments made as jokes throughout the years). So I guess it counts as a headcanon. But let's just say that it lends itself well for headcanons of the sort. As the server works, every time you kill someone, you get their heart. 

Lifesteal is all about hearts: giving and taking. So there's this closeness that tends to be formed just off the concept of hearts, giving it to a teammate or someone you're allied with is a display of affection, to show you care. Taking someone's hearts through violence is the opposite of that. The showing of hatred (in the case of devotions not always).

Lifesteal doesn't classify the stealing of hearts in any specific method past murder and the absorption of the heart isn't demonstrated past the right click of a mouse or the heart simply appearing in the hotbar after you kill someone. That empty period where the heart is absorbed is unclear and kind of open to fan interpretation I guess. 

When talking about Mapicc eating Zam's heart specifically, it isn't a re-draw of a specific scene or anything (well kind of, but not really). Over their time on the servers over multiple seasons these two have spent the majority of the time next to each other, if it’s by each other's side or against one-another really depends on the season and period of time. But there often is some type of misunderstanding between them. Mapicc at some point feels hurt and betrayed by something Zam does (usually something tied to morals, example s4 and s6. Zam's "good hearted nature" gets in the way of their team). And Mapicc wants to hurt back. He makes it his only goal on the server to torment Zam. Be the one who destroys him, who kills him over and over again. It's that kinda hatred that you can only feel for someone who you once loved. The cannibalism interpretation is more meant to be representative of his obsession with him in their time of animosity, the desire for Zam's "heart" (romantically/platonically) and his desire to have Zam and everything Zam is.

Also the caption is a reference to this idiom that really fits their season 6 characters: