Grand Unified Scarian Theory
a single, overarching Scarian romance arc across the whole Hermitcraft and Life series as well as a primer for anyone curious about the early seasons.
We start with NEIGHBOR MEET CUTE in early Season 6:
Season 6 begins in a peaceful pirate bay. SCAR, an established hermit just beginning his third season, is happily making pirate caves. Into this tranquil scene comes GRIAN.
Grian, fresh-faced and new to Hermitcraft, picks a sea-themed base location right next to Scar’s pirate caves. He gets himself set up and starts his base. Even someone like Grian can get newcomer nerves, and he spends the first few weeks desperately trying to act like a normal person instead of the horrible gremlin he really is.
(Some hermits are taken in by this. Doc and Xisuma give him pity diamonds, something that—after getting to know Grian—they noticeably never do again.)
The only person exempt from Grian’s just-a-little-birthday-boy act is Mumbo, whom Grian already knows, clearly has a puppy-crush on, and pursues relentlessly.
Grian and Scar don’t interact much at first. Grian sees Scar for the first time while passing by his base. Scar instantly falls in one of his own caves and dies.
Scar, intrigued by his new neighbor, makes some overtures of interest:
1. Scar leaves a fully enchanted trident at Grian’s base as a welcome present. This is a generous gift for the cute neighbor you have a crush on and frankly the most normal thing either of them do in the entire years-long relationship.
Grian goes ‘huh!’ at the trident, never finds out who sent it, and immediately forgets the whole thing.
2. Scar entertains Grian’s traveling-salesman pitch and buys his overpriced armor boxes.
Multiple jokes about the size of Scar’s wallet. Grian clearly pleased by the transaction.
3. Scar makes Grian a complementary in-joke build (Spongebob’s house by Squidward’s house).
This delights Grian immeasurably for five minutes until he turns back to his prank war with Mumbo.
(Poor Mumbo. Clearly immensely fond of Grian but not sure he wants to be in a relationship with a lit stick of dynamite. This is very understandable.)
By this point Scar obviously kind of clocks that Grian is insane about Mumbo. This isn’t much of a leap. The entire SERVER is aware that Grian is horribly in love with Mumbo.
Ah. That’s okay. Scar backs off a bit. He recognizes when he’s not really in with a chance.
Maybe this thing he has with Grian is just going to be a friendship, and that’s okay! Having a crush is fun even if you’re not going to do anything about it. Scar is going to build some shops about it and be normal.
Both of them are going to be very normal.
FLIRTING (First Stages) – mid-Season 6
Both of them immediately forget to be normal.
Grian has started a detective agency and has no mysteries to solve. Scar instantly invents a cookie-based mystery supervillain called the Jangler and leaves Grian a series of tantalizing cookie-based puzzles for enrichment in his enclosure.
Grian has invented a game where you kill people with rockets. Scar volunteers to get murdered. Both of them are delighted.
Scar and Cub’s business empire is incidentally crushing Grian’s startup venture. There is no reason for this to be so flirtatiously charged.
At this point all the hermits move to a new village because of the Minecraft update. Grian starts a who-can-build-the-tallest-house war with Mumbo and Iskall. Scar notices and starts doing the same from the other side of the village.
It quickly gets so wild that Mumbo taps out (Mumbo does not do well with intensity, would rather just not, thankyouverymuch), and it's only Grian, Iskall and Scar.
Scar builds a wild giant plant eating his rocketship, and then a castle in the sky, and an enormous version of himself firing a canon at Grian's house. This is the first time you can really see Grian trying to hold in shrieks when he flies back in to see what Scar has done while he's gone.
Grian’s interest has been caught. He’s gone from barely seeing Scar to checking on him regularly. What’s our good friend Scar up to? What’s Scar done? What is Scar going to do next?
FLIRTING (How To Catch Your Crush’s Interest By Building A Secret Government Facility) – late Season 6
What Scar does next is put on a snazzy military uniform, team up with Doc to steal the time machine Grian invented last week, then, in the most effort someone has EVER gone to to get Grian's attention, spend weeks on end building a fully-functional 'Area 77' military base and containment facility to stop him getting it back.
Turns out this works beyond Scar’s wildest dreams.
Grian INSTANTLY obsessed with breaking into Scar’s base and retrieving his time machine.
Grian persuades Ren into forming a hippie camp with him next to the base and spends weeks entirely fixated on Scar. Meanwhile Scar, who is starting to really understand how to get and keep Grian's attention, builds more and fancier infrastructure to keep Grian out. This is also where Grian really starts looking at Scar's art—the insane cliffs Scar has build around his new hangers—and awkwardly not quite managing words, because it would be very embarrassing to just outright say the word beautiful, and Grian’s a very normal and non-embarrassing person.
In the climax of the season, Grian-the-hippie breaks into General Scar’s base.
Nobody can say that Scar making himself a top brass general and Grian making himself an anti-establishment flower power hippie does not end up with plausibly-deniable not-making-out Grian-provoking-Scar-into-holding-him-against-a-wall.
This is Hermitcraft. It’s temporary. Scar and Grian both know it was a bit. A bit they both got super into, sure! But a bit. Not weird at all.
(“Sure, mate, not weird at all,” Mumbo says, after all of this is over. “Then why are you making it SOUND weird Mumbo you’re the WORST”)*
(“Sooo....” Cub says, and Scar says, “I know. I know!”)*
*not canon but you can't tell me it didn't happen off screen
FLIRTING (But What About…) – early Season 7
Okay, so that was weird, but Grian is definitely still in love with Mumbo. The Mumbo pursuit is going great and Mumbo definitely doesn’t look nervous whenever Grian turns up with a new idea. Grian is going to get Mumbo to fall in love with him and they will marry in the spring and have a dozen beautiful children redstone contraptions.
Grian attempts to make it more official with Mumbo. Surely they have been flirting long enough, they are ready for the next stage! This is in no way a reaction to Scar becoming a weird wizard in a way very unsettling to Grian and building the kind of wild organic tangled forest build that Grian is fascinated by but can't even begin to comprehend.
Everything is very under control in Grian's life. He's now official boyfriends with Mumbo. They live together and have a messaging system and everything.
Mumbo announces he’s moving out.
You’re… you’re moving out? Grian says, in the smallest possible voice.
We’ll still have the messaging system, Mumbo says, unconvincingly.
FINE, Grian says, I’m moving out TOO.
Grian deals with this in the healthiest possible way. He invents a mayorship and attempts to give it to Mumbo.
Grian is Mumbo’s self-appointed campaign manager so Mumbo has to be round him ALL THE TIME, it’s for the CAMPAIGN, Mumbo.
Mumbo, a man who doesn’t deal well with pressure or responsibility, is maybe not the ideal choice for mayor, something that has escaped Grian entirely (a thing Mumbo himself cannot do).
Mumbo builds a robot and attempts to palm off all responsibility for decision-making onto it. Grian immediately calls it their son.
Grian puts his moustache all over the server.
NO other hermits support them for mayor (except Scar, from a lost bet, who Grian has continued to have intensely weird flirtations with while all this is happening)
Things reach a fever pitch. Election day arrives. Mumbo doesn’t want this actually but try telling Grian that. The entire MumboGrian edifice that Grian has obsessively and wildly build has reached an unsustainable pitch and finally comes tumbling down around them.
Mumbo votes Scar for mayor.
Grian votes Scar for mayor.
Mumbo disappears for several weeks to do some nice soothing redstone and calm down.
FLIRTING (Civil War) – late Season 7
Everything has calmed down now. Scar is mayor. Mumbo is...somewhere. Grian is going to work on his base normally.
Grian has a new project. He wants to build in the new nether biomes. He builds a huge and echoing and obsessively inverse version of his huge and echoing and obsessively symmetrical mansion base. It's very impressive. It's totally hollow. There's... no one else here.
Grian decides that okay, he is going to bring PEOPLE here.
He invites Mumbo, because he hasn't seen him in weeks. He invites Bdubs, because Grian above all loves genius. And he invites Scar. Because of course. Everything major Grian does now, Scar is an of course.
Bdubs shows up! Generously builds Grian's entire mansion interior. Mumbo shows up. Builds a tiny upside down disco shack.
Scar is being mayor! Scar is a very busy and important man! Scar has spent the last few weeks obsessively replacing every single goddamn mycelium block in the shopping district with beautifully tailored grass and making trees whose flowers are diamonds. He's also got his own megabase going on. For once Scar has so much to do it's even enough for Scar's ambitions, which have never been small.
He does not come when Grian calls.
This is the point where Grian starts a steadily more unhinged campaign of leaving Scar invitations. He makes little tailor's dummies of himself and delivers them to Scar's house. He sets up a tea party of three grians in a secret space under Scar's mayoral throne. He hangs himself in effigy on the tip of Scar's megadrill build. Normal behavior.
And then when Scar still doesn't notice, he puts a tiny bit of mycelium back on one of the streets of the shopping district.
This starts… THE MYCELIUM WARS
Scar attempts to contain the growing mycelium patch with warning tape.
Grian spreads more mushroom spores.
Scar brings in his allies to help contain the growing mushroom patches.
Grian digs out an underground rebel HQ, recruits several rebels, and declares himself Motherspore.
Mayor Scar stares into a camera and uses his most velvety baritone to proclaim he will hunt down Grian and the mycelium resistance and bring them to justice.
Grian sets loose mushroom-spreading sheep.
Mayor Scar obsessively searches for his base.
Grian and Impulse build several decoy bases and trap them.
Mayor Scar employs Mumbo to strip-mine every block of the shopping district with redstone tunnel-borers.
Eventually Deputy Mayor Bdubs, having his own thing with rebel Etho, tricks all of the resistance into ender-pearling into jail.
Scar gets to threaten to pour lava on an imprisoned Grian for ten minutes straight and they’re both enjoying this so much.
Grian: Scar! SCAR! Scar Scar Scar no Scar no Scar no listen Scar
Grian: …Let’s take this somewhere else.
They ‘take this’ to Scar’s beautifully-appointed mayoral office. Grian sits on the arm of his chair (I don’t know what to tell you, this is on-screen canon).
Grian: So I know how to end the war.
Grian: We have to play minigames and make personal bets.
Grian: And Scar, Scar, if you lose…
Grian: … you have to help me build my base.
Entire room: [stunned silence]
Etho: Is this what it was about the whole time, Grian?
So! That happened. And the thing is, they could both mentally pass off the area 77 general/hippie stuff as Just A Fun Bit That Got Very Intense.
They can't do this with the mayor/motherspore stuff. They are basically making out on Scar’s chair. The resistance have noticed. The mayoral staff have noticed. EVERYONE has noticed.
Scar is into it. Scar is going along with it. Scar knows he’d had a crush for a long time, and he isn't scared of swimming with a huge wave, never mind where it's going to break. Scar has always embraced the rush. With Grian, you never know what’s going to happen next.
Grian has always loved being around Scar because there’s so much going on that you don’t have to think. Grian doesn’t have to think until everything’s calmed down. It's not until now that he stops and realizes… could this be… something.
And then, by whatever eldritch mechanic you personally favor:
HEAD-OVER-HEELS – Third Life
In the tiny claustrophobic stripped-bare world of Third Life, Grian makes a choice. Grian thinks, for once very, very clearly: what if it wasn't a bit? What if it was real. What if Grian took every explosive piece of who he was and handed it over to someone he's—okay, he'll admit it—someone he's been obsessed with for a long time. What if that heady sparkle he's been seeing in the corner of his vision is true. What happens if you grab it with both hands?
Scar—surprised, bemused, amazed but wrong-footed—almost doesn't know what to DO with this.
Scar is so used to Grian layering all his obsession behind a thick layer of irony and drama and second-guessing and schemes. ‘Sure we can make out but only if I'm trailing mushroom spores and you're wearing that sash.’ ‘I'm only here because Mumbo's not around.’ ‘It’s not a thing.’ ‘It's not real.’
And, for once, Scar hears a tiny alarm go off in his brain. Scar knows Grian better than anyone else does, by now, and even he doesn't know where this ends. Grian is a force of nature and Scar has never been his unfiltered target. But Grian's throwing himself into this, throwing himself at Scar. And Scar always says 'yes.' 'Yes, and.' 'Yes, let's'. Scar never wants less of Grian. Scar has always taken what he can get.
But with that warning bell, Scar does try to keep that slight layer of dramatic distance, even in this new world where you can die and not come back, even if they don't know if they'll get out of this alive. Scar doesn't fully buy into Grian's second-in-command-devotion, he forces a space for Grian to still be the Grian he knows, some kind of safety vent (‘here's a bee on a lead’). And it could be a lot of reasons, but part of it is…Grian's head-over-heels, for once, and Scar has the unfamiliar feeling of needing to be the one to look where they're going.
Because where they're going is: the last two, all their friends dead, not knowing if there's any way to survive but knowing their friends haven't come back, and at that point Scar takes off the very last of his brakes and the very last of his reservations and says:
For everything you've done for me you can kill me.
(I want this. I want it to be you.)
This breaks Grian absolutely and completely.
And not broken in the fun way! Grian is too far in. Grian let go of Mumbo, who was safe because Mumbo never let it get too far, and he took a risk on Scar, and now Grian is discovering that he didn’t even know what risk meant. Grian is in emotional pain he never suspected existed. Grian has let himself put all his gambling chips on someone who wasn't SAFE and he has lost.
Grian has LOST SCAR and he has LOST HIMSELF and he has FOUND OUT HE CAN BE HURT and he is never going to be the fucking same again.
Scar is in the pond with Grian’s sword at his unresisting neck. And Scar is going to die, and Scar (damn him damn him) has turned it into: he's going to die for Grian. Now Grian is hurting, he's complicit, it turns out grief is an inevitable part of love and beauty, this is all it's taken for Grian's worldview to fall apart in pieces he can't pick up, and Grian has no defenses against pain so there's obviously no way to cope except to beat Scar to death in a cactus ring and jump off a cliff.
They wake up in Hermitcraft.
They wake up in Hermitcraft! Scar is delighted to find out they just reincarnate, after all that!
Sure, they've all got some lingering trauma but Scar has never let that stop him from doing anything. Scar thought that whole thing went well! He just about dares to think...romantic...? Maybe...?
Grian is so fucking normal. it's like. s6 normal.
Scar is. kind of. confused.
Grian is NOT acting like someone he had a romantic death match with.
(Grian is falling apart, but if there's one thing Grian has proved in his building it’s that he’s SO. fucking. good. at facades.)
(Don't go round the back.)
Neither of them are ready for the death game to repeat.
DIVORCE (Traumatic) – Last Life, Season 8
Second death game. Grian deals with his trauma super well by isolating Scar, stealing all his friends, tricking a life out of him, dropping his horse in lava, forcing him into an extortion death loop, then abandoning him and—just as a bonus—murdering Mumbo as well.
This time it’s Scar who comes back falling apart.
A theory that seems plausible: Scar’s old friend Cub picks him up, puts him back together, gets him on his feet. What we do know is that Cub moves in next to Boatem, where Scar is still living with Grian, and incidentally builds an enormous dripstone megabiome that is coincidentally very hostile and might murder you upon landing if you're someone who flies a lot, or happens to be a bird.
There’s a hole with an endless dark void between Scar and Grian’s Boatem bases. They built it together. It’s around this time they both keep repeatedly falling in it.
DIVORCE (But When It Was Good It Was So Good) – Season 8, Double Life
Then the moon gets big. Gets close. Gravity breaks down and that should be the end, should be a way out of this terrible spiral they're in, surely they're better without each other—
Grian turns up at Scar's base and says: Scar. Build us an escape pod.
They go out together. Both of them can feel the pull back into each other’s orbit but they’ll die if they acknowledge it. At the end of it all, the void, the protective suits, the unbearable gravity of falling into space together, of holding each other until another uncertain end. They're nowhere but they're in it together.
Is this a good time for another death game? Of course. How much worse can it get.
Double Life, and this time Scar keeps his distance. My soulmate is this allay! My soulmate is my cat! I don’t need a soulmate. Oh—it’s Grian? This whole time? Hahaha. How funny.
Grian: Soo… do you want to base together?
Grian: It…might be nice…?
But the pull is still there. The pull is always there. You can’t forget Grian, but you can blunt the edge of him on your skin. Scar is here to take care of these cat-pandas. Grian can do what he likes.
Cheated of Scar’s full attention, Grian tries to tempt BigB into a pale imitation of the Scarian folie à deux (BigB is a genuinely nice man who does not deserve this).
The rest of the server turn red, one by one. Grian and Scar are the last greens. BigB is audibly nervous when Grian proposes a red-green alliance, even though BigB is the red, he has the power. But Grian can’t escape the rest of the server, and the red hunt begins.
Grian and Scar, hunted—trapped at the top of flaming towers, jumping from heights, chased down like foxes at bay, crammed into boltholes with their hands over each other’s mouths, Grian shrieks and laughs and falls back on Scar and Scar catches him and they’re both as alive and elated as they’ve ever been. Scar dies once to Ren and BigB’s zombies and Grian murders both BigB and Ren in revenge (BigB was right to be nervous). Grian has another unhinged murder plan underway when he dies for the last time.
This whole time, Grian was hit in the face by remembering that when it's good, it's so good.
Scar isn’t surprised. Scar has known that forever.
Back in Hermitcraft, its not magically fixed. They’re not innocent any more. But every time Grian looks at Scar he remembers: when it’s good, it’s so good.
DIVORCE (We’re In Love And We’re Not Done Yet) – Season 9, Limited Life
By now we're into Season 9. They’re still alive. They always live, they always start again, and the other one is just there. Being, infuriatingly and magnetically, them.
Grian is thoroughly annoyed by Scar’s new allegiance to King Ren, but he keeps coming back to Scarland anyway. Scar, I made you an obstacle course. Scar, stand here and get squashed by this anvil. Scar if you don’t do something I’m going to start a resistance.
Grian pretends King Ren doesn’t exist and he has more important things to do, and pretends this so hard that he incidentally invents a mad science robot pulls them all through into the Empires dimension.
Scar, assuming Grian is doing his own thing, shacks up with Jimmy.
It takes Grian three weeks to notice and be shriekingly outraged.
Scar we’re doing a project. Scar you can’t spend all your time with Jimmy! Join my cult. Get in my shrinking machine. I made you an enchanted netherite bow. I need your allegiance. (Another real quote).
Scar teases Grian for weeks then instantly abandons Jimmy when the choice comes down to him or Grian.
Fourth death game—they’re used to this, now. Nothing too intense. Nothing too weird. Grian can’t help murdering Scar.
At this point, Scar is starting to read it as: I love you.
And that’s how we get to the current Scarian dynamic we know and love of you're the worst and I'm the worst and we've divorced a few time but we still like each other so fucking much.
It's been years. They've killed each other every possible way. These two characters are in love and they're not done yet.
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