Joe Hills stuff that I tend to assume people know (like in the academics overestimate comic):
Joe is one of two people who have been wholly in charge of hermitcraft (Joe's reign as dictator lasted for the duration of time it took to confirm all the decisions for the start of season two, after which he stepped down)
Joe wrote hermitcraft fanfic (as part of a video) long before many hermitcraft fanfic writers got started
Joe led a one man, multiple day protest outside record label Warner Chappell for ruthlessly copyright striking Mumbo and putting his channel in real danger
Joe's channel music is a mix of original songs and parodies created in collaboration with his cool as hell sister Quinn Hills (hi Quinn if you're seeing this). She has a cat called Blair Witch, writes fantastic music, and is a vocally trans artist
Joe has consistently featured guest speakers in his streams or videos over the years, whether that be pathfinder writers, activists, or community members coming in to help offer viewpoints on his builds
Joe has admin permissions on hermitcraft (usually to his own detriment in accidentally clearing his inventory) and is a member of the hermitcraft "secret council" (as Cleo put it), who are the people who regularly turn up to meetings and do some actual admin and decision making
Joe and Cleo first met when they were challenged to fight to death by Vechs. Joe won the fight and then Cleo stabbed him in the back for vengeance. They both made overdramatic videos to prepare for this
Joe thought hermitcraft was a scam when he was invited a few weeks into season one (as a wildcard member)
Joe used to be part of the team who made the webcomic Jaque of All Blades and got his streaming start doing art streams.
Joe is also one of the authors of the Penguins and Pitfalls TTRPG, which he developed as part of Team Snow Day (TSD)
Joe pays all of his staff fairly for their time and classes blazing posts on Tumblr (especially for the mcyt sexyman competition) as marketing so that the IRS can see he's running a real business, not a fraud scheme
Joe's webcam expands on stream in response to tips. It moves from the hot bar into the Jhost (with the mandatory Jacob Marley chains bit) before growing larger and more transparent until he is gone. Once the Jhost is fully expanded, the beetlejhost comes out (with the suit and the webcam expander song). Once we max out beetlejhost, we get Joemez Addams (who wears a different suit)
Joe is one of only two hermits to have played every hermitcraft season (although he missed a lot of season 3 with a newborn baby to look after)
Joe's coup was responsible for getting mumbo added to the server. Shortly after, he suggested in a meeting that no members under the age of 18 should be admitted. Mumbo, 17, kept very quiet
Joe and Cleo did a Minecraft Christmas album years ago. It's bad. I love it
Fandom sidelines her or pretends she doesn't exist so they can feel comfortable shipping the main guy with another guy. Demonizes her for being an imperfect trauma survivor. Blames the writer's decisions for her storyline (which are also rooted in misogyny) on her, a fictional woman, instead of the actual living man who wrote it.
Casca is amazing. She's smart, kind, brave, and flawed in very human ways. I believe she is the beating heart of the story despite the author's prioritizing the male characters. Many of the story's themes are embodied in her storyline and by her. She is one of a very few women of color, potentially a Black coded woman, who stars in a fantasy manga and later a show from that particular era. Not only that but she's the love interest. Neither her romance or her trauma are handled with care by the author IMO, but nevertheless many survivors including myself have related to her story and found her to be a powerful and moving character. She deserves to be cherished and loved much more. While she may be an imperfect character because of her author's prejudices I still adore her.
Pearlescentmoon:
oh my god where do i even fucking start. in canon she's ostracized from her best friend in the whole world AND SOULMATE because he decides on a whim she betrayed him because she didn't immediately seek him out and throw herself at his feet. he then proceeds to spread rumors about her being his crazy ex to the whole server. he says she's the reason why he's gay. someone else on the server calls her "scarlet pearl" and the name sticks. at the end of the series (it's a death game) they're the only two left alive. he kills himself, making her the winner of the game, and frames it as an act of kindness/an apology that she is in essence forced to accept. even though it narratively removes her agency
and in fanon everyone just kind of agreed with her soulmate and said, yeah she is his crazy ex! wow! he's so nice for killing himself for her! or worse she gets girlbossed
she's literally my goat she's my everything she's my poor little meow meow she's my fun time gal she has suffered more than jesus
So basically in double life (think hunger games with soulmates) she was rejected by her soulmate, who proceeded to tell anyone who'd listen that he did it because she was "unhinged" "crazy" "psychotic" etc. She tried to play into it (because she was lonely and miserable) and neither the other characters or the fandom ever really realized that "Scarlet Pearl", as her bloodthirsty alter ego was known, was a result of trauma and ostracization and not something that came at all naturally. To this day people still portray her as an unhinged girl boss, and refuse to acknowledge that her soulmate did anything wrong in isolating her. They torture you to insanity and then torture you for being insane.
Also, people never appreciate how competent she is in general.
She didn't even do anything! She was making an effort to be thoughtful for her soulmate, and when that failed, she just wanted to be with her dog (who later died). And after it was all over, she went and forgave her soulmate, which makes her a better person than me. She's really good at all the parts of the game except the social, and people are constantly taking advantage of it.
Her storyline in vampires smp was cut short for pacing :(
She deserved better! She deserved to get to go "oh God what am I" more!
oh god where do i start. it's been a while since i've watched the life series, so i may have things out of order or slightly inaccurate, but i believe i have the broad strokes of everything. so in double life, players are assigned soulmates, to which they share a health bar. pearl, upon starting in this world, goes to the nether w martyn, yadda yadda, and comes back to find her soulmate scott has denounced her for "taking too much damage" (she didn't) and is choosing his own soulmate in cleo. okay whatever. this isnt too bad. he then starts going around to tell people she's crazy and a witch and trying sooo hard to get him back. okay what the hell. she builds a tower to get away from people and decides well fuck this if everyone thinks i'm crazy i might as well be!! she starts purposefully taking damage to piss off scott. she ends up a server-wide villain. she wins the game because scott has the audacity to kill himself despite her yelling at him not to. she literally just wanted to talk to him man. the thing the fandom did??? completely ran with scott's version of the story. pearl became a crazy ex, a witch, a villain, in the eyes of the fandom. she was lonely. she was trying to survive alone when she was in a world where everyone had a built-in, universe-assigned partner. she was REDUCED TO SCOTT'S CRAZY EX. SHE LITERALLY DIDN'T DO ANYTHING UNTIL SHE REALIZED THERE WAS NOTHING THAT WOULD CHANGE PEOPLE'S PERCEPTION OF HER.
she had the most justified character arc of all time and yet she is reduced to scott's crazy ex. if i was her i would've done worse actually
She gets slotted into the role of ~crazy~ bitch in the fandom.
I love the way she is ostracised in Double Life, and the way that haunts her in future series. I love the 'I am up at 5am and DOING MY BEST' energy she brings to everything. I love the way all her choices make perfect sense from her perspective and she keeps being judged harshly for them. I love the passive aggressive standing in snow to get back at her soulmate. I love Tilly (her dog, her only friend in Double Life) so so much.
Fandom overexaggerates bad things she did, complains she was selfish in times where she either wasn't or had no other option, and keeps making her "the mum friend" she is not the mum friend!!!!!
She is so silly and so kind and also a little fucked up. She loves her dogs and loves her friends and isn't afraid of mischief and/or tomfoolery. She is one of the best terrain builders I've ever seen and is absolutely amazing at rolling with the bit.
People love to portray Pearl in Double Life as someone who went crazy after being rejected. Pearl's DL perspective is the story of a woman unfairly shunned and isolated, and characterized as unstable by those around her. This is lost on the general fandom, who wants to paint her conflicts with Scott and various others as being on even footing, or even portray others as her victims when she was routinely victimized by almost everyone else on the server.
Pearl is the most loyal and effective ally to be made in the Life Series and is often taken advantage of because of her tendency for genuine kindness even in a death game. That's not to say she isn't also a capable killer when necessary, but she approaches most situations with fairness even when fairness isn't expected.
functionally suicidal character saying “I would die for you” to their significant other and its like. I get the sentiment, honey, but if a hot dog vendor told me he’d sell hot dogs for me, I wouldn’t feel very moved now would I
hey, don't cry, a Minecraft SMP raised over 1 million for charity
On April 17th and 18th 2026, the Hermitcraft SMP raised over 1 million dollars for the Gamers for Giving charity as part of the Gamers Outreach weekend!
What's Gamers for Giving or Hermitcraft? I'll tell you.
Gamers for Giving is a charity dedicated to giving video games to kids in long-term hospice. This sounds like a trivial matter, but these kids are often spending long days just lying in a hospital staring into space bored out of their minds.
All day. Only broken up by the nurses or doctor coming in. If you've spent time in the hospital as a kid for a broken bone, you know how boring that stay was.
Gamers for Giving ensures that these kids have a better hospital stay, by allowing them to access mobile video game consoles. (Also, it gives doctors and nurses an easy-to-access break too!)
The consoles look like this!
Hermitcraft SMP is a long-term Minecraft server made up of a variable of 22-28 members per season and has been going on, continuously, for fourteen years!
And before you draw the wrong conclusions, this isn't the Dream SMP reskinned (well, first off, Hermitcraft came first). The Dream SMP was a heavy role-play server where the oldest was wasn't even 30.
While some members of the SMP have their own separate little arcs, the only server-wide role-play event on Hermitcraft was 'moon big', where the moon crashed into Earth. And many of its members are over 30, with both Gem and Mumbo recently hitting it!
(A memorial and acknowledgement goes to TFC, or Tinfoilchef, who passed away at the start of Season 9 and was the oldest member at over 60 years old).
They're incredibly wholesome and make a concentrated effort to be family-friendly across all members, and each of the members are friends with each other- as proven by the charity streams!
That's them! They have their own theme music, logo, and banner!
The Gamers Outreach charity weekend also included a LAN party prior to the weekend, which the Hermits were part of in 2024 (this is their 4th year doing this!). The Hermits broke both GO and their own 2025 records with just the charity alone, and had an online auction house helped pad it!
Now, obviously, the charity weekend had to be well worth the 1 Million+ dollars. So, what happened?
Day One (in order):
- The Silly Games, hosted by Grian and Ollie TheOrionSound
- Donation reading #1 (readers slowly get clothspinned all over)/In-Person Peardle hosted by Ollie TheOrionSound and Pearlescentmoon
- Buy-A-Sign, hosted by Tango [audience could donate to have their names on a sign on the Hermitcraft Season 11 server, which was turned into a competition]
- Donation reading #2 (Readers get systematically fed mini marshmallows while reading)
- Blood on the Clocktower Live, hosted by Cleo and Martyn Inthelittlewood
- Donation reading #3 (Readers get taped up while reading)
-Q&A, hosted by Rendog and Mumbo
Day Two (In Order):
- Minecraft Championships, aka MCC: Hermit Takeover! Hosted by Scott Smajor and Noxcrew
- Music Room break
- Taskmaster, but it's Hermitmaster hosted by Gem and Grian, which gave us the following three delightful images:
-Donation Read #4 (Readers get accosted with bubble machine guns while reading)
- Peardle, hosted by Pearl and Ollie TheOrionSound
- Mystery Hermit, hosted by Zedaph
- Music room break
- Peardle, hosted by Pearl and Ollie TheOrionSound
- Blindfold Bingo
Throughout both days, Jono (Rendog's brother) kept a continuous stream of the music room that the stream occasionally cut back to, which featured delights such as Brian's Season 8 Timelapse music 'Work', Wonderwall, Time of My Life, and a drum battle between Skizz and Impulse (but one of them was on a toy drum set and the other on a real drum set).
It's one of the Hermitcraft community's most looked-after event, and next year promises an even greater record break and even more fun! Even if you can't donate, your viewership on Youtube or Twitch alone helps a ton- in short, stay tuned for Gamers Outreach 2027!
kids were roleplaying with minecraft figurines and one of them had their figure go up to the other and say “i’m in love with you” and the other one replied “sword slash to the chest. and you’re on fire”
I would like to put my words out on Cleo's possible face reveal this weekend
So for those of you who don't know Hermitcraft is participating in Gamer for Giving Charity Event this weekend for Gamer's Outreach and Cleo is going to be there irl.
They might choose to do a face reveal or she might not. Honestly I feel like she is the type of person to show up in a inflatable dinosaur costume but that's a different thing.
If they do face reveal. And ANY OF YOU are mean to her. Bye. Your blocked. Don't care who you are, if you are mean to them, Bye Bye.
And if they choose not to fully face reveal. Like showing up in a mask, or whatever else, and you are mean to them, Bye. Blocked. Again, don't care who you are you will be blocked if you are mean to her.
In short, be nice to Cleo this weekend. And for those of you who may think I am jesting. I'm not. I don't want you near me if you are going to be mean to Cleo for existing and doing something that take a lot of courage. For those of you who are on my side. If someone is mean to her and you are too scared to fight back, don't be. You have at least one person army behind your back, though I'm sure their are more. And if you're not scared, then I am proud of you. Let's stop the haters and let Cleo know that she has an army at their back.
For the folk who read this far, thank you. For reading my tired ramblings, and I hope you have a good timezone.
As you are probably aware by now, Cleo will be face revealing in just a few days. Here are some ground rules:
Cleo is, by their own description, "heavyset." There will be NO BODY SHAMING. These events often have challenges and mini games involving food, and when a larger person eats on the internet, people always say some shit. DON'T.
Cleo is, by their own description, "a femme presenting nonbinary person." She uses she/they pronouns. There will be NO MISGENDERING. There will be no exorsexist comments about her presentation!
You are allowed to be attracted to people. You're allowed to say she's hot. What you will NOT do is say she's hot in ANY PLACE SHE OR THE HERMITS AND FRIENDS CAN SEE IT or fetishize their body or their identity.
Cleo is NOT YOUR FRIEND! There will be NO PARASOCIAL BULLSHIT in their comments/chat!
Just... treat her with dignity and respect the way you would want someone to treat your or a loved one. Be a decent human.
Gem: I loved the Wizardology one, I wanted to be a wizard
Pearl: Ahhh (unintelligible, maybe "that was cool")
Gem: And I was really really really really really offended when I was a wizard in Empires season 1 and I have at least 5000 comments telling me that I can't be a wizard, I have to be a witch because I'm a girl and JK Rowling said. I- I-
Pearl: Oh...
Gem: I would like her to go away
Pearl: Yeah that would be great. She doesn't- she's what happens in a wizardry thing-
Gem: I hate- Dude you would not believe the amount of comments that I got in Empires season 1
Pearl: Really? I didn't even think about that, what the heck?
Gem: *mocking* You have to be a witch, you can't be a wizard, Gem. Wizards are for boys.
Gem: I loved the Wizardology one, I wanted to be a wizard
Pearl: Ahhh (unintelligible, maybe "that was cool")
Gem: And I was really really really really really offended when I was a wizard in Empires season 1 and I have at least 5000 comments telling me that I can't be a wizard, I have to be a witch because I'm a girl and JK Rowling said. I- I-
Pearl: Oh...
Gem: I would like her to go away
Pearl: Yeah that would be great. She doesn't- she's what happens in a wizardry thing-
Gem: I hate- Dude you would not believe the amount of comments that I got in Empires season 1
Pearl: Really? I didn't even think about that, what the heck?
Gem: *mocking* You have to be a witch, you can't be a wizard, Gem. Wizards are for boys.
