Ok so I just finished playing Dispatch and I freaking LOVED it! Sooooo I thought it would be fun to combine my two current hyperfixations and make a Hermitcraft Dispatch AU!
Quick overview for those who have never played Dispatch:
In this AU Impulse works as a superhero dispatcher, someone who analyzes a team’s strengths and weaknesses and answers distress calls by the sending the hero most suited to the job. However, he’s been assigned to the Hermit Program, a team of former villains trying to become heroes. To say the least, it’s like trying to herd cats and the office and comm lines are always in chaos when the Hermits show up to work.
More hermits bios incoming to fill out the team roster! :D
There's a fic of before this happened you can read here> Unshed Tears.
Warnings: None
Word count: 4,645
Grian stared up—or maybe it was down, or sideways. He couldn’t tell anymore. Direction didn’t exist here, not in the way it did in the overworld. The void had no up, no down, no horizon to cling to. It was just infinite nothingness stretching into itself. The disorientation was almost a small mercy; it numbed him, blurred the edges of his panic, made it easier to pretend he was just floating through a dream.
A dream where he wasn’t responsible for everything that had gone wrong.
It had been a while since they’d fallen into this abyss—minutes, hours, time didn’t behave here either—escaping the impending doom of the crashing moon. The silence was deafening. Not true silence, but a heavy, oppressive quiet broken only by the faint hum that thrummed under the skin. A sound too low for most of the hermits to even notice, but loud for him and Pearl, loud enough to vibrate in their bones. Loud enough to remind him what he really was.
He wandered as far from the others as he dared, drifting until the tug of the tether Scar had clipped to his suit jerked lightly at his waist. It reminded him not to stray too far, not to disappear completely. He didn’t deserve to be tethered, he thought bitterly. He should’ve been left to float away.
Tears gathered at the corners of his one remaining eye, shimmering like beads of glass in the dim, directionless glow that permeated the void. They didn’t fall. They simply drifted away, dissolving into the surrounding nothing. Even his tears didn’t want to stay with him.
He wrapped his scarlet macaw wings tight around himself, as if he could fold into them and disappear. The feathers were warm—they always were—but the warmth did nothing. The cold seeped in anyway, not a physical cold but something deeper, burrowing past flesh and bone to coil around his heart.
It was his fault.
The truth hit him again, heavy and merciless, like a hammer slamming into the same bruise over and over. His watcher powers—powers he had tried so desperately to bury—had reached out on their own. Had pulled at the moon like it was just another object to move. Had sealed their fate.
Scar's voice echoed faintly in his memory—reassuring, frantic, then cut off when the void swallowed everything.
Tango’s face flashed next.
Was Tango okay? Hurt? Alive? Dead?
Grian didn’t know. The uncertainty gnawed at him, sharp and relentless, until he could feel it eating through the last of his composure. Every second without an answer was a new torment, a fresh wound reopening.
He closed his eyes—just for a moment—and immediately regretted it.
The image was there. Burned into the backs of his eyelids.
The moon, impossibly large, filling the sky. The ground shaking. The panicked cries. The scramble to escape. The knowledge—horrifying and absolute—that it had been him. That the moon would not have fallen like that if his power hadn’t yanked it off its natural course.
His wings trembled around him.
He hated his watcher powers.
They were a curse. A burden he had never asked for, never wanted, but could never get rid of. They were destructive at their core—the power to observe everything, feel everything, manipulate the unseen forces that bound reality together. The power to watch, to know, to unravel.
And destroy.
He felt so small here. So helpless. Despite the strength humming beneath his skin, despite the threads of void energy still licking at his feathers like eager static.
It was ironic, really.
All that strength, all that cosmic potential—power that could twist the sky and shift the moon—
And all it had ever brought him was misery.
He curled tighter, wings wrapping around him like a cocoon, and whispered into the empty, uncaring void:
“I didn’t mean to.”
The void did not answer. It never did.
Grian felt a small tug on the tether clipped to his suit, a faint vibration that pulled him out of the spiral of his thoughts. He blinked, lifting his head. The tether line stretched toward a figure fumbling through the void—Mumbo. He was pushing forward in the most earnest yet hopeless way possible, limbs drifting, wings fluttering in useless bursts, his movements messy in the low-gravity drift.
Grian sniffed, rubbing at his eyes quickly with the back of his sleeve. He didn’t want Mumbo seeing him like this. Didn’t want anyone seeing him like this.
Mumbo built up speed faster than he realized—typical Mumbo—and by the time he reached Grian, he was going too fast to slow down. He flared his moth-like wings wide, desperate to brake, but the soft, powdery feathers caught no air here. The motion accomplished absolutely nothing.
He shot past Grian with a startled yelp, the tether jerking sharply.
“M-Mumbo—!”
Mumbo flailed midair, trying to reverse himself with frantic little wingbeats and grabbing motions. Grian sighed, pushed off the invisible floor beneath him, and curved through the void like he’d been born in it. He intercepted Mumbo effortlessly, one clean motion, the way a fish glides through water or a bird slips through a thermal. They drifted together for a moment, gently rotating before stabilizing.
Mumbo huffed, cheeks slightly pink even in the dim void-glow.
“I don’t get how you can move so well,” he muttered, brows knitting. “Moving is hard here.” His tone was lighthearted—trying to be teasing, even—but Grian could hear the undercurrent of worry threading through it.
Grian didn’t answer. He just looked away, wings curling tighter around himself. The void hummed louder in his ears, like it was disappointed in him too.
Mumbo tilted his head, antennae swaying slightly. He drifted closer in a slow, careful movement so Grian wouldn’t pull away.
“Are you okay?”
Grian opened his mouth automatically. “I’m—”
“Don’t lie.”
The words were firm, gentle, and immediate. Cutting off the lie before it even formed. Mumbo’s tone wasn’t angry; it never was with him. It was soft, painfully so. It made the tears threaten to return.
Grian let out a shaky breath.
“No,” he whispered. “I’m not okay…”
Mumbo didn’t respond right away. He just watched him for a moment—a long, assessing look that held more understanding than it had any right to. Then, without a word, Mumbo spread his wings as far as the tether and suit allowed. The delicate, dusty moth wings glowed faintly in the void-light, warm and gentle compared to the stark emptiness around them.
Grian didn’t need an invitation.
He drifted forward, letting himself float into Mumbo’s arms. Mumbo wrapped them around him without hesitation, anchoring Grian against his chest, holding him carefully as though he were something fragile—something worth protecting.
Grian exhaled shakily and finally relaxed. The tension bled out of his shoulders. His wings loosened around him as he let his head fall against Mumbo’s shoulder. Mumbo’s hand drifted to the back of his neck, steady and reassuring. The void hummed around them, but it felt quieter like this.
Eventually, Grian’s eyes slipped shut.
Mumbo was nice. Too nice. Kinder than anyone had a right to be. And Grian couldn’t shake the fear that if Mumbo ever understood what he truly was—what slept inside him, coiled like a shadow waiting for one mistake to wake—
He would hate him.
He had to.
Because how could anyone stay close to something that could bring a moon down just by existing?
But Mumbo only held him closer, unaware of the storm in Grian’s mind.
Unaware of how dangerous the thing in his arms truly was.
.
.
.
When Grian woke again, he wasn’t sure how long had passed—seconds, minutes, maybe longer. Time in the void didn’t move so much as it stretched, like taffy being pulled at both ends. He blinked a few times, adjusting to the dim violet glow that always seemed to surround him here, soft and sourceless.
The others were closer now, having drifted toward him while he slept. Impulse and Scar floated side by side, their movements soft and lazy as they talked in hushed tones. Scar gestured wildly despite the lack of gravity, his hands making wide arcs that sent him spinning gently until Impulse grabbed his tether to steady him.
Pearl was hovering near Mumbo, who looked like he’d been awake for a while, wings half-fanned and eyes heavy but alert. Pearl glanced up when Grian stirred, her antennae perking. She caught his gaze and gave him a warm, reassuring smile.
“Morning,” she said lightly.
Impulse looked over his shoulder. “Or night. Or… midafternoon? Honestly, no idea what time of day it is anymore.”
Scar raised his wrist and inspected his watch like it might offer a clue to the nature of the universe. “Might be morning. It says ten right now.”
Pearl made a face over at Grian, a playful scrunch of her nose. She knew it was morning—of course she did. And so did Grian. The hum in the void changed subtly with the cycle of the overworld, and Watcher instincts made it impossible to ignore. But neither of them said anything.
Small mercies.
They spent a while drifting together, talking over options with a kind of shaky, exhausted hope. Scar suggested building something—anything—to anchor themselves. Impulse theorized about blasting their way out. Mumbo, half-joking and half not, wondered if redstone logic applied in the void.
Grian hung back, staying close enough to listen but far enough not to be the center of attention. Their conversations washed over him like waves, but none of it mattered. There was only one way out of the void.
He or Pearl would have to open a portal.
He knew it.
Pearl knew it.
He could feel her glancing at him every so often—checking his posture, his breathing, the way his wings twitched. The void hummed louder around them, like it was waiting.
But he couldn’t do it.
Well…
He could.
That was the terrifying part.
Pearl drifted over to him slowly, her movements graceful even in zero gravity. She opened her lunar-moth wings—soft, glowing, impossibly delicate—and Grian instinctively spread his own scarlet macaw wings in response. The feathers brushed, pulse meeting pulse, and the air around them shimmered faintly as their shared magic created a small dome of privacy.
“Listen, Grian,” Pearl said quietly. Her voice was steady, but her eyes were serious. “We need to do something soon. You know as well as I do there’s no other way out of the void unless we stumble into a Watcher settlement.”
She paused, letting the weight of that settle.
“And we both know we cannot bring the others through one of those.”
Grian flinched. His feathers puffed involuntarily, a reflexive fear response. Images flashed through his mind—cold stone halls, eyes carved into every surface, the press of expectations, the judgment, the control. The chains you couldn’t see but always felt.
He swallowed hard and nodded.
“I know… I just…” His voice cracked and he looked down, staring at the invisible ground beneath him. His talons curled slightly in the air, useless without earth to grip. “I just…”
He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to.
The fear sat heavy in his chest, heavier than the moon ever had.
They drifted for a long while in a loose formation, following a direction that was more instinct than plan. The void didn’t have a map, didn’t have stars, didn’t even have a sense of distance—but Grian knew where things were, the way Watchers always knew. Not with sight, but with that pulsing awareness that tugged at the back of his mind.
Far to the east, a faint pressure gnawed at him—a small Watcher settlement. Quiet but dangerous. The west pulsed louder, heavier, a larger settlement sprawling like a web. Grian’s feathers prickled every time they drifted even slightly in that direction.
He prayed they didn’t stumble across either.
He stayed close to Mumbo, constantly checking on him. The poor moth hybrid moved like a confused cat trying to swim—drifting off-course, flipping upside down, or spinning slowly until Grian caught his tether and pulled him gently back into place.
“Thanks,” Mumbo mumbled more than once, cheeks red with embarrassment.
Grian would just squeeze his arm and drift ahead.
He moved toward Scar when he heard the first thin cough echo through the void. Scar doubled over slightly, hand pressed to his chest. His legs floated limp behind him—less painful for him, at least—but the wheezing that left his lungs was sharp and concerning.
Pearl immediately flew-swam to Scar’s other side, her wings shimmering faintly as she steadied him.
Scar tried to laugh it off. “Guess my lungs didn’t sign up for the whole moon-crashing, void-swimming adventure—heh—”
He coughed harder, cutting himself off.
Pearl reached into his coat pocket, retrieving the small glass pill bottle Scar always carried. She turned it upside down. Nothing came out.
“Uh-oh,” Scar muttered weakly, trying for a smile. “I really thought we’d, um… get back home quicker.”
The air around the group shifted, grew heavier. Scar’s lungs weren’t something they could ignore—not here, not when they had no supplies, no medical base, nothing.
Grian pulled away slightly, wings tucked tight around him, trying to think. Trying not to.
Pearl drifted next to him a minute later, her voice barely a whisper.
“Grian.”
He didn’t look at her.
She hovered closer anyway. “We have to leave. Now.”
Grian clenched his jaw. His wings ruffled, betraying his nerves.
When he hesitated again, Pearl let out a frustrated exhale. “If you don’t, I will. I’m not risking Scar’s life just because we want to stay hidden.”
Her words struck hard.
Grian closed his eyes, wings curling tighter around him, feathers trembling.
“Fine…” His voice cracked. “We—w-we’ll do this…”
Pearl waited patiently, hovering steady beside him.
“First let me…” He swallowed. “Figure out where Xisuma is.”
He shut his eyes tighter—but it didn’t matter. Because he felt the shift happen instantly.
More eyes opened along his cheekbones, his jawline, curling down his neck. The void brightened for him, reality snapping into focus.
Watch Player: Xisumavoid.
The words did not speak—they were.
Then the void dissolved, replaced by Xisuma’s surroundings.
He was standing in a hastily lit cave, torches flickering. Several Hermits were gathered behind him, clustered around chests and makeshift beds. Grian saw Cleo stitching Cub’s ripped sleeve. Joe pacing. Stress wiping her eyes. Tango was absent—another stab of panic in his chest.
Xisuma moved stiffly, breath uneven. He removed his helmet with shaking hands, rubbing his face. His skin flickered with void-static, the faint glow of a panicked void demon trying to keep himself together.
He dropped the helmet with a clatter and gasped in a breath—only able to breathe freely without the shell when the cave had enough void-energy lighting it.
Location, Grian thought, and immediately he knew. The exact cave, its coordinates, the pressure of the overworld surrounding it. He held the knowledge carefully—too carefully.
He lingered too long.
Xisuma froze.
His entire body went rigid, wings snapping outward as the feathers bristled. His eyes darted around wildly, searching, sensing.
Welsknight, perched beside him with his red-tailed hawk wings half-open, looked up sharply.
“X?” Wels said carefully. “What is it?”
Xisuma didn’t answer. His breathing accelerated, pupils blown wide with fear. He stared at nothing—no, not nothing.
He stared exactly where Grian’s unseen gaze lingered.
“Watcher!” Xisuma snarled suddenly, eyes burning as he glared at the carved stone of the cave wall.
Grian flinched so hard his wings spasmed. Panic erupted inside him like a fire.
Stop.
The command slammed through his mind.
And instantly—mercifully—everything went dark.
The extra eyes snapped shut. The Watcher-sight collapsed. The connection severed.
He was himself again.
Small.
Breathless.
Shaking.
“Grian?”
Mumbo had floated over slowly, his movements careful, as though he was afraid of making things worse by touching the wrong current of void. Impulse followed right behind him, one arm looped around Scar’s torso to keep him steady. Scar looked barely present—half-focused, half-trying to swallow down another cough that threatened to tear through his chest.
Pearl was already moving. She reached out into the space beside them and pulled—void matter condensing under her fingers like thick air. A platform shimmered into existence, wide enough for them all, stable in a way that felt unnatural in this drifting emptiness. Grian collapsed onto it immediately, wings folding tight around him like he wanted to disappear.
The others landed on it more hesitantly, staring at Pearl with varying levels of confusion and alarm. Impulse sank down with Scar on his lap, gently guiding Scar’s head against his shoulder each time he swayed. The coughing ebbed but didn’t stop, each one hitting Scar like a shock.
“Listen,” Pearl said, standing at the edge of the void-made platform, her wings flaring slightly for balance. “We need to tell you all something.”
Her gaze flicked toward Grian.
He stood, but he was shaking visibly—feathers quivering, fingers digging into his palms. Mumbo took a step toward him, concern tightening his features.
“Mate?” Mumbo whispered, voice gentle.
Grian flinched like he’d been struck and shrank back. Mumbo froze mid-step, blinking in hurt confusion, hands half-raised, unsure if he should try again or back off completely.
Pearl took a breath, steadying herself. “Do you all know what Watchers are?”
Scar’s shoulders twitched, but he wasn’t focused enough to answer—too busy breathing carefully. Mumbo shook his head, brows furrowed, trying to follow, trying not to panic. But Impulse—
Impulse jolted.
“Yes, but aren’t they… not real?” he said, wings twitching. “I mean—I was told stories about them as a kid. Myths. Old fairy-tale threats.” He inhaled sharply. “Like…the things moms told hatchlings to keep them from flying into void rifts.”
“They’re not fake…” Grian whispered. The tremor in his voice was worse now. “They’re real. They’ve always been real.”
His eyes darted to Impulse. “Have you heard of the Evolution Server?”
Impulse nodded immediately. “Yes. Wasn’t that the first server to be completely destroyed by Watchers? And their Admin joined them.” His voice carried the reverence of someone repeating an old legend.
Grian flinched so violently that Mumbo reached out again on instinct before stopping himself.
“Well—he didn’t choose to join…” Grian murmured, almost too soft to hear. Only Mumbo caught it, and Mumbo’s expression cracked into something deeper—worry mixed with confusion and dawning realization.
But Pearl continued before he could ask.
“We…” She swallowed. Even she looked uneasy. “We are Watchers.”
The silence that followed felt heavy enough to bend the void around them.
Impulse went pale, all the color draining from his scales and wing membranes. His tail wrapped tight around his own leg, a sign of pure instinctive fear.
Scar blinked sluggishly, still unfocused, but even he registered something—his fingers tightening weakly around Impulse’s sleeve.
Mumbo just stared. Alarm widened his eyes, but something else was there too—hurt confusion, rising panic, that familiar tremor in his hands that meant his anxiety was spiking hard.
And Grian felt it like a punch.
Mumbo with chronic anxiety, Mumbo who hated surprises, Mumbo who trusted him implicitly—now staring at him like the ground had vanished.
Grian’s stomach twisted. He wrapped his arms around himself, wings curling inward. He wished he could vanish into the folds of them.
He wished he didn’t feel like the monster they were suddenly seeing.
They argued.
Or rather—Impulse and Pearl argued, while the others hovered in the rising storm of panic.
Impulse’s voice kept spiking—fear sharpening every word. “You lied! Watchers are— they’re monsters! They destroy servers—wipe out worlds—possess people! They—”
Grian winced every time Impulse listed something. Because each time Impulse flung out another childhood horror story, Pearl or Grian would quietly, miserably, confirm it.
“Yes, that happened.”
“No, that part wasn’t exaggerated.”
“That was… a different branch, but yes.”
Mumbo drifted uselessly along the edge of the platform, hands twisting in the fabric of his suit. The confusion on his face was quickly collapsing into something worse—rising dread, the kind that left his breath short and his wings trembling. Every new piece of information hit him like a wave he wasn’t braced for.
“W–wait,” Mumbo stammered, “so you can rewrite memories? And—and the whole bit about seeing through dimensions? And the—”
“Yes,” Grian whispered. “Yes to all of that.”
“And you… have done those things?”
Grian closed his eyes. “Not the worst of it. Never the worst. But… enough.”
Mumbo’s pupils shrank, fear punching straight through him.
Scar tried to break into the argument—lifting his head like he wanted to say please stop, please calm down—but his breath hitched sharply. He doubled over as a harsh cough ripped through him.
Everyone snapped silent.
Scar’s coughing got louder, harsher, each one sounding deeper than the last. Impulse held him tighter, panic flaring across his face. Even Mumbo stopped shaking long enough to watch, horrified.
“Look,” Pearl hissed, voice shaking but fierce. “Do whatever you want with me and Grian later but Scar needs HELP right now.”
She turned to Grian.
And Grian wished—more than anything—that he didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to show them what he was. Didn’t have to become the thing Mumbo was already terrified of.
But Scar wheezed again.
So Grian took a breath. And let go.
It happened fast—too fast for anyone to process.
His feathers split into eyes.
His wings multiplied outward in bursts of sickly light—four, then five, then six.
His spine elongated. Talons replaced his boots. He grew until he towered over the platform, three times his normal height, shadow swallowing them all.
Mumbo went white.
Impulse clutched Scar like shielding a child from a storm.
Scar didn’t even seem aware, dazed in his feverish haze.
Pearl wasn’t surprised—her wings unfurled to match his, her eyes glowing—but she stepped closer to Grian like grounding him.
Grian closed all the eyes that faced the others. Every single one. He did not want to see their fear. He did not want to see Mumbo’s face.
He focused instead.
The void rippled. Space folded like soft cloth. A tear split open in front of them—shimmering with blue-white light—and Grian stepped through.
Solid stone met his talons. He nearly cracked his skull on the low cave ceiling. The air tasted like dust and panic.
He blinked his many eyes and stared at the gathered crowd.
And Xisuma.
Xisuma looked… furious. Defensive. Terrified. His wings flared instinctively, tail bristling as he backed up.
“Back—BACK OFF—Watcher—!” he snapped, voice shaking with his own instincts.
But before he could get another word out, the others spilled out of the portal.
Impulse practically ran—dodging around Grian’s massive wings like he was avoiding molten stone—carrying Scar with shaking arms. “Stress! STRESS!” he shouted into the cave, weaving through the Hermits.
Mumbo stayed several meters back from Grian, eyes wide, trying not to hyperventilate. He hugged his arms across his chest, wings pressed tight, pupils blown wide with terror.
Pearl stepped up beside Grian, hands lifted in a placating gesture toward the Admin.
“Xisuma,” she started. “Just listen—please—”
The cave was filled with whispers. Fear. Confusion. Suspicion. The stink of panic.
Grian couldn’t bear it.
Slowly, he shut all his outer eyes, pulling inward. The wings folded in on themselves like dissolving illusions. His height shrank, bones twisting back. Feathers reformed. Beak softened back to lips. Until—
He was just Grian again.
Small. Human-sized. Barely holding himself upright.
The transformation happened mid-argument, mid-snap of Xisuma’s voice—and the Admin froze. He cut off mid shout, staring at Grian like he’d witnessed something impossible.
Like he wasn’t sure whether he was looking at a threat—
or a broken creature trying desperately not to be one.
“What…?”
Xisuma’s voice came out strangled, low, disbelieving. His visor flickered, his whole body language going stiff in that way only void demons did when their instincts screamed danger.
“No. You— he can’t be—”
He stepped back like Grian had physically shoved him. His wings snapped half-open, trembling.
Grian didn’t need the eyes, didn’t need his powers—he knew exactly what Xisuma was thinking.
He had allowed a Watcher into the server.
His protected server.
The one he rebuilt, fortress-tight, to keep Watchers out after the fall of Evo.
And all this time, one had been right beside him. Laughing. Building. Dying. Respawning. Playing.
Xisuma’s fear wasn’t unfounded.
It still hurt.
Grian kept his eyes shut—every single one—because if he saw the fear in the cave, he’d break. A tremor went through his hands, then through his wings, then through the air itself.
He didn’t mean to lose control.
He just… couldn’t hold it anymore.
All his emotions—fear, shame, guilt, grief—burst outward in a shockwave of Watcher power.
His body warped.
Bones bent.
Feathers split into irises.
His silhouette stretched and twisted until he was no longer anything remotely humanoid.
A full Watcher.
A nightmare bird made of eyes and impossible angles.
Gasps filled the cave. Someone screamed. Someone else whimpered.
Grian didn’t linger in the fear.
He moved.
A thousand instincts took over, the old training he never wanted to use again, the commands drilled into him like shackles. He fired off three in rapid succession, each echoing in the cave like distant static.
His mind snapped to Tango like a magnet. In a blink, the world folded.
A portal tore open—not to the void, but to space itself. Reality peeled apart like thin fabric, starlight bleeding through. The sound was a horrible ripping thrum, as if the universe hated this and wanted it to stop.
Through the slit of torn reality—
Tango floated, limp. Barely alive. His helmet cracked but still intact, breath fogging faintly inside.
Grian didn’t think.
He lunged through space, talons hooking into Tango’s suit, wings battering against the vacuum. Then he yanked the portal back with him, clenching reality shut as he tumbled into the cave.
Pearl caught Tango.
Grian crashed—hard—flaring with pain—
and then he snapped back into himself, into small human form, shaking and dizzy.
He would’ve hit the stone floor.
But arms wrapped around him.
Mumbo’s arms.
Grian blinked up, stunned. He wasn’t sure if he could breathe. Mumbo looked terrified, yes—absolutely terrified—but he was still there. He hadn’t run.
Grian’s fingers curled into Mumbo’s suit on instinct, clutching desperately, like he expected Mumbo to disappear at any moment. Like he already believed he didn’t deserve to be here anymore. Didn’t deserve Hermitcraft. Didn’t deserve Mumbo.
He buried his face against Mumbo’s chest, wings trembling behind him.
Pearl and Xisuma were talking—no, arguing—but their voices were distant, muffled. Grian heard the snap of Pearl’s eyes opening, then the crackling sound of healing magic as she set her hands over Tango’s throat and chest. The air shivered as bones realigned and damaged organs knitted back together.
But Grian couldn’t focus on any of it. His heart hurt too much.
“‘m sorry…” he whispered into Mumbo’s shirt. His voice was barely sound. “…I’m so sorry.”
Mumbo didn’t say anything at first. His breath was ragged, wings shaking, but he didn’t let go. After a long moment, he lifted one hand and gently, hesitantly, rested it between Grian’s wings—right where he'd touched him on the nights Grian couldn’t sleep.
“I… it’s okay…” Mumbo murmured.
His voice was thin. Unsure. But real.
Grian shuddered. “Is it?” He lifted his head just enough to look up at Mumbo’s face. “I’m a creature of mass destruction. Is that—” his voice cracked—“is that really okay?”
Silence.
A long, painful silence.
Mumbo looked at him, fear still in his eyes, confusion still twisting his features… but underneath it all was something else. Something stubborn. Something kind.
He exhaled shakily, hand still pressed warm and steady between Grian’s wings.
“I… don’t know how to take all of this yet,” Mumbo admitted quietly. “But… you’re still you. And I still care.”
As promised, Rujini aquarium date part 2! This one was supposed to be a more dramatic/romantic piece compared to the first, apologies I legit forgot how to draw these people and they're different in most panels but alas, enjoy. And some crackpost Jinu shenanigans at the end cuz I can't not.
Something I haven't seen anyone mention yet is how the opening tale in the pilot is clearly refering not to only Gwen herself, but ALSO Olivia, who to me is clearly supposed to parallel Gwen's role as the captive princess of the Park's kingdom
Putting aside the whole "Princess trapped in a tower" symbolism which is *painfully* explicit here, this conversation with her father makes it clear what role she's supposed to play: while it's not clear if this scene happens at the beggining of the Park's history or if it had already existed for a while, what IS clear is that Olivia's father is, well, grooming her to continue his legacy and take over the Park's operations, watching over the guests from afar and keeping the magic flowing while sitting contently in her gilded cage, with all her shiny toys and machines. He frames it all as a big shiny gift for her, compensation for something that happened in the past while also urging her to forget that same past and accept the now
So naturally Olivia complied and became some sort of "ruler" of the Park, at the very least acting as a (human) face for the public. And she has kept this role for YEARS, so much so that in the present she STILL remains on the same damn room, just now bedridden and surrounded by medical staff and freaky androids instead of toys. She's a much of a prisoner of the Park's underlying structure as Guinevere is, the main difference being that while Gwen apparently recognizes that and is constantly trying to escape, Olivia probably never realized she was one to begin with (how could you, if most of what you've ever known was a prison?)
That is also the reason why adult Olivia seems so distraught about Gwen's scape: she doesn't realize she's living in a cage and so can't for the life of her understand why Gwen, her friend/toy/surrogate mother figure(?), keeps escaping. She rationalizes it as an error in Gwen's programming and thus is always trying to "fix her", not necessarily out of malice but because she's desperate to keep her one and only companion at her side, jailed together, forever
It's downright tragic and a GENIUS idea for a villain: a captive princess that rules her kingdom from afar while subsequently being a slave to it. I can't wait to see what direction the show takes
This is very much my read on it also, and it's what elevates Knights of Guinevere for me. Before the pilot aired, there was a lot of "ha ha Dana Terrace hates Disney she is going to Epically Own Them!" going around, and a bit of a presumption that the sum total of the show's imagery and messaging would amount to "fuck you Disney! Blood and guts dystopian Disney Princess imagery ha ha fuck you!"
Which would have been fine and fair enough, and certainly a sentiment Dana Terrace has earned the right to!
But the show doesn't stop at a South Park-ian raised middle finger to the corporation, it doesn't just scoff and spit and cry "it's all phoney!"
The pilot is premised on an understanding that no matter how fake or how toxic it might be, the Disney Princesses and their stories are important to people (Frankie seems to most directly embody this, hallucinating Gwen in her most glorious form even when she's broken and damaged), and that finding love and meaning in these things does not make a person weak or stupid or bad.
It's... not necessarily healthy to fixate on it, and Frankie is very explicitly shown to retreat from reality into hallucinatory fantasy, and those fantasies cause her to act rashly and put herself in serious danger. But it's not evil, it's not stupid, and she isn't wrong to love Gwen and the beauty that Gwen represents.
Gwen, the Princess, is not the problem.
And neither is Olivia, really. She's a deeply traumatized child who was not only groomed and isolated by her father, but who seems to be stuck in a state of permanently arrested development, absolutely cocooned in saccharine childish fantasies, and consumed by the obsessive idea of "fixing" Gwen. If she can only "fix" her properly this time, then... then she'll stay. Then it'll work. If she can only make her PERFECT, then it will work.
There's a heavy implication that Orville is acting out of guilt for something, some trauma or pain that Olivia was put through because of him, and my read is that Olivia's obsession with fixing and "perfecting" Gwen is a sublimated obsessive desire to somehow fix, somehow undo, whatever that trauma is. My first guess would be the death of a loved one, and my first guess would be Olivia's mother (there's that conspicuous family portrait we see a couple of times + the umbilical cord imagery when Olivia pulls on her guts: a child yanking on the connection to a mother).
Olivia and Frankie seem somewhat parallel with one another in that way, opposites and complementaries. Both of them obsessed with Gwen, both of them in a state of alienation from reality. Olivia is physically frail, Frankie is physically potent, Olivia is rich and privileged, Frankie is poor and marginalized. Both of them are deeply marked by the neglect and abuse of father figures who think they mean well.
Olivia is not the problem, she's the product of the problem. The problem is the fucking park. This hovering, consuming leech on the world, gorging on resources and throwing up garbage and poison on the world below. It is the world, the structure, the system of cyclical and constantly escalating consumption - this is the thing which is not only poisoning the world, but which is strangling Olivia's life out of her with endless swaddling childhood, and which produces and commodifies Gwen's body (bodies?) for consumption and abuse, and which exploits the fantasies and dreams of people like Frankie and Andi, and poisons their world and impoverishes their lives.
And I think that's a lot more interesting and salient and complicated than "this show is about how Disney is bad and princesses suck" that I have seem some people kind of reduce it to. The art isn't the problem, the characters aren't the problem. It is the ravenous maw of consumerist exploitation which uses them as a lure.
Ok, fic idea that I don't have the time to flesh out so I'm giving it to this community to use if they want.
Grian isn't a Watcher, Evo ended differently.
Xisuma is a worshiper of the Watchers, who aren't entirely evil.
Xelqua is a being completely separate from Grian who is in no way related to Grian except for the fact that the 2 look identical and have vaguely similar personalities.
Xelqa is the Watcher Xisuma worships.
Grian joins Hermitcraft and Xisuma comes to the conclusion that Grian is actually Xelqua in disguise.
The real Xelqua is absolutely delighted by this.
Through a series of shenanigans, everyone eventually decides that Grian is actually Xelqua and this is causing Grian to pull his hair out.
Wait no, the Watchers are having a meeting Xelqua doesn't want to attend so he gets Grian to attend for him.
The other Watchers know but honestly don't care because Watchers can transfer memories so as long as Grian doesn't do anything extremely stupid Xelqua can just copy Grian's memories of the meeting because it's not a very important meeting.
The memory copying goes extremely wrong and now Grian is stuck with the memories of Xelqua and Xelqua is stuck with the memories of Grian and so the Watchers and the Hermits need to fix this while the 2 have an existential crisis and don't know who they are anymore.
jacobvanloon
dededos
izzy806
2087
