#sparrows soliloquy

[leafatlaw]

There’s something different about the winners of previous life series, something about Grian, Scott, Pearl, and Martyn that just seems off. How sometimes when they interact it’s like a solar eclipse, and you get the feeling they’re not safe to Watch for too long. It’s not even nesseacry how they look even, it’s more so how they feel.

How Grian always seems to hit harder than he means to, a playful push taking a few hearts. How he seems to always accidentally nick his allies with his sword. The odd way he always seems to be dusting sand off himself, how it pools around his shoes when he takes them off indoors. The way his hands always look stained red, even even when he’s just washed them. And it must be a trick of the light, because he’s not killed anyone yet this season. The way tnt seems to almost ignite around him, the way he seems like a piece of tnt himself, waiting to be lit. Waiting like a hunting animal to be commanded to kill. They nickname him the Sun, but his eyes look like black holes more than anything else.

Scott’s oddities are more subtler, more sanded smooth. He seems to almost glitter where Grian and Pearl shine. And maybe thats why it’s even stranger the way his eyes always seem to glow red, looking around like hes carring some curse that cant be shaken off. The way it’s impossible to tell where his hand ends and his bow begans, each arrow shot moving in ways different than it should. His hands impossible cold when you shake them, how each promise he makes feels like a threat. Like an eventuality, like the heat death of the universe.

Pearl is already dangerous everyone knows, but after winning she changes somehow. her laugh sounds like breaking glass, her smiles too sharp, when her and Scott talk it feels like standing next to an open flame, sound of gas whistling in the background. She’s cold to the touch just like her soulmate. When she’s on red the entire world seems to stand on end. The hairs on the back of your neck raise, it smells like there’s a storm on the way. And the way she interacts with her dogs… She talks to them like they’re people, and they seem to respond to understand her. Pearls dogs fight rougher, bite harder, they even seem to survive longer.

Martyn + Scar l8r

[leafatlaw]

Im in love with how the hearts are represented by nether stars,, its just one really cool to think of, instead of it being some modded in thing.

Like do you think the lifesteal members ever look at the night sky and think its alive? The night sky so full of lives, shining and shimmering just out of reach. Do they stare at the nightsky with greed, those with less hearts, do they stare with envy?

Do they ever kill the wither and think how remarkably similar they are to hearts? Holding the nether star close, like it might give them a life back. Do they identify witht he wither, they also drop those same stars when they die after all?

And then, how does it feel to hold a star/life. Does it burn like a real star? Is it freezing cold? Does it thump in rhythms or pulse with light? We are all made of star dust after all, the lifesteal members are just more star than most.

[leafatlaw]

It really is just- Lifesteal does the whole meta/out of character/cc vs c!, thing different than anyone else. What really shocked me initially when getting into ls was how often they talked about “content”. About doing stuff purely for the video, how “so and so ruined the ending of my video”. And I don’t say that as a bad thing, just coming from the streaming-based dsmp, lore based empires smp, short video series traffic, and prison escape/debunks, it was a complete shock.

Nobody talks about it, as much as them. Maybe post-dsmp people talk about bts more, and sure Scarlet Pearl from double life wouldn’t have happened if Pearl wasn’t forced to record at 5am her time, but noone else talks about it so openly.

It’s like- early on, I watched Vitalizys s4 stuff, and, he fully ends that one video with the conclusion being him irl talking to the viewer. No more c!Vitalizy trying to save the server, just Vitalizy being affected by the sever. And that was it, that was the conclusion to his lore-based Minecraft video ! Thats crazy ! And now we have the other half of purple duo doing things that can only be fully explained by ooc motivations. There’s no way to talk about the Warden arc without acknowledging that Subz wasn’t acting in character for like any of that.

I don’t have much of a conclusion to this, it’s just something that’s been rumbling around my head since I first started watching streams. You literally can’t talk about like Abyss without acknowledging it was about inactivy on the server that they’re all playing on, that they’re content creators playing on. You can’t talk about PB and J and Bfb without talking about server equitte which is also an ooc thing. Idk, even the exploits even the whole Youtube narrative vs what actually happened on stream. It’s impossible to talk about lifesteal in this rigid box of canon vs not. It’s all canon, or nothing is, or it just doesn’t matter.

[leafatlaw]

Derap needs Zam more than Zam needs him. Sure, Zam is beginning to rely on Derap some, and Derap is a good influence on him to be more selfish and stand up for himself( like against Kab), but Zams been on his own for a long time and before Derap posed being teammates, Zam was prepared to be on his own longer.

J don’t think Derap can handle being on his own like that. Derap has wanted a team for, forever basically, and I think his recent conversation with Wembu post revival really highlights that. Derap pretty much blames Wembu for making no one want to team with him. And he is really upset by that, he couldn’t find anyone to team with him, until Zam. Derap was going to give evryhting to his team, when he was desperately wanting to team with the Sticklers, he was going to give them his hearts. He was prepared to give everything and all of him to a potential team.

But that didn’t work out, and then Zam showed up. Someone willing to put up with all Deraps trials and tests, their morals mostly lining up and even better he had no team. Zam proved himself to be reliable and Derap even felt like he could help Zam. But they’re not equal in how much a betrayal would hurt, not even close. Another betrayal would be devastating for Zam, he’s been hurt so many times this season, and who knows how he would take another betrayal of this magnitude. But for Derap, he would lose everything. Zam will always have Mapicc even if they’re going through a rough patch right now, he could probably team with the empire if he fully committed, he’s got Kab and Poafa in his corner and even Eccoridor ! What does Derap have to do? Wembu doesn’t even want to log on ever again, and by teaming with Zam he’s effectively burned several bridges. What I’m trying to say is that Derap needs Zam. (More than the other way around)

[leafatlaw]

Hmm random thing thats happened without me noticing it: Deraps gotten stingier with his hearts. Previously, Deraps been on twenty breifly, but hes also been on like two, he knows what its like to be both. So when he gets high on hearts again hes eager to give them away, to his new team, either The Sticklers or whoever. And when him and Zam teamed, he made a point of giving hearts, as few as Zam would accept, saying he wanted them to be on the same number of hearts. And they were for awhile. And then Derap died to Flame and the wardens like THREE times and for awhile realized hearts dont matter.

But sometime after Zam left and Parrot arrived, that changed. Derap changed fundamentally. He borrowed hearts from Jumper and resistes giving them back. He took hearts from Pangi, and never gave him any, despite saying that he planned a video to give him alot of hearts. He kept all(?) of the Parrot hearts even though I think he was supposed to split them with Rek.

If I had to guess I would say, it had something to do with him being abandoned again. With him being exiled from spawn and ally-less against what felt like half the server. He started looking out for himself first and then Parrot refused to return, and that solidified that thought. Derap made deals with Mapicc his former enemy against Pangi, his closest friend. All for the sake of looking out for himself.

And once Zam returned, it’s as if she immediately noticed the chance, just unable to put it into words. Derap changed, he was the giving, loyal ally she teamed with 97 days ago. In a really damning moment Derap did not offer her hearts until she died again to Flame, even though he knew she was low. And when Zam refused, he didn’t even insist.

This change which happened so slowly I almost didn’t notice appears to have slipped by Derapchu himself. Maybe it’s just the normal lifesteal cycle, maybe this change is natural. Either way, I don’t think it’s a change for the better.

[leafatlaw]

flowerhusbands… to me… is just, “I’ll wait for you forever”. And Scott does no matter where when or anything Scott’s always there waiting patiently for Jimmy. Empires rats limited life, it’s always going to be them meeting, and it’s always going to be them not working out.

Ranchers to me is “I’ll go to hell with you. I’ll go to heaven with you, I’ll go anywhere with you.” They’d go anywhere together holding hands and laughing. I doubt they’d notice where they’re going, I think they’re lost.

desert duo to me is “I’ll follow you to hell and back but I swear the next time you go to hell I’m leaving you there”. Grian will never leave him. They are tied together.

[leafatlaw]

See the reason why Wifies getting chunk banned hurt so much is because how you don’t even realize how much of a constant he’s become for Parrot. He’s always right behind him, helping solve puzzles and making jokes. It’s Parrot and Wifies. Them. And when they’re pitted against eachother it’s different and frightening, but it’s still them, they still have a plan to win, together.

But then suddenly it’s Wifies vs A Secret. Versus the thing Parrot wants so bad, and he’s already begun to take Wifies presence for granted. See Parrots fatal flaw is he wants knowledge, he need to know. And sure sometimes it may be for good, to protect the server, or just himself, but he craves the knowledge. And he knows himself if he doesn’t get what he wants to know now, he’ll regret it.

“It’s all yours” and Parrot does regret it, even before he knows the Secret, he regret it as he stares blankly at the telescope. And in a way, it’s sort of ironic that there’s no secret, because it symbolizes what Parrot has realized too late- there is no secret that would have been worth Wifies. And it’s poetic that there is no secret after all. Parrot essentially killed his best friend for nothing. Because it is Parrots fault as much as it is Spokes. Parrot told Wifies that the secret was worth more than him, Parrot told Wifies to sacrifice himself, and he knew he would do it. It is Parrots fault Wifies is gone.

(And he knows it.)

[leafatlaw]

I need to make Zaun distinctly more haunted. By literal or metaphorical ghosts, it needs to be a place where something isnt right. I like the idea of the woods that surround it being unnaturally quite, like theres no creatures of any sort hiding in there. Or post Wardening of Zaun, theres the constant sound of them in the woods, shrieker calls in the dead of night, growls that sound right behind you but when you turn theres nothing there. And maybe its just the mountains bouncing the sound around, but also the residents swear they got rid of all the Wardens.

And then the isolation, the fact its miles away from spawn, completely cut off from the outside world. Maybe way out there, chat messages dont always go through, and the players online list shows only one, even when anyone would swear they thought someone else was online. And then the lag, a near constant on a sever that normally boasts at least one lag farm, but at Zaun, it feels like playing on a single player world. It would be nice except for the unnerving feeling that the game should not be running this smoothly.

I also like how it used to be on the very edge of the world, right by the old world border. Maybe the world border has strange energy that tries to pull or push players away from it, an unnatural bit of the world added in. And to live right next to that field everyday...

Also as a place meant to be hidden away, that intention stayed even after it was found. Players even when given the exact coords struggle to find it. Flying over it, or missing it in the nether. And then others stumbling across it, even when its so far away, like something in Zaun is calling to people to find it. Maybe it wasnt a coincidence Zam just found this beautiful spot of land and decided to settle there. Maybe it wanted to be found.