#so he will deny it and say he doesn't know what Martyn is talking about

[notsogoodangel]

Well, people seemed to like my Martyn-QSMP Au, so I'm here to share more. Have some Martyn-absolutely-going-into-Morning-Crew-time-slot, Martyn and Phil tapping into their roots as *shivers* Northerners, a possible Forever-Martyn meeting, the Miku-on-Miku communication and a bonus I developed before this AU which is why he doesn't have his feathers.

Also, please suggest ideas on how to name this AU/tag.

[jellieland]

The thing is, it doesn't actually make any difference, really.

It doesn't.

What's the difference between a fistfight and a blade?

Between three axe strikes and one?

More blood. More pain. Nothing but drawn out suffering.

And they can all say what they like about him, but they can't deny that he wanted it to be over.

All day he lies and lies and lies, he deflects and backstabs and smooths things over, and over, and over again, and it works, and there are no consequences, because the world is not fair.

They suggest a fair fight. All of them swinging at each other in a mess of random chance, once Scott has thrown away his hard earned time, the time he tore from those who he killed, those who are gone, and Martyn has done the same.

They won't like that.

They won't like that.

They would find that boring.

...

...He would find that boring, actually.

They plan it out and talk it over and he stews in it, heart pounding in his ears, and he lies to them, as he often does.

He's angry. He's so angry.

At Impulse - doesn't he know they need to keep things interesting? There's already so much that repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and now he wants a rerun of finale number one. They're not friends, they're not Scar and Grian. Why should they give this up for each other? Why would they? Who is he to demand that they do?

At Scott - what does he think this is? He won. He won, all he had to do was take it, and it would have been over, and Martyn could have fought back without a second thought, with the knowledge that he could never win. But no, he has to be defiant as he always is, as though it's easy, as though it does anything at all in the end other than hurt.

No.

This is easy.

The power of friendship does not win in the end, because it never does. With the way the world works, it never will. Whether he gave it the chance to or not is irrelevant.

It feels good, too - wild and furious and unrestrained.

Time tastes sweeter when there's no-one left to hear you scream about it.

And finally, finally, the blood on his hands is honest.

...

He's not won. Scott won, and Scott threw it away.

Who cares, though. What does it matter.

What will it ever matter.

He was angry at Scott, and he was angry at Impulse, and now he has stabbed them both in the back and he stands and he stares, and the fury curls back into its familiar knot inside his chest.

And the world kills him.

And he is angry at that most of all.

[katalyist]

I'm gonna ramble my thoughts about secret life focusing in the watcher lore for a moment. Apologies if I skip or don't remember something the way it happened.

So, everyone saw this symbol, it is literally The Watchers symbol from Evo now here in the life series, we already knew from Martyn's lore they were involved in the games, but now they are making their presence clear for everyone. And a lot of people has pointed out already how it looks and details like the sky getting darker, so I would try to not talk a lot about that part.

One of my theories is that they are getting more greedy and impatient with the emotions they collect from the games and this is a easy way to collect them, when someone fails a tasks they have to go to them and said they fail, with people watching their failure and it would bring negative emotions, something like a 'public humiliation' under their sight.

Other is that, they are trying to be worshiped by the players, once people start getting yellow and red the supplies they obtain from The Secret Keeper would come more in handy and because you can't ask for help there is really no one you can say thanks other that the weird entity. Besides, we know from Evo how they like the attention being on them, in Evo they made their challenges with regards for everyone, trying to be seen as 'good' for the server, they wanted the server to like them, I don't know if it is their objective here but it is weird appearing after four seasons without a single warning.

Now my favorite part: ✨The Watchers Grian allegations✨ because damn if he doesn't like to do his own lore but loves lore. I think this is the most we have ever seen him directly being the one putting down the rules or throwing them around for the convenience of the Watchers.

Almost 15 minutes into Scar's and his episode Scar fails to do his task because he reveal the secret. Grian tries to help him saying something like "Read it carefully! You may have a chance" before Scar reading it out loud and Grian sounds so defeat when he says something like "I don't think we can let this slide..." because there is no more obvious and direct break of the rules than what Scar did and Grian can't thing on a loophole to save Scar (and I may ramble a little more here but that we didn't sound like "Mumbo and I" but rather "The Watchers and I", but maybe it's me being delusional).

And then once they are in front of The Secret Keeper he decides they could give Scar another chance and rerolled for a harder task and he comments a lot of times how "You know, the rules of this game are always more a suggestion so, who cares", but Grian does care, he cares a lot about the rules of this game even if it doesn't seem likely, he does a vote to let everyone decide if Scar got other chance (just like he did in limited life with the reroll of the Boogeyman) to do a task so Scar rerolls. And almost inmediately after Scar does it Grian explains to him in a simple way all the loopholes that can be use to get his task done and what is allow or not.

And you can tell more later on the episode that Grian stays with that rules, everytime Scar or someone else asks something Grian doesn't deny or affirm anything, not even when Mumbo suggested it could be about pounds like his, Grian always says "It is a secret!", but he would leave other people slide what could be their secret of be too obvious about it. Probably because that, if he is questioned about why the players are disobeying the rules he can excuse in "Well, you never make the rules very clear" but there is no excuse if he disobeys a rule because he knows them very well.

Also I think decisions like letting Scar rerolled or in the past season for the reroll of the Boogeyman aren't just because Grian can, but because if not done could make the serie shorter (in the case of Scar because he wouldn't have gain hearts back and would have been even lower) or less interesting (in the case of the Boogeyman in Limited Life). I see the series having two objectives: provide the high rank Watchers with emotions to feed and to the rest of Watchers (us, the audience) something entertaining to see.

It would also explain why at the end when Grian asked "Did someone fail in their task?" And no one said yes, he repeated the question, almost hoping for someone to have fail because that's what you expect normally on a first episode, someone going yellow, someone failing with the Boogeyman kill and then, because he helped Scar, no one fail the task.

In no co-relation with my other point but with the watcher allegations, is how he talks about The Secret Keeper as 'my' and how he comment "What is people doing?" when he found things in front of it, it reminds me a lot that one time he complained on Evo about people being careless in the spawn and needing to terraform it. Maybe it is just a silly coincidence and I'm looking to deep into it.

Also, something noticiable is how The Secret Keeper looks a lot like The Entity from Hermitcraft season 9, the buttons are very similar from the one in front of the Rift and the system of tasks works a lot like Grumbot Content Generator (at least the normal ones), I just wanted to add that, I love the little details.