Sharp little shear. Pearl I adoor. 25 cheeks. I boop no more.
@discreterhystic
You won't be seeing much images of artworks here. Instead, you will be reading a lot of rambling. Of a few things. First off, the dystopian future where MCYTs care about quality, substance and production value over all else. Second, other variety things when I run out of ideas.
(i haven't used this "main" blog for 2 years huh. I want to finally bring out some music reviews like I wished to do from the beginning.)
Listen to the material
In this review, I will offer very brief opinions about each song and the overall package through a relatively short amount of time listening to the album and living with its culture, indirectly also relatively.
Track by track review
[U] London Song: I rate this a solid No Mana - Solarpunk. To elaborate, compared to that track, the actual music production is frankly not as nuanced, but clearly it's way more blunt and more resonant to you casuals. That's gonna be my common perspective throughout this album.
[I] iPod Touch: The other side of this album is a lot of high pitched storytelling lyrics. For this song, I have a hot take: the cheerful vibe and the massive buildup to a single drop just don't mesh well together. Like the drop just doesn't feel all that triumphant.
[U] F*ck My Comp*ter: This tune is actually fun, I can totally get behind the unhinged lyrics.
[U] CSIRAC: a club track and not much more than that, not for the overthinking like myself.
[I] Delete: The first smooth transition of the album, this tune got everything working in harmony so well.
[I] ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ, All I Am: These two tunes played alone might feel a little unfulfilling, but them played right next to one another gives truly the most complete experience. For that, this is my favorite part of the whole album.
[U] Infohazard: The neuro reeses in the first buildup really fooled me into thinking the first drop is gonna be this minimal grim thing to save the euphoria for the second drop. In reality the latter is just what both drops are.
[U] Battery Death: The obligatory single experimental song of this album. The overuse of hardwave here is pretty tiring, especially the first drop, through the second drop is pretty good at its goal of being grim and cruel.
[I] Sing Good: maybe i should stop being so critical
[I] It's You: This is the most normal song on this album, and it definitely shows the polish. I give this song an "Ecstatic And Irresponsible".
[U] All At Once: The most abstract experience on this whole album. Mostly for the fact that the second half stayed as smooth of a slope up as possible. To be honest, I expect literally anything else.
As with every piece of music I care about, they really need the time to stick with me and I can really have the strongest feelings for them. Such criticisms from me are very natural with these early listens when I don't understand everything that comes with them.
Holistic review
This is definitely one of those albums that aim to be more cohesive and deliver a consistent message rather than having any individual tunes that are particularly strong. This fact is certainly reflected in the visual elements: the visualizers shooting constant images, music videos using chaotic fonts, etc. That part I have everything to enjoy. Because truthfully, that's the part that really make this album really resonate with me: this big picture, this free internet, this "rebellion for the feeling" if I dare elaborate.
A lot of my criticism about this album tends to stem from the structures of them and how certain drops and buildups just don't fit one another. Which I can try to "improve" with my own mixtape:
For the heavier songs, it's certainly the easier side. One drop follows another, you can do it yourself, whether you want to keep both drops being the same or you have a clear preference within each tune.
The first two songs are similarly mixed, then Delete transition into All I Am's second drop, which then goes back to my favorite part of the album, which is the buildup to Infohazard which suddenly makes a lot more sense, euphoric finale in It's You, and Sing Good basically acts as the credits roll.
Now that the bracket gets to go on 3 whole servers, I hope the results seem a bit more trustworthy to myself.
Honestly the first half, pretty unique fun stuff to vote on, I have no problems, nothing to say on. And hey there's a 69 turnout of one of the battles, that probably has beaten shearson 2's record, but that was just 2 servers.
And then the second half, I think the scuffing came from the fact that I commented on things people said about the bracket. You probably wouldn't notice, but you probably very much can guess which pairs I really want. Half of them won.
Having a boring feeling I may actually have enough time to run this bracket from now on to be Swiss i.e. if a pair loss they can keep fighting against other losing pairs. But eh, too much women in suit propoganda at this point in time.
And let me talk something about team summer, they lost again to another goth pair. Last time it was Traffic, this time it's Blaze. So now there's 2 variants of farmer queen in quarterfinals. I digress, queenterfinals.
And that last battle, honestly truly surprised me is that saturated dial pair managed that much of a fight aganist MCC EC. Well I do admit that pair still looks cleaned rather than being, let's be real, rather busy colorwise. Like Gem has orange, lime, pink, so like is she part of 3 different teams at once?
Overall, the dying feeling in me thinks that 5AM pair would just win again, back to back. If you're reading this and can vote, prove me wrong.
It was quite the rapidfire to go through 4 battles per day. But well, I choose to have a break the weekends after it all.
And it wouldn't be this bracket without some scuff. Notably, the match between orange + yellow overalls vs. aqua cyans, the fifth one. Both servers voting ended up ties, through at some points did picked the cyans. Eventually I had to run the tiebreaker in a third server, which I wish I just ran the whole first round there, admittedly they don't have much activity outside but somehow they noticed the poll. And I decided to bring a different aqua cyan pair in instead somehow.
How many people would actually notice? Not as much as previous shearson I have to admit. Buried just the same, some still voting both sides so I added them as margins of errors. New feature.
So I decide to be commenting on the shuffling of this shearson mostly. Since that pretty much determines what happened really.
I didn't really check this, I just picks randomly, way more randomly than usually, which is the plus of 32 pairs. and oh boy, the right side gets to be eons more stacked than the left side. Especially top right, basically has last shearson's semifinals and finals there, quite something to behold.
Also press respects to MCC blue, they have been falling ever since the glory of shearson 1 to now losing to the saturation dial. I don't understand.
One is a brostep-psytrance that I definitely won't use silly ways to mix together. The other two are your typical tri-drop progressive color bass. How much music falls into that umbrella?
And then I turn the hermit off and I went blank...
It's a strange feeling. I don't feel that insanely compelled to look forward to the next episode. Well, I'll have time to go through some, I'll turn them on, write some funny quotes down, definitely feels alright about it. And then I turn the hermit off and I went blank, what happened, what was said, what was done, what was all these about? Why did nothing stick, has this turned into those grindy exams?
Well, that explains how inactive this main blog is. That last one, definitely feels too much like a recap instead of actual reviewing.
I fear blandness for too long
Honestly, how many times I have to brought up the fact that: In the art world, blandness, the act of playing it safe so that no one will gets mad at you so everyone will pay you $10 instead of just 10% of those people paying you $30 each out loyalty, isn't quite the right path to create arts that really resonates. It's the risk taking, out of the box, out of the comfort zone experiments that's to be celebrated, because, knowing all well most times it failed against the audience and the artist's will, when it works, it works so well you'll see it from a mile away.
Back in the day of Season 10 just starting out, you'd think that the decision of moving down from mega bases that consumes time and effort like locking yourself in a hole waiting for the sun to rise to just smaller builds to spend the spare time interacting would in fact be the act to move from blandness to greatness?
Well turns out, just as there are a scale from incredible builds that used every of its tiny space to its maximum potential to giant castle that's just a facade with nothing inside or in the back, not all interactions are made equal. Some do be running gags material for life, like "12 bamboo", "boatem pole", "special fancy soup, "murder camel", others well, are certainly sentences, you may note them down you may not, but both cases you probably won't search for them anytime soon. Because it's true, you don't need to.
Unfortunately, guess how much of Season 10's runtime fall into that latter category. Can I give example? Probably not, and it's probbably better for my time to just tell you to read my Pearl ramblomatics for some examples you may not even know existed. If anything, that proves a point. It's that these stumbles upons have more in common with background noise than actual fun interactions that probably was intended.
I overthink the weapon against blandness for too long
You know, just let it to random chance for that "lightning in a bottle" comedy to happen. Which is why it's good to have two new Hermits around, so more chances to roll the die, that is. They certainly are the people to roll a lot of dice in this metaphorical sense. The world works that way, you can't mess with these chances any further.
I kinda partly agree with this argument. You know, it certainly really is lucky that the Hermits get to meet each other and found this imprint that lasted this long and stably. It certainly really is lucky that I found this world to get immersed in, albeit it's kind of late for my age but better late than never for sure. I guess, be grateful with the timeline you're in, with the dice you've rolled, good or bad.
Which is how the Hermits basically operated. They never try to fudge the system to be as scientifically in their favor as possible, since it may work that day but if tomorrow everything were to collapse because of it, who knows. And they certainly chose the path to say "That's too much stake to gamble it all in a day, we'll pass."
TL;DR: You can't force a joke to happen, right?
It's a difficult thing to realize for me. Because it's too easy to deconstruct every little demise early game or permit office to see where the funny is intended to be. Sounds elitist but it may feels like the popular medias made by corporation's ways of doings things maybe trickling down to us "we aren't sellouts", you can't truly be immune right. And the conspiracy about these comedy being moved over to Traffic, yeah that really does feel sad for any hermit not comfortable enough with that pacing which is why they stick to their home. And should I just stop being a hypocrite and return to the simple time of being casual about this scene? No, here're some questions I ask myself instead:
Why haven't I talked about SOS? Because it's literally all these same arguments frankly. Sad they gave up on lore so much they use that as the joke of the series.
Why haven't I talked about the charity event? I didn't last time. Serious answer wise, honestly those pictures of Pearl in a jacket towering over everyone has spoke for more than 1,000 words each.
Why haven't I talked about Minecraft the game? Honestly I'm not seeing the basalt delta snapshot moment of this update. Even the potato one, that wood has just the 4 horzontal lines and none of the verticle lines, you frankly don't need them. Grappling hook still adds to the insult to injury through.
Where are the lore roleplays on the internet now? Caves and Lizards campaigns. I have been getting into them, as casual as it stays right now. So not even the big popular one, the small scrappy is what I started with. Honestly has been doing wonders.
As things not MCYT takes up more and more of my time, I have more and more of the feeling of how consistent Hermitcraft Season 10 is. Feels like correlation to how reliable the mail system will be.
The last 2 seasons of Hermitcraft has seen the sixth epearlsode being about Pearl playing silly games as the last bit of starter base fun before she moves on to bigger and better things, which will start with a mountain on epearlsode 7. This time not so much.
Because of that, I'll take a really different approach, to instead of going in episode chronologically, I'll go in genres of the sections happening. Feels like a more practical way to write.
Tech tree progress
Remember when people used to argue about beds vs. TNT by this stage of a season?
[PRLH074] It started with Pearl building a shorter in the y axis version of the starter house to house an enchanting setup that will finally put some glitter to the diamond gear that certainly won't be lost to block lag in the End or anything. It's certainly a necessarily evil, you may take the progress slow but at sometimes you certainly has to pull the trigger to make the blocks break a bit faster. One thing for sure, no bookshelves float or are dangled here, and the outside certainly looks humble enough.
[PRLH075] How do I feel about the jokey chorus fruit prologue raid actually reassembles the soup group instead of the actual big shulker + elytra raid? How do I feel if I know the exact pairings this time, Pearl and Scar, Gem and Grian? How do I feel if I know that Pearl died and lost her gears in this trip? Well, I can safely say I get the intentions: Who cares about elytra lol, horses mules way more fun, just have the wings in case of building mega bases. And also Pearl gets to reawaken her inner cleaning lady during that postdeath gear recovery, gear that has to come from a messy train.
[PRLH078] Cub really wanted to offer people a demo of these rockets, so what more useful way to do it than having people open end gateways by killing the dragon with these fireworks. Which adds some much needed color to the End, even just for some moments right before a friendly fire kill.
Permitalism
Pearl could have been evil and force people to use stamps to buy things in her shops. But well, a post office's terrible reputation will mostly comes from the fact they will be terrible at dealing against spam.
[PRLH074] Feels like a bargain to get the permit of some colorful flowers to your name and just offload the templates to the one with the hourglasses of blood, sweat and tears- excuse me, generosity in form of easily found sand blocks. Well, that would also mean Pearl don't have to care one bit about any of the sands, she just gets all those template for free. Well, that would also mean Pearl is playing with the actual heroes side this time, not the wholesome looking but obviously evil- Leave the prophecy at that, along the spores of the spore blossom, not a flower for purposes of this permit.
[PRLH076] Somehow, the flower and dyes permit excludes spore blossoms, I guess you could argue that one new flower is for the particles. And turns out getting it is relatively easy, because it's Etho who has it, same faction and all.
[PRLH077] Pearl has the permit of Granite, the first single of the album In Shearlico by the band Pearldulum. Which she didn't build a shop of right away, instead she took the bone from her single skeleton spawner plush some in the nether to sell in a truck opposite to the "gem-dubs" street, let's call it.
Post office
Well, this is the big part of the review right?
[PRLH074] The rollout will take a while and will goes from person to person, so it only makes sense to make a progress tracker board of who got a mailbox already. Unfortunately, due to the fear of lag, the best you can get is a bunch of acacia signs on top of unoxidized copper bulbs. I get the not using "the nice looking things" that would make the chart actually readable at any distance past just staring at a specific tile. But just using all orange on all unoxidized copper, that might be too overwhelming to the eye.
[PRLH074] And here comes a Scar who got to try the mail system with a bunch of test Etho stamps that have none of the visual treat of a real stamps. You know, good segway for me to rant about the Ethogirls meme that went insane in recent memory, <a lot of unhinged words i haven't actually written> screw redbubble, awful website ruining the absolubely sacred dapperness of the miniskirt, and the fact that Gem had to see that abomination.
[PRLH074] Well the most important thing about the interior will be the section that sells hermit stamps, and in that place Pearl got me confused about how she sorts the 24 not-post-office-workers into 8 groups of 3 each. May you try to figure the logic of it all like a bunny lurking out of a chest.
[PRLH075] Remember how I loved the fact that Pearl showed Gem around a part of her build? Well, this time, Pearl got the thing for resident sea captain Gem, a dock with a ship that you don't have to question much about how it actually worked, and how did "hold by god" came from the sky. Unfortunately, Gem isn't quite the resident land captain to come visit Pearl's van and/or park a horse in, not sure about how much oxygen a vehicle with little windows can provide.
[PRLH076] Can't have the shulker shop owner lose out on communism or win out on people needing to supply their own shulkers to send mail, Pearl decided that the post office will offers white shulkers as mail packages, automatically crafted by not automatically named. That's certainly a slow start to her epearlsode.
[PRLH077] Honestly, what a way to introduce the mail system, with Shiny Duo sending each other things of themselves, for lack of better words I can think of. Gem would go on to deliver herself to offer a Pearlland language impression. Gem would then also go on to bug Pearl for some stamps. It would be such a mess to know who has claimed which stamps, so some proper tracking are certainly needed.
[PRLH077] Now the view of the post office is clearer, the view must also be clear that the post office isn't complete perfect and mistakes will happen and there better be a place to report your issues. Glad Pearl spent all her cheeking point teasing about the interior in the epearlsode, instead of teasing people needing the service. Like an impatient Xisuma.
[PRLH077] The first complainer is none other than Grian, who in his typical buttercup braincells wants to send mails to Mumbo. Turns out, it's a bribe to get Mumbo a mailbox so that the post office can get a permit for the stamps. How do you boil my elitist blood hotter? Well, turns out it makes for a tour of the mail system for anyone who only watches the postmaster, i.e. me. And it makes for Pearl seeing Grian's chest monster and him still trying.
Solarpunk
[PRLH076] It feels like Pearl really needs to check a lot of builds off the list of things to build in her base, after so long in the post office. And I intentionally avoided using some words like "killing lots of birds with one stone" because get this, that's not what Pearl's build theme is going for, Solarpunk - harnessing the environment to better the world, in face of those cyberpunks wanting a dystopian. A dystopian where Keralis finds the bridge to be a 4/10.
[PRLH078] After doing some terraforming in front of the base, Pearl and Etho had a deep tour starting from Etho's cave of sheeps through a path back to her base. There's a lot to learn, Etho did a good job, Pearl has more to add next to the back, you get the daylight sensors you wanted, a cocoa farm is automatic if you have an axe, apples should fall on the ground, beetroots deserve better, building vehicles is like building redstone, time to put address signs.
[PRLH078] Oh I get Pearl put the sniffers and allays in. Good choice mob voters.
Silliness
[PRLH075] The journey of all weird music producers tend of start with them mashing a bunch of random sounds together to see what makes of that. Well, Pearl got to experience one of that. Feels like a logical leap to when you saw shiny duo hunting for those heads. And the other two postmasters certainly agree, to which it finally occurred to me that the post office could offer such a music service, in case the ancient sounding "you got mail" is too boring for some's liking.
How much did I listed?
I think I proved my point: This season is damn consistent. You wake up, you see the video, you know what to expect, you get what you expected, not much more. Definitely will still be stuck in the trance, but doubt I'll remember any quote of them for life.
If you ask me for the strongest of the 5, probably 078, the weakest, probably 076, it's the shortest one after all. Everything else is somewhere in the middle.
Is that april fools traffic oneshot any different? Haven't watched it, because I wasted my time typing this.
One is a brostep-psytrance that I definitely won't use silly ways to mix together. The other two are your typical tri-drop progressive color bass. How much music falls into that umbrella?
Probably. It's a service, not a tangible thing to put in a chest/shulker/barrel, so who can mess with it?
It's certainly an interesting choice to hype up the almighty prize of the early game demise that has never done before. Through, it is a good segway from the first chapter of the season 10 early game to the second. How do I feel about it, or harder question, what do I infer from it?
Restriction breeds identity
So everyone gets a set of 6 permits of 3 common, 2 uncommon and 1 rare (I'll name them like that just to be annoying), and False gets another wildcard one to turn into any one down the line. These permits will give you right and/or duty to stock and offer these things for sale, while nobody else can (they still can farm or grind the things). These sets of permits are probably random sets of blocks that are relevant or irrelevant to each others. So to fix that, one may seek out trades to replace permits one by one, or acquire/accept collaboration on permits, or something else.
Thinking about this system at first, I didn't think much of it frankly. The shopping district as a concept didn't need fixing, the season 9 one flopped for season 9 reasons, not shopping district reasons. And then previous gimmicks like season 7's paid land never really got people really using the full (at the time) Y-height really, I guess not until Aque Town. I guess one thing this system could prevent are those mega shops that have most of the core blocks to end up concentrating power on one hermit (cough cough barge), at which point I now see this system adding an extra step. And it's an important extra step.
You know, the step of talking to a hermit in search or trade of a permit is a gesture that says something. Think a hermit's set of permits not as mere licenses to sell, but as a set of faction pins that tells you their identity. Like if you were to see Grian's trinity of sea permits, you know he worked hard on the riverbank for that mending book, and he's definitely envy of pirate Gem's coral permit; or if you were to see Doc's amass of wood permits, you know man's doing everyone a service, while everyone's doing the funny, man's putting in the grind that powers all those funny. Something that ironically the Hermitcraft TCG kinda failed at, after all real life TCGs may pride themselves on the fact that your deck tells something about you.
Obviously it exists to start another war
I have intentions when calling those examples. Could have named Cub's love for astronomical number of combinations, or Xisuma's mastery of copper aging (he deserves a David to say the least), but I think their permit tales end at that. Unfortunately if you ask me about Pearl's set I have a hard time imagining a mail lady, well there's the dyes that labels the shulkers I guess.
So let's talk about conflicts. These two sides used to face off each others, but right now, so far, they aren't, they have other fishes to fry each to their own.
Doc's first conflict, lies with his massive hourglass. A hourglass that represents either pain of grinding or generosity. Those sand will buy you every type of wood released before 2014. For anything newer, come to the top half of the hourglass of pure salmon immersion with your tightly packed diamonds. Obviously those are sold by Doc's enemy faction. It's the typical identity conflict again, when your arch nemesis just stole part of your identity and makes a clear effort to mock the most out of it, so everyone sees you as the evil villain caring this much about this. About the whole hourglass overwhelming every other shop debacle, I guess one's supposed to look forward to all those other shops catching up. So far the post office is the closet one to such a task.
Doc actually has a second conflict that goes back to the early days of season 10. Doc spent those first nights and days breeding up book villagers. And then some minister of bisexuality (hint: it's an AND case) gets the permit to sells these books, books that are sold by those very villagers? Doc saw them (plural) being gone, and got his revenge in form of getting a 50% cut on those books. Or did he? Turns out the books went into a kitty cafe, in that place you buy coffee not books, so either some False is gonna just take the tea or Doc is gonna just not get any cut of those drinks (spoiler: it's another AND case). It's like selling those people 30 crafting currencies with 30 loot boxes attached to skirt around the regulations, you may not remember that debacle, or it may still exists. Speaking about selling things with boxes as bonuses, Doc literally did that lol.
Who's there to say about that? Well, if it were Doc, obviously I'll start thinking the kitties are the true masterminds behind this. And if it were Grian, should I even bother with clarifying the rules? Well it is Grian who's leading this thing called "the permit office" that would answer "no" to that question! He may say it's bureaucracy like real life, but I see it as him having a conflict against those hall monitors. Those who keeps whining about whether people played these silly block game wars/traffics/series "fairly" or not, forgetting to consider the entertainment that's the actual most important metric of all. If the hermits ain't getting the clarifications most of the week, doubt you hall monitors will. Keep trying to judge fairness by put a value on each permits in your spreadsheet, it'll be interesting to know.
What's left to issue?
Outside of a mob permit for a certain zookeeper, doubt there'll be another one. Anything from the future that isn't turned on with a datapack right now aren't relevant building blocks or items, that's for sure. And I guess there're 1.22 in the far future, but how much value is a new permit issued for the last 6 endgame months? Who knows, today we just know season 10 is still a really consistent experience which not much boatem to shout or delays to sleep. Wouldn't be surprised if the hermits would be really committed to keep this line going for the 18 something months this season has left.
As I cheekily written in the opening, still no one can say anything about services. You're still free to start a shop of a service, which you frankly only really want to if you have the unique idea to back it up, but whenever you do that's backed, it'll probably be worth it.
If there were permits on which kind of kills, which one would you take?
Coming off that far and wide land with so much Pearl written and drawn all over it, this season will have some tall order. What tall order? To win on a different dimension, that being the sheer memorable humorous moments with everyone on the side. If in the last ramblomatic, I have reviewed Hermitcraft, today, I'll review Pearl's Hermitcraft.
#1 - PRLH069 - Fresh World Yet Again
Well, that's certainly another title for the first episode of a series of all time. Something you notice too often.
The beginning of her season certainly feels unique. Meanwhile a bunch of other hermits got into the underground in the name of a communist party (as in a one and done thing, not a whole thing), Pearl got her first steps and irony progress alone in the wilds. If you don't tell me, I would definitely be fooled that this is just her new singleplayer world. Well, that worked because the pacing this time is also much slower. As shown in her absolute masterpiece of a starter base, which also can claim to the fame of having the most complex shape and palatte with the most amount of function and life inside.
Pearl would go on to meet up with her neighbours Tango and Etho, knowing all well a lot more people are living in that not-distant cherry mountain. What do I think about that? You know how Pearl answers on stream more than once that she wants to shake things up over time, not just sticking to the same factions with the same peoples? Well, that explains everything about why Pearl chooses these two redstone Decked Owt (now that's more specific) masters, over, I don't know, the rest of Boatem plus the rest of the Soup Group plus these two new hermits. (that, knowing the banhammer that may head my way, doesn't quite inspire the same exicitement, it's an iteration not an invention like grian or shiny duo were in a way). And now that I see it, Pearl will always be in the same faction as exactly one person in the ZITS, so brace myself. Through I do wonder what if she, in that vaulty encounter, were to joined that trio she encountered as a salmon into the neighbourhood instead, that way I would TIL that moonrot is a term.
Wanting some mangrove, Pearl got to meet a Pirate Gem who definitely got some protection of that faction Pearl doesn't want to join for reasons rambled above. Something definitely tells me, the faction mounds may not divide the shiny duo, which I can only take as a good thing. Which, along with all the other wood types that converts to plank at a rate of 4:1, made up her starter house looking house. Which looks like "netherite-level progress" to some, and looks like it can't house a giant alien above its roof for others. What it can house through is a firework trap that feels only prophetic. Didn't work through. What can work through is the mailbox and the animal nook housing a donkey and a mule, because path designing certainly is more fun than rushing to get an elytra.
In conclusion, it certainly feels like a welcome to the ground, my way of describing a very consistent experience without much insanely standing out. So about as good as Gem since I didn't get to complement Pearl's good taste in indie game that inspired her base.
#2 - PRLH070 & PRLH071 - Bumping Heads & All the Collabs
Let me have a Judging by the Cover. These two epearlsodes are some of the least Pearl looking thumbnails I have ever seen. Well, I mean, I guess, that epearlsode 3 cover looks like those covers she did for the citadel game, but maybe I don't like those eyes from the sides of the hole. Epearlsode 2's cover through, has no excuse, it looks like those "Why Hermitcraft has last for 12 years and will keep doing so" primer pieces there must be a couple of on the internet I feel. I guess it has to be this way to conceal what's actually inside, which I'll have a lot to say.
Let's talk about Pearl's demise tale. It goes something like this: Everyone was fishing, realized they want to murder, came to Pearl to murder her, broke the roof, a hole was rigged, she was demised and it justifies the funny to start a space program with said fishing rods. Now with the right to kill someone, Pearl teamed up with fellow clock heister Keralis to rig a big dripstone hole under a nether portal, which managed to kill a well geared but careless Xisuma. Do you feel a feeling of this being, all thing considered, quite derivative? This wasn't the first time fishing rods were chaos weapon, that probably would go to that time in Double Life, one of those highlights that didn't majorly involve 5AM Pearl, the dripstone hole trap is even more derivative, since literally her shinymate Gem tried this thing aganist Xisuma too, well that one was too shallow so it didn't work at all. That's the thing about this Demise being all early game traps. Frankly, you just don't have that much weapons to choose from, don't have much scale to apply those weapons and don't have much character establishments to riff or rip off, it's my fancy way of calling people's bases and themes, which pranks often rely on. So I guess, it's good for Pearl to die early and get this over with and let somebody else do the playing safe and being careful.
Between those two sections, Pearl get to meet with many faces, which is why her week's play gets split into these two epearlsodes. Right after death was her and Etho having an exchange tour of each other's bases, which really gives fandoms of both sides a chance to appreciate each other's artwork, hopefully strengthening the bonds of this newfound faction. That's a weird way to talk about the purpose of touring two starter bases, it's a peace treaty. What I don't need weird ways to talk about the purpose of, is Pearl's trip with Gem to the ocean, in the name of quite literally morbid curiosity, what does these mobs sound on the note blocks. It may look like that epearlsode 2 long ago when they caught some axolotls, but now it's got some twists, in the way Gem now takes the boat's lead and Pearl's the one in the back getting the heads. Getting to witness this live firsthand, I definitely gained an appearlciation about how a-door-able the shiny duo very much still are. Doesn't quite hold up to that high shine however is her ancient city raid with these quite a few much more humble Hermits. You can see why I put that judgement, the soup group level energy obviously just isn't there, and if you think about it, Pearl's probably at least a tier ahead everyone else here in her warden messing skills. Hard to make the justification that she's training any of these people, but I guess she does have some loot to walk away with.
In terms of actual building, something fully of Pearl's individuality, Pearl got to show her starter storage room, one you guessed it, is underground with wooden sides and deepslate floor, which actually may feels like a downgrade from an aquarium for some axolotls. You may actually find this room a bit disappointing consider what Gem's doing on the other underside of the river, but well that one has to last Gem the rest of the season and Pearl still has a chance for upgrading, so no judgement just yet.
From my experience, it's the episode 2s that actually set up the overall tone and mood of a series. Season 8 was groundbreaking, Last Life and Empires S1 were soild journeys, Season 9, well, was a bit cursed, Double Life was a tale for the ages, Secret Life was a long overdue revitalization, Lifemited and New Life is what prompted Secret Life. So, based on these two epearlsodes, what is my prediction for Season 10's tone? It'll be really influenced by each other, for one. It won't be the Pearlest of Pearl season ever (that obviously has to go to her colorlful land last season), but if that means she compromised to meet a Gem and some other people's interesting tales every epearlsode, maybe Hermitcraft as a whole is onto something.
#3 - PRLH072 & PRLH073 - Postal Delivery Company & Ready for Business
How harsh was of me to call that much comedy "derivative"? Well, having a machine deliver that through a properly elaborate system certainly doesn't fit that description. After all, the most people have tried before is just a mere three way, and that's the soup group.
The first purpose of this postal company is to probably stick a landing of the faction of the deepfrost quadret (cub didn't play), team PET (skizz isn't here so pls avoid that), you see the problem. After the Neighbourhood, it's good to see another faction being able to have a name for themselves, one that everyone really should know, something you may not necessarily be able to say about that hatbearers, their services are domestic only.
The second purpose of this postal company is to set a tone about the right thing to do this season: To interact, to send something from your side to someone else's. I see this a lot like the Secret Life tasks, it's a written the rulebook way of pointing the Hermits to do the right thing, it'll great for the recipient and in turns, great for them.
The third purpose, well, it's the right thing for a trio of one builder plus talker and two redstoners to do. As opposed to a giant committee of some two redstoners and six builders that always want to make jokes about being able to do redstone, you know which one I'm talking about. It should finally understand why Pearl stuck with this little trio instead of "said obvious choice".
Being the post company that's in the name of connecting people (not with indestructible bricks just yet, mind you), Pearl probably has figured another genius idea: Instead of drooling on by herself doing the show and tell each of the thing of the build, let's have someone else alongside her taking the tour. It'll be a lot cheekier so in turns you'd want to watch it more, that other person could Pearl some valuable feedback since after all, the place is made so that people like them can come in and do things in it. And what better person to be the first for Pearl to try this with than Gem, who finally got her bucket of tropical fish. Well the refund for the delay is in the form of a tour of unfinished interiors and getting to flick some of the doors. By the time Pearl got to finish the interiors, she invited the "postmates" for the tour, this time more of a complement rather than replacement for the long trance of Pearl building piece by piece of the interior, which I'm always glad for. Guess this better stay this new way, especially since Pearl's going for a big game next.
And about the postal office itself, what do I think? It's the sniffer palatte but now I like it more because I like warped cyan more than yellow or green. Either way it's always eons better than real life post offices that's just all gray boxes of queues. And about the new Pearl skin, what do I think? Can I render one with a hat right now? Still very much on the dappearl side, so I definitely prefer that over cleaner lady, but still investigator pearl ain't need no hats or silly bags so if you ask me, I still have a favorite and still wishes better for that one.
Glad the trio picked the postal service soon enough before it gets written into a permit for someone else to monopolize over. That's right, this season we're gonna distribute random sets of permits to the Hermits, telling them a few items they better focus on to build and stock shops for. In the name of there not being competition shops, which is a really weird problem to solve, doubt it even came up for me; not in the name of preventing duplicate farms ever, which sounds oddly contradictory against what this season is about, like you telling someone who hates the permit to just build every farm to self sustain themselves? Well, the permits system will encourage interaction in another way, that is to have people either trade one permit for another, leash a permit for another so that the newfound duo can split the profits, having the hermits selling some amount of variants of a thing (wood, glass, terracotta) to build nearby, etc. So far, we only see what's fitting for whom, but in the future, may this cause another war on the borders, this time imaginary, and doubt Grian would bother that much since he has to run the permit office this time. Honestly, what permits Pearl did get I'm kind of indifferent about, since not like anyone is putting out permits for services.
The future is a future
I'm a bit terrified by my current time management, that's why I took so long to get this out. That Gem ramblomatic may ended up being a one off until she goes crazy interacty again, and signs are pointing to the fact that the latest 2 epearlsodes are lacking a certain kind shiny duo interaction, the ones that have them talking and being cheeky and stuff. Maybe this timeline all things considered would still be better than the one where Pearl is a sniffer farmer building Bin-Go 2 and also sloppily juggling SOS alongside Gem.
You know what would be a weird way of putting my takes on the beginning of season 10 out there? With me ranking the two videos Gem has made. The reason I dodged Pearl should be more than obvious, I'll wait until way later in the month. Still sounding weird what I'm doing? Well, I think I would thank the murder camel arc for really reinforcing my affinity to the shiny duo and to Gem, whom before that I thought was at her best as a sidekick to Pearl.
#1 - GEMH055 - Mini Minecraft Starter Base
Well, that's certainly a title for the first episode of a series of all time. Something you notice too often.
So the first third of the episode was about Gem's first movements in the new world, which led her to this giant cherry blossom mountain that will turn into a giant faction of, get this, 4 of the 5 boatem members, Gem (probably to replace Pearl as to "finish boatem") and both of the new hermits, count total 7. Which, on one hand, surely will be the best way to have the two new hermits really learn the blending way in, on another hand, it's terrifying for my elitist side, I'll leave it like that. Admittedly, well the actual reason Gem chooses this place is because she loves her cherry blossom so whichever faction has the most of it has her side.
The middle section is a long boat adventure with fellow LTT-land-ian Etho, probably call the duo "birch slab" despite the fact I don't remember them actually crafting the boat or anything really out of birch. Certainly some physics-doorstroying shipwreck looting, and Etho still stuck with the old knowledge of Gem having an ego problem. Also they got a camel, that feels either wrong because the controller, wait, he lives near Pearl?, but feels right to be grateful for because surely Pearl will get on this one sooner than later. And then Pear showed up for the first time to get a mangrove sapling (what's that spelled) for the debt of a tropical fish. Returning to Etho's face, he wanted some breath of fresh air of music to be injected to Gem's video, which I appricate, knowing all well that it's generic industrial midtempo.
The last fourth of the episode is Gem giving a boat-shaped shoutout to the #5 best game of 2023 according to that fully ramblomatic guy. Emphasize the boat, not ship, because it's one teeny tiny base, a living embodiment to the quality over quantity mindset of not just Gem, but like a good chunk of Hermits this time. By I mean quality over quantity I mean smaller in scale but more tightly detailed, better seen up close on foot rather than from far on elytra. Which I'm frankly all for, especially if it means factions boundaries may not matter much in the end, which is to say I get to see a bunch of shiny duo adventures.
So overall, it's a very consistent experience from beginning to end, nothing as communist as a mining expedition and nothing as season defining as someone shouting a name of their faction they just eureka-ed. Wait, you telling this is just half of her first recording? Well, that makes sense.
#2 - GEMH056 - Demise
So, this time, right at the beginning of the season, in order to heat everyone's seats, the game of Demise is back. When one died of a natural cause, they're given the reaper role i.e. the right to kill one person with a, let's say, creative mean. Which can snowballs up to a whole dead team until there's one person left, who will receive a weird never done before prize. I never think the early days need these shakeup event as much since they tend to be the loudest and most interactive times, it's the megabase phases that tend to scream for these things much more. But I guess, this time, Demise's role isn't so much to "make more interactions", it's too "make different interactions". Instead of some early game motions that may seems actually kind of boring for how many times we may have seen them, here're something else: some scrappy attempts with scrappy materials at murders that puts all firm faction flags and speedruns aside. And suddenly that communist mining trip makes sense, the cave is a great way to put the fuel in Demise in the form of red names.
Well, let's talk about Gem's video, not Hermitcraft meta I would have covered anyways. Gem started by fishing, something that really makes sense in the slower paced more relaxed early game context of this season. I once misspelled that as relazed, which is to warn you that someone from above is fishing you, not like your shiny new pirate skin has grown eyes on the top of the head to be wary of that. Gem died because she failed at her MLG, putting one time she did managed that in the intro feels so intentional it isn't funny anymore. What also isn't funny is the fact that I swear I've seen Grian brutally punishing Gem before, like he was also punishing another person in a hole or something.
Respawning, Etho returned to give Gem's boat a visit, especially giving the squid note block a visit, which certainly has led to a shiny duo adventure down the line. Another thing for me to thank Etho for. Down the mines, Gem gave a shoutout to all these episodes 1, which certainly has sponsored her whole chestplate-less armor set.
The middle third is Gem's attempt at reaping, something GeminiSlay may not be too capable at. I guess, it's good practice until whatever future tries that of her. First was a dripstone try at killing a diamond-armored Xisuma, if only she took the liquid the dripstone drips to build this trap. Later on, Gem decided to team up with Cleo to rig a chest with some TNT minecarts, this can't sound any more familiar. Then after seeing Grian's sheer fishing skills and a bunch of people doing so, they decided to all gang up to fish the most pearlescent fish of them all. Probably will go much more in depth of my take on this demise, but considering Gem's POV, the funny thing is that she didn't protect her shiniest friend at all during all of this. And the gang went on to fish more people up to the strastrophere, whether they land on a MLG is their problem.
The last quarter is Gem finding out that her trap got Stressfroggo of the neighbourhood, not the one building the eyesore house next to it. Now free from demise reapings, Gem got on the survival thing and commits soupy watchception and also flatting out land as the first step of terraforming. I think the episode kinda winds down at this point, fair enough, instead of the quotes being funny spoken stuffs, it's the unwaxed signs get changed for ego correction.
Any part before that I would definitely also use the label of "being consistent", has all the funny, has all the fishy, has two of the murdery. I wonder how highly I would think of something that is both of those first two episodes "combined as intended", being over an hour long and all. Honestly, splitting feels like the right thing to do this time, since I definitely would expect more ambitious tales with such a length.
#3 - GEMH057 - The Lighthouse
Or, well, isn't that just a small version of Pearl's S8 base? On a faction with the buttercups and impulse and all, something has to adds up. Well, it's definitely weird to see a new build this early, but it certainly makes sense thinking how little space that starter boat has, so there's little to no chance of expansion moleward nor rodward. And in the quality over quantity focus, this lighthouse might be smaller, narrower, doesn't have elaborate castle interiors inside, but it will have two glass fishes trying to reach to it, and animated lights that attracted said fishes in the first place, lag in this busy land in the future be damned.
Two glass fishes that very much are big deals, one is kind of ordinary and one is more abstract, to which I say both are still far more comprehensible than a mending book fished from the sea. Fun fact, Pearl wanted to do a swirling dragon around her big lighthouse back in the day too, so more has to adds up. I really have forgot that Gem also did some terraform, oh well. That's the thing, do I really want to sit here and argue at length about something that is supposed to blend in the land, the rocks that are?
Well this episode isn't as dire as just a build. There's an adventure as well. Reason maybe familiar, is to get prismarine from an ocean monument, Gem certainly has went down there before. Through this time it's with a fisher (with current bad luck rating of smidge less than 10%) instead of a froggy hatter, which means that there better be some sidetrack to save some allays and finding a spiky badlands, apparently the rarest biome, needing an update, and also to a village that they accidentally started a raid on only to duck away from it, because not like the emeralds they'd win from this raid can go into a mending book just yet.
What else happened? At the beginning, there's Tango sponsoring the builds. As Gem builds the lighthouse (in the last third), Etho comes for a visit, giving complements as always, and also giving tips on the 3-tall lighting, because observers can only push lights up 2-tall. He also gave a deal to get a sniffer at the cost of Gem be able to lag "any" thing from his base. Beating Pearl to the punch, both on sniffers and on duo communism, per say.
As I kinda allured with my take on the terraforming, honestly, this feels much more in line with the typical Gem, you know the one building elven castles twice back in the day, instead of the lead singer of the band who's onto a whole tale of mischief of the first two episodes. It certainly makes sense given that this is now the second week, so some jokes probably prefer themselves to die down.
Conclusion
Where's the Hermitcraft logo in the middle one? And should it be in the middle?
Honestly, how much procrastinating did I managed to not finish this one? I didn't even need to fish for some badly game designed enchantment book, I don't even like eating fish either. The actual reason, is well, I learn how to art critic: Some thing gotta really stand out for you to write a lot of. And I feel like this trilogy of Gem's earlygame is pretty indicative of Season 10's start: It's super consistently good, consistently funny, consistently cute builds, but nothing truly stands out. Like there really isn't that "boatem pole, boatem hole" moment that made the beginning of Season 8 that legendary. But well, still better than Season 9, that's the important thing to keep up I guess.
And now I'll be onto my ramblomatic of Pearl's whole Feburary, not just half of it. I'll figure the schedule, Pearl will be end of month, Gem will be middle of the month, 2 other semis.
Congratulations to the Traffic pair of 5AM Pearl and GeminiSlay for winning this shearson of the Shiny Duo Soupdown, as scuffed and rushed as the very last round is.
First off, across the two Discord servers I ran this thing on, I both really thank you for caring and voting and also sinceshearly apologizes for how harsh I has been about the issue of these polls getting buried by Discord people using Discord, you know, for their simple questions and their simple hype. I've been so out of touch, I haven't seen a use for either for ages.
[ID for the bracket image: The color of the winners' squares are to represent the scale to which the swept their first round: Green for 50-60%, Orange for 60-70%, Red for 70-80%, Purple for 80-90% and Blue for 90-100%. Has nothing to do with the actual colors of the skins, through when it does match it do be funny. The two pairs on the top both have won their respective semifinals and the two pairs on the bottom both have lost, so I saved space by not repeating them, which ended up not being able to display the swings.]
Here are the raw results of each battle from beginning to end.
Honestly, to describe today being stressful is an understatement. What an uphill battle it is to stay out of touch for me, that's how I would summarize all the horrible takes I may have typed in the day. Honestly, looking back, there could have been so much things about timing and channel placing I could have done differently that would certainly let me run this whole thing with way less rage. Oh right, I could offer the vote on a whole different website, one where you definitely will be notified of when to vote.
Well, when is shearson 3 coming now? Personally, I don't feel like another slight reshuffle like this will do again. There are a few options that I see on the table:
Chaos roll: Instead of still cherry picking 8 pairs to put them on round 2, just roll the 24 pairs all together, some quarters will be stupid easy, some quarters will be close calls, who knows then.
Three sided fights: This will require 27 pairs (i.e. 27 Pearl skins), actually there are 29 Pearl skins so that's plausible. The pro of this is that it runs really quickly, like 9 in round 1, 6 in round 2 (because I like giving these block women mercy), 4 in round 3, that seems doable.
5 full rounds: Now this require more Pearl skins. It takes 32 pairs, probably will just do the chaos roll with this one. Care to make the joke again, if this were something like idk, Scott + Shubble bracket, I'd certainly be looking at 6 rounds with byes or something.
For whatever it's worth, may the murder camel take us to places.
What a cruelty that the cost to get the woman in suit in semifinals is that I have to take away the bluest pair. The three other retro pairs, well, seems pretty obvious they were gonna go.
Is that sacrifice worth it? Surprisingly, not even worth the bronze medal. None of the three battles frankly.
Which leads to the question: Would I be better off pairing that dapPearl with the elven gem "as if they're the way the soup group is intended to be" and left the cleaner lady with season 8 gem? Sounds ridiculous because well it is. But I didn't think it registered to anyone that froggy hat Gem is by all accounts that season 8 skin that I have to chose one to save space.
The color of the winners' squares are to represent the scale to which the swept their first round: Green for 50-60%, Orange for 60-70%, Red for 70-80%, Purple for 80-90% and Blue for 90-100%. Has nothing to do with the actual colors of the skins, through when it does match it do be funny.
Here are the absolutely raw stats table. It may makes a sense to you, also the stats from the previous round for those missed it.
Feels like I still have a lot to learn about running the polls, I have things to say:
The weekends are still cursed. All of the first 4 battles got buried in one server like insanely quickly, which required me to rematch in the next morning. Unlike last time I rematched, I discarded the old results, so apologized to anyone who only voted that first time and not the second. I could have went for the sqrt(A^2+B^2) to take a bit of that first time into account, but eh, such irrational numbers.
It really do feels rigged, all of the 8 pairs that got their byes to be straight in round 2 all wins their battles. Which makes sense in the competitive context, but in the fun context (i.e. what traffic wants), not so much, not gonna lie.
I have like until Saturday to finish this whole thing. Oh god, no breaks allowed anymore. Guess why.
Thank you all for voting, we were that close to 69 votes on the last battle but I guess, that's enough. And oh look namemc gem new skin just dropped, pearl still hasn't however...
Honestly, the 3 default pairs could have been a great launchpad to get some round 1 pairs to win, like all of the other round 1 pairs very much have good reasons to be treated better than *this*. Which can only means 1 thing: If I have the time, I'll give those 8 losing pairs an alt bracket as a chance for them to shine.
And to elaborate on the whole rushed feeling I will feel about this whole hobby right now: Honestly, I placed my bets on Lunar New Year's Eve, which is Feb 10th, which is like a week from now. Which could have given the bracket plenty of breathing room, like just 4 days per week to run through a round, and then I take a deep 3 days break. But due to my brain and the way it wants to be, I ended up taking just the Friday (not for *that* reason) off and quickly return with round 2. I guess that's probably the right way to come about things, given now that we know I'm too late by a week. Don't worry, someone in one of the servers started a religion to be late by three.
The new improv prophecy will be that: Pearl will upload her 2nd epearlsode in the 10th.
The color of the winners' squares are to represent the scale to which the swept their first round: Green for 50-60%, Orange for 60-70%, Red for 70-80%, Purple for 80-90% and Blue for 90-100%. Has nothing to do with the actual colors of the skins, through when it does match it do be funny.
Here are the absolutely raw stats table. It may makes a sense to you.
Feels like this is the first time I juggle two different servers for the polls, I have things to say:
It kinda helps with the fact that you know the current results as you make your choice. Suddenly, one side could all be rooting for left and another could be all rooting for right, and that's how you get a much more balanced result.
Well, not that much balance however. One server the poll would get buried really quickly because I still have to use the public channels where anyone could just scream something like "omg tommyoutit is joining theirmitcraft" and you don't see the polls just like that. The other server retains the polls so well I still have to recheck the numbers after I tallied the results, not like the actual "who won" changes, just the numbers. So that one have much more influence on the results.
Maybe I should have went for a "best of three" with a third server. Not seeing one active enough right now.
Maybe I could do some bonus "alternative" polls for the servers that voted for the other option only for the actual total results to have that lose. One server will get 3, the other 1. In the meantime, thank you for voting. Getting halfway to the 100 votes mark.
First battle, I guess was obvious because lime and purple still doesn't go very well together. Not like a lime Gem or a pearlple Pearl exists still.
Second battle, yeah orange eyes are a bit weird and terrifying in a way. Friendly reminder however that that's the cursed MCC Pearl you've voted for.
Third battle, I know people hates their spider but not by this much. Admittedly I have no case for Pearl's skin, wow that one looks rough.
Fourth battle, I may retry by replacing Gem the Grain with the green cultist Gem skin I glossed over making this whole thing this whole time. TIL the Pearl version of that isn't a MCC skin, I mislabeled it last season.
Fifth battle, obviously retro skins with colors that off have no chance. Christmas wear still holds up even now, given how cold it still is.
Sixth battle, new pair winning over 23 pair. Another one that definitely put a challenge on how to match the pair.
Seventh battle, scuffed skins still too memey.
Eight battle, I think this pair would have went further had they not have to face the 5AM Pearl duo.
Man, that's some of the worst I've written in ages.
It'll be sad to look at that landscape between her base and Decked Owt, remembering the banter of shiny duo as one walks on the road. But as she literally says, it isn't about the community finishing for me. i love the fact that you have the space to use, what you'll add to it. I love being around with people and see what they add to it. I'm dissapointed in not able to finish, but i won't be dissapointed in the fact that the world will be your oyster. So, let's make up Pearl's 51st epearlsode and beyond ourselves, so that we get what we want. Not with AI, that's the challenge.
#2 - PRLH068 - Farewell
I feel like using a music analogy works for this pair, in terms of an album structure. Many times, it's the second last track that serves at the big climax, the one that has everything going on for it. And the actual last track is just one for the outro, could be the shortest most basic piece to the whole thing. Just telling you to go find another album to listen I guess.
The epearlsode well, isn't as much of a nothing outro as many others. Namely, you get one full game of Bin-Go packed with peoples and bonus in the back some words Pearl has in reflection. I think the original plans was to have the last soup group gathering in this one, which personally I feel would balance these two parts a lot better. But I guess, one is about the Pearl and the other is about everyone.
In terms of that game of Bin-Go, if you want spoilers this late, False and Cub win, sounds a bit obvious if you think about it, and the pair that struggled the worst was Grian and Bdubs, sounds equally as obvious, have we ever got to see what Bdubs' chest monster is like through, where does he build in?
In another timeline, if Pearl were to have more time to build this game's automation, it would be lava that killed those not coming home on time instead of a Pearl they can totally flee from. But I feel like that's a double edged sword, you do lose something not having the game master to bug. To argue about the timer length or the unfairness it seems of the game. I mean, I guess if Pearl were to automate things, it probably would just mean she has less buttons to press and more lava to flood the floor with, not like she can just sleep in this game at a time people in more favorable timezones can join.
And then coming to Pearl's reflection, which now I think about it, feels more like the baselines for your opinion to think on. I'll see on a sentence by sentence basis, let's see what I get:
Something I really strived to do was to create a base full of life, utility, narrative, and design. Thank you for the four pillars to judge a base on, I may or may not go deeper on this like I did with Gem's definition of Hermitcraft. Let's try: Life is the feeling one gets from seeing and walking in it. Utility is the things one can do in it, whether storing stuff, farming stuff, getting to places, etc. Narrative is how much the place provokes one's thoughts, theories, headcanons, the likes. Design, basically the technical stuffs like how well the palatte goes with each other, are the shapes interesting, maybe also how much lag it generates.
It’s no lie I want to build more of this base. However, I’m quite proud of what I’ve made here regardless of that. I feel like I may repeat this argument, but if anything, a piece of art that makes one want more of it is a proof that the piece of art is, in fact, a success. It's the one that makes one feel bored or enough that's the blandness in the world, they just gloss over.
It’s a base more vibrant in color and shape than I’ve ever made before. And it challenged me to create that loudness without being too noisy or overpowering. I feel like the latter sentence describes these people trying to play Traffic just as much as it describes Pearl building this place. How much should a murder camel murder before you've just ended the series without knowing when to make the encore have its weights, weird sentence I think about just now.
I didn’t build, I rather painted. I was a traditional artist and I’ve loved drawing from a very young age. And I would be ignorant to deny that the way I draw influenced how I placed blocks. Honestly, I truly hate the term "content creator" to describe my beloved MCYT, both words of it. Just call them "artists" like they rightfully are. And Pearl is more than others, because you realized it more clearly here.
Holding onto a child’s imagination for as long as you can is so important in a world that feels dominated by grayscale shades. This one sentence hits so hard to home. This is in fact worthy of a whole discussion of its own, really serious one.
In terms of the place's lore, (I'll paraphrase) Pearl is an alien, investigating the land us humans built to investigate the world of the aliens. Plot twist, Pearl thought it was the other way around, which is to say only one layer of investigation is actually necessary. Honestly, if we all knew this all along, don't think the Pearl in a suit would be that simple of an outfit change. That timeline would certainly see Pearl uses that skin a lot more. It's infuriating to see the cleaning lady feeling a bit too lazy to change her skin working in this place, not gonna lie.
Which is one of the reasons she was a terrible investigator. I feel like a place like this would have been prime for a lot of those Empires S1 level lore, worldbuilding, interactions, you named it, elaborate stuffs. But well, Pearl already doesn't have enough time to build the damn thing, I may be asking too much.
I wanted more purpose in my base than I’ve made before. It’s a tall goal. Some did gave Pearl some head pats for delivering the place whose looks is already worth it, honestly I'm one of them. Some still see a decorative wasteland because nothing will ever be functional if they can't cram everything in like Mumbo's nano bunkers he didn't even build on Hermitcraft. I guess, the restaurant that doesn't actually have a smoker in it counts as not having enough of a purpose, so does whatelse.
Yeah, I thought a lot. Mission accomplished, roll the shader showcase of everyone's bases.
#1 - PRLH067 - The Final Base Clean Up!
It really took this long for Pearl to finally got past the 60 minute mark for her mainline epearlsodes, alright, two and a half years. Coming off those two times she was like a minute and something close, I really thought it must have been much earlier than this. Two years really changed things that much, especially how I feel about the quality of each epearlsode. That's one way to segway into saying: How good was this one?
Well, instead of going for so many different angles like that second epearlsode ever I named my favorite of all time, this one does two things and two things well. One last soup group gathering and two or more finishing touches in the "human civilization" tunnel. Both honestly being things that are my favorite to see in the modern day Pearl playing in a long term SMP, which is to imply it excludes the traffic chaos.
The gathering first started by Pearl riding a camel train, Gem rides on that and Impulse is led by the second camel led by Pearl's, the first camel's setup is quite familiar not gonna lie. This gathering is a trip down memory lane on camel blocks, with the memories being colorful monoliths the camels are moving on, or into. As Grian once said, one is a pure display of talent, one is a hole dug for motivation, and one nailed the balance between cute and evil. At that last one, the soup group played a round of stats poker, probably Gem and Pearl's first round ever, which is always welcome, because data is beautiful, especially the story it tells. I don't think. Now I'll go on about that last quote:
Want to be next to me, Gem? Can’t get rid of me.
I feel like as a shiny duo head, this cuts too deep. I really get it, Pearl wants those cheeky collabs with Gem just as much as any of us. So keep manifesting, not shipping, you should want fun, not yaoi. Through given how Pearl's general stance to not repeat alliances across series, maybe she'll be right to find another crew we'll learn to love just as much. Something you may overlook, but Impulse was the one to carry over from being in the same Boatem with Pearl to being in the same Soup Group with Pearl. So, that rule actually has a single slot shaped loophole for one to carry over. For a few shiny duo heads out there, let's lock this slot in forever.
And the other part, basically epearlsode 32 but actually longer, you know that one I really liked, where Pearl has a lot to say for each little block she built in this little street.
Her first focus is in an underground restaurant, tucked deep under a long staircase, you know that may be a good idea to get people hungrier as they descend. Pearl went really in depth into each part of this interior, starting from the toggable lights that's better than lichens, to the wallside dining tables to the more public tables, to the allays refusing to get in the farm and making a song somehow, to the bartender, which has her figuring out hanging miniblocks and giving a home for these zombie villagers that's less cruel than the 2x1 every other villager has to suffer in, and bad game design.
Coming up to the tunnel (not the surface quite yet), the place gets some more few last things like a room holding some really tall stacked (or stacks of?) beds, a water purifier (that's actually a composter), some less gray walls for the "lab room" that has some scrapped plans that may be up to you to finish, because that lab room doesn't have any lab interior actually, just as much as that huge land mass, some reinforcements for the empty half of the tunnel, that made the sides of the landscape less of a straight cut down. Returning to the surface, she honored the meme with the last 2 bridges, each fitting to the section of the base they're on, one with cover and the other paints the citadel as an unknown land for those brave explorers.
I'd say, thanks for the reminder of the little things that reminded me what pearlfection (not greatness, that's for Gem dangit) Pearl's place was. I may struggle with singing praises for this place this late in, but whatever, let's recall a saying: If you still can come up with so much ideas to expand upon a piece of art, then maybe it's really effective at giving you that emotion, that feeling, that imagination. That's the most powerful pieces of art.
And that's it all folks
That's the last of my rankings on Hermitcraft Season 9, seems to be the last of my rankings of Hermitcraft when Pearl and Gem are still the newest Hermits (barring any guests lol). Should I compile together my overall ranking of everything, let's say all 20 Hermitcraft epearlsodes in 2023? Maybe not, I don't give them grades nor have the spreadsheet to track, that sounds terrible anyways. Honestly, what would change about these rants if I were to remove the rankings, interesting question for me.
While everyone may blindly celebrate Season 9 for its 22 month long journey, I'll still see the flaws that made its actual 13 month long hike a struggle and dream of the what-ifs that could have made a better world. Some have called such critics unnecessary for this scene, but for me I feel like I have been learning more than I actually went on unhinged baseless smears like I imagined a timeline of this project could have turned into. So I guess, still here for a while.
And now I try to address my own break. It's definitely one I have to rather than I want to, can't bring this ancient laptop out with the power brick dangit. Things has happened in that time to say the least:
YouTubers that aren't Hermits has been "pausing their main series' schedules" left and right because one doesn't just build a giant team to scale up this creative job. Definitely hits close to home with the MCYT scene, which so far have all stuck to their independent guys. But who knows about the overproduced tomorrow, I'll imagine.
Jellie has passed away, which I do see is a hole that can't be filled and a thing I shouldn't try too hard to "write something creative about", especially not if I were to run a poll about cats, come on, you know these precious things need to be handled with care.
The Hermitcraft's website's banner got updated with a C I'm certain didn't came from Blockbench and a line of hermits underneath. That line has its two sides capped off by these two silhouettes that doesn't actually reveal the front/back layers so no clue for you. Which I do be surprised by, I'm one of those people who got silenced by the "no nominate anyone for Hermits" rule for so long I just say: The current roster is enough, the others can just go build their own imprint, like Empires. So here's my two cents on these 2 characters: It's Olive and Nugget to make the Jellie proud.
Last joke, may I propose my ideas for Bin-Go 2? Instead of just putting the block on an item frame, you gotta put the blocks in this space so that it's a copy of a build in the right, which the whole thing will use the whole 9 blocks palette. Sometimes, it'll require a bit more logic because you may need to craft the block into other stuffs to fill in the hologram. Maybe that requires a lot more junk to run the game, since all the excess probably can't be further crafted.
It was tempting for me to do a "Best, Worst, Blandest" list like a certain rapidfire critic I'm fond of. But no, listing Hermitcraft or New Life in the latter two categories that broadly probably will get me in trouble. So, let's do something less harsh, let's draw up the future utopia that all these series ending will lead to. Everyone's tones seem to be that we won't get any worse or blander than 1.20, so I may agree.
Hermitcraft Season 10
If Season 9 were inspired by Season 5 and basically ended in the same fate, Season 10 probably will feel logical to follow the rebound step of Season 6. Everyone will live on one big continent that's divided into different districts and all their bases will not be mega as much to fit in the continent as to let them have more time for the pranks and the games.
How long will it last? I'll say from lunar new year of 2024 right up to late june 2025, where the next next update will happens. You know what, let's mock up the rough roadmap of how that looks like:
Quarter 1 [Feb - May]: Starter base arc. You know the humble fun part of Hermitcraft.
Quarter 2 [Jun - Aug]: Big move arc. Everyone starts building their big (not mega) bases. The crafter comes really handy in this time.
Quarter 3 [Sep - Dec]: First server wide arc. Let's say this time it's Pearl messing with Impulse's big redstone machine that's the first event to the thing.
Quarter 4 [Jan - Mar]: Gaming arc. Everyone gets in the big gaming district and have all kinds of fun there. Hopefully will prove the self-fullfilling prophecy of "Jan and Feb are terrible for content" wrong.
Quarter 5 [Apr - Jun]: Encore arc. Second story arc that will culminates in ending the season with a bang. Let's say it's Demise 2 but instead of killing someone you gotta hide a bunker in their base.
In terms of grouping, I don't know, give me my shiny duo and I'll be happy I guess. And may have each of the buttercups lead a different group to satisfy the elitists.
Traffic
I'm still arguing about how some tasks Pearl got leaned way too much into *trying to break a conversation one's already in* and therefore weren't fun for her.
I feel like my Hermitcraft roadmap seems to leave some pretty obvious room for Traffic. History wants to make a cycle, a 2 year cycle of one year having a Traffic season in spring and another in fall and the next year only having a single summer season.
So let's lay out what should the two seasons entail, rulesets wise, players wise, winners wise.
Season 6 [Jul-Aug]: Let's call this stupid ruleset Chase Life. Instead of giving one the book of your tasks, they will give one someone else's task instead. That person's job is to deliver them at the right time, as in, the book will tell you when to deliver. If the book is delivered too early, the deliver gave them the advantage so when the reciever wins, the deliver get punished. If the task never got delivered, both player gets punished. Hard tasks can be rerolled at the watcher, but the book will be delivered to the nearest person. Otherwise rules are a lot like Secret Life, but hopefully there're wiser playtests now.
Season 7 [Feb-Mar]: In what feels like a late protest for an inventory update, let's make your life bar in the form of the inventory. The off hand and armor slots are sacred, but the 9 lives will be represented by the 9 columns of the inventory, so every time one gets killed, they lose one of those column. Worry not, finishing a task will give you back one of the inventory slots, which will fill up horizontally so amassing lives will be hard. Should kills do the same? The name Cat Life would horribly and inaccurately be the name of this ruleset.
Which one should Gem win in? Should Pearl be on her faction for once? Maybe that would take a task of her taking over everyone again.
Empires and Changeling
Rumors has it that the next series they're doing is neither. Good thing, the correct option for them is somewhere in the middle.
I still long champion the idea of doing a modded series but really carefully curate the modlist and especially the ways the mods interact with each other. Sure, it's ridiculous doing the latter for something that probably won't be released to the public, but I honestly always see that as a bit arbitrarily. And that kind of modded will definitely still leave room for the custom gears, although the whole topic of those artists not wanting to release those to the public is still something I prefer not to comment on.
I allured to custom gears because I still feel like everyone still loves their idea that they get to design a character, which a style and motif to each of them. It's the storyline and roleplay that definitely needs thinking about. Yes, doing something as destructive and hard to hear as Xornoth is still to excessive, but if you just tell everyone We don't have a clue what story we want to tell, you and your friends may come up with whatever, it's just ain't gonna work. There must be a middle ground, still events that brings everyone together, but doesn't end up as harsh as that demon, sounds almost as if Hermitcraft tried it.
Personally, I think it should probably start in March and end at the end of the year, so about a whole 10 months for, let's say, 3 different arcs, hopefully interesting ones. Member list will probably have most of the Empires folks, with Gem but without Pearl (she may come in the rift occasionally for a visit, something about the MCYT future we should be open to) and maybe Martyn should be down to. Ask me down the line, hope I'll say once again Shelby has the best tale of them all, or the fun fact that Oli uploaded a whole 5 times.
Overall tone
Let's deliver my take in a weird way: This year, Pearl released a total of 18? + 8 + 7 + 9 = 42? epearlsodes, so slightly short of once per week, until all the Decked Owt enjoyers scream at me about the full phase mixes. Last year, Pearl released 30 + 6 + 6 + 2 = 44 epearlsodes, wait, that's surprising, really doesn't feel like that ngl. How much should Pearl release this year? If by the projection of quality over quantity, probably down to 40, so 2 S9 + 8 Traffic + 30 S10? That sounds small. I see a better world than this, let's say it's back to 45, more than ever. Unless you count 18 + 11 + 8 = 37 epearlsodes in 6.5 months as where it should be...
And on the topic of POW or Witchcraft's imprints, maybe this is the year I'll finally watch them.
So, Gem's finale, it is do be a typical season encore, and it has being released before Pearl going for it too. Not going to pit it against whatever the other river side has, but there's one line of quote that really sticks with me:
I think at the end of the day, Hermitcraft is a bit like a big old pot of soup. You need all your ingredients: You need your big mega bases, you need your tiny little detailed builds. You need your pranks: You need big planned group events, you need tiny goofy group events. You need big planned mini games, you need goofy little mini games. You know, you need all of it all together, and that's kind of what makes up Hermitcraft. After all, the soup just would not be the same without all of its ingredients.
To which I say, that's certainly a well-put way to define Hermitcraft. Which can only means one thing: I'll go on a whole ramble about this definition.
Not that complicated
Gem managed to list six things: big builds, small builds, big events, small events, big games and small games. Reading that, one's brain should prefer to put that in a 3 by 2 matrix to easily organize it.
Feel free to put in your own examples. For now, let's say I have my own examples shuffled and shubbled up. Figure where they should be:
Decked Out
Pearl putting goggly eyes on soup group things
The Perimeter
Economy war, or the Clown arc
GeminiSlay giving everyone PvP practice
Grian's cat looking house
I won't be arguing over possible answers, if anything, one should obviously embrace the fact that some things may fit into multiple columns, or the fact that the medium or gigantic rows are missing.
Defining each
According to that guy I got really inspired on to ramble about all this in occasionally such negative tone, Yahtzee Croshaw, a video game is supposed to bring any combination of the following three things: Context (story), Challenge (challenge) and Catharsis (fundamental fun). And I feel like this is a good place to apply that in to define what each of these genres bring to Hermitcraft:
Build
Or well, let's use a better, more accurate word phrase for this, a piece of art. It's going to be, to its artist, strong in the department of challenge and with varying levels of catharsis and even more varying levels of context. It's a big challenge of figuring out what the overall thing will be, what it will be made of, and then to actually make each of them, you know how it goes.
And with that, comes tons of catharsis of seeing that piece of art comes to life step by step, and then be able to show both the process and a stage of the piece to the world. I say variable because sometimes, these builds does wear its artists down and the level of catharsis does wear down. And I never used the word final build because as many Hermits constantly insists, that final rush will never happen, and it's good the build is what it is in the world download.
The context is well, iffily defined for this one, sometimes a build is made just because I want to build something, so context obviously won't be strong, but sometimes, it's a lifelong dream to design your own theme park or to bring so much color and life to a mountainscape, for which context makes even more everything.
Additional note: Redstone probably falls into this category. Sucks it got fallen into this wayside, but one really has to figure the presentation to really make it as appealing as flashy aesthetic builds. As even a MCC spreadsheet can appeal to people, anything can to be honest.
Event
The more used words to describe this are: collab, pranks, lore, story arc, etc. Which definitely rings a bell to you, as they are often the Hermits' favorite memories, not because one could just put 90% of the recording session to make a long episode, but because many times they genuinely are so funny and meaningful to their friendships.
Well, on these 3 Cs, obviously it's really strong in the context sense, it's exciting to think about what comes next, and then even more exciting to learns what happened, not so exciting to whine like a hall monitor about some unwritten rules certain Hermits apparently broke through.
Obviously it's the challenge of writing a story as it happens, the challenge of improvisation. Not saying that any storyline on Hermitcraft or neighbouring imprints are scripted however, but these events had to be thought about somehow sometime. And we prefer if that sometime is as they happens.
In terms of catharsis, it's definitely fun to be in a part of history as it's being written by yourself, we all know that much. Bonus points to being able to hear a wide range of Pearl voices during any of these times, it's the little things, little quotes to make a meme of that made the memories.
Game
(I wrote a whole paragraph about Minecraft's game making power. Don't belong here, go generate one with AI if you need that for some reasons.)
Honestly, I think if you were to look back at the attempts at Hermitcraft definitions, many did came close to this one. Because they nailed the builds and the events, but never the games. That's because it's kind of a unique place of its own. The middle of the scale of the other two that is.
A game, to its designer, to its developer, to the Beefs and Tangos of the world, is everything in common with a build and more. More catharsis of seeing other people having fun with your work. More justification of all the decorations being there too, to that comment about mega bases being pointless wastelands.
A game, to its players, to you, is everything in common with an event however. It has all of those catharsis of a social interaction (between opposing teams, between alliances, or between man and another man's machine), it has all the contextual fun of seeing someone step by step learning and mastering a system, wait did I just describe a challenge?
Which is to say, it's the best of the both worlds. Every base should have an elytra course above and a boat race undernath. Every storage system should use its excess junk to build a Bin-Go. Every map room should have copies shuffled and shubbled up for people to try to puzzle it together. I don't think I'm joking, but knowing how much effort some of those options maybe, maybe just a button that turns on a random thing in the interior one's in goes a long way. It's like a loading screen.
Large vs. Small
Finishing the first row, let's get to the left column. It's truly tempting to cut off the big row and just have the small role just like how Traffic have it. I don't know about you, but that world seems a bit hollow. We need the two to have harmony, to have a medium.
As I may have allured in the build's challenge paragraph, a big build should never be one big monolithic piece. It should be a collection of interconnected smaller pieces all working towards the big abstract goals. Maybe some will be larger than others, some will be a big build of their own, but it's the basics of life: You can build a perfect machine out of imperfect parts.
Suddenly, a big build isn't so much a literal monolith, but a metaphorical guide. To give you the idea of the next small step, whether to contribute to your own big build, or to parody another's for a laugh. Oh wait, a small build could do that all by itself too, it's rare that it happens but it makes itself a big one when it does.
I feel like I struggle with this section because frankly, I'm okay with every option the Hermits has chosen or will choose for their future. Being a piece of art, there shouldn't be a correct answer overall, there should only be a correct answer for the goal you've decided for yourself.
Full circle moment
I started this whole blog defining my way of seeing what a mega base can and should do. Back then, I already saw this whole pushback against such giant castles whose backs won't be finished and whose interiors will only ever be a chest monster. It does feels terrifying to see my observations still aging well in a way.
What feels more terrifying is to see the temptation to cut off not just that tile, but a few more among the six tiles to make a better imprint than Hermitcraft. Yahtzee screamed so much wishing games does one thing and one thing well instead of just trying and failing at being jack-of-all-trades number 100, I was inclined to apply to the Hermitcraft that I had feelings on. To which, I once again have to remind to myself: It's good to have a comfort zone, it's good to have the monument of the scene be this stable thing, sure it doesn't look as innovative as the Dark Souls that Yahtzee guy found so comfortable in, but still.
Tell me which single episode of Hermitcraft hits all six of those tiles, no cheating with an encore that includes a montage hopefully. Or tick the tiles that your all time favorite Hermitcraft episode ticks. Mine, let's say the entire small row, so three.
Let's all laugh at a Hermitcraft that may have learnt something, tee hee hee.
History lesson: Season 9 was actually supposed to start on Feburary the 19th. However, it got delayed by 2 weeks. So in damage control about the fact that everyone knew that old date, they decided to organized a "town hall stream" to discuss things. Feels like in retrospect, all things considered, probably one of the best apology videos ever made. I may cut slack of Season 9 for many things, but this stream is not one of them. Let's do a revisit, now that the actual season has ended.
Flat hierarchy
On Hermitcraft, apperantly no one is truly the boss per say, one's voice have just as much power as another's voice, as long as they're all Hermits. So just propose things, get the votes in, if it's majority and nobody's mad, so it happens.
Guess my statement would be: Sounds like designed by committee, right, that explains why S9 was so boring, probably wouldn't change the future. To which I debunk myself: Hermitcraft tends to pride themselves a lot on their comfort and stable factor, which is why they can keep their 20 something rosters in harmony in the first place. It may sound tempting to "rewrite the scene" by splitting Hermitcraft into more focused groups that "do their own thing better", but if that's what it takes for MCYT to have their ambassador imprint, I guess I should accept it.
It's good to have one leader's vision being clearly felt in everything that leader owns, but maybe it's more stable to not have that vision infect something as big and broad as an entire season. That Traffic theory about the winner deciding the next ruleset probably makes some sense for that imprint, it sounds much more like what I want.
Six weeks' break
Long story short, Season 8 was too exhausting, the Hermits needed a break, they decided on six weeks and then will play on mid Feburary, sounds good enough.
And then, really complicated reasons and a tons of factors happened. So, in order to appease the whole committee, the start date had to be pushed back. I guess, the public probably should have no right to know the full list of peoples with their reasons, to I don't know, decide whether the delay was overall justified, for very obvious reasons, especially on the topic Scar, which the Hermits definitely called out, which I watching that thought there would have been more of.
I feel like this delay was a big warning about what was about to happen to the actual season 9 itself. There will be a sea upon an ocean of little bugs that happened on the way that has delayed or distracted any certain Hermit from their project, and then who knows about the domino effects each one has on others. Last time I pointed at like 5 big ones, but this time I'm here to say: But wait, there's more.
The biggest callout from the Hermits to us is that Don't speculate, your fiction hurts people. And the toxic positivists of Hermitcraft definitely has taken that to heart, I'll say that much.
What is a Hermitcraft?
We are just some normal dudes, juggling some professonal entertainment career that's somewhat grounded and normal. Hermitcraft isn't an entitiy. We figure stuff ourselves as we go. We make mistakes, but we won't do things in bad faith.
Many times, it really do feels like Hermitcraft is the untouchable pantheon from the sky with all the things they've done and delivered. Especially when you see those little kids asking "How can I join Hermitcraft?" and then someone pulls the bot command, and that's how a dream get crushed, both meanings may apply. Then you hear about the Hermits always defending themselves "we're just a person", "we're independent" and you just have an existential crisis.
To which I say, something I keep thinking about: Hermitcraft is big enough to be a professional thing, the flagbearer of the MCYT scene, something to be looked up from your ground, for respect and for fear. But it's simultaneously small enough that it hasn't grown all the necessary parts that those giant corporate entities have, for better and for worse. It's a double edged sword from each side, so a four edged sword.
Explainer stream
I repeat: All thing considered, I think it's the good decision to do this town hall stream. Maybe something may sounds too obvious to the die-hard Hermitcraft fan who may be trying to run a Tumblr blog solely of Fully-Ramblomatic-inspired critiques about various aspects of the scenes, but I'd say most will learn something of some value. It's definitely a nice chat.
And now for the flipside argument, where's another one? Well, during the long, long course of season 9, I don't think I have quite seen any release date of anything being announced and spreaded as quickly as that fateful 19/02. Not even the 20/12, which arrived 1. really close to those events actually happening 2. which they did actually hit all of those dates they promised 3. was I thinking about those dates Pearl mentioned once on stream about her epearlsodes that for their respective complicated reasons obviously didn't happen that quickly, was that what I was mad about?
Well, there could have been other occasions that would warranted it, maybe the end this season could have been one, or the end of those big events or storylines. Or let's make it really consistent, so much to make a whole "Hermitcast". Which on the full stream, they did shot down and instead talk about "streams like these". That one I don't think aged so well. Someone is still sad they don't get to see the whole stream of the perimeter covering.
Season 9 will be full
It's too hard to imagine that alternative timeline where season 8 had just been this full length season where first 6 months everyone played in the old terrain island and then eventually everyone goes out to the new terrain frontier. Maybe in that timeline Hermitcraft will just stuck to their 6 quarters cadence and the season 9 that timeline would experience has been a great 2/3rd of the way through.
Well, the story was about them being scared about Mojang's update split. Which they eventually decided after that Season 8 is that they gotta be more flexible against whatever shenanigans Mojang would be up to. Well, so far, Mojang has been pretty nice about their update cadence, every fall you'll know what the next one will be about, few weeks after that you get the snapshots to play with those things, and then every summer you get one final build, good or bad that's your opinion. And with MCYT's gradual shift away from the gameplay itself and now onto the people and their art, starting anew on the same update just in the new year frankly still gives a fresh perspective. Although your gear and goals may get too strong for the slow brushes of the summer.
What works the best for as many people as possible
You won't always get what you like. I feel like this is the cold water bucket admission of the Hermits themselves. Being in the group project, if you're the minority voting against, maybe you should try what the majority thinks and see where you truly stands before letting that side declares revolution. And I feels like that's why all those other SMPs that popped up and actually managed some stability, enough that you learnt about them tends to share more with Hermitcraft than they do revolting against this ambassador. Maybe being an SMP inherently requires you being on that side, that comfort zone, that stability.
And I once again have another extensional crisis about the role of the critic here. With those giant corporations and their products, it's easy to smear at them for some bad decisions that to anyone outside of that committee would be illogical nonsense, which makes for great critiques, example obviously I said above like Fully Ramblomatic. But with this awkwardly big awkwardly small imprint, it's surprising how much I emphasize with the mistakes and blunders they do. It isn't car crash fascinating, it's just sad. At which point, the critic ended up only having things to point out and nothing left to truly criticize or speculate on. I think this is why the toxic positivity has surrounded the scene so much: If you can't fight them, join them.
Another break?
We're in one right now. In the stream, Doc definitely written off a whole year, yeah, that's ridiculous, but he's still okay with the "similar amount of time to last break". (so six to eight weeks) Chances are, probably will be the case this break. I wouldn't mind honestly, what will mind is what topic I will have to write about. Let's see.
What does a town hall look like?
A mega base
Visual background noise
That thing with the pilars and the wide triangle top
