My Drawing Of Gem And Joel That I Did For Bluet! We’ll See If She Finds This Teehee.

this is how the bad boys feels to me

This would be a lot but is it possible we could do both the eras tour and do you want to tell a story?

First of all, I’m cracking up at the fact that people are using the silly names I came up for the different genres of zine, thank you. To people who are confused, anon is referring to this poll. To answer your question: I was actually just thinking about this! My plan is basically, given that currently the overwhelming majority of people want to do eras tour, that’s probably going to be the winning one, but, if too many people apply (and I’m still figuring out exactly what counts as too many, but the general idea is : more than the number of smp/worlds that Joel has done to art/write about, but that also depends on who wants to do what and a million other things and honestly it might come down to just looking at a number and then evaluating how much anxiety I feel about modding that many people) then rather than telling people no, we can have people who maybe are less interested in doing a piece based on canon work together to make a story! I’ve been doing some brainstorming on how things can work and how to make this zine the best possible experience for as many people as possible, so here is a vague plan for how things will work:

This next part is extremely important zine info!! Please read it!! I’m looking at you, person about to scroll past!! Read!!

-once we know how many people are going to be participating and who those people will be, we’ll try to get everyone together on a discord server so that I can contact everyone with ease. If you don’t have discord and can’t get it for whatever reason, we’ll do our best to allow you to still participate, but you may have less of a say on what sort of piece you’ll be doing. -From there, hopefully with the help of other mods, I’ll send out like a million bajillion polls (important note: I don’t know how discord works. Everything will be chaotic) to figure out what everyone wants to do, how much structure they want for their pieces, if they want to do something more collaborative or individual, etc, etc.

-Then, me and the other mods will get together and try to figure out a game plan for how everything is going to work. This zine is likely going to be very different from other zines people may have done in the past, because I’m hoping that we go in less with a specific vision of what the end product is going to look like and then assign everyone part of it to make, but rather we go in with just the plan of “let’s create something fun and interesting about this shared interest of ours” and the end result will be a chaotic but passionately made scrapbook of art and writing dedicated to this weird little guy on the internet who makes us laugh and smile and inspires us to create. I’m being very vague, so here’s an example of how I’m kinda envisioning the process to work:

okay, we have X amount of people, and Y amount of them want to do a Joel eras tour zine. A bunch of people want to do a piece for this one thing, and none of them said they were against working with others and many said they were for it, so we’ll offer them the option of doing a scarland-artbook style collaboration on this one thing. The remaining eras people mostly said that they weren’t really interested in collabing with anyone, and we’re not seeing any major conflicts on who wants to do what, so they should be set. Z amount of the people remaining want to work on a story together, and many of them expressed that they had an idea for what to write/draw, so we’ll work with them to figure out the general plot, and make sure that it still stays connected to Joel. There are a few people who don’t really know what they want to work on, or would like to know the options before making a decision, so we’ll work with them to find something their interested in contributing to.

Then we’ll have a mod to monitor each group to help them stay on track within the scope of the zine, and it is my hope that things should be very collaborative for those who are interested in that and open to that, and that its an enjoyable experience and an opportunity to meet other people interested in the same thing.

this doesn’t mean that 100% we’ll be able to do both, but (and this is a little bit personal bias cause I’m definitely most interested in do you want to tell a story) if enough people there are interested in that, then we’ll do our best to make it happen!

-mod Dinn

214-

MY TOAAAD (like goat? get it? ok sorry)

I’ve been working on this drawing for a while and was planning to do a background but kinda lost patience with it lol so uhh here

It for a story I have in my head that is somewhere in the space between an au and headcannons about winner Joel. Also it was really fun imagining what sort of pajamas c!joel would wear. My favorite part is the fuzzy socks, and also yes those are *technically* his swim trunks but whatever he seems like he would wear swim trunks to bed anyway lol. It’s meant to be like him waking back up on Hermitcraft after he won. If anyone is interested in hearing about this au/complicated series of headcannons I will happily ramble!

everyone better compliment me I’m looking at u person reading this I was gonna demand you all notice one specific part but actually I’m proud of all of this. Also he has a Mohawk because Risi is obsessed with bald Joel and I like drawing him with long hair so compromise! /sily also Mohawk oriental-cyberpunk Joel is cool as heck. Also the crown says wild life but tumblr killed the quality.

hey guys who likes wild life *raises hand* I mean really likes it, loves it in fact *raises hand even higher, stands on tippy toes for how high I’m raising my hand* no I mean like loves it is obsessed with it it is your pride and joy *falls over from how high I am raising my hand, stands back up and goes to space with how high I’m raising my hand* yeah but can you prove it by spending 5 hours rendering grass to be almost entirely covered up? *me: bet*

First of all thank you boat boys discord and especially Risi for sponsoring this drawing lol and by sponsoring I mean loudly proclaiming the virtues of gribeans in my immediate vicinity. Anyway yeah they are meant to be standing in front of the bam hill with the wings blocking the top and the sun just peaking over them. Also the words on the explosion are lyrics from the song Don’t You Dare Forget the Sun by Get Scared which inspired the poses

Anyway as soon as I figure out how to draw cars it’s all over for you guys I will project my very specific vision that is essentially a combination of danger days good omens and back to the future onto you all I have so many thoughts!!!!! I will elaborate in the future, I will elaborate so much that you will say “Ian, shut up with your elaborating” and also I have an au based on session seven planned because the superpowers happened to coincide with an overly complex magic system I’ve been developing for about five months now lol slowly in the background. Also maybe an animatic if I can figure that out maybe possibly don’t hold me to that…? At least I know no one will take the song I’m planning to use in the meantime lol because the MCR and trafficblr fandom overlap is fairly small.

what if… dnd au but instead of them being heroes and adventures within the dnd universe, they are just a bunch of nerds playing tabletops rpgs together?

like, Tango is the dm who has spent forever crafting the perfect home brew campaign and is determined to make it the most amazing campaign any of them have ever been part of. He’s got the custom maps and characters figures and costumes and voices and one session he even brings in a fog machine for ambience. He’s like the perfect dm to a bunch of perfectly terrible players who will only encourage each others worst dnd habits.

Etho is the one whose been playing dnd since, like, edition 1, and who shows up to the first session of the campaign and starts describing his character and someone’s like “are you playing kakashi from naruto?” And Etho’s like “oh is that who this is? I just found it premade online and thought it sounded cool” and he’s got the emo backstory and looks real cool but is in reality not actually that good of a character and whoever made it horribly messed up the stat distribution but for some reason he always avoids death and it stuck with the underpowered not-kakashi for forever.

Joel is the murder hobo (it’s a dnd term guys trust) who tries to kill everything who also renames all his spells and weapons on dnd beyond to really silly things and then forgets what they were originally and needs someone to translate for him. He will always make sure things get out of hand, accidentally starting cults, making sure the party is always at least mildly morally gray, killing people left and right, aggressively shipping his character with other peoples jus because. He is the embodiment of chaotic neutral. (He says he is chaotic evil in the life series but I think he is more chaotic neutral because chaotic evil will cause chaos for the sake of evil and chaotic neutral will cause evil for the sake of chaos)

Bdubs is the one constantly trying to befriend everything, who also unnecessarily narrates everything he is doing (ex. “I Am RAISING my EYEBROWS at you!!!!”) and he has a million pets and always makes Tango explain what each one is doing at that moment every five seconds and is constantly yelling at Joel for killing everything while Joel is always yelling at him for befriending everything. He will argue that the dice are rigged if he rolls badly and 100% has one of those dice time out chairs and will be extremely superstitious about which dice he uses.

Jimmy is the one who keeps having really great ideas but really terrible luck with the dice rolls, and always manages to stumble into traps. He’s also the only one trying to actually follow the rules and remain completely in character, like everyone’s like “oh it’s probably over here!” And Jimmy’d be like “yeah WE know that but guys our characters wouldn’t!!!!!!!!” And he’s like the perfect player in terms of how nice and easy he makes it for Tango to dm but is terrible at the actual gameplay. He will loudly boast to the enemy that they are about to “get WRECKED, FOOLS!” And pulls out a spell that should kill them instantly if he rolls anything but a nat 1, and guess what he rolls lol.

Scar is the one whose character dies first session and he just picks up a pen, writes “jr” next to the character name, and shouts “I’ve come to avenge my father!” he’d also name his character something like “Hotstuff McSexyman” (if Joel doesn’t take that name first) but actually be surprisingly wholesome and moral, if kinda bad at combat. Extremely oblivious as a player, Tango has to spell out the answer for each puzzle and he will kill an ally genuinely thinking that it’s an enemy.

Grian is the one playing a firmly non-human character who has just the most normal guy core backstory, like “yeah I’m Clarence, I’m 45 with a wife and kids and I’m going on this adventure to celebrate my retirement.” But he’s like a lizard guy or something

Gem is the one who makes a really nice and sweet and normal dnd character and then combat starts and she takes out a magical great sword powerful enough to one shot the BBEG (it stands for big bad evil guy and it’s real dnd term. Gotta love nerd culture) and rolls a nat 20. She is also the only reliably sane one here (Grian goes about managing his sanity like he does shifts at the permit office, and Etho is sane but his character turns out actually to be pretty ineffective at, like, everything so there’s not much he can do except have the privilege of being driven insane rather than already being so. Everyone else is a maniac, some just their characters but not in real life, some are just as crazy “irl” [as in within the au] as their characters)

there is a lot more that could be done with this and a bunch of other people to include these are just the initial thoughts I had.

doodles from Joel’s most recent gartic phone stream. I can confirm that this all happened, I promise I’m not making this up./gen. Joel smallishbeans, never change.

Boat boysers eating well today. I’m still in shock at the fact that he called Etho babe like okay Jimmy is gonna get jealous. Lizzie is probably chill though I think she’s learned to pick her battles and stopping her husband from queerbaiting the internet is always a losing one /silly. Also happy national haunted refrigerator night! I have no clue what that holiday is about nor what you are meant to do to celebrate, but I know it’s today, so I guess I wish you a fridge full of ghosts, or smthn. I’ve decided to make it my job to always know what national holiday it is because um don’t ask such silly questions. We always need more reasons to celebrate lol.

edit: also sorry for switching art styles every five minutes lol

more boat boys.... I beg ....

Okay, maybe it's a bit unhinged of me but. Performing android Joel from Doc's laundering casino poker thing and science experiment Etho from Gem's base.

my mildly unintelligible incoherent rambling headcannons on the life series but primarily wild life and I had more to say but I had to cut it down lol and I’m mainly posting this for personal reference: (be wary, it is a long post)

Wild life is so fascinating from a lore perspective like in the past it was everyone against everyone else, friendly survival but things were just a little bit off, a little bit desperate, felt a little bit out of control, like maybe something bigger was at work here, but you could look the threat in the eyes and kill it and go home…until you couldn’t. As the strings being pulled turned from invisible twine to neon shoelaces and the hand in the shadows was suddenly the title character and every thing seemed to connect, seemed to end. But it didn’t. The watchers were the center the thumbnail the logo the everything mercilessly piloting the story towards the conclusion they desired, and then it was done, the loop back to the very beginning was made, it was finished. But then it wasn’t. What Real Life and Wild Life have in common is this sort of sense of storytelling absurdity, everything is cut short and brief and it’s silly and horrifying and painful (just to intulude here, I am still discussing everything purely lore wise. The only pain I experienced watching either of those things was sadness when they ended) and suffering doesn’t seem to have a meaning a purpose a quiet dignity anymore it’s April fools and everyone is throwing up and dead their bodies won’t listen won’t function can’t fight cant run but it’s a joke haha there’s no story no rhyme or reason it’s just torture and now the ultimate of random purposeless suffering wild cards they can’t kill each other can’t fight each other because every moment is a struggle to survive as the world itself has turned against them as their bodies betray them as they die in humiliating horrifying ways the very fiber of their being the very core of their world something is terribly terribly wrong it is like the order and rules that bound the life series have broken and the chaos of the void is pouring through drowning the code of the world as the players are ripped to shreds by the avalanche, watching their bodies crumble. It’s like the watchers finished telling their story of perfect and purposeful suffering and then pulled the string holding the knot together. It’s like the life series is a pane of glass that they polished to perfection, punched, and walked away, leaving the shards to slowly shatter as the beauty and horror and chaos and glory that makes up the world spews forth to tear it’s broken remains apart. There will still be the games, but now there is nothing pulling the strings, nothing holding it together. Suffering no longer has a meaning, a purpose, a goal, it is simply suffering. How terrifying must that be to have everything that you are shattering, pieces of you like broken glass strewn about as the void bursts forth to consume the ruins and the wreckage of the world.

We know that life series players are alternate versions of themselves, because while Hermitcraft scar is happily building his zoo in season ten, secret life scar is still out there wandering among the sunflowers. I don’t remember if real life Cleo lived or not, and we don’t know if this season’s winner will live on, but let’s pretend for the sake of this ramble being almost somewhat coherent that both cleo and the new winner live. What happens to the new winner (I’ll get to what happens to Cleo later)? The world is breaking, coming apart at the seams. Each new day brings a fresh horror from the void to try to wipe them out. And what about memories? This is where this strays firmly into headcannon territory, but my personal way of imagining it starts at a fairly ubiquitous jumping off point, the idea that lifers during the games do not have access to their memories, but going upon the alternate versions thing they do not remember the games at all. There is the original player, journeying through smps and servers, and then there is a version of them for each separate life series, shadow copies that they are completely unaware of and unconnected to created by the watchers to play puppets with in their perfect dark fairytale. Each life series is a new copy, because every game the copies all died. Up until secret life. They had had their fun, there was no reason for them to kill off the last one, scar, the winner left alive and alone. The og scar and the secret life scar are not aware of each other because og has no idea about the copy and copy wrongly assumes he is the real scar. He regained all the memories from before of Hermitcraft when he won and the watchers broke the game but the way he understands it is, because again the other life series were other versions of scar, he was on Hermitcraft uninterrupted up until suddenly they were all abducted into this game called secret life and they all were driven insane and killed each other and now he is alone. He can’t leave because the copies are bound to their worlds and doesn’t try to leave because as far as he knows there is no where for him to go. Crucially, again, secret life scar and Hermitcraft scar are two entirely different people.

So let’s imagine for this new winner, living in this horrifying shattered world, there are no more watchers to police memories. The copies are still made, the code is still there, the games carry on, becoming more garbled and twisted with each broken game, so that the copies don’t come out quite right, which explains the movement issues and nausea in real life and the way the wild cards go to the very data of the player and twist it in wild life. So this broken copy wins, and suddenly remembers, just as secret life scar did, all that came before, but the game is even more broken so they remember so much more than that. They see all the lives, every version of themselves. They see themselves after, the version that was never in the games, with their friends, living on. The versions of the friends they know are dead, but alternate, happier, more carefree versions live on with an alternate, happier, more carefree version of themselves. Their friends don’t miss them, don’t know they are gone, because they aren’t. They are alone and trapped on a world doomed to slowly fracture into oblivion. Everything is broken. But they refuse this, perhaps. They rebel. There is nothing tying the world together? Then they will escape through the cracks. They will find this world with the other copies. Real life Cleo, who remembers enough to know that they are are a copy, but the game hasn’t fully broken by real life so she is unaware there were other games. Also I’m realizing now that I haven’t really talked a lot about Cleo but tbh that’s mostly because their character strikes me as someone who is unshakable, pragmatic (this is why I think she and Scott got along so well, they both go at the games with eyes on the prize) who would of course be upset but also be rational, and simply try to make the best out of their life) secret life scar, who still believes that he is the only version of scar out there and that he murdered all of his friends. Both stuck on these worlds alone, but this new winner will break through the walls on these servers, and say come on, we’re here, we’re our own gosh dang people, so let’s go take back our lives. Idk where this goes from there but I headcannon that every real life version of all the players had mobility issues, hence the movement problems, but Cleo is the only real life player left so she’s the only one still experiencing these problems. I also headcannon that the new winner has, well, I haven’t actually figured out the specifics but some sort of residual issues relating to the wild cards and broken code.

this headcannon also introduces some interesting lore ties for Grian, and tbh I haven’t thought to much about how the watcher lore would work in this, well ig this is an au at this point, but if you think about his panic at the end of the most recent session, and that he was able to freeze time, it could be a sort of thing like he is unintentionally the one causing the games to continue being a watcher, but in the past he had no control but now he’s been handed the reins with no instructions and has no idea what to do. All the power and no clue how to use it. This also could lead to some interesting things about watching, because maybe in the past he could watch, could see that they were copies, and played accordingly. He knew the other versions would live on so he resigned himself to a certain extent to death, but now there is no path no clear cut story no string to follow through the dark he can’t see beyond the games and he’s terrified.

anyway that’s like kinda my headcannons idk if anyone will actually read this far but if you did thanks. Also I really wanna write/draw something for this, maybe turn it into a proper au, so if u person who is still reading would like to join me on that endeavor I would love to work with u.

This is for Han specifically (oh my gosh you have no idea how many tries it took to spell specifically lol). Shadowbeans marriage! I decided that they should both wear dresses because dresses are more fun to draw and also I kind of suck at drawing suits.

Sigh… I miss empires. Big fish wife and tiny clay husband.