Read, reblog, and resonate!
So this weekly theory inspired by one of @/cocoabats art post, that explores how Pearlescent Moon and GoodtimewithScar are eerily similar is Double Life and Secret Life respectively. Besides both being the victor for each of their respective seasons, both Pearl and Scar share a plethora of similarities that closely link their storylines, character develops and relationships.
This theories stems from the fact that both Scar and Pearl in both of their respective series are considered alone and isolated from their suggested and initial allies. Pushed away by their alliances from their own destructive actions that torn their passive reputation and ruined any other teaming with the surrounding participants. From adventuring that lead to the seperation from her soulmate to the progressively antagonsitic tasks given by the Taskmaster, every action done lead to stumble upon stumble. Causing both Scar and Pearl to be outcasts and acting as the antgonist or local-mad(wo)man.
Through other external factors, Scar and Pearl began on their downward spiral towards insanity and bloodlust. One driven to madness from the loss of a beloved and sleep and the other prodded and pressured to act sadistically towards others. Eventually forming fragile bonds with remaining contestants but when it came to the final duels, they overcame victoriously. Soaked in the blood of the deceased.
One final similarity between Pearl and Scar is the final duel between these two contendors in the season of Secret Life. As both Peral and Scar commenced the determining battle, Pearl just fell into a nearby crevice. Ending her journey and Secret Life and commencing Scar as the next victor. Similar to Grian's death back in Third Life and could be seen as a symbol of a purposeful sacrifice for Scar. An act of remorse for the fallen to the newly crowned, Scar.
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new life series came out yipe
Art post referred to : https://www.tumblr.com/cocoabats/753004871276544000/the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same
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.
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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.
Aight ranting time, can we appreciate how revolutionary Double Life was for the Life Series fandom.
The introduction of the soulbound mechanic introduced another potential method to interact and collaborate with different members of the community. In the previous canon Life Seires, most alliances were built of the members previously collaborating or being close friends (for majority of alliances, and this is not discounting that all the participants of the Life Series weren't already friends), but with the randomized pairing of Double Life, it forced new collaborations and interactions. Resulting in the mechanic transferring into the fandom's version of their Double Life, Woven Life.
Involving dozens of participants from authors, artists and animators such as rusty_courage, cherrifire, xmaruu, kitsuneisi, mudboowl etc.
(Non RPF)
But what stirred up the fandom into an absolute frenzy was the shipping potential of Double Life. We had Box Boys (Ren and BigB), the Homewreckers (Bdubs and Impulse) which were previously a ship in Hermitcraft and the Divorce Quartet (Pearl, Martyn, Scott and Cleo) which were pretty substanial new pairs but don't scale to the sheer amount of popularity the subsequent pairing recieved/s.
We got Scarlet Pearl which is not a ship but a fan favourite persona with her pairing with Tilly.
We got Boat Boys which are Joel and Etho which was a due no one initially expected but blew up to the fascinating dynamic they had.
Then we got Desert Duo again after the escapades of Third Life which produced lore upon lore of angst and tension which further fueled the shipping train for Scarian.
And finally we got the Ranchers, Team Ranchers or Rancher Duo consisting of Tango and Jimmy. Another pair the fandom did not expect but are instantly attached to. The amount of potential and ideas from this duo grew in number from their light-hearted dynamic to the angsty moments in the subsequent sessions was intense. Lore-wise, their pairings were eventually reunited during the Hermits x Empires Crossover in Season 9.
So basically Double Life was big for the Life Series fandom.
LESSGO PURPLE PANDERS FOR THE DUB
lessgo Fwhip with the aiming and Pearl for her second win in a row
So this Life Series theory is that Gem's and Lizzie's substitution as Cleo and Pearl respectively were a sort of testing by the Watchers for new contestants in Limited Life.
For some context, in session six, Limited Life, ZombieCleo and PearlescentMoon were unable to participate in that particular session and so GeminiTay and LDShadowLady substituted for them resulting in many shenanigans and deaths.
So this theory basically stems from the fact that both Gem and Lizzie become participants in the next season of the Life Series with Lizzie returning for her second season and Secret Life being Gem's first official season.
Through the amount of bloodshed, betrayal and overall chaos harvested throughout Limited Life, the Watchers decided to run a small experiment. To test new contestants without any context and transport them to the confined world of Limited Life and see how well they would adapt and generate chaos that the Watchers could feed of. So then these two subjects were Gem and Lizzie who sprouted and developed seeds of chaos by Gem being the Canadian gremlin she is and Lizzie with the Grian kill.
The Watchers deemed their presence worthy to summon them to the next installment of the Life Series, Secret Life.
So this theory is basically how Real Life is Third Life created by the Watchers as a punishment for Grian and his group of friends or the other contestants.
After the success of the previous Life Series games that provived enough pain, anguish and drama to satisfy the Watchers, they decided to create a rendition of Third Life to torture Grian once again as afterall by lore standards, it was Grian who first created Third Life.
The twist the Watchers decided to implace onto Real Life where to incoporate compeititors such as Pearl who had a persona who would be easily influenced by bloodlust and dispose of the competitors that they had deemed too weak or ineffecient. This was all done in an attempt to replicate the feeling of torture and anguish at Grian and the other original contestants during Third Life.
But this ultimately failed as Real Life ended quickly through the combined efforts of the contestants crowning Cleo as the new victor. Completing the sextet of winners all linked together through their soul-link bonds. And having the Watchers fail in their endeavour to replecate Third Life as another death game punishment.
lessgoo pearl first mcc winnn the Cyan Coyotes
taken from Pearl's stream
So the members who currently interact and talk with Grian from the members of Evolution SMP include Jimmy (Solidarity Gaming), Martyn (InTheLittleWood), BigB (bigbst4) and Pearl (PearlescentMoon). And these listed people (their online personas ofc) all have connections and links to the lore of the Life Series and more specifically the Watchers who also originated from the Evo Smp who then migrated to the Life Series (Secret Life).
My theory is that through their efforts of the attempted retrival of Grian and restorement of Evo after the Ender Dragon fight, the Watchers cursed them with their curses revealing or unearthing themselves during the Life Series.
These curses include :
Jimmy - The Canary Curse, (a curse set into a player's code to remind them of the tradegy they bring and the warnings they provide)
Martyn and Pearl - Insanity (a curse brought upon those who protected the weak idk)
BigB - A Tragedy Upon Those Around Them (the curse for the one who cared too much)
A note for Martyn is that his insanity only occurs momentairily and in bursts when compared to Pearl because of his connections to the Listeners who rescued him during the stage when the curse was becoming permanent in the code. Only altering the curse to happen in weaker bursts and sporadically.
Adding into headcannony ideas, the curses established cant be removed either manually from an admin or a defective Watcher. This is because the curse or the code was established so long ago thats its been incorporated and permanetly embodied in the player's code.
So ye the curses of Evo on the remaining members. :D