like I know decked out and PET postal gave us some of the pearl etho dynamic but that was like rivals and friendly coworkers and had nothing that particularly stood out to me
but the pearltho platonic friendship that just barely emerged in past life was something I did not know I needed. ep. 6 & 7 was like. what I felt in last life ep 8 & 9 with the first taste of the cletho dynamic. the beginning of something amazing.
they better team next season istg. give me more Pearl and Etho interactions.
What if past life isn't about the evo method of going to furture versions? What if it's about saying no to the watchers curses/favouritism/patterns?
Keep in mind I haven't watched episode 8 yet but i've been spoiled a little bit on etho's perspective soo...
Anyways, in past life, we've had a lot of things go wrong/not how they usually happen. [spoilers after this]
Jimmy "Himmy" Solidaritygaming is popping off, not even close to first out, having at least two eliminations under his belt. Pearl not only fell out of the top 5 but went out of the series third. Etho didn't make it to the finale. [EDIT: JIMMY IS A DIRTY LIAR (/hj) THERE IS NO SESSION NINE] These are just examples off the top of my head but it feels like this season is about saying no to what the watchers thought was normal. And the thing is, this works both for martyn's evil godlike watchers as well as the idea that the watchers are the viewers and the fans. Past life's relation to evo is that this is the point in the life series where the players fight the patterns. Obviously some curses are pretty strong like widow's for grian, but i think past life is where we start to see many strong curses and patterns fall apart.
just the brain thoughts of someone who hasn't even watched the latest batch of episodes, maybe when i get back home and actually watch the stuff i'll just change my mind on all of this and cry about the watchers being the evil masterminds of the universe and making everyone and everything horrible.
if you watched gem or pearl's past life session 6, you've seen the complicated success/failure of the plot to kill etho. gem had the initial idea, organized it with jimmy through skizz, sent pearl to complete the mission, and then martyn ended up killing etho completely independently of their plans. gem decides she's satisfied with this outcome anyway, etho declares them even, all is well.
if only it were anywhere near that simple.
from pearl's perspective, you get to see a lot more details that gem left out or wasn't present for: namely, that gem specifically tells pearl to act as if she's going behind her and grian's backs. pearl manages to convince etho of this so well that he asks to continue their secret conversation, and she has to explain to him that it was fake. etho seems so convinced that gem questions pearl about it afterwards, and pearl says she was just following gem's directions.
(interestingly enough, from grian's perspective, the existence of this plot is entirely missing. but that'll be its own post.)
in etho's video, you get a very different story from any of the villies' povs. he kills grian, the whole team rebukes him, and then pearl approaches him to ask for a secret team-up. etho, who's gotten an exclusive look into the villies' internal drama, believes pearl wholeheartedlyâand then martyn kills him.
i've spent hours combing through the scenes that follow etho's death, and there's a glaring omission from both grian and gem. the scene where gem explains her plot to grian only exists in etho's perspective, and it's pretty clear why they cut it:
this makes the villies look like a fucking mess. grian had no idea any of this was going on, gem is unrepentant, and etho is livid: he goes off on them after hearing this. they both completely ignore him. grian attempts to change the subject, and when etho doesn't let him move on, he and gem focus on etho trying to pretend he's on the team, refusing to acknowledge his accusations about pearl.
there's a cut in etho's video before gem says "well, i sent her in the nether" that's clearly missing some context. we can safely assume gem was starting to explain her plot to grian, and etho cut out the exposition. this is conjecture on my part, but i suspect that etho cut out something that made the purpose of pearl's mission clear. he effectively shifted the focus away from the fact that pearl was attempting to kill etho, and emphasized the fact that gem was intentionally endangering pearl's life.
if you need proof of how deliberate etho's editing choices are, here's another cut from earlier in this scene:
he's being uncharacteristically precise with his cuts in order to construct a specific narrative. (and don't think i've forgotten about grian, this screenshot will make a reappearance in another post!)
after they're done arguing, the three of them leave the tower and meet up with scott and pearl right outside the base. despite there being five potential perspectives to pull from, there's a lot missing from this scene. gem's pov contains nothing but a short bit of context to provide a conclusion to the murder plot, grian and pearl cut out huge chunks of the conversation with little overlap between them, and scott and etho both choose to scrap the entire thing.
pearl's the only one to include the scene where she tells etho that her offer was a ruse from the start:
scott cuts this because he wasn't here for any of the rest of this shit, gem probably cuts this because she realizes that saying "pearl knows her role here" is fucking insane, and grian cuts this because he's determined to erase any trace of this saga from his video. but why would etho cut this out? this is vital context that explains the entire mess that just happened to him.
the problem with this clip is that it entirely undermines the narrative etho has constructed in his mind and his video up to this point: that pearl is being mistreated by her teammates and is seeking help elsewhere. if you were to watch only etho's video, you'd be under the impression that pearl's cry for help is genuine. by asking her to continue their conversation, etho is hoping for more evidence that pearl wants out, and when she tells him the exact opposite, he rejects this explanation and hides it from his viewers.
whether or not he ends up doing more with this, etho has set up his character to be extremely aware of and sympathetic to pearl's plight with the villies. by cutting out explanations and obfuscating the full scope of the plot to kill him, he's choosing to believe that pearl is in serious trouble with her team and wants his help to escape them. i can't wait to see what comes of all this next session.
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p.s.: if you want to see the full perspective-comparison spreadsheet i made, shoot me a dm and i'll be happy to show it to you! it's a very helpful visual aid for understanding the full scope of the aftermath.
help why is etho's title for this week scratching my brain in all the right places like i know he has a way with video titles but this is just ridiculous
someone in Scottâs comment section said that if his team âkidnaps Etho they can be the S.P.I.C.E girlsâ and honestly I would love that team up, both for the name and the chaos of the group
You asked for art requests and I canât keep zombie au Etho out of my mind (spinning around like rotisserie chicken), so maybe some fun outfits, yesyes
Not sure this counts as fun but I'm having fun. And I enjoy this sweater pattern....
boy it's been a while since I've tumblr'd, have mostly just been lurking lmaoo
wanted to talk about the cletho I saw on scar's stream a couple days ago...they just get each other and it's so amazing to watch--like when etho told cleo "you can curse me out all you want when playing frogger" and it immediately got cleo excited for the game--it's like he KNOWS them which is to be expected given the amount of time they spent together in the life series--but when you think about it, they didn't know each other in third life, all they had was their mutual connection to bdubs and y'know that kind of colleague dynamic "oh we can do this and act like this and pretend to be that for the content but we don't really know each other that well", and over the years it's built up to this amazing dynamic that just. makes me happy.
and what's even cooler is that we were like. THERE.
we have watched cleo and etho become the great friends they are throughout the years--maybe not all of us were there, but a good amount of us saw third life and how they didn't really know each other, and then we got to see last life and the first little specks of their dynamic near the end when they were trying to survive together, double life and Etho's hilarious and unreasonable (perfectly reasonable) fear of Cleo, limited life was literal fever dream, TCG battles "I have never seen Etho as much as I have now that TCG's here" or whatever the fuck cleo said in that one stream somewhere some time ago, the Decked Out interactions "I gotta protect you Cleo" when she let people grab what are basically free shards off her, Secret Life aka fever dream no.2, the boat race banter and that adorable moment where cleo hopped into Etho's boat for that last race, these freaking s10 stream interactions--we are THERE. we have watched their dynamic develop and bloom and it's just. idk. it makes me happy to know that I got to watch these two incredible minecraft youtubers become such close friends over the years.
Etho fans are a highly specialized species of Minecraft YouTube fan that can live off of a single minute of content alone for weeks at a time. This specialization is not without its drawbacks-while Etho fans are typically content to rewatch old series while waiting for new releases, they can be easily overloaded with large amounts of Etho content releasing at once and become violent in a manner typically referred to as âcute aggressionâ. When this happens, fans will generate even larger amounts of fan content than usual, and the strain that this puts on their bodies can cause emotional overexertion, wildly out of character theory-crafting, and in extreme cases, death.
just on cleo's stream (1hr 23min-ish for the yucky vod viewers /j) cleo read a letter sent to her by etho where he said he wanted cleo to teach him armourstandology
the way the letter was phrased made it seem like cleo asked him if he wanted to learn how to make armourstands a while back and this is just a reply though
edit: I just yucky vod watched gem's stream, apparently cleo's been advertising an armourstand teaching service through the mail system!
anyways this means that a cletho episode is coming soon! (but probably not in either of their next episodes)
psst I think etho wants to learn armourstands because joel can do armourstands and he's obsessed with joel and everything else about Joel, but that's just a hunch :)
today, we put to rest a debate that has lasted centuries. it has confused the minds of many intelligent people, mended and broken friendships, cause all out fights, but today the war ends.
now, we must answer the most trivial question of all:
YOU GUYS I am LOSING my mind rn over those statues like you dont UNDERSTAND OK?
Because- guys. Etho is a kitsune right? RIGHT???? Like we all draw him like a fox and I wanted to draw him more like a kitsune bc of the boat boys thing and they're aesthetics were both leaning in that direction, esp. joel.
And then. And then Joel's stupid Toori gate and...and those are like entrances to shrines, and they're like gate ways to the 'spirit world/divine world' kinda thing?? Like they're portals and gateways and those kinds of things.
and in my head I was thinking of this stupid little AU like "Oh kitsune Etho keeps inviting himself over bc Joel put a toori gate basically welcoming in the 'spirit' world haha" And Ive just been sitting on that idea for like weeks now
BUT Then. THOSE STATUES.
LOOK AT THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE
RIght??? RIGHT?
^^ Thats Inari btw
OKAY?? OKAY RIGHT???
Not to mention we're all pretty certain Etho's the one who put them there, right?? Not to mention that Kitsune are often seen as pranksters and tricksters (And seducers but like--)
origamiaround
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