Here’s why I love convex:
And yes, yes, the weird goofy disturbing nonsensical storylines from seasons five and six of possession and pranks and corporate domination compel me to this day, and after that they’ve been members of mayoral office and king’s court, allies and adversaries and roommates, but friendship is what ties it all together.
The extent of it is not always obvious on videos, because both of them tend to cut out much of the more casual interactions, but every time one of them streams, the other will be there. Scar will try (and fail) to murder Cub by spleef and they’ll start talking of anything and everything. They’ll go threaten Joe or sneak to the forbidden areas in Decked Out 2 and all the while there is an ease to every interaction; taking each other for granted in a good way. Scar compliments Cub’s genius and Cub leaves a sweet little message at the top of Scar’s castle. Always the first to comment on each other’s tweets, getting along in person swimmingly as well, these guys have been friends for years and years and it shows.
There are many wonderful friendships on Hermitcraft, of course - a lot of different flavors, and many that I enjoy. There’s a couple reasons why I especially like watching Scar and Cub together. One of those reasons is, weird enough, how understated their relationship is from the content creation standpoint. They hardly ever call attention to it; it’s just there. (Though to be fair, Cub does appear to be plenty obsessed with HotGuy.) They are always willing to run with each other’s bits, a great quality common on the server. I also very much enjoy how between them, there’s an assumption of competence (or at least no stated assumption of incompetence) - even if it might be unwarranted! Scar is prone to silliness but Cub rarely makes fun of him for it, and rarely calls attention to any mispronunciations or the like. Now, hermits making fun of each other is funny and never ill-intended, and I wouldn’t want every relationship to be like this, but the convex way of utmost mutual respect until suddenly an attempted murder is much to my taste.
Okay. Okay Kie we get it, they are friends. So why ship it?
Right. So this is a real friendship between real life people. My interest does not lie in RPF - and even though HC sometimes skirts the line, especially with Convex there are many, many explicitly character bits. They may not have called it roleplay -
(Forgive the side note but, bless these ccs the mcyt as a whole has a very muddled idea of what roleplaying even is. Here’s Iskall85 on stream talking about his planned murder mystery game saying he hates roleplay because these scripted scenes don’t interest him but if there’s just a character he could embody, and pretend to be, without a script then he might enjoy that... Sir, acting out scripted scenes is called acting, what you describe is roleplay. Okay side not done)
So what they did on s5, they may not have called it roleplay but they wore vex heads and did voices and had a whirly transition to when the vex take them over, so I have a very easy time thinking of them as characters. And the friendship the players have happens to be the basis for how the characters act with each other. So I imagine characters Scar and Cub having this implicit respect, closeness and shared understanding. And clearly they like each other.
So let’s turn closeness to commitment to, if we want, devotion.
Why I make it romantic is simply because I like fictional romance and for me, the building blocks for friendship or romance are not much at all different. They’re repeatedly (business) partners, they live together, that’s enough for me. My own relationships have started from close friendships and I’d be hard pressed to explain what the “romance” component even is, so that surely colors my view.
Also. Minecraft men are known for flirting with each other and they do it too - but that is not the main draw for me. I don’t need that, though I enjoy it when it happens.
Also! All this talk about friendship doesn’t mean I’d mainly write them friends to lovers, or in a kind of relationship that I would want. I am a great enjoyer of the more messed up parts of their stories, Convex as villains, as corrupted, as possessed. Mutual respect and care can be twisted or taken to an unhealthy extreme. But the dynamic between them is what drew me to them and what keeps me enjoying them together.
You’ve slept in the drafts for months. Now go, my rant, roam the world. Be free!
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