Weekly Art 13: Parents

Weekly art 13: Parents

Here are the designs of the parents that will appear in the story! Some are more plot relevant than others, but they all help to understand more about this universe

(thanks to @liloinkoink and @cherrifire for allowing us to add their oc's into ddvau<3)

Theories and Headcannons Pt. 22

So new week, new theory about Doc's new poker game and the hermits decided to be used as the monarchs and joker for each type of deck. Innovated from the French-suited playing cards, Doc's poker deck has four suits, diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades, and each suiting having three court cards, King, Queen and Jack. This results in only twelve available spaces considering one hermit takes one court card each and leaves fifteen hermits unable to be represented by the cards. Nethertheless even with the limited representation of the hermits, each cards has its depth and lore.

Starting with the suit of diamond, has Doc representing its King, Gem representing its Queen and Scar representing its Jack. As diamonds is represented as a valuable material considering its bartering and trading value in Hermitcraft, being the main currency for shops, it's reasonable that Doc would be the face of Kings of Diamonds. Gem's reasoning is also obvious due to her talent considering both PVP and her building skills. Finally Scar, being the Jack of Diamonds is poetic due to his bartering (scamming) skills built from his charisma to trade for "diamond" tiered items with common items.

The court of Hearts is a different story considering its representatives are Rendog for the King, Falsesymmetry for the Queen and Bdubs as its Jack. With the symbol of Hearts often depicted as red and hearts in general epitomising the living flesh of a person, Ren as the King is perfect. As RentheKing in Hermitcraft Season Nine and the Red King back in Third Life, Ren deserves the position of King of Hearts. Second to the King of Hearts, is Falsesymmetry, the winner of Season's 10 demise. With hearts also depicting the life and soul of a person, it's also fitting for the winner to recieve the mantle of Queen of Hearts. The final court of Jacks is Bdubs, who in Season Nine of Hermitcraft was the assistant or right-hand man to RentheKing. Resulting in his title of the rank below the King, Jacks of Hearts.

With the court of Spades, majority of its court was already explained by Doc in his previous Hermitcraft 10 episode, (29) with the Jack of Spades being Mumbo, a spoon, Etho being definitively cool and the suit of Spades being objectively cool (in Doc's perspective), and Pearl fitting the role of Queen of Spades. But the reasonings run deeper than this besides Mumbo's spoon reasoning. Take Pearl, the Queen of Spades. Back in Season Nine, she was the Cleaning Lady, taking on jobs of cleaning chestmonsters and other messes with a price. Spades is often linked with the concept of cleaning so it was natural to pick Pearl. The final court card, Kings of Spades, is given to Etho and rightfully so because of his connections to Shade-E-E. Originally Shade-E-E was a "subscription service" and later evolved to a "gardening service" which entailed him using dirt and other blocks to create pixel artworks for the other hermits in saeson seven. And what else is connected to dirt, spades, hence the King of Spades being Ethoslab.

The final suit, Clubs, consist of King of Clubs being Xisumavoid, Queen of Clubs being ZombieCleo and Jack of Clubs being Grian. Although the listed hermits' connections to the suit of Clubs may be vague, there is a connection hidden between the layers of history the deck of cards retains. With majority depictions of a deck of cards using French-suited playing cards, other versions of the standard 52-card deck is found throughout multiple continents with German depications of the Club being an acorn. Acorns also being a symbol of strength and resilience, a trait Xisuma has constantly demonstrated throughout the decade Hermitcraft has been running. Cleo's connections of the suit of Clubs includes her role as an enforcing monarchy, the Queen, with a royal baton otherwise known as a sceptre being a symbol of royalty. Finally, Grian's relation to the Club are the multiple depictions of the suit of Clubs being of a plant. Plants and weeds like the clover and acorns are all edible to a range of bird species, both domestic and wild and with the fandom's collective decision to represent Grian has a human with avian features, it's his connections to birds that create his relationship with the Jack of Clubs.

These twelve court cards all with their representative hermits all have depth and lore leading their portrayal as the monarchs and Jacks of each suit.

---------

So this theory is finally here and I hope it made up for the multiple weeks without theories. Still have to cope with exams but soon I will be free from these shackles.

Stagelight AU

A modern music Lamplight adjacent AU. (Lamplight adjacent in that it uses the loose format of: guy who is powerful and can't talk + guy who will do anything for him). Thank you @liloinkoink @martynsimp69 @ilexdiapason @kingtheghast @honey-daisies and Bird for collective brainstorming this with me <3

Let's meet our guys in this AU!

Martyn is an aspiring musician, previously with the band EVO (though he left when the band signed with Watcher Records). Years later, he now works a pub called The King's Head, but attends the open mic nights hosted by The Burning Lantern down the road. He begins noticing a reoccurring audience member.

That reoccurring audience member is of course Ren Dog. An older man wearing sunglasses at every open mic night. He always sits through Martyn's performances, sometimes he leaves right after, sometimes he sticks around for a while, but he is always there when Martyn plays. Except that one time Martyn played an old rock song from Red King, the guy had left in the middle of that performance, odd.....

And that's where it starts.

Martyn, of course, immediately has his interest piqued. Originally, because there was a very attractive man staring at him intently, but afterwards because of the mystery. Who is this guy? Why does he only leave after hes had a chance to hear Martyn's sets? Why does he never come up and say something? Martyn is aware he's an attractive guy, and the musician look really does it for a lot of people, so he's no stranger to an audience member coming up for a chat after his set.

This guy never does though, so Martyn ends up taking the matter into his own hands. So he devises a little trap. If that man always waited for him to play, then how about using that to his advantage? Trading out his electric guitar for acoustic that night, Martyn delays his set until he is the last act of the night. The moment his last note finishes ringing out from the stage, he sprints down the steps to introduce himself.

Ren though does not react well to this situation at all, staring at Martyn in startled silence and before turning and walking away without a single word.

He eventually finds out Ren's name by asking the employees of the bar. Imagine his surprise to learn that his name is Ren, just like the Renthedog account that has been consistently liking his posts on AUstagram. Even after the disastrous introduction.

So the next time he reaches out to Ren, he tries to take it a bit slower. Making eye contact from the stage, a little wave. Next time he tries to talk to Ren, instead of offering to buy him a drink, he asks if he can get Ren's AUstagram, and with a laugh Ren hands it over.

A flood gate opens from there. For all that Martyn has never heard Ren speak, he sure has a lot to say when it's in writing. They hang out from there, quickly becoming friends. When Martyn finds out that Ren straight up cannot speak, and it wasn't just shyness holding his voice back, he tries to ask why. Ren just gives the vague answer of:

Stage fright, all the world's a stage

Which doesn't really explain anything.

They have a comfortable, distant, but a bit flirty, friendship. Which is something that changes when Martyn finds the photo.

He finds it when cleaning out an old box of stuff. In a box full of high school knick knacks, one of the photos stands out. It's of himself and BigB, they must be 17 or 18, and they're standing with their arms thrown around eachother at some sort of music festival or concert. That's not what gives Martyn pause on it though, it's the singer performing in the background. The face might be obscured by makeup, and time, and the noise of an old photo camera, but its Ren. Martyn is absolutely certain Ren is the one singing in that picture. It clicks what band that is, Red King, BigB’s favorite. Ren, Ren was the lead singer of Red King.

With some digging, he finds out what happened. Red King, a three man rock band, with Lead Singer/Guitarist Ren Dog, Drummer Skizz Leman, and Bassist/Harmony Singer Scar Goodtimes, was one of the bands of all time. Sold out shows, huge tours, the works. Until it suddenly broke up over a decade back because of a scandal involving the lead singer, involving Ren.

Their tour had stopped where Ren's childhood friend Lizzie lived, famous actress Lizzie Shadow, Lizzie. They had been out for dinner to catch up and Ren was driving her home when he took a corner just a little too fast, the car skids, hits a tree, Lizzie's taken to the hospital and suddenly Ren finds his life crumbling around him.

Lizzie had been fine when the paramedics had arrived, told him it wasn't a big deal and that he didn't need to worry about any bad press from this. Cause why would she want to hurt her friend?

But somehow the press does find out, and the person who tipped them off implied that it wasn't a mutual understanding but instead a cover up.

Someone reports that he was drunk when they wrecked (even though he wasnt) and that gets picked up and run with. The constant pregnant rumors that follow Lizzie also get thrown in the mix and whispers of an affair (which again he wasn't, they weren't) get picked up as fact.

Ren figures out pretty quickly it was Scar who leaked the accident, the initial reports had too many details that he'd only told a couple of people. And when he goes to confront Scar about it? Well, Scar's always been able to put on a good performance, it's why Ren had brought him into the band in the first place. To have that acting turned against him though? Used to manipulate the flashing paparazzi cameras so that it looks like Ren is lashing out against his innocent band mate? It makes him wish he'd never met Scar.

The day after that fight with Scar is flooding across the tabloid, they still have to go onto the stage to performing their show.

Ren steps up on stage and sees a sight that will haunt him for the rest of his days. The giant venue, a sold out show, stands almost entirely empty. He tries to push on, tries to sing, but his words get absorbed into the empty silence. And on that silent stage is the last time Ren Dog speaks.

Lizzie speaks out and clears up the scandal after she's leaves the hospital, but its too late for Red King to recover. Skizz returns home to his family, Scar builds a solo career off the stinking corpse of Red King, and Ren fades into the obscurity of a normal, secluded life.

Martyn takes this knowledge and uses it to help Ren on his journey to gain back his voice. They are drawn together by music and fall in love. In the end, Martyn and Ren go on tour together, The King and The Hand, not to become famous, but to travel around and continue to find the joy in music together. Ren is back in the stagelight, but Martyn is the one in the spotlight, and Ren could not be happier for him.

PLEASE ASK ME ABOUT THIS AU IT MAKES ME INSANE AND I WANNA TALK ABOUT IT MORE!!! THERES SO MUCH MORE I COULDNT FIND A WAY TO FIT IN!!!

Where it started: