votederpycausemufins

[votederpycausemufins]

I am being completely serious wen i say tat te game announced in today's pokemon presents made me keysmas so ard tat i broke one of my keys. No not te app one, te big one. But wat can I expect. I ave been cursed by yveltal for years now. ow dare I get excited, deat to my one keyboard key.

#pokemon #pokemon spoilers #i mean i don't directly mention it #but better safe tan sorry #o wait #yay! on screen keyboard ftw!!! hhhhhhhhhh

[votederpycausemufins]

cookies based on a video of Minecraft inspired cookies

Done in the video order, but for reference I'll list them.

Top row: Berry Cookie, Carrot Cookie, Chorus Fruit Cookie Bottom row: Mooshroom Cookie, Squid Cookie, Creeper Cookie

#my art #minecraft #mcyt #zedaph #mrbarrylewis #hopefully me putting this in the minecraft tag won't upset people #is it from a mcyt video from a mcyt'er? yes #but is it otherwise not exactly the normal 'mcyt content'? also yes #It can completely be removed from the mcyt context and stand on it's own so it should be fine #Pretty sure it should be fine

[votederpycausemufins]

Used Worm Man week as an excuse to finally finish these wips of a gem Zedaph and Worm Man redesign that have been sitting in my folder half finished (okay more than half finished) for months. (since mid to late august)

I made these two to be the same gem (ie, Zed is Worm Man, inverts gem to disguise, lie about gem type), but you can also just ignore Zed's weapon and treat them as two separate entities that happen to look similar since -gestures to pyropes hessonites and Garnet-

Version with notes featured below the cut

After designing my own Evil X and Xisuma gem designs, I decided I wanted to look at my zed/wm design again. I wasn't as happy with kinda just making another gem that didn't exist, so went looking for an existing gem that might fit better. And then I remembered the Morganite sketch.

Originally there was going to be a story about the ruby and pearl that make Rhodonite, and the morganite that owned them, but the story was cut. That being said, we did get sketches of her (i think there were like 2). Sketches aren't final of course, but it was the best I had. And I absolutely ran with the fact that she was designed in a kimono.

I started with Worm Man's design, running with the idea that 'wait, a kimono is japanese, the japanese version of a hero is a magical girl!!!' (yes i know that's not actually the case super sentai, kamen rider, etc) So bam! put him in a skirt! The weapon was also designed to be magical girl esque, which is why i say to give Zedaph another weapon if you want them to be different.

Also, if you want any lore, my one bit of potential lore is that since Zed is a morganite, which we know is an elite gem, it could be that he owned a certain trio consisting of a bismuth, carnelian and topaz. But he definitely treated them more as friends than underlings bc being elite is booooring. He wants to do stuff!

Oh and also if you go along with my interpretation of the diamond authority in gemcyt, because of him doing redstone and his whole s8 science thing, gem him really wished he were part of Blue's court.

#gemcyt #wormmanweek2024 #zedaph #worm man #my art

[votederpycausemufins]

Yes I know it's been over a year. Life has been craaaazy. Like I graduated, I got a job, I almost died, I got a new computer, stuff like that. I mentioned some of it in other fic stuff, but maybe you're just here for this scattered fic based on the au from @hermitcraftheadcanons

Fun detail is Evil X and Grum's sections I actually pulled up mc and played to make things more accurate. I mean i messed with my spawn location since you don't normally end up where they did, but otherwise i actually did it.

The Watchers jumped slightly when Xelqua slammed his hand on the table along with a number of papers. “There. All done before the nutshell.”

No one said anything as Zem picked up the papers, reading them over as Xelqua grinned, feathers ruffling excitedly. Yus looked over Zem’s shoulder to read along, sometimes moving the papers to get a look at something they missed. It took a few minutes before Zem handed the whole stack over to Yus so they could really look through it as well as show to the other three. “So, it looks mostly alright, but I want to ask a few things first.”

“Go ahead!” Xelqua happily agreed, quickly building himself a chair and sitting in it, making Zem narrow his eyes.

“First, how were you able to prepare this as fast as you did?”

“Oh, well Mumbo actually wanted to help out. Of course I was suspicious at first, he could have been trying to tweak things in their favor, but he actually made it worse! I mean so many shriekers littered about, prioritizing moving people around, more challenges, he’s even fine with giving the ‘living redstone’ things a downgrade. Oh and not to mention this little tidbit here.” And Xelqua ran over, stealing one of the papers to really let Zemunis look at it. “Adding an extra requirement to this whole thing similar to that little rotator. Meaning it’ll last longer and we’ll get more time to test and research. I mean, this will definitely up the time from around six months.”

“And are you sure that extra time won’t skew our results?”

Quickly, Xelqua’s cheery demeanor turned serious and almost angry. “I’m sorry, are you saying we shouldn’t do this?”

“Well I think he’s just-” Yuslep spoke up before a glare silenced them again.

“We’ve gotten results already. Herobrine has already started giving us answers after who knows how many years you two have tried getting him talking. And now we know that this is the world. If we do anything wrong, They’ll just show up and tell us to stop. Now, not sure if you’ve noticed, but as far as I can tell, They haven’t shown up. And since They haven’t shown up, They probably don’t want us to stop. So until They do, we’re going to keep going. Plus, you agreed to this if I could get the work done, and now I have.”

“Well, you didn’t really get it done. One of the testers did.”

“One who is learning to become a Marked. If we’re going to allow any of them, it would be him. So. Are you allowing this, or not?”

With the current tension in the room, Zem jumped as Pin whispered in his ear. Watchers were fortunately known for their eyes and not their ears, so a hand in front of Pin’s mouth easily made the conversation private from Xelqua. “Look, if one of the hermits planned this all out, it’s obviously something that should help them in the long run, even if Grian can’t see it. And it’s not like the experiment isn’t a mess already with how it’s affected Grian. Noah even just got back and is recovering because whatever’s doing this to Grian messed with him as well. And either way, he’s right about us finally getting information. If you’re worried about the time, all this might end up shorter if we can finally find Them from the experiment.”

Zem was quiet for a few moments, processing all the information before giving a single sharp nod. “Yuslep, send a mass message to the testers once we’re ready to implement the changes. Give them a warning of half an hour, then update.”

“Got it.” Yus agreed before rushing off, beginning to set things up.

After Joe passed out in the tower, Beef struggled getting him back to the village. While he rested, Beef worked on gathering more materials. Around the time Joe finally woke up again, Beef didn’t get a chance to ask for what he had been trying to say earlier because the messages from Doc and Etho started flooding the chat. Immediately Beef crafted an anvil and some stone swords for Joe to use on him, sending some messages to everyone.

While it did work, it was done while Joe was only just waking up, so the action left him tired. At first Beef was the one to let himself die since Joe was still recovering, but it was more important after it was pointed out that hybrids were being affected, which was probably similar to what was wrong with Joe. 

Beef was sure he would be able to ask Joe once he woke up again, but that hope was dashed again when his comm started making noise other than the standard buzzing. The last message that had been sent through deaths was a message from Mumbo, warning that the experiment was going to change up a bit, but it turned out it was coming sooner than anyone thought. Though Beef wasn’t speaking out loud, at the same time he read the message, it seemed like the voice of someone else was reading it off with him.

“As stated previously by a player, an update will occur for the experiment at the request of one of your own. All spawns will be reset but inventories will stay constant. Unregistered players will be registered, creating a total of 30 players. Terrain may be altered, but will for the most part remain unchanged if already explored. Original spawns may also change due to player overlap. The update will occur in half an hour. You have thirty minutes.”

Beef quickly shook Joe awake the rest of the way and they began to gather resources and equipment into their inventories. With the mention of spawns changing due to overlap, especially with the two of them at true spawn as opposed to anywhere else, Beef and Joe were most worried about their spawns changing. 

They, along with anyone else who could, grabbed armor, weapons, tools, blocks, and more, preparing for when the time was up. Coordinates were memorized for meeting points, and a few messages were sent in chat in hopes that it wouldn’t be wiped. And then-

‘Your Server will be Restarted Shortly. Please be patient.’

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The mountain was a reluctantly familiar sight. It being devoid of life, however, was not. Sure, there was the weird pillar monument thing from before, plus the bed, but there should be more. “Hello? Is anyone here? Dad? Grum?”

The last thing Jrum remembered was him and Grum seeing a message where someone was killed by a zombie using a named tool. Said tool was listed in chat, which made the two of them realize that renamed weapons or whatever could be used to send actual messages. The problem was you needed an anvil. 

Somehow, he and Grum had managed to imprint some of the letters on and around the pillar to a snowball. Jrum offered to be the one killed for the message, if it could even really be called that. They had done their best to use the odd symbols to look like the word hello, but it didn’t really. 

But even then, he had been killed, and it didn’t look like he had respawed normally as not only did the time seem completely different, but Grum was nowhere to be seen. His next guess was that Grian was right to worry about their respawning and needing to use magic for it, but then Grian didn’t seem to be here either. Did that just mean that normally for them, it would take ages? Did… did Grum think he was dead for good?

But where was Grum? There didn’t seem to be a path down or anything. At least that he could see. But maybe the same thing that happened to him happened to Grum. After he didn’t respawn, Grum would have been alone. And he had to do everything himself until he slipped up. Which meant he was probably just taking his time respawning just like Jrum.

But as he finished that train of thought, he then noticed the amount of death messages appearing in chat. Ones that probably shouldn’t be happening… not with the prior information he knew. Impulse didn’t seem to be drowning, nor was Daddy dying to vindicators. But Xisuma was still being killed by a Warden and Wels to hoglins, so at first it would seem like they escaped their area, but at the same time, there were other messages causing confusion.

Last Jrum knew, it was only the hermits, he and his brother, oh and those two mysterious players Gemini and Pearlescent. But apparently Helsknight was also here now. Also False hadn’t dealt with any other deathloop other than a little bit of drowning at the start, but now she kept dying to something called dripstone. And while Xisuma was still being killed by that warden, now the death message was different mentioning a sonically charged shriek. And finally Zedaph was now being eaten by frogs? For some reason? Jrum didn’t even know what that was!

Jrum was just about to essentially set the messages to a sort of do not disturb so he wouldn’t have to focus on that, but just before he did, a new death message popped up. This wasn’t one of the hermits, nor was it one of the new people. Instead, it was Grum’s name, and he had been killed by a Piglin.

Jrum was immediately looking around. There wasn’t much on the mountain, and he had already looked around, but he had still hoped to either see a nether portal, or see Grum respawn. But neither of those happened. He still looked around expectantly for a few more moments, barely noticing himself starting to shiver before there were more messages of Grumbot getting killed by not only piglins, but hoglin and brutes as well. Jrum almost shut his messages off so he didn’t need to look, but then a single message from Doc came in, saying ‘bot. water.’ and a pair of coordinates, him having gotten an anvil apparently and given a sword to a zombie.

Bot was probably referring to him with the nether not able to have water since now Grum was spawning there for some reason, plus Grum had reported seeing Doc below the clouds. That, along with the fact the coordinates weren’t too far from where he currently stood. In fact they were close enough that he could probably jump to where the water was. Since it would probably be easier to get back up to the mountaintop after going down and hopefully getting resources, Jrum took a running start, then jumped.

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The sky was not black. It was very much blue. Meaning Evil Xisuma had gotten their spawn moved to the overworld. Pretty much the last place they wanted to be. Sort of. They lifted their head to see where exactly they ended up, only to curse when they saw very very large mushrooms. They took it back, this was the last place they wanted to be.

He gave a long sigh, putting his head back down and continuing to lie in the mycelium. “Fuck it, I’ll just kill some mooshrooms and swim elsewhere.” Then after a moment more, they jumped to their feet, running towards what looked like further into the island. Opposed to what the message given to everyone said, EX did not still have his loot from the end city in his inventory, which was going to make any progress to get back there very difficult.

While there were indeed mooshrooms, that was not the only thing present on the island. Standing among the mushrooms, growing from mycelium and not a patch of grass, were some trees. They weren’t trees EX recognized, but they were still some type of tree. “Well I guess I don’t have to swim.”

Instead of attacking the mooshrooms, Xannes started gathering wood. The wood itself seemed to be oak, but the leaves looked the wrong color and shape, plus last they checked, no leaves had flowers blooming in them. Eventually a sort of sapling fell, that being an azalea shrub, whatever that was. But if it could be bonemealed into a tree, it would work. But that meant getting some bonemeal, which meant finding a skeleton. And monsters didn’t spawn on or under mushroom islands.

Or at least that’s what Evil Xisuma thought, because once they had gathered a few trees worth of wood and shrubs as well as some beef and leather, they went down into a surface cave. They were already intrigued by what seemed to be vines glowing further into the cave that they didn’t realize until too late that a skeleton was nearby. At this point, the only gear they had was some leather crafted into boots to potentially help reduce fall damage a tad. They didn’t really have enough to make more, and they didn’t think they would need any.

EX managed to whack the thing once with their axe before getting killed. They grumbled before finding their way back to the cave, managing to grab their stuff and start leaving the cave before getting shot again. Fortunately they weren’t attacked after picking everything up again and instead mined some stone that was further away from the dark part of the cave. 

After getting a good amount, EX crafted a furnace, as well as a stone pick, sword and axe. They grabbed a little bit more wood now that they knew that tools and torches would be more important. The skeleton had moved away a bit, but a creeper was in its place. The creeper exploded around the time the skeleton wandered back over, damaging it a bit more, but it took another hit before the monster was finally dead. 

Xannes ate some of their now cooked beef before realizing that regen still seemed to be disabled in the world, so they couldn’t heal back to full, but at least for now they had about seven hearts. Plus there were no more mobs, and there only seemed to be the one dark area and further into the cave also had the ground above it missing, acting as a sort of skylight.

They used the area as a chance to mine for iron and coal, only to be surprised when the iron wasn’t ore, but some sort of raw iron. It seemed to need to be cooked as well, which didn’t make much sense to them; but it was whatever. They got it cooking before going towards a slightly darker area, now with armor, a shield and an iron axe. There was only one skeleton, but it did give them a bone, which was the point of looking.

Gathering up the last of the cooked iron as well as their utility blocks and some more coal, Xannes had grabbed water from one of the various clay lined pools. There had been a single block leading down to a cave, and right now the goal was to get down to diamond and lava level.

There was a bit of an incident with some mobs at the bottom of the water stream. One of which being a perfect line up to end EX up with a music disk, though it was 11. Further down past that was a more open cave. The greenery, clay and water from before was gone, which would have made it look normal, if it weren’t for the fact that the stone was the wrong color.

Getting distracted, Evil Xisuma looked around, trying to figure out what the weird stone might mean… up until they ran into an exposed piece of diamond ore. And hidden underneath were four more. “Alright, I’ve changed my mind. I ended up in the perfect place.”

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When Grum opened his eyes again, he expected to find himself up on top of the mountain again, hopefully with his brother. From there, it would be easy to make their way back down to where Doc was positioned, assuming the pond they had made was still in place. Unfortunately instead of snow and ice and cold, Grum found his new spawn much hotter, with blackstone around him and the grunts of some nearby piglin.

With no danger immediately present, Grum checked on the world chat messages, noticing that a few players had gotten into death loops again, though some had gotten into new ones as well as some of continued deathloops having some small changes, that mainly being Xisuma’s.

Wondering about his dad, Grum then switched over to the player list, finding all the hermits listed including his dad, though with a different name than usual listed for him. There of course was also Pearl and then the other unfamiliar person, Geminitay, but there were also two newer-ish names. Those names were Helsknight, who was vaguely familiar, but also Xannes, which wasn’t as much. It would just have to be something Grum would ask about if he found anyone.

Well, anyone who was a player, as once he stopped looking at the world chat and tried exploring his spawn, he managed to run into a piglin and got killed. Knowing that path wouldn’t work, Grum attempted to go a different way, but this time he found a hoglin inside the bastion which also made quick work of him. By the time he finally managed to get to a safe area, Grum had been killed by some piglin brutes as well as more deaths from the other two. And if anything, he had been killed by some of the brutes a few times more than the others. Normally he wouldn’t try paying attention to that, but it wasn’t like this world was normal.

Grum finally noticed that the safe area he had found was actually a pretty good place to be. He could hear piglins, sure, but there were none in sight, even despite the fact that there was a chest right there. He carefully listened around to figure out how close the piglins were before opening the chest, getting prepared to run. He knew enough to recall that piglins did not like you rooting through their chests, so they could show up when he did. 

After a few seconds with the chest opened, nothing arrived, so Grum carefully looked inside, still keeping an eye on the surrounding area. The two most important items to him were a gold sword and a golden apple, a weapon and a way to heal since regen still seemed to be off. There were also a decent amount of arrows and a pair of crossbows, which were also helpful, though Grum wasn’t sure how well he could use them. As for the rest of the items in the chest, Grum collected up some golden carrots, some string, a singular pork chop, two iron nuggets, a handful of bone blocks, and some crying obsidian, but most importantly, there was some regular obsidian as well.

If Grum could find a ruined portal, or just more obsidian and enough stuff for a flint and steel, he would be able to create a portal and escape. Unfortunately, that all hinged on him actually getting out of the bastion alive as well, since he would lose all the items if he did die. There was the potential of dying so many times the piglins accepted him as one of their own, but he wasn’t really looking forward to the possibility of being part mob. If he even could become part mob when he was a robot and not a regular player.

From where Grum stood, he could just barely make out a chest on the other side of the bastion. He couldn’t see any piglins directly between it and him, but who knew what would be on the way there, and if he could even easily get there since there was also a large pool of lava in the middle as well. It was surrounding some netherwart, so that meant there was a platform, but that would likely be soul sand which would slow him and- he was overthinking this.

Steeling himself, Grum loaded both of his crossbows before running towards the chest. Almost immediately a piglin was in his way, and Grum turned to try and run away from it before getting cornered. With no other option, he fired his crossbow and was relieved when the single arrow was able to kill the piglin. Unfortunately, in running, he had fallen down a level, which hadn’t hurt him, but there was now a wall keeping him from getting directly to the chest. Loading the crossbow again, Grum carefully made his way around the wall through thin corridors, expecting danger at every turn.

Finding another dead end, Grum turned around, only for an armored piglin to see him. With two more arrows and a swipe from his sword, Grum killed it, but not before taking some damage. He barely had time to load his crossbow again before another piglin armored appeared with a brute by its side. Miraculously, Grum was able to hit the brute into the lava pool and kill the piglin, even getting its golden chestplate, which he immediately threw on. Just in time as third piglin appeared, this one with no armor but a crossbow of its own. Grum only had his sword ready, so sliced at it, getting shot once in the process, but not being killed. 

With no more threats immediately appearing, Grum ate his apple, glad for the healing to take him back to full hearts and then a little. Another piglin with a crossbow saw Grum as he made his way to another alcove. Grum managed to take one of his bone blocks to block a gap for them to see him from, but in the process found some magma flooring, taking just a touch of damage before he was safe again, hearing the piglin killed by a hoglin.

From his new place, Grum could see another chest in the middle of the lava, which unfortunately was now further away from him than where he had started. It was something he could try to get to if he died again, but that was still thankfully an if. The regular path continued into a dead end until Grum went up a level, but he could hear more piglins there, so instead he used his other two bone blocks to bridge a small gap towards another opening.

Using a touch of crying obsidian as well as punching through some blocks with his hand, Grum ran into another piglin, and only barely stopped himself from firing his crossbow before noticing that he wasn’t being attacked thanks to his stolen armor. Unfortunately, the same didn’t work for brutes, and there was one between him and the chest. Thankfully, it couldn’t reach where he stood, but Grum knew opening the chest would also anger the piglins, so he had to take his next steps very carefully.

The moment he attacked the brute, all the piglins get angry with him. With some panic, Grum managed to get them all to walk into a pit where they could get in and out, but couldn’t get to him. Barely dodging an arrow, Grum managed to attack with his sword, and then watched in surprise as pretty much all the piglins found a puddle of lava and fell into it.

As Grum continued to pick off piglins, a baby hoglin dropped in on him, barely loading his crossbow in time to hit it before it thankfully ran into the pit as well. Finally, Grum reached the chest, and then yelled in frustration at the items inside. The most useful items were more bone blocks as well as chains, as he could build across gaps with them, but the piglin disc and other gold chestplate weren’t as helpful. Well, Actually his stolen one was almost broken, so he did replace it, but it was still lacking.

With some reluctance, Grum made his way to the center chest, picking up the growing netherwart as well. Taking a deep breath, he went to open the chest, only to get killed by a piglin brute that fell from above. Feeling angry as he respawned, Grum didn’t even hesitate as he rushed back and shoved the brute into the lava, picking up what remained of his own items. Thankfully the new chestplate still survived along with his obsidian. In fact, while his sword had fallen in lava as well as one crossbow, the other crossbow survived with the arrows. And as Grum opened the chest, he doubled his obsidian as well as got a gold axe.

With enough obsidian to make a portal, Grum smiled before frowning at the fact that holding the axe felt a bit more comfortable than the sword or crossbow. He hoped maybe it was just his own imagination, but Grum couldn’t be sure. But not wanting to dwell on it or get the chance to die again, Grum immediately used his obsidian to make a portal frame. Though he couldn’t light it, it was at least there, so Grum stood on top to fire arrows at the rest of the piglins and brutes and hoglins, taking the last few out with punches into lava when his arrows finally ran out.

Feeling safer, Grum explored a bit more. There were unfortunately no more chests, but Grum did find where what seemed to be every remaining piglin seemed to be. He did his best to block up the area with bone blocks, but one brute escaped, which killed him twice before he finally killed it in return. But with that, he was safe. There weren’t any more hoglins or brutes, and the only remaining piglins were children and didn’t attack him. They seemed scared of him, which was reasonable since he had just killed what seemed to be their family. 

He felt a little sad for them, but he had to do it to survive. With some reluctance, Grum picked up the chests he had emptied and took them to his spawn point. He was still stuck here, but he had the beginnings of a way out, and that was progress, and progress was good.

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He was willing to admit that he had lied a little with what he had said to Wels. After the warning of the soft reset, Hels had reluctantly helped with obtaining stone tools for himself and Welsknight. He also did his best to kill a couple of hoglins and pass the pork off with a reminder that starving was probably a better option than eating crimson fungus.

It was midway through trying to make sure Wels' spawn was safe when it happened. One moment Hels was in the nether placing blocks, the next he was in the overworld, and with his inventory completely empty. Great, so the part about him keeping his stuff was a lie. Which made things a lot worse for him.

When he had tried to claim that needing to keep Wels from dying just wasted resources he could have used for himself, that wasn't entirely the case. While his name was Helsknight, it was in part because he was from a sort of alternate universe or whatever that was referred to as hels. Going between the two places wasn't common. He had ended up there in the first place because of one of the Hermits' inventions, and was only back due to Evil Xisuma. The only reason he had been doing so well in the nether was because Evil X had insisted on modding one of their seasons with the nether. Because that dimension wasn't normally a part of hels.

Helsknight himself, despite being named after the alternate universe or whatever that didn't have the nether, had actually been from a world that had also been modded with the fiery dimension. Which, if he knew enough about how things worked, Wels was in the same situation, being from a world that had added in the connections to an extra dimension. Still, the dimension that Hels had grown up with didn't exactly match the present day nether of wels, but for whatever reason, Evil X had wanted to be nice and give a slice of home to the knight. It had felt off since it was made to match the new version of things, but now Hels appreciated the gesture.

It still hadn't exactly matched with the nether Hels had found himself in before, but it gave him some familiarity with the dimension he had found himself in. But emphasis on had. Because now he found himself in the overworld in a biome he didn't fully recognize. And that would be bad enough if it weren't also for the fact that he wasn't exactly sure how to actually survive.

Okay, that was sort of hyperbole, but it was still going to be tough. From what Hels had learned after his first visit to wels, there hadn't originally been a separation between the two dimensions. But sometime around the addition of a new dimension, the split happened. Since then, the two dimensions had stayed separate, and what might be discovered in one of the worlds would have a different equivalent in the other.

Like for instance, apparently they had spruce and birch instead of pine and sycamore. If something that small was different, what else was he going to deal with? Well for one, probably the bird a couple of blocks away from him. He looked at it and it looked back, but nothing happened, so it probably wasn’t hostile. He then looked around at the landscape, hoping to spot some kind of landmark, only to be disappointed by finding just one. 

Just like at Wels’ spawn, a similar pillar thing stood just behind where Hels appeared. But unlike the netherbrick of the other one, this was made mainly from a type of wood he can’t recall the name of. It’s orange wood, but the bark is more of a gray. The only things not like that are the piece of bedrock and the strange block on top of it that looked like weird dirt or stone.

As far as Helsknight could tell, he couldn’t get anything out of the small structure other than being able to see his spawn. Maybe that meant he should build his base there, but he needed to gather wood first. So, Hels started walking to the nearest tree, punching at the logs that matched what the spawn marker was made of. When he finally picked them up, he noted that they were ‘acacia’ before turning them into a crafting table and set of wooden tools.

Chopping down another tree, Hels used the planks to outline where his base would be before digging at the group below until he hit stone, then continued to mine that up until he could change to a stone pickaxe and make a furnace. He popped back up to the surface to place the untility block next to his crafting table, also making and placing a chest for good measure.

Digging randomly for coal wasn’t really the best option in the moment, so after stuffing the extra cobble and dirt into the chest, Hels went looking for a shallow cave in hopes of finding some coal ore. Thankfully it didn’t take long, and he mined it up and crafted a number of torches. One was placed in the cave opening to help it stand out, and he placed a small trail on the way back to his base for the same reason.

While placing one in the center of his outlined area, Hels frowned at where it was now suddenly broken. For whatever reason, a few of the blocks he had placed were just missing now. He couldn’t really see why, but Helsknight placed more blocks in the gap. After that, he added a second layer of blocks to make sure there was a wall to hopefully keep out any monsters once night finally hit.

Now that Hels had a number of torches, he continued his staircase in the spawn area. If he could find a cave below his spawn, then he wouldn’t need to go exploring too far. And with regen off, if he died, it would be fairly easy to return to where he had been. But that meant finding a cave in the first place.

For now, he was having very little luck. Helsknight had only managed to find two pieces of iron ore, and he had no clue what to do with the raw iron that had dropped. Even if it worked like regular iron ingots, what was he supposed to do with shears? As Hels tried to potentially come up with any idea, his train of thought stopped in its tracks when he reached the surface. In the same area as before, the planks making the wall for his temporary base were gone.

Helsknight stared at the gap in the wall, trying to figure out why it was there again. His first guess was the strange bird he had seen earlier, but at this point, it had wandered off far enough that he couldn’t see it anywhere nearby. With another glance, he noticed how that side of his wall was closer to the spawn structure than the rest of it. Probably nothing could be within a certain distance of the thing. 

With a frustrated sign, Hels tore up what remained of that wall and expanded it. He was still going to enclose the thing to some degree. It was his spawn, and the thing was important enough that protecting it was probably the safest option.

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.

.

The first time he had seen a player was a surprise, leaving quickly enough he was pretty sure he wasn’t spotted. The next time he wasn’t as sure, but couldn’t tell. The third and fourth times he knew they didn’t, but the fifth time he knew he had been seen.

He had been alone for a long time, on his own and sometimes managing to find himself in different worlds. Sometimes, those worlds included other people. And when those people saw him, they talked about him. Those talks ended up connecting to more things they had spotted, things he had left behind like little tunnels or small builds. He didn’t think it would amount to much, until the first time a player appeared in the world he was in, instead of the other way around.

That had been this world. Ages and ages ago. When the first Watcher had appeared. They did something to him that day. They essentially laid a curse upon him, one he was stuck with for ages. Technically, he was still stuck with it, but it had been lessened. At most he could say it left him feeling sick for a day or so. And part of that was because of how accommodating his current home was.

Well, it wasn’t really current now. This world wasn’t supposed to be their home. And it seemed someone had noticed the little fix that had been given to his curse. The Watchers were running the show after all. They wouldn’t want something like that messed with if they hadn’t been the ones fixing it.

But he didn’t know it had happened until it was too late. The idea only crossed his mind near the end of their timer. He did his best to rush back to a piece of safety, hoping to ride out what he thought was coming. Surely he could be taken care of for a little bit. That’s what hermits did after all.

He called out to Beef in time for him to turn around right as the server reset began. And when everything was set back to normal, only one hermit remained at the true spawn. And due to the message given previously, Beef sadly assumed that the other Hermit had ended up with a moved spawn.

But that wasn’t the case. He hadn’t moved spawns, but he was no longer at the true spawn. He was nowhere. 

Version 1.ᓭᒷ.0, Changes: - Removed Herobrine ⋮𝙹ᒷ⍑╎ꖎꖎᓭᓭᔑ||ᓭ

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft au #scattered au #grian #watcher!grian #the watchers (evo) #vintage beef #joe hills #jrumbot #docm77 #evil xisuma #grumbot #helsknight #herobrine!joe

[votederpycausemufins]

I know I mentioned it in my recent art post, but I've started another gemcyt fic. It's meant to sort of adapt the whole gem rebellion and war and whatnot into the gemcyt au.

Check it out! And feel free to ask about any bits of the history I'm making up. I've already got 4 chapters, and working on a fifth.

#gemcyt #my writing #steven universe au

[votederpycausemufins]

A small piece that goes along with my fic on ao3, specifically for chapter 3

Specifically, this is Lizzie and Joel after leaving Homeworld and staying on the planet they are now calling 'Life', and mid discussion where Joel is carefully reaching towards Lizzie to see if she's okay.

#gemcyt #life series au #steven universe au #ldshadowlady #joel smallishbeans #my art

[votederpycausemufins]

The Gemcyt Diamond Authority

Couldn't decide on background or not, so here's both. Well, technically the black is a background, but whatever.

Lizzie design by @chrisrin and the other three (Sparklez, Dantdm and Stampy) by @ingapotejtoo

Pose and coloring style referenced and inspired by images from ' Your Mother and Mine'

Also under the cut I'll put a solid color version with a transparent background

aaand here's the reference images

#gemcyt #my art #mcyt au #steven universe au #ldshadowlady #stampylonghead #dantdm #captain sparklez

[votederpycausemufins]

This is to hopefully get a visual and concrete representation of how people are reacting.

Also, please remember to go to tumblr.com/support and submit feedback about any dislike you have about the new twitter style format or wish for the option to swap between formats. Even if you are someone who would switch back to the old format, at least giving us the option would be good.

Just try not to get angry or cuss out the staff in those feedback tickets as that could get them dismissed or ignored.

[votederpycausemufins]

reblogging this to my main blog as this seems important enough for it.

This is to hopefully get a visual and concrete representation of how people are reacting.

Also, please remember to go to tumblr.com/support and submit feedback about any dislike you have about the new twitter style format or wish for the option to swap between formats. Even if you are someone who would switch back to the old format, at least giving us the option would be good.

Just try not to get angry or cuss out the staff in those feedback tickets as that could get them dismissed or ignored.

[votederpycausemufins]

Eh, I'm just gonna add this as a reblog to it

Supplementary sheet. and the fic these are connected to can be found Here.

And here's my Evil X gemcyt design sheet thing. I already posted the Xisuma one, so check that one out too.

the whole gemcyt au got kicked off by @chrisrin so make sure to check out their stuff and all the stuff they reblogged if you haven't already.

Another version of the sheet above but with more notes on and for it is below the cut.

Alright! I had a lot of fun figuring Evil X out, probably bc of him being one of my blorbos.

Evil X has a lot of 'theories' surrounding what he is and I've seen some variations. He and X are siblings, they're X's clone, he's a glitched version of X, they're X's hels. etc etc. And so trying to figure out what to do for him.

While I already borrowed sweetest-honeybee's design in the second part of my Zed/WM gemcyt post, I didn't want to do like that and make him corrupted. I know the gemcyt stuff seems to play with corruption a little looser, but it still didn't feel right. So, I went researching and found a fun lil mix that seems to fit well.

First off, the closest thing you can get to a glitch in terms of gems is being off-color. I mean technically you glitch when you're cracked, but we're not doing that. Anyway, off-color gem Evil X, which is why there's the gem comparison. Next, the clone/hels part. I don't mention it on the sheet, but specifically, I think of this Evil X as a sort of gem experiment. No wait wait don't leave let me explain!

We saw that there were gem experiments of some type on the show. They were more fusion experiments using shards, and were experiments for the cluster (which technically don't work since they only emerged slightly before the cluster so there was no telling if they worked and if then the cluster would work). Also on the show, we're told that there's a resource problem on Homeworld which results in 'Era 2' gems like Peridot, who don't have all the abilities a normal gem would have. Also also in the show, when Steven and Lars are with the off colors on Homeworld, we see the kindergartens there. And while there are normal holes, there are also holes that overlap, as well as holes that look like there's been a chunk scooped out of them.

The analogy I could think of was like when you're making cookies. you roll out the dough, get a cookie cutter, and get all the cookies, but assuming you weren't using a square cutter, there's extra dough left between the cuts. Instead of just leaving it, usually you reroll it to cut out more cookies. Well, why can't Homeworld try the same?

Evil X is meant to be an experiment on if Homeworld can successfully do that. They scooped out extra rock from a kindergarten or two, compressed it into a new boulder, then used an injector on it. Eventually after a long while, out came Evil X. And that whole thing also leans into the clone thing because I imagine some of the scooped rock was from part of where Xisuma emerged.

Anyway, with all that, I originally thought about making Evil X look similar to Amethyst's pseudo buff reformation, but trying to draw that was a mess. I meant to go back and make him look a little more lopsided, but you'll have to just imagine that. Whoops. At the very least he has the funky stripes. I imagine that's probably from where the different rock pieces met or something, and since it wasn't as solid as regular rock, he was like that.

Coloring him was tough, but eventually I just copied Xisuma over, inverted his colors, and then shifted the hue to be more red. I considered making the green parts more black, but it didn't fit, so they're just more purpley to show that Xisuma connection or smthn.

Speaking of his gem, I show what I picture a normal Cuprite to look like. Meanwhile Evil X's is a bit misshapen, as well as that darker area that mimics the one reference I had. specifically that darker bit is chrysocolla, but he's still just cuprite.

Instead of a mask, he's just got a visor similar to what we've seen with Peridot and Doc and technically those zircons. And also instead of a mask he has those... blade things. Look, the best name i could find for them were blade gauntlets, but they look more like sword brass knuckles to me so I don't know. Also yes they are based on a weapon a digimon had, what of it?

And then, he is hella amethyst coded. Popped out of his rock thing in a chamber under the kindergarten (similar to the other experiments in the show) with no one around. He was an experiment and uses rock from different gems and is off color, so he doesn't know what he's for. Doesn't even know what diamond he should belong to, so that's why he's got a grey one on his chest. And there's a lot of little things and ideas for him that are inspired by Amethyst's characterization on the show, to the point I was planning a screenshot redraw even before I had his and Xisuma's designs even close to finalized.

I also have a fic I'm working on with him and Gemsuma, as well as that quick Jevin design plus a few teeny tiny references to other people's gem designs. If my adhd allows it, i should post that 1 shot fic tomorrow.

#gemcyt #evil xisuma #hermitcraft au #steven universe au #my art

[votederpycausemufins]

Muffin has created a Gemcyt fic

I said I was going to in my pair of gemsumas posts, but I finally finished it and uploaded to ao3. Hopefully the fact that I am linking it will not hide it on tumblr since I know it tends to be a problem.

But here's Cabochon Cut, which doesn't really use any of @chrisrin's designs, just references them. But is a part of the au they started. I think it's because it's more Hermitcraft than Life Series, but I may write another fic connected to this one that explores the life side of things instead. Or maybe alongside? I dunno.

Either way, hope you will enjoy the read if you do read. I uploaded all the chapters at once, so no need to wait for the whole thing as it's already there. and technically all 5 chapters were just going to be one, but I divided it per scene. As I had a lot of notes for some of the chapters.

#gemcyt #hermitcraft au #steven universe au #my writing

[votederpycausemufins]

And here's my Evil X gemcyt design sheet thing. I already posted the Xisuma one, so check that one out too.

the whole gemcyt au got kicked off by @chrisrin so make sure to check out their stuff and all the stuff they reblogged if you haven't already.

Another version of the sheet above but with more notes on and for it is below the cut.

Alright! I had a lot of fun figuring Evil X out, probably bc of him being one of my blorbos.

Evil X has a lot of 'theories' surrounding what he is and I've seen some variations. He and X are siblings, they're X's clone, he's a glitched version of X, they're X's hels. etc etc. And so trying to figure out what to do for him.

While I already borrowed sweetest-honeybee's design in the second part of my Zed/WM gemcyt post, I didn't want to do like that and make him corrupted. I know the gemcyt stuff seems to play with corruption a little looser, but it still didn't feel right. So, I went researching and found a fun lil mix that seems to fit well.

First off, the closest thing you can get to a glitch in terms of gems is being off-color. I mean technically you glitch when you're cracked, but we're not doing that. Anyway, off-color gem Evil X, which is why there's the gem comparison. Next, the clone/hels part. I don't mention it on the sheet, but specifically, I think of this Evil X as a sort of gem experiment. No wait wait don't leave let me explain!

We saw that there were gem experiments of some type on the show. They were more fusion experiments using shards, and were experiments for the cluster (which technically don't work since they only emerged slightly before the cluster so there was no telling if they worked and if then the cluster would work). Also on the show, we're told that there's a resource problem on Homeworld which results in 'Era 2' gems like Peridot, who don't have all the abilities a normal gem would have. Also also in the show, when Steven and Lars are with the off colors on Homeworld, we see the kindergartens there. And while there are normal holes, there are also holes that overlap, as well as holes that look like there's been a chunk scooped out of them.

The analogy I could think of was like when you're making cookies. you roll out the dough, get a cookie cutter, and get all the cookies, but assuming you weren't using a square cutter, there's extra dough left between the cuts. Instead of just leaving it, usually you reroll it to cut out more cookies. Well, why can't Homeworld try the same?

Evil X is meant to be an experiment on if Homeworld can successfully do that. They scooped out extra rock from a kindergarten or two, compressed it into a new boulder, then used an injector on it. Eventually after a long while, out came Evil X. And that whole thing also leans into the clone thing because I imagine some of the scooped rock was from part of where Xisuma emerged.

Anyway, with all that, I originally thought about making Evil X look similar to Amethyst's pseudo buff reformation, but trying to draw that was a mess. I meant to go back and make him look a little more lopsided, but you'll have to just imagine that. Whoops. At the very least he has the funky stripes. I imagine that's probably from where the different rock pieces met or something, and since it wasn't as solid as regular rock, he was like that.

Coloring him was tough, but eventually I just copied Xisuma over, inverted his colors, and then shifted the hue to be more red. I considered making the green parts more black, but it didn't fit, so they're just more purpley to show that Xisuma connection or smthn.

Speaking of his gem, I show what I picture a normal Cuprite to look like. Meanwhile Evil X's is a bit misshapen, as well as that darker area that mimics the one reference I had. specifically that darker bit is chrysocolla, but he's still just cuprite.

Instead of a mask, he's just got a visor similar to what we've seen with Peridot and Doc and technically those zircons. And also instead of a mask he has those... blade things. Look, the best name i could find for them were blade gauntlets, but they look more like sword brass knuckles to me so I don't know. Also yes they are based on a weapon a digimon had, what of it?

And then, he is hella amethyst coded. Popped out of his rock thing in a chamber under the kindergarten (similar to the other experiments in the show) with no one around. He was an experiment and uses rock from different gems and is off color, so he doesn't know what he's for. Doesn't even know what diamond he should belong to, so that's why he's got a grey one on his chest. And there's a lot of little things and ideas for him that are inspired by Amethyst's characterization on the show, to the point I was planning a screenshot redraw even before I had his and Xisuma's designs even close to finalized.

I also have a fic I'm working on with him and Gemsuma, as well as that quick Jevin design plus a few teeny tiny references to other people's gem designs. If my adhd allows it, i should post that 1 shot fic tomorrow.

#gemcyt #evil xisuma #hermitcraft au #steven universe au #my art

[votederpycausemufins]

My Xisuma gemcyt design on a sheet. Originally I was gonna have both him and Evil X in one post but I had too many thoughts.

the whole gemcyt au got kicked off by @chrisrin so make sure to check out their stuff and all the stuff they reblogged if you haven't already.

Variation of the sheet above but with more notes below the cut.

Alright. Originally I had just been searching for gems to be potentially fusions as I was planning to do a ZIT and/or ZITS fusion, then noticed that tango and impulse don't have a fusion yet. (tango and skizz don't either, and there's no ITS yet, but whatever)

I was scrolling through potential gems and stumbled upon the existence of purpurite. And there's all the theories of Xisuma being a voidwalker or something and having the mask bc end air is thinner and the overworld atmosphere is too thick, etc etc. But like! Purpurite like how there's purpur blocks in the end. And xisuma's two main colors are purple and green and purpurite is apparently purple and green! I had to make him as a purpurite!

His outfit is trying to adapt his skin/the doomguy armor into a gem style. Xisuma himself is essentially shaped based on Holly Blue Agate since that or jadeite seemed like the most similar gem (ish), and i couldn't see him looking like a jade. Also there was another agate on the show that looked more like the various jaspers that had been corrupted, so there is variety in shape anyway!

I almost have him green spot markings, but they just never looked good, so he doesn't have them. Maybe I'd try again to try and match with Evil X's markings, but maybe the opposites are fine.

Instead of a regular gem weapon, he has a mask. And while it was never confirmed, the main theory about Garnet's glasses is that they're Sapphire's 'weapon'. Plus, Jasper had a helmet, so straight up weapon isn't necessary. I'm planning to do an extra sheet for both of the 'sumas, and for Xisuma it will probably show how he emotes even with him wearing the mask 24/7. If you've seen the Fool's Gold series by Dingodoodles, I imagine it vaguely similar to how Gothi emotes.

And finally, the x's. Like, the x shaped on his outfit/form/whatever. I have it similar to how Rose has the star around her gem. It's just that X has an x around his gem as a cutout from his cuff glove bracer thing. Originally, it was just that his backside felt empty and I wanted something there, so I put another x on the back, but then I got ideas and now there is a very good reason why he also has one there. But I'm not covering that here.

And the actual last part is that the sheet mentions its from Cabochon Cut. I'm actually working on a one shot under that title that I will hopefully post tomorrow. Hopefully. We'll see.

#gemcyt #xisumavoid #xisuma #hermitcraft au #steven universe au #my art

[votederpycausemufins]

Okay I swear I'm working on the characters I wanted to... I just happened to be researching gems and stumbled upon Orange Spodumene, went 'wait spodumene comes in blue, it would be perfect for Jevin' and made this. Honestly I'm surprised no one had done it yet.

But part of the reason I did him is because I may be working on my own Xisuma and Evil Xisuma designs (I know I used sweetest-honeybee's designs on the second page of my zedaph ones, but I have so many ideas now that require my own designs)

Just so I can make sure it's out there sooner rather than later, I know @chrisrin , the one responsible for the gemcyt brainrot, made the Boatem Gems to probably be the Crystal Gems equivalent, and people are already writing stories for gemcyt linked to the life series since most of the characters done were from there. However, what if Hermit Gems? Are you intrigued by the idea? I have more info below the cut, both on that and also how it connects to a part of Jevin's design.

Okay hear me out, Hermit Gems. A variation for the crystal gems. Instead of just defending Earth, it's a planet system they defend. That way you can have a planet for hermitcraft, a planet for the live series, a planet for a different group, etc etc.

Unlike with Earth, that had the normal warp pads and the homeworld warp, let's have 3 kinds. Normal 'Planetary Warps', Solar System or just 'System Warps', and ofc the 'Homeworld Warps'. The Hermits/Hermit Gems have disabled the Homeworld warps on any planet they were on, but for the most part the planetary and system warps are still functional.

Like, let's imagine there's 10 planets in the system. Each planet would have 10-15 Planetary warps, 1 System warp (to get from one planet to another) and maybe 3-5 of the planets would have homeworld warps. All the Homeworld ones are disabled purposely, and then a few of the system and a number of the planetary warps are disabled just due to wear and tear from over the years similar to what was seen in the show. That way while it's all the same solar system, there are a few planets that would be disconnected from the other planets. So you could have the life players end up stranded on a planet and not know that it technically is protected by the Hermits.

Now, as for the Hermit Gems themselves, I imagine most of the Hermits were part of the Hermit Gems, but the planets are a bit more dangerous than Earth, so former hermits have either been corrupted, shattered, or lost when they were poofed over time. As it stands, Xisuma has become the defacto leader of the HG's, but in the same way that after Rose became Steven, Garnet was seen as the defacto leader, but really there was no true leader.

The Hermits who were in season 1 that are present day Hermits are probably the original Hermit Gems. So that's Xisuma, Joe and Keralis. Technically Bdubs was in season 1, albeit briefly, so we're not counting him. (Though since Pungence was there, could be that he was there as another Nephrite and when Bdubs eventually learns of the HG's and of his uh... former crewmate(?), he might join with them. But I feel like most of the people part of the life series are up in the air.

Of course more gems/hermits ended up joining the HG's over time, whether on purpose or accident. I'm not sure about some of the other life series people, but Cleo having been in hermitcraft since s2 seems like she probably went to a different planet through the system warps, but by the time she wanted to go back, something had damaged the warp to go back to the sort of main planet, so she ended up stuck on what could be the life series planet.

Of the planets, I feel like the system would go along the lines of 9201 dash [XX], 9 bc of hermitcraft s9, and then the 201 due to us being on 1.20.1. And then the letters signify the planet, so the main one would be 9201-HC and the life series could be 9201-TL (for third life or traffic life, pick your poison).

The Hermit Gems are of course mainly on 9201-HC, and instead of their main base being the Gem Temple, they have it called the Mega Base (for obvious reasons). It would still be similar to the Gem Temple with having a door to various rooms that each Hermit would get, but unlike the Gem Temple, it wouldn't stick to the 5 rooms or whatever number, but it would change with the different HG's, mainly through someone like Xisuma or Joe messing with the gem tech inside. (Since the fact that the Gem Temple has it for the present crystal gems means that it was made after Bismuth was poofed and Amethyst has joined. That, or they changed the door. The fact that Bismuth has a gem in the same place Amethyst does means that the Temple Gem itself could have been her instead, but who knows. We don't know enough about the Temple's history)

Finally, the part that involves Jevin's design. Similar to how the CG's all had stars as part of their designs, I feel like the HG's would have x's. We see that Rose had her star far before the others did, and they added their stars around the time Steven was born, likely in honor of Rose, but Bismuth had stars of her own on her apron and 'tattoo' despite not knowing Rose's fate. So I imagine that the HG's, after joining the Hermits, if they got poofed and regeneration, they had the possibility of adding on an x design to show their allegiance to the Hermits. Xisuma was the first to do it, which is part of how he got his nickname instead of just being called his gem name: P[redacted until the design is complete]. Other HG's probably did it as well before Xisuma was seen as the leader, X just added x's first and whoever was in charge at the time liked it as a replacement for their diamond decals.

I'm not sure if I want to say the HG leader before was Generik, mainly because of... recent outlook on him. And I know Rose/PD had a sort of problematic backstory to put it lightly. It could be similar to why he seemed to have made HC in the first place (assumed to be that he was salty about not being invited to MindCrack, so made his own server, and then once he did get onto MindCrack, he didn't return for s2). If we go with that, it could be something along the lines of Generik started their gem rebellion, and the other Hermit Gems assumed it was for their independence and freedom, but then it was revealed that Generik just wanted to do it to upset HW and didn't care about the other stuff, which put a sour note on the whole thing. Whether he decided he was done, or if HW managed to find and capture/shatter him, who knows. Even if he didn't exist, Xisuma's the technical leader now and the symbol of the HG's is an x.

Of course, it's not required. The designs I saw for Cleo and Joe don't have x's (though i feel like that's because Cleo has never been poofed), it's just a 'if you want to have it, go ahead'. Which is part of why Jevin has an X through his hood and what represents the drawstrings of the hood, but then the hoodie pocket is still a diamond. I almost didn't make it an actual pocket, but i didn't know what to do with his arms, so in ze pocket they go.

If anyone wants to draw/tweak his design, the non transparent version is there for color grabbing. I put the transparent parts at 75% opacity. If you can't tell, his gem is at his chest as opposed to Orange Spodumene having it at her belly.

And lastly, part of why I designed him instead of just saying 'hey, someone do that' is bc i'm working on a fic. and while he's not the main focus, I needed more gems for it and he happened to be sitting there and easy to choose a gem for.

#gemcyt #hermitcraft au #steven universe au #ijevin #my art #also haha gem-vin

[votederpycausemufins]

Holo-Aquamarine aka NPC-Grian bc i suddenly thought NPG as a holo gem would be v fitting

Gemcyt au and Grian design by @chrisrin , Background ripped from the show.

More notes down below

So Gemcyt gave me so much brainrot. I've been rewatching episodes and I've been working on other gemcyt stuff and designs and doodles, but then suddenly i thought 'Wait, what if we had a holo-pearl, but it was a holo-aquamarine, or perhaps an NPC-Grian if you will'

So! I doodled him up! Instead of sword fighting, he does building! And of course instead of a sword fighting menace, he's a rustic house menace. Or something. It was easy enough to make, just recolor and low key simplify grian's aquamarine design. Since his lil ahoge seems to be like Aquamarine's bow, I excluded it from the holo-grian since the first time we see holo-pearl, there's a diamond instead of a star, and later things imply that potentially she added her lil star post regeneration, so it reflects the gem and not anything added, hence no wand thing. and then i removed the shading from the hair, and didn't have the color variation between the collar pants and toe tips.

Also in rewatching the show, I may or may not have found a scene from on the run that fits for X and EX, so I'm making my own designs for them to do a sort of screenshot redraw so haha, that's next.

#gemcyt #hermitcraft au #life series au #grian #npc grian #steven universe au #my art

[votederpycausemufins]

We're back with another chapter of Surprisingly Familiar. And I'm posting on here first rather than Ao3 bc it is not loading :')

The first two sections had a lot of backstory, so i tried to have less of that in the last section.

“Try it again. You’re making the curve too round.”

“I’m trying!” Grian huffed as he traced a small spiral in the air. “Can’t we just go back to the easier stuff?”

Grifter had called Grian over for some more magic training. Unlike before, where it had just been along the lines of using magic to do basic spells that anyone with magic could do, he was now insisting Grian work on using magic more specific to Listeners. Apparently it meant drawing the sigil of the Listeners with magic. Something that was apparently very particular.

“Sorry, but no. One of my friends has been looking into your situation. He thinks we can get you back to your time, but that there’s a bit of a time limit on that.”

“What?” Grian stopped to look over at Grifter. “Like, there’s a certain time that it can be done, or what?”

“Like, if you stay in this time too long, eventually you will never be able to get back to your time at all. I’m not going to try and go through all the ‘temporal explanations’ because I don’t really understand it all myself. But he was connected with Evo, so he knows some time stuff.”

Grian nodded a little at that. If it was another Listener who had worked with that world, then they would know about messing with time. Probably. Grifter had mentioned what it was about at one point forgetting that Grian didn’t remember that world.

“From what I can tell, the longer you’re out of your time, the more you connect with this time. Technically there’s always actually having you travel back to the past and then reconnecting, but then it becomes a lot more difficult. There’s a report of some people who had actually made a time machine that tried to just take it back an hour or so, but instead sent themselves back to before the Watchers and Listeners even existed as groups.”

“They… they did?” Grian nervously asked. If that was how bad it could go, then maybe Grifter was right to worry about taking too long.

“Yeah. They eventually got back, but dismantled the machine not long later, as they should have. Essentially, as long as the world still thinks you’re from whatever time, most methods can use you as a focus point. Because something most people don’t consider is that you can’t just travel in time. If you went back even a minute, well, the world moves along in the universe over time. Unless you can tell me the exact moment you got sent here, it would take a lot more work to figure out.”

“Well, I was asleep when it happened, so I can’t help there.” Grian replied, trying not to sound angry at Grifter, but he was frustrated at the situation.

“Exactly. So, if you want the chance to hop back in time and use magic to save Taurtis, we need to kinda rush through training.”

Grian sighed before looking back to where he was working. “Can we at least take a small break first? It’s a lot more exhausting.” Out from the ground stood two spikes of bedrock. Each one was from managing to successfully draw the sigil. While it took a lot of energy, it seemed to be from boosting Grian’s magic, his magic’s color shifting from purple to green. 

“Hmm, alright fine. It won’t work well to hurt yourself.” As soon as the words were out of Grifter’s mouth, Grian flopped onto the ground to rest. He had his eyes closed, something Grifter was happy about so that his frown wouldn’t be seen.

Grifter had gone back to try and get some more help with the Grian situation, only to find that a certain someone had figured out how to get into Hermitcraft. That, along with the group of Hermits that were trying to get into this world- well, half hermits, half family, which made it even worse- certain plans needed to be sped along. Lying about Grian potentially getting stuck in this time was just one way to help move things along. Plus, Grian wasn’t actually from the past, so he couldn’t get sent back home. So it would be easy enough to claim something or other had delayed them just long enough that now the easy way was gone. It would probably be best to try and frame it as being Astrid or Flora’s doing. Sure, Grifter adored Flora, but she was getting far too close to Grian, so if he had to throw her under the bus to make sure he could finish this plan, he would.

“Hey Grifter?” Grifter looked up to where Grian was lying, glad to see his eyes still closed. “Is it okay if I hang around the castle for a bit once we’re done here?”

“Of course. It’s technically your castle as well. Any reason why?”

“Flora and Astrid are busy.” Grian lied, badly enough that Grifter could tell.

“Sure they are. What’s really going on?”

Grian hesitated before answering. He could tell the truth, at least part of it, but either way, it wasn’t great. “It’s just… uh…” He tried to wrack his brain for something to say that wasn’t exactly a lie, but wasn’t a truth either. “I saw some of Flora’s family. And their grandmother tried getting close. She… she looks a lot like what I remember from Mum, but at the same time not. And I don’t like that I can remember more of someone that isn’t Mum rather than Mum herself.”

“Ah, yeah I can see how that’s hard to deal with. So I guess they’re spending more time there?” Grifter asked, not looking further into Grian’s answer. Grian gave a small shrug, not really saying no, but also not saying yes.

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve also just been around you a lot, and then around Flora and Astrid, but I haven’t really been near the people who are going to be my husband and kids.”

Grifter couldn’t help but light up at that. Unlike Flora and Astrid, Sense and their boys knew exactly what was going on and could help steer Grian in the ‘right’ direction. “Oh well that is a very easy fix! I’m not sure about the boys, but Sense is probably just busy with redstone and needs a break.”

“So, I could spend some time with him?” Grian asked, getting a nod from Grifter before getting taken away to see the redstoner. It took a little bit of hunting before the pair finally found him working in the castle, indeed doing some redstone engineering. He didn’t notice them immediately, too entranced in his work, but eventually Grifter snuck over and grabbed Sense, making him jump at first before giving a small laugh when seeing who it was.

“To what do I owe this surprise?” Sense asked after noticing that Grifter wasn’t alone and had brought Grian along.

“Well Grian brought up the fact that you two haven’t gotten to interact much, so I figured you two need some one on one time!” Grifter explained, and Grian was surprised when Sense’s smile actually fell. For a moment, he seemed almost scared before it morphed into simply just surprise.

“I uh, I thought you two would want to interact more yourselves?” Sense offered, looking between the two avians again. “Or perhaps all three of us? Or what about the boys?”

“The boys are busy with their own things right now and if I’m not training Grian with magic, I’ve got admin duties to deal with. The regular stuff is already enough but the added bits for helping Grian have made things almost overwhelming, so the backlog piles up when I work with him.”

Grian felt a little guilty at Grifter’s explanation. It was probably that Sense was upset that all Grifter’s free time was being spent helping him and not with Sense. And now he needed to spend that time with a younger version of Grifter that didn’t know him as well. “I don’t have to if he doesn’t want-”

“Oh nonsense! Seesee will be perfectly fine, right?” Grifter asked Sense. “But if he doesn’t think so, I’m sure I can convince him.” And Grifter leaned in to whisper something into Sense’s ear. After a moment, Sense nodded and Grifter smiled. “Well that settles it! You two have fun! Bye!”

Grifter left in a blur after giving Sense a quick kiss, leaving only a feather or two behind with Grian and Sense, having them stand there awkwardly for a number of moments before either of them moved, that being the redstoner getting back to his work. At least until Grian stopped him again.

“Uh, what exactly are you working on? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“I do mind, actually.” Sense replied before pulling away to go back to work. “I’m sure Gri will be too busy to notice if you stick around or not, so you’re free to leave.”

“I’d rather stick around.” Grian spoke up, not even asking if Sense minded this time. “And Grifter mentioned you should take a break from whatever you’re doing, and you know, he’s me, and either way, I think you should too.”

There was a pause before Sense said anything more. “I’d rather not.”

“Please? Just for a little bit?” Grian pleaded, then paused before asking a question. “Do you not want to be around me because of the chance I’ll change the past?” When Sense didn’t reply, Grian continued. “Look, I’m not going to lie, I am going to try and save Taurtis no matter what, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make sure I find you too. Honestly I’d love it if we were able to boot Sam out once and for all and you could be there instead.”

“Is that so?” Sense asked, which pulled a smile from Grian.

“Oh yeah of course. I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about him from Grifter, but he was a giant asshole, still technically is for me, but hopefully I won’t have to deal with him too much longer. And I could maybe also make sure to have you around if I knew what you were doing back then.”

For a moment, Sense actually considered the possibility before remembering how it was just impossible outright. Grian wasn’t really from the past, so he couldn’t go back and change anything. But Grian wasn’t supposed to know that, so he had to play along. After thinking it over a few moments, Sense huffed and pulled himself out of his machine, wiping redstone dust onto his pants before walking towards where he had left his dress shirt and suit jacket. An action that made Grian realize the redstoner was only wearing a tank top above the waist. While he was still covered, Grian averted his eyes anyway for decency, at least until he could see Sense finish buttoning his shirt out of the corner of his eye.

After Sense pulled his jacket on, he went for his tie before realizing it had been caught by his machine at some point and had been shredded up. “Ugh, great. Do you mind if we head to our, er rather, my room so I can grab another tie?”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Grian shrugged before starting to follow behind Sense. “Sorry about that one.”

“It’s not like you could have stopped it from getting destroyed.” Sense waved Grian’s comment off. “And Grifter wouldn’t have repaired it anyway.”

“Really? Why not?”

“He’d prefer me to cycle through my whole collection. I just find it easier to stick with one and our ways of organizing them are different. The last time I went through wearing ties, I found Gri with ties strewn about the room, arguing that patterns shouldn’t be sorted with colors unless the patterns were the same color or whatever.”

“Well I’ll try not to freak out over your tie sorting.” Grian said, crossing his fingers that whatever he was about to see wouldn’t be such a visual travesty.

When the pair reached Grifter and Sense’s bedroom, Grian was reminded of when he had first woken up there. Well, other than the fact that it looked a bit more messy than it had however many days ago. He wasn’t sure if it was due to Grifter being so busy, or if this was how it normally looked and they had just made it look nicer for Grian. Honestly he could see it going either way.

Sense went over to a pair of folding doors and slid them open, revealing the mass of ties hanging inside. For the most part, they were indeed sorted by color, but Grian’s eyes immediately caught on a few ties that looked like they were out of place. As Sense thumbed through the ties in the cooler section of colors, Grian pulled out a tie covered in blue and purple patterns, though the base of the tie itself was a red color. After putting it back, he found what seemed to be an orange tie covered in multicolored flowers that also made it look out of place grouped with other normal orange ties.

As Grian continued to look over the ties, Sense finally picked out another generic looking blue tie, putting it on. As he started to try and close the closet doors again, Grian stopped him, instead pulling out a tie that was a dark green, one that reminded Grian of the magic Grifter used. “Here, why don’t you wear this one instead?”

“I’d rather not.” Sense said after looking at the cloth, pushing it back towards Grian. “I’m perfectly fine with the one I’ve got.”

“But you were just wearing blue!” Grian complained, pulling the tie Sense had on away, finding it easy since he hadn’t managed to actually tie it yet. “You’ve got so many colors here! Wear something else!”

“I prefer blue.” Sense argued, pulling a different one from that colored section. “Blacks and whites are too bland and I like a little splash of color, and Grifter isn’t a fan of me wearing purple, so we agree on blue.”

“What? What about all the other colors?” Grian asked, gesturing especially to the gradient of pinks all the way to greens and even dipping into cyans. “Even a light blue might be nice.”

“I have my reasons for not wearing those other colors as well.” Sense said, attempting to close the closet again, but being stopped by Grian forcing them to stay open, shocking Sense by the fact that it was through magic. 

“Then how about you tell me and then I can choose one for you that you might like that isn’t boring.”

Sense glared Grian down before relenting and sitting on the bed. Grian smiled at the action before turning back to the closet and going through the ties. “So I assume greys fall under the same category as blacks and whites.”

“Of course.”

“Okay, What about browns? I don’t see many of those?” Grian looked back over to Sense, wanting to hear about that.

“Leather ties aren’t exactly comfortable to wear.” Sense began to answer. “And I just don’t tend to get many gifts of brown cloth ties. It’s either something colorful or greyscale to be ‘classy’.”

“Well, red ties could be classy too.” Grian lightly argued, pulling out one that matched his feathers.

“Well red is a difficulty for me.” Sense argued. “Not only am I told it clashes with my eyes, but cleaning redstone from it is a pain. Not to mention the fact that my… other self tends to use that color.”

Grian looked up. “You mean like how with Grifter and me and-” Grian hesitated, not recalling off the top of his head what Sense knew about Grifter.

“How you’re from Wels, yes.” Sense agreed. “The two of us have interacted in the past, so I prefer to make sure we don’t overlap, so I don’t wear red.”

“Well how about pink?” Grian asked. “It’s different enough from red, right?”

“A certain someone I hate very much is fond of pink and I will never get over that fact.” Sense crossed his arms. “Potentially, pink would be fine otherwise, but I would burn those things if Gri wouldn’t get upset over it.”

“Okay, good to know.” Grian quickly pushed the pinks away along with the reds. “Orange?”

“Too close to red and yellow and I don’t use either of those.”

“Oh. Wait, why not yellow?” There was silence to Grian’s question, making him look over at Sense and ask again. “Why don’t you wear yellow? It’s… not because of me, right?” Grian’s feathers ruffled, remembering the amount of times that Sam plucked his yellow feathers because he wanted them for himself, since ‘Taurtis is always wearing blue and gets some of your blue feathers, I want some yellow ones!’. The memory made Grian shudder before he remembered where he was. “If I- if Grifter gets upset-”

“He doesn’t get upset if I wear yellow.” Sense finally spoke up, though he was staring at the ground. “I will not wear yellow. I can’t. There’s-” He cut himself off as his voice caught in his throat. “I used to, but then things happened. So I don’t anymore.”

“Can I ask what happened?” Grian asked softly, pushing the ties back in place. He couldn’t help himself when he sorted a green tie out from the yellows and into the dark greens. He needed to do some sorting to help scratch that itch he felt looking at the mess. But after he put it in its new spot, Grian pulled his hands away from the gray tie and grabbed a light blue one before handing it to Sense and closing the closet.

Sense took the tie and put it on, waiting until he had tightened it around his neck to say anything more. “Well, I guess you did already ask about my past. Probably around the time you’re from, I ended up in a… situation.” Grian could tell that it was something Sense didn’t want to fully elaborate on, so he wasn’t going to pry on what the situation was exactly. “I ended up with someone who… he wasn’t quite as bad as Sam I wouldn’t think, but it was a similar problematic friendship.”

“That’s… not great. I’m guessing they’re the reason you don’t like yellow?”

“Sort of. I just… remember an argument we had where for reasons I won’t specify-” Sense immediately clarified, making Grian nod that he wouldn’t ask about those reasons. “-that the fact that I was wearing a yellow tie at the time was actually a large part of that argument. I know that sounds idiotic without the context but-”

“Me hating rabbits sounds idiotic without context. I’m sure a lot of things can sound idiotic or bad or whatever without context. But that made you swear off yellow?”

“Uh, no actually.” Sense continued. “Not entirely. I-” He paused again, a quick laugh escaping before he said more. “I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve lost a lot of the people close to me when yellow has been involved.”

That caught Grian off guard. “Wait, really? That seems weird.”

“Well, there was of course the argument I had with… my ex friend. But after him, I still wore yellow ties for a while. It’s part of why I have so many, even compared to my large amount of blues.”

Grian had to admit, there were a large amount of yellow ties when he had looked. He figured part of it was because if Sense wore mostly blue, those tended to get destroyed one way or another, so there weren’t quite as many as he would have ever owned. “But then something happened again?”

“My father liked yellow as well.” And despite the fondness in Sense’s voice, a chill ran through Grian as he immediately realized the mention of losing people and referring to his dad in the past tense meant that they were dead. “I liked the idea of matching him and I was even gifted a number of ties from him. But because of that, I couldn’t stand to see myself in that color anymore because it just made me think of him. And how I still never managed to do anything about it.”

“How did he die?” Grian asked, not expecting an answer since it seemed Sense was torn up enough talking about it vaguely. But he was surprised to actually get an answer.

“He was murdered.” Sense answered, venom in his tone from how angry he was now, any sadness completely gone. “And unlike the others, he wasn’t brought back since that would oust our new ‘admin’. Not like this wasn’t our third one anyway. And I couldn’t do anything against that hack and his stupid obsession with trying to destroy his brother’s server. Not to mention the fact that he’s apparently coming here.” And then the angry frown curled into a smile. “Well, this isn’t Helscraft anymore, Grifter’s the admin. And you’re not going to be the only hacker around this time.”

“Uh, what do you mean?” Grian asked, making Sense look up and shake his head, having gotten completely lost in his own thoughts.

“Oh, nothing. Just, apparently Gri and I’s old admin isn’t happy about us being here. To the point he’s even involved his brother and a number of wels to try and mess with us. Not to mention bringing along my other self.”

“Really? That’s not great, is it?”

Sense huffed. “Well, if Grifter can’t handle it, it won’t be, but I’m sure he’ll be able to.”

Grian patted Sense’s shoulder comfortingly before the redstoner pulled him into a hug. Grian almost pulled away, but then hugged back. Right now, it seemed like Sense needed it, and he didn’t want to take that away from him. And as they stood there, hugging one another, it hid as the light blue tie seemed to dull as a grayish purple started to coat it instead.

.

.

.

Everyone was just sort of standing around, not sure how to react to what they had just seen. After the jungle had faded away, half the group rushed to check on the other half. Mumbo had quickly gone to look at Grum while Phil and Techno were worried about Wilbur. Paul went to help Doc recover from the whiplash of getting his cybernetics back while also dealing with his heightened hybrid instincts, and finally Xisuma went to go to Tommy’s side.

What had thrown everyone off was Tommy flinching at Xisuma, but not from his reaction to Xisuma but rather Xisuma himself. X found himself dressed in armor that wasn’t his bee themed set, nor his regular set of green. Instead, he was dressed in a gray while standing to the side of the group was the familiar armor he normally wore, but currently being worn by Evil X.

The confusion wasn’t helped as the moment Xisuma called to his brother, they had unfrozen from whatever shock they had been in, running off across the end islands the group had found themselves on. Which left them to their present situation, at least until Phil finally pointed out that they would need to gather blocks to follow Xannes, since he was the only one of their group who could fly.

Doc was helped to sit down, not currently able to help out, but after that, everyone started to work on mining, save for Xisuma, who was staring off in the direction Evil X had gone, and Tommy, who went to Xisuma’s side. “Are… are you okay?”

“I should be asking you the same question.” Xisuma replied, not taking his eyes off the horizon. “You’re not injured from anything that was in the jungle, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t really remember much after I got separated from you guys. I think I got knocked out pretty quickly. Uh, should we assume this is him going through it now?”

Finally Xisuma looked away and down at Tommy. “I’m.. not sure. I think if it’s not, it’s something of mine that he doesn’t like.”

Tommy glanced towards where he had last seen Xannes in the distance. “Why was he wearing your armor? Mumbo said that was yours, right? Is it because you two are clones?”

Xisuma looked shocked before looking at Tommy again. “What? Clones? Who said we were clones?”

“NPG mentioned he was your clone or something. Cuz Mumbo didn’t know if you were siblings or he was a clone or what.”

“He’s my twin brother, not a clone.” Xisuma clarified. “I suppose it’s because the two of us look so much similar as opposed to…” the admin trailed off as he looked towards where Wilbur and Techno were, Tommy following his gaze and knowing what he meant. “I believe it’s probably because we have matching scars as well.”

Tommy looked back to Xisuma, realizing he couldn’t see through the visor of X’s current helmet to see the scars he knew were present underneath. It was a set of four claw marks that sliced over Xisuma’s face, going over his left eye in a way that impressed Tommy with the fact that the eye itself seemed unharmed.

“I think I remember you mentioning you got them from a dragon?” Tommy asked. Xisuma had shown off the scars to him back when he was still relatively new to Hermitcraft, trying to find ways to connect with Tommy. He had also given a summary of how he got them to Tommy, but he hadn’t really cared at the time.

“Yes, an Ender Dragon. I had managed to bring one into where our family lived and it attacked, leaving Xannes and I with our scars.”

“You think this might be about that?” Tommy asked, vaguely remembering the story a little better now that Xisuma had given the summary again. “I know you lived in the end, but the dragon’s there and now we’re there.”

“I… If it’s for me, potentially” Xisuma admitted after some hesitation. “Evil X liked to taunt me with it. There was one time where he brought in dragons to try and destroy Hermitcraft.”

Tommy shrugged. “I mean, I honestly was worried that we’d end up in a destroyed Hermitcraft at some point, either from you or me. The fact that this is just the boring ass end is pretty good in my books. And one dragon versus all of us looks pretty good in our favor!”

The wince Xisuma gave was hidden behind his helmet. While he knew Tommy was trying to help reassure him, X was also worried about Xannes being on his own and potentially ending up on the other side of whatever they might be fighting. He almost said something about it too, but then the pair of them were called over to help with bridging in Evil X’s direction to try and catch up, and to also talk about what situation they were probably in.

“So, why is he wearing your armor?” Grum asked as they were halfway across a void gap between the islands. No one was completely sure if the void was really there, but no one was fully eager to find out. “And why are you wearing that instead?”

“Well uh, that’s a really long story.” Xisuma replied, his feeble attempt to avoid the topic pretty obvious to the others.

“C’mon X, everyone’s bearing their truths to the world, it’s your turn now, innit?” Tommy asked, lightly elbowing Xisuma.

“Well, I suppose the simple answer is that armor used to… belong to him.”

“Seriously?” Mumbo asked, turning around in shock and having Paul barely grab him in time to keep him from falling off the bridge. “It was his? I can hardly believe him ever wearing anything other than red. Even with all your different armors, he’s kept the same style.”

“Since Hermitcraft, yes, but that wasn’t the case in the past.” Xisuma hesitated before saying anything more, enough that Tommy tried taking back his previous statement, saying the admin didn’t need to actually say anything. “No, you’re right. Especially because I think I know what this is all about.”

“This isn’t about when you banned him that one time, right?” Tommy asked, since he had already heard the story not too long ago. “I could just tell them if you don’t want to.”

“It’s something different.” X stepped onto the next island they reached, turning back towards the group. “As you know, Xannes and I are voidwalkers. That’s essentially the term for End based humans similar to netherborn, aetherkind, and if you want to be specific about it, terrans.”

“Which is what most of us are.” Phil said, gesturing to the group. “Not sure if he counts though.” And that time he pointed to Grumbot.

“I am Robots Georg, an outlier that should not be counted.”

“I’ll pretend I know what that means. Anyway, you were saying X?”

“Well, despite the name, voidwalkers can get what is known as void poisoning. Similar to how despite being in a dimension filled with water, you can still drown, and even netherborns can be susceptible to lava and fire in the right conditions. Some more than others, I know Tango constantly forgets his limits, not to mention-”

“We get the picture.” Techno cut Xisuma off. “Your point?”

“The last time Xannes and I were in these respective armors, there was… an incident.”

-

“What are you even doing with your life? The family business? You never cared about that before!”

“I care about it now, isn’t that enough? It’s not like you’re taking it up, so someone has to.”

“I’m doing something better! Something our parents can be proud of.”

“You know, you don’t get it, do you? What you do doesn’t matter to them.”

“And I’m sure you know that sooo well, huh? You’re just trying to kiss up to them by taking an interest in what our family has done for generations, huh?”

“Well I’ve been getting good at it, Starting out in the overworld is a little pain but-”

“What, can’t handle a little bit of sunlight or something? Or maybe you can’t stand wearing that suit, huh? Wish you were home where you could be out of that stuffy thing? Just lounging around in bed being a good for nothing waste of space?”

“You take that back!”

“Why should I? Isn’t that all you are?”

“I’m not! It’s not like you’ve been around, I’ve been putting plenty of work in.”

“Sure you have. So much compared to me, right? Except I’ve actually been busy. The reason I haven’t been around is because of all the work I’ve had to do. All the training I’ve had to do.”

“Stop it, you’re pushing me too close to the-”

“And once I’m done, I’ll be able to do just what you can but even better. It’ll be simple and easy. All I need to do is pop in a few commands-”

“-Look we might-”

“-pop into the End and just-”

“Xisuma!”

-

“Wh- You?!” Tommy looked shocked, realizing that Xisuma was being the jerk in the story, not Xannes.

“Yeah, I agree with Tommy. “ Doc spoke up. “Sure, you did a lot of pranks back in the day, especially with Biffa, but that sounded kinda cruel. You sure you’re not embellishing it to sound worse than it was?”

Xisuma winced. “No, I was an asshole back then, no way around it. I… our parents seemed to constantly put me above him to the point it got to my head. Both in the idea that I was better than him, but also that I could just keep being at the top of whatever I was doing. Around that time was when I first looked into admin classes. Suddenly there were people better than me and… well I took it the wrong way at first. I was so used to our parents putting Xannes down that… I came back to do the same.”

“Wow… yeah you were an asshole.” Tommy agreed. “How the fuck did you manage to come out of it like this?” And Tommy gestured to all of Xisuma.

“Well, for one I ended up dropping out of the class and didn’t again until after Hermitcraft had started and around the time Generik’s residency was starting to look shaky. But the main reason is what happened next.”

“Which was?”

Xisuma sighed. “The two of us both ended up falling, though Xannes managed to keep us from completely falling into the void. We were still stuck on a low outcrop from an End island with no easy way up. Not to mention our suits were damaged.”

-

“Xannes! Your suit!”

“Huh? Oh, it’s just a tear in the back, no big.”

“The fabric’s almost completely gone! How the hell did you manage that?! Do you have any idea how hard stuff like that is to repair?!”

“Oh, that’s what you’re concerned about… Thanks. Good to know the fabric is so much more important than my well being.”

“Well you’re the one who got us stuck in this mess.”

“Me? You’re the one who pushed us in here. I’ve been living here and could have been just fine with a respawn, but you’ve been away at your fancy school, so it wouldn’t have been as nice for you.”

“Then why not let me fall?”

“I could have. If you want I could still push you in!”

“Then do it!”

“...No. I’m not the only one who had their suit damaged.”

“What are you- my helmet!”

“See, at least I can stitch back together my suit.”

“You mean make Mom do it for you.”

“No I don't. I know how to sew. I learned even without Mother’s help.”

“Calling her that won’t make her dote on you.”

“I know that! Look, can you shut up for just… five minutes. Unless you want the void seeping in faster.”

-

“We did actually stay there quietly for a while, and at one point they even pulled their suit off to start fixing it. They didn’t exactly have the necessary tools on hand, but that actually made it a little more impressive. I had been worried about them not wearing it though, since there’s a reason we wore them even in the End.”

-

“I’m fine.”

“You’re coughing too much. Take your helmet off so I can see.”

“I said I’m *cough* fine! Don’t touch me! *cough*”

“‘Suma, c’mon, let me look!”

“Fine! Whatev- *cough* -ever.”

“Shit, this is bad.”

“What *cough* do you mean?”

“It’s already black. We still don’t know if anyone’s coming, and if they are, how long it’ll take. If they knew you were back then maybe-”

“So? *cough* They’ll notice you’re gone and *cough cough* come looking. How *cough* long are you usually out?”

“... Take my helmet.”

“What?”

“Put it on you derp! You need it more right now. Unless you want to die.”

“What about *cough* you?”

“I’ll just wear yours to make it take longer. They’ll show up soon enough, so it should last me until then.”

-

“No one showed up for hours. I’m not sure how long it even took because the two of us passed out before then.” Xisuma finished in a somber tone. “Turns out a near death experience really shakes up how you see things. And apparently my own armor was more damaged than I thought, because at some point Xannes switched ours up to make sure it would stave off the void poisoning for me. And he was right, I recovered fairly quickly, but he didn’t.”

“But I mean, he’s alright now, right?”

“I guess.” Xisuma answered, though he didn’t sound sure. “It was after that that they started being a bit more angry and violent towards me.”

“And a side effect of void poisoning is a sort of… unpredictable blind rage, right?” Paul asked. “The void causes a weird decay in the mind, similar to what zombifies creatures, but practically irreversible.”

“Right. And so I just wonder if maybe his current situation is my fault. If I hadn’t started that argument-”

“Well it sounds like your parents were jerks too!” Tommy said, cutting Xisuma off and making Phil wince. “If they hadn’t treated you like a perfect golden child and him as a scum of the… End, black sheep, then it wouldn’t have happened, right?”

“Well, yes, but-”

“Tommy’s right.” Techno spoke up this time. “And look, I’m not trying to use it as an excuse for any of us, but sometimes the actions we take are influenced by others in a way that the blame can be placed on them. It depends on the actions themselves, but in this case it doesn't seem like your fault.”

“The Wither were totally yours though.”

“And I said I’m not using it as an excuse.”

“How about we stop talking and just find Evil X!” Grumbot practically shouted, pointing off into the distance. “There’s lots of lightning that way! So they must be there! Let’s go!”

.

.

.

“So, that was your dad, huh?” Jrum spoke up as the block he was trying to lift with magic fell back down the pixel or so he had managed. 

“Yep! That’s Papa! He’s really really really nice and I love him lots and lots!” Vee replied with the biggest smile on her face. “He adopted me, and then my sister, and so now the three of us are a big happy family! Well, maybe not big, but definitely happy!”

Jrum couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Vee at the very least seemed innocent enough, or maybe the better word was oblivious. Her dad had been working with Grifter and somehow hadn’t realized that something was wrong with Grian. Or, well, it sounded like he did know, but completely trusted Grifter with any lies he told. But that was what Vee was saying, and she had also fallen for Grifter’s lies, so who knew, maybe her dad wasn’t lied to, but both he and Grifter were lying to her.

And then there was her sister, which made Jrum more sure that they were all just lying to Vee. He remembered that comm call. He knew the voice on the other end. It sounded like his dad, but simultaneously not. It had to be Grifter then, right? Vee had even said it was Grifter. And he was there through Vee’s sister’s comm. The same sister that was apparently dating Grifter’s niece. They all had a connection to Grifter, so there was no way none of them knew what was going on.

“Ooo! Lookit! You’re doing it really well!” Vee exclaimed, making Jrum realize he had moved the block up a full meter this time. He was a little surprised by that, since he hadn’t even been paying attention to what he was doing, and now that he was focusing on the block, it fell once more. “Aww, don’t worry! You’re doing really really well!”

“Whatever.” Jrum huffed. “You know, you keep bringing up that your dad adopted you and your sister, right? And in that one meeting you mentioned that she had a brother that sucked?”

Vee’s smile disappeared. “Yeah… he was really really bad.”

“Mind telling me?” Jrum asked. They had figured out who Flora or Fleur was supposed to be, but Astrid was still a little up in the air, and since she was around Grifter and maybe also around Grian, it was important to know about her too.

“Um, well…” Vee hesitated, kicking at the ground. “Nightmare was-”

Vee didn’t get a chance to continue, Jrum immediately recognizing the name. “Nightmare?! Her brother is him?!”

“Y-You know him?”

“Know him?! It’s because of him that my brother got kidnapped by Tommy’s stupid hels! And then it turned into a whole mess with Grifter getting involved and hurting my family! And then Grifter came back and made everything worse!”

“Eep!” Vee yelped, and Jrum looked over to her and the spike of bedrock that had appeared from the ground, pointing at her face. Jrum was shocked to see it, looking himself over before looking back up to essentially growl at the spike. Surprisingly, it seemed to react to his growl and disappeared into the ground a moment later. “You g-gotta be careful with that.”

“Yeah… sorry…” Jrum responded, though distracted. Things kept happening when he was angry, so maybe- “How much do emotions affect magic?”

“Uh, a lot?” Vee answered, though she didn’t seem confident with her answer. “Uh, they can help with focusing it. Papa helped me train with music and he said it was because uh… the emotions of the sounds help with how you feel, ‘n then it works as a guide for what you want the magic to do!” That time she started unsure, but slowly got more confident as she spoke, which helped reassure Jrum. Especially when she followed it up with a little magic demonstration of her own.

“So because I keep feeling angry and frustrated, stuff keeps happening for me? Do I just need to be constantly angry?”

“Oh no no no.” Vee quickly waved her hands to stop Jrum. “It’s just stronger stuff makes it react more when you’re new to it! Even sometimes when you’re not new to it cuz Papa has had it happen too. Uh, it’s kinda like when I got scared and then made those boxes.”

Jrum remembered the bedrock that trapped Ren. And then he thought more to his own dad, and the times his magic had acted up when it seemed he was feeling some sort of intense emotion like anger or fear. He could even remember one time when Grian was really happy and that had caused some sudden magic. Jrum almost made a comment about it, but then paused. When he had been trying to eavesdrop on the conversation Phil and Paul had had, way back when the latter had first arrived. He had made a comment about knowing Jrum was listening in to their conversation. He hadn’t known how the man recognised Jrum had hacked his way in, but Paul seemed to know enough magic that if Jrum was using magic instead…

Jrum focused once more on the block in front of him, reaching out and managing to lift it once again. This time he was actually controlling it when it got a block higher, and still when he pushed it left and right before it finally fell on its own, Jrum finding himself a little tired.

“You did it!” Vee exclaimed, jumping up and down before tackling Jrum with a hug. “We should show Papa! Oh wait, he’s busy. I could message Astrid! But she might be busy too. Grifter is-! Grifter is bad, we said that. Uhh… Well I think we should tell someone!”

“Yeah whatever, let me see who’s available.” Jrum rolled his eyes, trying not to smile with how infectious Vee’s joy was. He was easily able to send a message to the world chat, getting an answer not too long later from Joe, who was apparently happy to be available. Jrum thought he would be more involved in whatever important stuff the Hermits were up to, but Jrum also supposed that Vee was already pretty comfortable with him. “Joe says we can meet up with him. Let’s go.”

Vee was bouncing again as they left to meet with the Hermit, finding him a small distance away from the meeting room at what seemed to be a newly set up table and chairs for the three of them to hang out at. “Howdy there you two. I heard you had somethin’ to share?”

Jrum couldn’t get a word out before Vee answered for him. “Jrum’s doing Watcher Magic! Like he could do a little before, but he’s doing a lot better now! He did block moving! C’mon, do it again!” Jrum sighed before moving a new block a bit, though not nearly as much since he was still tired from before, and running over there hadn’t helped him regain any energy.

“I need some redstone.” Jrum panted, surprised when Joe handed some over. “Why do you have-?”

“Well someone pointed out that you might need some since you were doing a lot of work. Well, technically multiple someones, as it was recommended you get somethin’ to eat followed by gettin’ pointed out you tend to eat minerals like redstone, especially since that helps with chargin’ you up.”

“Uh, thanks then.” Jrum ate the redstone before getting some more from Joe, which he put in his inventory to save for later and make sure he didn’t use it all up in one sitting.

“No problem at all.” Then Joe looked towards Vee. “Yes?”

Jrum looked over to Vee as well, finding her fidgeting where she stood. “Um, are you still mad at me?”

“Mad at you? Now what gave you that impression?”

“Well, when you visited me when I was at Stress’ place, you got really upset.”

Jrum saw as it took a moment for Joe to remember what she meant. “Ah, that. Well I’m sorry for makin’ you think I was mad at you. You had just caught me off guard with what you were talkin’ about, and I suppose that surprise came off as anger which you thought was directed at you.”

Jrum was a little taken aback. Joe caught off guard? That never happened. Or well, it could definitely happen, but he had the uncanny ability to always seem to know what was going on when things were serious, like with the current situation. He was a little worried for a second that Joe could be lying, but he didn’t seem to have a single tell that he could have been.

“What had you been talking about?” Jrum asked, looking between the pair.

Vee opened her mouth, seemingly to answer, but was stopped by Joe. “It’s not somethin’ that’s exactly common knowledge. Part of why I was so surprised she knew about it.”

“But Papa said Listeners get to know about it! And shouldn’t Watchers too? And Jrum’s one.”

“And I’d have to agree with you on that part.” Joe replied. “But I believe you mentioned you’re still trainin’, and that seems like the thing to wait ‘til you’re fully fledged to learn about.”

Vee huffed and crossed her arms, slumping in her chair. Jrum looked between her and Joe, now even more confused and wishing he weren’t in the dark about… whatever they were discussing. “Can I at least get some vague clue about what it was?”

“You could, but I believe if you learn a little, you’ll want to know more, so nothin’ at all may be best for you.”

“What if I promise I won’t ask anything else?” Jrum suggested, trying to also give pleading eyes to Joe in hopes he could be convinced. “At least if it has any connection to what happened to Dad?”

“Well, I suppose it does.” Joe started to speak, getting Jrum hopeful. “Alright then. But you’re promising you won’t go lookin’ into it, alright?”

“Yes! I won’t! I’ll just imagine my own answers or whatever!”

“Okay, and Vee, you better not help him along.” Vee nodded, staying silent and even pretending to zip her lips. “We happened to get on the topic due to how Grian ended up messed with due to the mixin’ of magic from he and Grifter. Magic from Watchers and Listeners mixin’ together’s got a special term. And that term comes from when it first happened, specifically on a rather large scale. Despite that, it’s a little bit taboo to talk about the incident itself, and Vee happened to mention somethin’ implyin’ she knew about it more than most.”

“Oh. So like… how Dad talks about stuff when he was younger, and so everyone kinda just says that it’s when he was in highschool, but not any specifics?” Jrum offered as a sort of comparison. Especially since he and Jrum didn’t know as much about that time as the other Hermits did, so it was a similar situation for Jrum himself.

“Now I think that’s a fine comparison.” Joe complimented the bot. “Includin’ the part that he’s probably the one who should be tellin’ you about it. Or someone else older than you.”

“Vee’s older than me.” Jrum pointed out, reminding Joe that he was literally only a year old due to being a robot. “So she could count.”

“Now I’m sure you know that isn’t what I meant.”

“Yeah, I was just joking.” The bot huffed. “I said I wouldn’t ask about it more.”

“Um, mister Joe sir?” Vee carefully spoke up, hiding a little when Joe looked over to her and said she didn’t need to use formalities like that. “Why can’t you just help his dad? Because you’re… a thing I can’t say to Jrum.”

“Hey, I know he used to be Herobrine.” Jrum pointed out before pausing. “Well, I mean he technically still is? He goes by Joe now, but was it just a name thing, or is it a concept or-”

“The nuance of that matter isn’t a highlight of this discussion right now.” Joe said to keep Jrum from overthinking things. “As for your question Vee, despite any connection I have to what you tend to refer to as Hels, my involvement in this situation isn’t one that was ever foreseen as direct involvement. That being said, the situation also isn’t one that everyone is so sure it is.”

“Wait, what do you mean it’s not what we think it is?” Jrum asked. “My dad has been kidnapped and based on what everyone is saying, he’s missing a gigantic chunk of his memory. How is it different from that?”

“Jrum has a point! Why’s it not that? Is it because Grifter is trying something we don’t know about but you do?”

“Grifter’s involvement isn’t exactly what’s causin’ it to be something else. And as far as the Hermits and you are concerned, it is what you think. But there’s plenty of other people involved.”

Both kids looked confused before Vee gasped. “The other Watchers and Listeners! Or at least the Listeners, I don’t think Grifter could lie to the others as easily. But he must’ve done a bunch of lying to them! And… and Astrid and Flora and everyone was with him too! They’re being lied to as well! I need to call Astrid again so she can help!”

“Now slow down. I believe you already did talk to her about that, now didn’t you?”

Vee frowned. “Well, yeah, but now we know more so she needs to know more!”

“Vee’s right.” Jrum agreed. “But also shouldn’t do it yet, because she mentioned something to me.” Joe gestured for Jrum to continue after the bot paused for a moment. “You know how Vee keeps mentioning she and Astrid were adopted? Well, apparently before Astrid got adopted, she lived in the Hels version of Tommy’s server because her brother was the admin. Her brother was Nightmare, Dream’s Hels.”

“Now that is something we didn’t know yet.” Joe conceded. “Vee, you said your sister didn’t get along with her brother when you talked about her at the meeting, right?”

“No, he was really mean! He hurt her and Flora and her whole family and even tried to do it to me once. He was just as mean as my mom was.”

“How much does your dad know about Nightmare?” Joe asked, Vee answering that he probably knew more than she did. “Alright, I’ll need to go back into the meetin’ to tell the Hermits and others about that, you two take some time to rest before you go back into trainin’ alright?”

“That sounds like a good plan to me.” Jrum agreed before standing up, stretching, and then starting to go towards a nether portal. “If you need us, we’ll be at Daddy’s base. Dad’s portal is too dangerous.”

“Perfectly good reasoning.” Joe nodded, waving just before the two were whisked away by magic into the Nether.

“Uh, Jrum?” Vee asked shortly after they had stepped out of the portal and into the hub. “Did it seem like he knew more about what’s going on than he said?”

“Huh? Oh, well, Joe is always like that. I think it’s a mix of him being so old, being a poet writer whatever, being a Hermit, and probably five other things.” Jrum shrugged. “Plus, he probably does but doesn’t want to tell us just yet because they want to know more about it themselves, or because we’re younger. Or heck, maybe even both at the same time.”

“Huh. Okay I guess that makes sense.”

#hc x dsmp #hermit!tommy au #hermit!tommy #grian #watcher!grian #avian!grian #grian xelqua #yhs grian #hels!grian #hels!mumbo #hels!xisuma mention #xisuma #xisumavoid #evil xisuma #tommyinnit #philza #philza minecraft #technoblade #wilbur soot #ghostbur #mumbo jumbo #grumbot #did!grumbot #docm77 #paul soares jr #jrumbot #joe hills

[votederpycausemufins]

okay all the gemcyt stuff made me find some art I made for a gem themed card game I made for a class I took. Here's the art for that, and I'll give the gem types after the cut

So I had put these in alphabetical order going from left to right, top to bottom. There's repeats of gems in different colors mainly due to the game balancing, but they're all the same shape so i'll just list what the variants were when we get to them, which is quickly since the second one is one of those.

So the gems are:

Amethyst, Apatite (blue/green/yellow), Aquamarine, Augite, Beryl, Chrysoberyl, Diamond, Diopside, Emerald, Euclase, Garnet, Hematite, Iolite, Jadeite, Jasper, Lapis, Monazite, Moonstone, Morganite, Nephrite, Peridot, Prehnite, Pyrite, Quartz (black/clear/orange/pink), Rhodonite, Ruby, Rutile, Sapphire, Spessartine, Sodalite, Spinel (blue/yellow/pink), Staurolite, Taaffeite, Titanite, Topaz, Tourmaline, Turquoise, Spodumene (blue/pink/purple), Zircon (blue/brown/white)

Anyone who stumbles upon this can take inspiration from either the gem types, or their shapes. I don't exactly own those features, but ofc the art itself belongs to me. Just since i had to make the gems visually distinct from one another, I have a lot of fun shapes someone could use c:

#my art #gemstones