#trafficblr meta

[autumnwhistles]

I'm rewatching 3rd Life at the moment, and (c!)Grian's dynamic with responsibility – even within the first two and a half episodes – is so interesting. You'd think that he has at least some sense of it, what with pledging his loyalty to Scar to make up for a prank gone wrong, with presenting himself as the responsible, levelheaded figure to Scar's more whimsical, reckless one. He's warning others about their clothes being stolen, he's constantly telling Scar to put his armour back on so he doesn't take unnecessary damage – despite his penchant for chaos, there's at least a responsible side to him, right?

And you'd be half correct. He does take responsibility sometimes, when there's no real other way to explain his actions. But far, far more often, he absolves himself of blame for anything dubious by making it something he has no choice in. It's always Scar telling him to do something, or an obligation due to Rules, or a story arc he was supposed to have (eg when it comes to creating monopolies – that's the wording he uses in Ep 2), or an inevitable consequence of his own nature (and this all continues throughout future Life series – see "because I'm me!" in LimLife).

That's because to me, it seems like Grian's constantly caught between two opposing urges. He does enjoy chaos, he enjoys messing around, he enjoys being a little destructive – but, crucially, he does not want to be seen as a bad person, and by nobody more so than himself.

Because it isn't his fault if he has to threaten people with lava, something he loudly expresses not wanting to do despite the fact he can just refuse; despite the fact that Scar only told him to get the lava bucket out, not to place it a block away from a person and then on that person! It isn't his fault if Scar is scamming people of their valuables when he's around despite us seeing what Grian actually trying to stop that looks like when Scar scams BigB (someone Grian is very close to), warning him to run away beforehand and then restraining Scar with cobwebs; despite actively contributing to scamming Jimmy of his diamond chestplate one episode later and enjoying it, and helping Cleo take Scar's own things! It isn't his fault if people die due to him releasing the enderman he's put in place as a security measure for the desert: it's technically self-defence and so is within the rules of the game, so he isn't a bad person for doing it!

And he's not a bad person for doing a creeper prank that leads to a death and then not doing anything to address the root causes of that death (his love of messing with people, his mischievous streak, his willingness to risk harming others in the actions he takes (again, see the lava and the enderman security) even if it isn't the aim). He's not a bad person for not doing that, because he already made up for that action by addressing it at the surface level by pledging his life to Scar in return! Yes, it was an action taken because he genuinely felt bad for what he'd done and wanted to make it up to Scar – but it was still by far the easiest way to remove his own feelings of guilt over the matter without having to work on himself and, in the long-term, give up the destructive things he enjoys.

(So, while I genuinely don't think 'providing another excuse for myself for when I do something destructive' was a factor at play when he pledged his first life to Scar, it was certainly something he took advantage of very, very quickly.)

[quicksilversnails]

Took some notes from the Wild Life retrospective episode of the Imp & Skizz podcast featuring Grian because I thought the behind the scenes info was really interesting!

(3:15) The wild cards were all kept totally secret from the players (apart from Grian), with the exception of the superpowers and finale (as they required the players to set keybinds)

(3:45) The players were given files containing the required mods each week, which were named things like "creeper rain" to throw them off

(4:12) Wild cards were a combination of data packs and mods

(4:38) Grian told them not to read the folder name to avoid spoilers (which is kind of impossible), so everyone fully believed there would be creeper rain lol. Grian was saying it in jest but everyone took it seriously and were apologetic about having seen it, to which Grian told them not to worry

(6:58) Grian originally contacted a data pack dev called Brace for help with programming the wild cards. Some, like the shrinking/growing could be achieved with minecraft attributes, but the snails were too janky and unusable. Grian still liked the idea though, so he reached out to mod developers Henkelmax and Breadloaf, who designed the pathfinding/behaviour from scratch

(8:49) They had a debugging mode used to test the pathfinding of the snails, shown in the podcast and in Grian's credits

(10:09) Grian wants most of the credit to go to the development team and artists, as he was mostly in charge of ideas & organization!

(10:39) Grian's only regret with the snails was that they were too fast in session 3, leading to unexpectedly many deaths. They were apparently not so difficult to get away from during testing, but perhaps the testers were more used to them than the players were

(11:44) Grian: "We did develop to the lowest common denominator" ie. prioritizing how players would struggle over how worrying about if players would do too well

(12:56) Oli's voice for the snails was iconic. It cost Impulse a life because he intentionally stayed closer to it to hear the voice lol

(13:42) Danny was in charge of the snail models and animations

(14:11) During testing, the snails just sounded like Oli, which made it feel weird. They pitched up his voice so that it'd be less immediately recognizable

(15:18) The snails' jumping attack was meant to be clearly telegraphed: they would stop, wiggle, make a "ooeee" sound before jumping. Many players had their friendly creatures volume turned very low/off (as cows and other mobs are loud), which made this attack much less obvious for them

(16:57) The growing/shrinking had the least testing done for it, as it was the simplest conceptually and to program. This meant that the falling off of blocks due to the shrinking hitboxes wasn't anticipated

(17:55) Before the 1st session, Grian told them that he didn't think anyone would die to the wild card. Pearl's death made Grian pretty nervous, as he didn't want everyone dying too early in the season

(19:29) 6 lives were given, knowing that many of the death to the wild cards were unexpected/unfair. The intent was for ~3 lives to be allocated for wild cards, and ~3 for PvP.

(21:13) The developers were all fans of the Life Series!

(22:43) The shrinking/growing was intentionally pretty simple to ease players/viewers into the concept and build up toward more dramatic wild cards like the snails

(25:38) In the hunger episode, Grian didn't know which foods would be good

(25:58) Grian thinks that "it's unfair that Grian already knows everything" is valid criticism, but that it's important for him to be involved with the ideas. Having someone else do that is like having someone else record his videos: Life Series is his brainchild

(26:35) Well before the season began, while they were still developing the concept, Grian asked the other players for wild card ideas that would meet a few criteria. All of them ended up being unused for one reason or another. Impulse thinks his ideas were very "inside the box" because he was viewing things through what was possible in vanilla Minecraft. His idea was to have a scavenger hunt where the players would search to find a relic. The first person to find it would get a buff. Skizz's idea was for every player to turn into a random passive mob for every given interval of time. They would have to find every other player of the same mob type as them or else the whole group loses a life.

(29:44) The food qualities were weighted by the rarity of the item, so very common blocks like dirt and cobblestone would never give anything good. The other items were randomly selected

(30:23) Regular blocks/items cannot be made edible normally, so they had to circumvent that and custom code a fix for items not stacking correctly

(32:41) While a lot of players do want to win, the main priority is creating entertainment, which prioritizes playing recklessly

(33:20) The food wild card wasn't included in the finale because it would've felt like "too much". There was a higher risk of technical issues since it changed the data values of items, and Grian didn't want someone's last death to be because they ate their sword. In his mind, it was a good and fun wild card, but didn't need to be repeated in the finale. Impulse points out that they all would have collected more rare items by that point, removing the incentive to search for blocks to eat

(33:46) The wild cards in the finale were nerfed from their original sessions. The shrinking/growing had a smaller height range, the snails moved slower, etc.

(36:21) The personalized snail skins were a late addition by Danny, who made 18 skins very quickly

(36:49) Grian did not anticipate the snails becoming as popular with fans as they were. After the session released, they had the idea to release the snail merchandise, which directly funded the rest of the season

(39:20) Grian spent what "felt like every day" testing with the developers. They'd record the sessions on Tuesdays, meet up with the dev team, talk about what need to be done, testing, bugs, etc, edit and upload on Saturday, and would get a few days grace before starting again

(40:01) After the snail session, Grian was worried that the season would be very short due to all the deaths. They were considering toning down the later wild cards but ultimately didn't change them too much

(40:36) The time wild card was carefully balanced. If it had gone even a little faster, many players likely would have died because they wouldn't have time to react to threats like baby zombies or creepers.

(40:57) While sessions normally run for a variable amount of time, session 4 was hardcoded at 2 hours. Grian ended the session ~10 minutes early, just after they hit max speed, because he felt like things were getting dicey

(42:46) When the wild card first activates, it looks a lot like the server had frozen or crashed. Grian told the players before the session started that it would look like the game was broken, but that it isn't broken. Skizz tabbed out anyway and missed the beginning 😔

(43:30) Having the rain start just as the wild card began was a good visual indicator of time slowing down. This was a suggestion from the dev team (probably Brace)

(44:41) Impulse and Grian "cheesed" the end of the session by going branch mining. Grian wanted players to take advantage of the wild cards (eg. mining quickly, helping to kill someone), and not have them just be an annoyance.

(45:30) Keeping the client and server-side time stay in sync was challenging. The sky's motion was changed to be smoother on client-side. The players were also not as fast as the server (around 2x faster), the server was going faster than that, and the time of day was even faster

(46:56) The sounds were pitched up/down based on the speed to add to the effect

(27:46) In testing, if the players were made 7x faster, it would be basically unplayable, which was why it was capped at 2x speed. This made mobs very dangerous, as they were now faster than players and could catch up to you and kill you easily

(49:01) On several occasions, they had to extend the fuse duration of creepers to make them more fair. In the time session, their speed was only increased by ~10%

(49:39) Usually, Grian was the one to test the wild cards and notice when things like creeper speed would be an issue, since he was the one with experience making videos

(50:50) A challenge with balancing wild cards is accounting for the playstyles of so many players: reckless players like Scar and Skizz, "kind and gentle" players like Bigb who would stay off to the sides, and "the sweat squad" (Scott, Impulse) who play very cautiously

(52:48) Trivia Bot was the only wild card that was not planned in advance. Grian was struggling to come up with a wild card for that episode, and wanted to have a wild card available that could give people lives in case many people died to early wild cards without it feeling cheap.

(53:33) Trivia seemed a little boring on its face, so presentation was essential

(54:34) This one made Grian the most stressed due to all the moving parts involved in making it (coding and pathfinding mostly by Henkelmax, visuals by Hoffen, audio/music, questions)

(55:08) Trivia Bot's design was based on Grumbot and Mettaton from Undertale. Hoffen drew concept art shown in the video

(58:32) They show Trivia Bot's custom animation for becoming a snail and it's really cool

(59:12) The music was the most stressful part of the project. Grian spent 2-3 days looking through Epidemic Sounds for a Trivia Bot theme song and couldn't find anything good. He commissioned Zera @hopepetal for a theme song, which is played in the podcast. However, Grian realized he needed a full audio package, so he commissioned Oli late in development, who created the final soundtrack and many audio variations

(1:01:38) Grian wants to send appreciation for everyone who worked on the project, even if their work ultimately went unused

(1:02:58) Skizz was happy to give back however he could by staying on standby in the final episode as a zombie, as the players were able to "reap all the benefits" of the hard work of the development team

(1:05:21) Grian didn't know any of the trivia questions beforehand, which were done by fans of the series. The goal was for ~50% of the questions to be answered correctly, which was approximately met

(1:07:11) Players couldn't get questions about themselves because it would be too easy. This would encourage players to leave their bot, allowing other players to mess with them

(1:07:57) Grian felt a little left out from the discovery element of the wild cards, and decided to mess with Scar by hiding his bot. He wasn't expecting Scar to die from it, and could tell that he was genuinely a little upset by it. Grian felt bad about it, which led to a genuine in-game alliance between them

(1:12:32) Grian was very close to letting Trivia Bot give lives as rewards, but decided it would feel too cheap

(1:14:38) Mob swap was slightly toned down, with more camels and sniffers spawning

(1:15:07) Evokers didn't drop totems anymore. Instead, there was a minuscule chance a warden or wither would spawn, which would drop a totem if killed. Grian was a little disappointed that the warden got cheesed in the end

(1:17:45) Having the mobs start passive and turn hostile was mostly for the presentation, building anticipation, and so players could predict where mobs would spawn and react accordingly, making things feel less unfair

(1:20:32) There was no superpower made for Skizz (or Mumbo presumably)

(1:20:38) The superpowers were another late addition. There was a large design doc where Grian created all the powers, which were handed over to Henkelmax and completed over 4 days

(1:21:42) Grian avoided superpowers involving strength, that could cause someone to die easily. Most of the powers were social or movement-based, which couldn't be used for offence as easily

(1:22:25) Some powers were randomly assigned, others weren't. Impulse's was random. Cleo's, Bigb's, Lizzie's, Grian's were assigned.

(1:24:25) Grian gave himself the mimic because it could easily backfire (like in Grian's fall damage death), and because it would've been confusing for a player who wasn't aware of the other powers. They likely would've spent the episode just figuring out how everything worked and not actually using the power to its best ability

Lots of discussion about the superpowers and how they interacted in the episode itself, go watch if you're interested :)

(1:33:38) Talk on how the series "standard" rules evolved since 3rd Life. There was no keep inventory, and no restrictions on enchanting levels or potions, which created slow or unbalanced fights

(1:36:23) 3rd Life was designed to be an experimental series, which made Grian eager to improve it. For example, some people just weren't dying in 3L, leading to the boogeyman in LL, and so on

(1:37:17) The goal with the seasons isn't to one-up the previous one, but to create a different experience every time, which keeps things engaging for the creators

(1:38:31) At the end of each session, Grian would ask the group if they had fun and how they felt about the wild cards. According the Skizz, the answer was "a resounding yes"

(1:39:08) Grian had moments throughout the season where he personally felt like things didn't go well for him, and was anxious for the rest of the group's episodes. Things worked out while editing the raw footage, though. His issues were never with the wild cards themselves, but his own actions (traps not working, spending too long branch mining), but would always find funny moments in his footage

(1:43:41) Everyone in the Life Series cast genuinely likes and genuinely respects everybody else in the group. This allows them to make the show and get mad at each other, because they know it's all just in-character

(1:44:50) It'd be hard to top Wild Life in spectacle, and Grian doesn't want to start an arms race with himself. The next season could potentially be closer to 3rd Life, but Grian's not sure yet. For Grian, Wild Life was the most enjoyable

(1:45:20) Grian: "As long as people keep enjoying [the Life Series] then I'd love to keep doing it"

(1:49:35) With the finale, Grian knew how the wild cards played out the previous sessions and was able to adjust them

(1:49:56) Grian's goal was to create safe chaos where everyone knew what was happening and wouldn't die to them, which didn't go entirely to plan. The snails were 60% of their original speed and people still died

(1:51:03) Grian made a precise timeline of when each wild card would start/stop, it wasn't randomized.

(1:54:16) All the superpowers were randomized, with Bdubs' power being removed from circulation because it didn't have much use in a finale setting

(1:56:10) It was important for Grian that in the final moments, the wild cards were removed, so there were no interruptions. The timing worked out well because there were a few people left and it ended within ~10 minutes (this implies that the change wasn't based on # of players alive, as people had speculated based on Gem's death)

(1:58:48) The players all randomly switched to zombie skins throughout the session to mess with people on NameMC. Well-played :)

[doodlelesbians]

Martyn can preemptively think of what Ren will need; he's just always so prepared. He doesn't need Ren's communication about stuff like getting them gear for colder weather or what foods Ren's picky about or getting him the materials he'll need next. Martyn is just so on top of things like that, and Ren becomes used to it, not having to push himself and having everything be easy. Ren hides behind his fancy words and over-the-top demeanor so often to avoid being honest.

Martyn's self-deprecation lets him tend to all of Ren's needs up until the ones relating to him. He can't conceptualize that Ren would need him to be safe, to be happy, to be by his side. The idea that anyone could feel that way about him is silly to him so he dismisses it.

Ren is left scrambling. He doesn't know how to communicate what he wants to Martyn because he's never had to do it before. It makes him angry because suddenly, Martyn isn't doing his Martyn thing of making Ren happy! Why wouldn't Martyn do that? That's what he's supposed to do! That's what he always does! It's unfair that he's not doing it now!

[salemoleander]

I don't know how it felt when Third Life started, but I like to imagine Secret Life feels a little like those first few sessions.

Not that we can ever get back to that naiveté! BUT. Idk if it's the silliness of the tasks or the generous game-ified rewards or Gem & Mumbo & Lizzie but it all just feels so new.

This is the first Life Series where they could actually defeat the Ender Dragon. Beat the game. Leaving aside any meta or lore or whatever- consider how special is it that they can win the original battle, the core goal of Minecraft, together.

This world is gentle - I know it lacks regen, but is it so terrible to be cautious? To have time and reason to go slow?

Food is abundant. Plentiful passive mobs, and a way via spawn eggs to get more. There are berries and pumpkins, and cherry and dark oak and mangrove trees, not generated but kindly placed. A mesa and a jungle and a savannah and a plains and a jungle - so many biomes to choose from.

The tasks so far are silly, kind - puns, pranks, nicknames. Building homes near each other. Poetry. Trust falls. What does it say that the worst task is simply to dig a hole?

They can gift hearts for free! And 30 hearts a person! A creeper blew up right behind Scar, and this time he lived. They are all so strong here.

With a way of getting more health, and the barrier to death so high... I'm sure the CCs have their plans, but per the world we know right now: no one has to die. There's an impossible, wonderful sense that this time could be different.

[huggywuggysuppy]

Obsessed with PICS (pearl/impulse/cleo/scott) and how absolutely dysfunctional they are. BEGGING to fall apart in the messiest breakup and make it everyone else’s problem.

Dissection on why:

Pearl is obviously suffering under scott/cleo’s usual pressure, especially their disregard for her side of the story. When she’s like “yeah double life was awful for me, it was a win at what cost” they just brush it off as character development. Impulse doesn’t back her up at all either. Soup Group for life, but not in Life Series. Logically, she knows she works well and lives long with these people, but it always costs her emotionally. She’s just not comfortable around any of them. In the breakup, Pearl would probably go to BigB, Gem, or Tango, as they’ve all treated her with constant kindness in the past. It’s only a matter of time before she leaves.

Impulse is in a weird place. Him and Scott were buds in Secret, but it was more of a coworker relationship held together by Gem. Impulse tried to cut him loose during tag, but Gem shot it down (“are you breaking up with me?!”) They were also spontaneously allied for a bit in Limited, and betrayed by Martyn together, but again that’s more coworkery than real bonded. Impulse has betrayed Cleo, who holds a grudge forever, and will have to spend the whole series trying to make up for that. He’s got a fondness for Pearl, but nothing concrete. He canonically doesn’t remember the other series while the other three (winners) do, so there’s that angle too. Impulse isn’t in danger, there’s just no real loyalty. If I had money on it: if he’s not taken in the divorce he ends up with Skizz again.

Cleo doesn’t want to be with Impulse and Pearl. Scott and Cleo are chosen soulmates and would probably stick together post divorce, but they are definitely beefing with the other two. Cleo has a clear and loud grudge against Impulse and wouldn’t mind cutting him off immediately. As for Pearl, Cleo is uncomfortable naming Pearl’s new wolf, as they understand just how much weight that carries. Cleo knows that PICS is almost certainly gonna fall apart, and is already dreading what they’ll have to do. They might even have to kill it themselves, as they’ve tried with many of Pearl’s other dogs. Others have pointed out and I repeat here: Pearl only kills Cleo when they’re not allied, Cleo kills Pearl when they are. If and when the breakup happens, Cleo will be the first to walk away, maybe dragging Scott with them.

Scott knows all of this. He’s perceptive and likes making power moves and will set up contingencies and alliances in preparation for the breakup, which will only speed up the process. More unconsciously, he hasn’t forgiven Pearl for double life either (ex: powdered snow comment). As I’ve mentioned, he and Impulse have some unresolved distrust from their professional coworker relationship in secret. Scott’s mostly chill with Cleo, but if they don’t officially stick together then all bets are off (ex: limited, secret). I expect him to struggle a bit post breakup, as he usually leans on strong day one alliances he can put his back to.

This is the interpretation from lore!! The actual creators are clearly having a blast with things. And honestly, that just makes it better. They are storytellers and I have faith they’ll pick the best one. Personally, I’m rooting for the breakup.

[mossy-cobble-slab]

(Rotating @space-princes-posts 's Joel post and the empathy for the reds thing in my head. Thank you for that.)

Hes such a protective character in general, especially of underdogs (like the reds in secret life +Jimmy at all times) and his teammates. You dont get to see it for the first few seasons because hes more or less solo, but its so obvious as a defining trait later on. In WL he always responds to people asking for help in combat. The number of times he turns around and goes back to fight when hes trying to escape the trial chamber because Grian is calling for him in a panic. Also the moment in the mobs episode when the Bamboozlers come for shelter and he throws himself into trying to fight the mobs off of all of them rather than staying in the safe house (car) himself. Same with Jimmy and the ravager in the finale - who was trying to kill him with it by the way. Not that that matters to Joel, just look at the bridge incident. It was so clearly bait, but he still let himself be led into an obvious trap because Etho played at needing someone to fight for him.

Fighting for his allies means more to him than his life. In WL he tells Gem if Pearl kills her he'll kill himself until hes low enough to legally kill Pearl over and over til shes out. He was going to kill himself for Jimmy in LimL.

He doesnt really want it reciprocated either, the sacrificial element. Hes happy for it to be his role and no one elses. In his last few minutes in LimL he refuses to take Grians time even though he'll die without it. And Im always thinking about his ending in SL when he thinks hes killed Bdubs and hes really frantic about it, then he realises he hasnt, then he realises he should have cuz it was his only chance to beat Scott - he dies and says that it may have been the smart thing to do but hed never have done it, not to his teammate.

By the end of WL, even loyalty doesnt seem to need to be reciprocal for him to honour it. The Etho situation is obvious - never punished. But Joel also never even considers breaking ties with the Bamboozlers for killing him (and continuing to try to), but does consider breaking ties with Grian (which would hugely disadvantage him) for killing them.

He's not great at making allies, he prefers to make enemies, but if you get him as your ally you know hes ride or die. Ride and die mostly. And a lot of the time you dont even have to do anything more than act like you need help. The only time he ever betrayed an alliance was all the way back in 3rd life, when he allied with Dogwarts to fight the Crastle, then betrayed and fought Dogwarts too. But I don't think thats even out of character. Dogwarts werent the underdogs. They were the overdogs, the big controlling faction. And Joel loves to hate an overdog.

[boxesblr]

*fighting the 'Etho doesn't care about Bdubs as much as Bdubs cared about him' allegations from the highest tower that I built and stand alone in on the hill I will die on, the people closing in from all sides*

I GET IT. I FEEL THE SAME WAY. I just think that Etho feels Bdubs loyalty is slightly too close to pity especially when he never wavers in it despite Etho not giving him reason to. To trust your friends, to believe in your friends, it can't be absolute fact - you have to hold space in your heart for doubt.

*kicks someone from the ramparts*

It can be both true that Bdubs gives Etho his undying love in a way that doesn't feel returned, and that Etho does return that love in his own way (which happens to be more logical and less self sacrificial). The out of context Siken quote "if you love me...you don't love me in a way I understand", it's both of them! It's someone who keeps hearing "I owe you everything" (Bdubs) AND who thinks that it's not true and is tired of hearing it (Etho).

*pulls a sword from a body and turn to stab someone approaching from behind*

It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It doesn't mean it feels fair. I ask myself frequently why they both act this way. But how much Bdubs cares about Etho is just as much about who Etho is as it's about who Bdubs is. You can't separate who Etho is from how Bdubs cares about him. And Etho is someone that cares. He does. I said I was gonna die on this hill and I meant it.

*jumps into the crowd of people below, duel-wielding daggers*

[cattimeswithjellie]

Curses

Curses

What if Secret Life was not about the breaking of curses, but about the twisting of them? Like, sure, you broke the curse, but did you _really_ break it?

Consider:

Jimmy, the Canary Curse. Sure, he didn't die first this time, but he still died at the beginning of the mayhem, warning the server with his death that bad things were happening.

Skizz, cursed to miss the end. He survived into the final episode at long last... but it was a double episode, and he was out very early in the second session. He still missed the end and had to watch his friends go on without him.

Grian, cursed to bring death to his friends. He managed to not actually kill any of his allies this season, well done there. But he still outlived all his allies again, if only by moments, and by sending Cleo out of the cave instead of calling her to hide in the bug-out tunnel with him, he may have condemned both of them to death alone.

Joel, cursed to red madness. He managed to keep his head and hold onto his alliance this time around... but he still murdered his close ally by accident and died senselessly from a crushing buildup of errors he should've been able to avoid.

And Scott, blessed to have winning alliances, well. The Cherry Blossoms didn't eke out a win, that is for sure. But Scott claimed that Scar stopped being his ally, not the other way around. Someone he'd considered an ally did win the game.

Something fundamental changed in the nature of the games with this installment. Something has woken up, something is paying _attention._ Something took everything we thought we knew and gave it a little twist and put it back on the table. It'll be very exciting to see what the next game looks like.

[the-somwthing]

Welcome to my little meta analysis essay called

Why do we misremember Flower Husbands as being “nicer” than it was?

Disclaimer: I’m not here to talk about whether or not FH is “toxic” or anything like that. It’s just a fact that many old fans rewatching FH POV and new fans who are watching it for the first time after seeing fan content tend to be surprised at how they actually behaved in the series compared to how everyone remembered them being back in the day. This will NOT go over whether or not I think FH is unhealthy or whatever and instead just discuss why I believe this phenomenon has happened.

So, if I try to make this a fancy well written essay, I’ll be here all day, so I’ll just get to the point. 3rd Life came out during the DSMP era of mcyt. MCRP has been around for ages, but the DSMP style of RP (which I’ll be calling “smp rp”) was pretty much popularized by DSMP, mostly towards the end of 2020. For reference, 3rd Life started early 2021, so there’s about a half a year between these two events, and DSMP kept going for years so 3rd Life was absolutely happening during the golden era of DSMP.

But what does DSMP have to do with this? Well, it sort of created this idea of “lore” and only specific things being “canon”. You can make fun of me for the way I worded that, but you know what I mean, DSMP was weird about that stuff. I don’t really blame them as it was kind of a new style of RP they accidentally spawned, but still, it was a confusing time for SMPs.

3rd Life was actually less like DSMP and more like the modern SMP RPs, where there’s no (known, lol) scripted events and the fandom itself deciphers what is or isn’t “canon” rather than it being told to them, with mostly everything being considered canon. HOWEVER, I do believe that DSMP’s style did still affect the fandom, specifically with the topic of this essay, Flower Husbands.

But why would it only really affect Flower Husbands? Now we get into a rough topic: shipping discourse. Back in those days, shipping in the mcyt fandom was heavily frowned upon. Moreso than it is today (I know it’s still around, but it was a lot worse the earlier we go lol). I’ve even seen old relics of ppl saying flower husbands should only be portrayed as platonic cuz it’s wrong to ship them, despite their team name literally being husbands. But more importantly, for A LOT of people, flower husbands was the One Ship people felt “allowed” to ship, BECAUSE it was canon. So they would allow FH and shun every other ship.

My point isn’t actually that, with it being the only “acceptable” ship everyone tried to make it more wholesome, though I suppose that could be a contributor. But my ACTUAL point is where all the things I laid out finally close in on each other:

Ships were a Dangerous territory in mcyt fandom, and ships being “canon” was something a lot of people weren’t prepared to deal with. People don’t want to get too close to RPF territory, but back in the day their ideas of c! vs cc! wasn’t as great, so they default to the DSMP Rule of “if it’s stated to be roleplay, then it’s canon to the characters, if not, it’s noncanon and just the CCs hanging out”.

You see where I’m going with this? When trying to follow this rule for a character relationship where they don’t explicitly state what is or isn’t RP, they hear “we’re married” and instantly mark that as canon to the characters since it clearly isn’t true to the CCs, and tend to block out anything else, otherwise you’re risking it not actually being true to the characters. Especially when it’s things like Scott saying something mean about Jimmy; that directly contradicts the “these characters are in love” thing, so it must not be canon, right?

But wouldn’t people still remember that these things happened, or did they actually straight up not process any of it? My answer to that is: of course everyone was paying attention, but with the context that it’s the CCs playing a video game, all of the teasing and other behavior seems WAY less serious. It just looks like average friends playing a hunger games smp together. And as I explained earlier, the fandom was ONLY processing this as a CC thing, so Scott’s treatment of Jimmy never stood out because that’s just how it is playing games.

Back to DSMP, I’m not active in that fandom anymore but I’ll see snippets sometimes, and I’ve seen the claim that beeduo was actually boring in canon and the fandom was the one that made it interesting. I feel like this is exactly what happened with FH. Nobody was actually expecting anyone to go hard into romantic roleplay, so the fans just take whichever pair says they’re getting married and fill in the blanks themselves. And that was normal back then, it wasn’t fans making stuff up for no reason, it was kind of expected of us.

So yeah, I personally believe that this whole confusion about FH is a result of its time. Whether you want to finally look at the actual substance of the relationship rather than following weird rules about what is or isn’t “canon”, or you believe that since FH was from a time where romantic RP was confusing and weird it would make the most sense to take into account the time period it came from and ignore the less appealing bits in favor of the fanon, I don’t really care honestly. But man isn’t this an interesting situation.

[endbuster]

A lot of people have been speculating about each session bringing back a twist from a previous series, and while I've mostly seen people talking about potential soulmate pairs for session 3, I was wondering how the Limited Life gimmick could possibly be incorporated into the series.

Because Limited Life used time instead of lives, the progression through the colors and the players' willingness to kill and be killed were wildly different compared to the normal format. You could try to incorporate some system that gives each player an amount of time based on the number of lives at the end of session 3 (6 lives = 24 hours, 5 = 20 hours, etc.), but because these timers would likely only last for a single session, the hard time limits of Limited Life wouldn't be nearly as daunting. After all, if the timer is just going to change back to a regular life system in the next session, having a low timer at the end of the session isn't a problem.

Lives would also be an issue in a hypothetical Double Life soulmate twist in session 3, because players haven't been paired since the start of the series, so there's no guarantee that soulmates would have the same number of lives. Since everyone's still on green, that's hardly a big deal, but with the punishment for a failed boogeyman being dropping to red, they must have at least considered the possibility that someone could be on red by the end of session 2. In that case, would the person they got paired with stay on their green life, or would they also drop down to red? If everyone kept the same number of lives they had previously, what would happen if your soulmate died on red and left you behind? Do you just.... not have to deal with the soulmate gimmick for the rest of the episode?

I'm sure whatever I predict will get proven wrong when the next episodes come out, but I think that any future gimmicks that do get implemented won't be exactly 1:1 with the series they originated in. We already got different wording on the boogeyman in session 2, so even if we are doing a tour through the past gimmicks, there's no reason they'd be implemented in their original form.

Or, alternatively, all of our speculation is over nothing and they just added the boogeymen as a little surprise, because moving to a new version of the game with a regenerated world every session is honestly gimmick enough without repeating every other gimmick in the series history.

[ancientcity]

Martyn's color has always been yellow.

Maybe lime if we're being generous (or being literal), but there's just so much to be said about the medieval depictions of yellow and Martyn himself.

(Pastoureau, Michel. "Yellow: The History of a Color". pp. 111)

In Martyn's "Limited Life Behind The Scenes and Watcher Lore Q&A" video (39:00), he mentions that "it was always a plan in third life to potentially betray Ren".

This is exactly what yellow calls out: a warning. Something to watch out for.

(Hidden beneath the reds and blues of his coral in Limited Life, he finally got the betrayal he wanted.)

(Pastoureau, Michel. "Yellow: The History of a Color". pp. 116)

In the excerpt above, Pastoureau mentions a "treacherous vassal dressed in yellow". This is seen underneath the layers of red in his original Red Life skin. And, by pledging his loyalty to Ren, I would think he'd be a vassal of some sort, despite (usually) being of equal standing.

(Pastoureau, Michel. "Yellow: The History of a Color". pp. 216)

In this last image, Pastoureau tells us that yellows (in an environment that can support this) can "convey a feeling of anguish, sadness, or abandonment." Especially at the end of Last Life, he felt all three of these feelings. Martyn's also been a bit of a loner, wanting to explore the world every time he spawns in. Despite this, he finds ways to brighten up any space he walks into. Whether it be with a joke, or just with Martyn being himself.

He's the embodiment of yellow and everything it stands for.

Martyn's color has always been yellow.

[salemoleander]

After seeing these generous lifespans/regen chances, and keeping the Secret Keeper and Evo symbol in mind, imo the only way to keep this from going past Christmas is to make the secret tasks start being things like 'push someone into lava' or 'kill the next player who says your name'.

Which is of course a delightful way to up the ante! However, given all that...

I really hope Grian has considered and is prepared to roll with:

The Secret Keeper is going to start asking for crueller and crueller things.

What happens if a significant number of Players try to rebel or destroy it? *

I understand if it just ends up being a mechanical macguffin! I won't even really be disappointed! But I'm crossing my fingers that he might be prepared for if the story builds to a non-Player antagonist.

To be clear, I don't want an entirely external antagonist for the whole series! I like the complicated motivations the Life games require if they're voluntary rather than some Watcher trap (apologies Martyn). However, consider:

A single season where this particular Life server houses an insidious and monstrous rock that commands people to hurt each other for life and prizes. **

* Yes Scott defied Boogey in LL, and the Divorce Quartet defied their soulmates in DL. But the source of these curses/ impositions have never had a physical, in-game form, and that may understandably spark new reactions. In this case, it feels like a good GM would be prepared for the players to want to bounce off that antagonist.

** This would also be neat to me as a canonization of the Life series taking place on different worlds each time, that have seemingly-innate rules or properties that differ from vanilla. Fun bit of worldbuilding there.

[huggywuggysuppy]

Life Series winners decide the next season’s gimmick

I’ve seen this fun fan idea floating around and here’s my take on it

Grian: Ability to actually pledge a life to someone. Everything that happened in 3rd was due to his ep1 pledge to Scar, so this time if he makes a mistake he can actually give a life and move on. The Boogeyman was also added to more clearly delineate greens into passivity, since Grian’s green bodycount was so high.

Scott: Actually tie everyone together in alliances and go down with his teammate. His victory was one of vengeance for Pearl, and he didn’t want to be the last one standing again. Of course, that didn’t really work out as he planned. From a more manipulator perspective, he also wanted to see what the dynamics would be like.

Pearl: Didn’t have enough time to work things out with Scott in double life, they were interrupted by red chaos, so designed one where you could fight and make mistakes and die and still have time to fix things. She didn’t exactly rebuild any bridges with GGG, but it gave them all time to process.

Martyn: Wanted everyone to be aware of the Watchers and how they’re controlling everything. He’s been strung along for so long and winning Limited was the last straw. The Secretkeeper put a face to the evil, and now everyone’s aware there’s something more here.

Scar: Wanted everyone to understand what it feels like to be tripped up every episode and pulled around by the whims of the Watchers. The tasks gave some semblance of control (rerolling) but the wildcards are inevitable and crushing. Scar was railroaded into villainy, gaining the hostility of the server, and now he’s demonstrating that it’s out of anyone’s control. Even Grians

[worldsworststairs]

MASSIVE SL SPOILERS

There's something so poetic about scar winning this one if it truly is the last one of these they're doing (doubt it, but the possibility is there). Because like. Scar was the first monster the life series made, arguably. Him being red and antagonizing in third life I feel like truly set the path for what the rest of the series would be? And then his red skin this time intentionally being a callback to his last life skin, the season that felt most like he got "screwed over"- alliance fell apart, stayed alone, lost it all- matching this season where he turned an inability to form alliances into I think the thing that saved him at the end gaslight gatekeep girlboss style. It just feels GOOD. RIGHT. An end of an arc. Not even mentioning the kill on Cleo and probably like a million things I'm missing now but GOD. This was a good win. This was a good end.

[riacte]

Um hii so I may have something to add to the "duo name" discussion going on.

Fanmade duo names are generally established to separate them from shipping. Which is a good idea and we should continue to make an effort to tag shipping. But you know what else is a fanon concept? Not the idea of two CCs being good friends irl, but the fannish idea of shipping their characters. (Excluding CCs who are married / together). So instead of coming up with fanon names for platonic duos who are friends irl, I think we should come up with fanon names for the fannish concept of shipping (who are not together irl / whose characters are not together).

I'm not into QSMP so I cannot speak for that side and I know y'all have a different shipping culture, so this is more for hermitshipping / trafficshipping.

I can't verify this statement but in this post, OP mentions Joe and Cleo didn't want a duo name because they felt like a word + duo couldn't represent their years of friendship. And I can imagine this to be true for many duos especially in HC, which has been going on for so long. Instead of trying to “define” friendship with a word, we can shift the focus to making up a fan name for the fannish concept of shipping them.

Case study 1: Renchanting / Treebark

The ideal scenario: CCs make their own canon platonic name, shippers make their own fannish name for shipping. Treebark is a pun, it's vague, it doesn't overtly mention Ren or Martyn or their brands, and like the more niche duo names, you need to put in effort to understand what this means. Which makes it perfect for shipping in the sense we try to "hide" it. I know people have said it can be frustrating when you see a new duo and don’t know what it means, but I think it’s okay for ship names because they are by design meant to be obscure. You have to make an effort to look for it and understand what it means.

Case study 2: Convex / Cubscar (Ranchers / Solidaritek (?) also goes here)

I think it's called Cubscar based on Cubscar Week? Anyways, a slightly less ideal scenario than Treebark but still very very good. Canon name for platonic stuff, name mashup for romantic stuff. Less elegant that Treebark but it works so who cares. If it works, it works.

Case study 3: Flower Husbands

FH is different in the sense it’s a canon romantic ship and the CCs made the name themselves. I guess FH is still used for platonic but romantic FH would probably be best tagged with shipping to differentiate it.

Case study 4: Rendoc (aka. is this platonic or romantic or what) (Renskall also goes here)

Rendoc is like FH but?? It’s both a ship name and a duo name?? SHIPrendoc? They made it themselves hello?? Rendoc has been around long enough that we just use it for whatever. Like FH, romantic Rendoc should probably be tagged with shipping.

Case study 5: Fress / Stresskall

Long established ship names that sometimes gets used for platonic because it’s faster and we don’t have canon names (at least I think we don’t?). At least I use it for platonic too. It’s different from Rendoc / Renskall in the sense we don’t get a “haha yes ship us” from the CCs. And I think we have enough common sense to tell whether a post is meant to be shippy or not. Eg. “YESS FRESS CRUMBS IN NEW EPISODE!” (about canon platonic interaction), “omg fress in your au is so cute” (depends on context? What’s the AU?), “I think Fress should kiss” (overtly romantic).

These dynamics in particular have been around long enough that it feels weird trying to make a duo name for them (like Jleo). Like, I would rather call platonic Stress+Iskall with Stresskall than, fuckass allium duo or whatever. If it’s tagged with shipping, it’s meant to be seen as shipping. In the absence of canon names, sometimes using name mashups is faster and more efficient.

There are of course exceptions for everything: eg. Desert Duo is well established enough and it’s a good contrast to Scarian. But I think for more niche duos / ships, we can kind of get away with using name mashups? In the absence of canon names?

But I think name mashups are still seen as inherently shippy because that’s how other fandoms make their ship names. (Ironically one of my ships have the name “sniper duo” which is unrelated to mcyt duoification I promise, and is more used descriptively instead of as a tag) So we have to be careful with how we present name mashups especially in public spaces…?

I still think it’s better than making up duo names that few understand. And I think we should reserve our obscure names for the more obscure act of shipping instead. If it’s difficult to find out what it means, why not make it difficult by design? The name mashup tells you who they are, but the obscure ship name tells you explicitly it’s romantic. I know it’s hard trying to twist your thought process the other way because we’re so used to name mashups being for shipping (in other fandoms), but idk I just think it makes sense for fan names to be made for entirely fanmade concepts. And non fanmade concepts (friendships) can stay the way they are. Idk just some thoughts.

[sweet-like-salt1]

i think there’s this really interesting imbalance between what the fans vs ccs vs algorithm want from the life series and i’m wondering if i should try to write something about it