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the first law of tragedies: the end is already written and inevitable. the second law of tragedies: your actions are all your own and you can choose to get off this ride whenever you want. the third law of tragedies: we both know that you are never going to do that.

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caught red handed!

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I have not watched a single episode of wild life 👍

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how it feels when Martyn says on stream he got bored during the life series and started fucking with people and it went badly

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Oh no! Your homosexual situationship didn't work out! You have four options to proceed:

Graduate from murder cop to puppet fascist

Become a pit fighter and descend into alchaholism

Emerge from your chrysalis to become twink Jesus

Age 20 years, kill a politician, and murder your ex

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Session 5, huh

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Chaos vs. Patronage: How Life Series winners grapple with skill disparity

As the Life Series has gone on and matured into more noticeable patterns, some winners have pivoted to a mentorship/support role to their chosen 'champion'/ a favored player.

Scott spent Limited Life as a duo with Martyn, and then joined a high-skill group in Secret Life that ultimately saw him sacrifice himself trying to get Gem the win. Pearl spent Secret Life with her stated goal being one of her teammates winning, pivoting to support Scar at the end when they'd died. Now in Wild Life, she has outright stated her intent to support Impulse to get the win. (Scar supporting Jimmy in Wild Life may also fit this pattern; we'll get to that.)

In contrast, winners Grian and Martyn² are not sticking to that single-minded attempt to get a player to win, whatever it takes. They will express support for teammates winning, but generally do not take actions that would worsen their own chances of winning/surviving to help a teammate. They aren't playing "meta", which here means putting all their resources into one person.

These two categories of behavior ultimately reflect the Winners' approaches to answering the question of how to balance disparate skill levels in the series cast. (Second half of writing + footnotes under cut.)

Grian has spent game after game altering mechanics & playing with randomization to try to level the playing field without directly intervening against specific players.³ Martyn is invested enough in the narrative/story that making less-than-optimal decisions isn't hard for him or atypical (this is the player who beelines for the Nether every single season).

It seems like Scott and Pearl realized they're very strong players and are interested in nerfing themselves more actively... but they still don't want to throw the match. The compromise there is to put their effort & skill towards helping another player achieve victory.

A case could be argued that Scar is moreso the former group by nature (he's similar to Martyn in his penchant for making entertainingly bad decisions that render nerfing unecessary). However, after witnessing multiple seasons of Scott & Pearl acting as mentors, seeing them compete head-to-head in the game he ultimately won, mentorship now seems like a normalized route to take once you're a winner.⁴

¹ Unsure if BigB in LimL counts? They were a duo, but Scott fomenting Martyn's win seems to be what kicked off Pearl's dedication to support another player.

² Cleo is a winner but they do not fit this analysis for a variety of reasons I don't want to get into. So I won't, bc this is a tumblr post & not an academic paper. Ignore that there are footnotes and an academic-ass title

³ Grian seeing Scott win: "Oh no I've created an unbalanced game. Ok lets randomly assign players together to try to balance things... why has RNG betrayed me?!" RNG does not stop betraying him btw. I have another post in draft about this but it's kind of nuts how dedicated Grian is to Not Rigging The Game Even A Little.

⁴ Incidentally imo this is what will force Grian in the next few games to either end the series, create dual winners/some other atypical win structure, or bust his ass trying to get a second win & break that taboo. Based on his game design so far, he can put up with a bit of interference, but ultimately will not abide "we all do schoolyard tradesies on who gets to win until everyone gets one".

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AHHHHH EPISODE 5 WOKE UP SOMETHING IN ME I DIDN'T KNOW EXISTED

so have a comic I made that i didn't like enough to post but because it reminds me of them in today's episode

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Grian in 3rd Life to Scar: “I feel awful, and I owe you.”

Grian in Wild Life to Scar: “I think slightly in your fav- I feel like I owe you something for that one”

Yeah that’s fine. Just do that why don’t you.

Then later on, Grian drags Scar to the side to talk to Scar one on one? Grian says he feels bad so he feels like he owes something to Scar? They call each other best friends? They pledge allegiance? They directly reference their 3rd Life partnership? Yeah,,, okay…

“So, I get the mace, and we’re best friends?”

“And we’re best friends.”

“Aw! I love it! Aw, everything worked out so well! All I wanted was friends, that’s all I wanted, and to get a mace.”

Whhhhat the fuck is going on right now,,,

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scar built the panda reserve FOR grian....

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scott being the one to burn down ren and martyn's base is exceedingly funny. to me. mans decided he was Fucking Done with the social game and just started arsoning

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ao3 turns 15 today

reblog if youre older than ao3

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do you wanna try your luck at the wild life session 5 trivia questions?

well now you can! i gathered all the questions we came up with into a pair of google forms so that you guys can try your hand at the same trivia questions the CCs did!

quizmaster's questions from session 5

we tried to have a good amount of questions for every player and season. we also tried to include only questions we thought at least one person would remember the answer to, especially things we'd seen them bring up recently in their own videos or streams, or big moments that would appear in fanart/animatics that we thought they'd be more likely to remember from seeing in those. we also aimed to include silly questions/answers, or questions/answers we thought people would find entertaining. we wanted players to be able to go to each other and ask each other for help on questions they didnt know the answer to!

but wait! there's more! we also have a form for all the questions which didn't make the cut!

rejected questions

the rejected questions didn't make it due to either being too difficult/niche or being something we did not think any creators would remember, being about a player we already had too many questions for in order to make room for questions about other players, being "stat" or number questions (i.e., "how many times did X die of Y cause?"), having too many names involved in the question or answer (making it hard for players to know who to ask for help), the questions just being wordy, or not being particularly entertaining. fair warning, the rejected questions also were not all fact checked as well as the actual episode questions were, as they didn't go into the actual session

originally our questions were a bit more difficult (we had a lot of questions we didn't necessarily think anyone would remember the answer to), but we were asked to tone it down and have mercy after the unexpectedly high amount of snail carnage (hence why the forms are jokingly names "easy version" and "hard version")

anyway, huge thanks to the rest of the trivia team, @cherrifire, @xmaruu11, @hopepetal, @applestruda, @ink-ghoul, and @cocoabats !!! working with all of you was super fun! and thanks so much to Grian for trusting us with this! this whole thing was a super cool experience and i'm thrilled with how much everyone likes the questions!

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IT WORKED

HIS HAIL MARY WORKED

I'M SCREAMING

THE WATCHERS GOT MUMBO *opens google docs*

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allies or enemies (or a secret third thing)

ao3 link

cw: one (1) scar-typical innuendo

So, here’s the thing, right.  There’s only one bed.  Jimmy doesn’t mind–honestly!--but it gets… cramped.  Especially with three of them.  Oh, they’ve tried, but it’s like doing a puzzle on a tiny raft in the middle of the ocean.  Somebody’s always getting kicked in the face, or elbowed in the gut, or (on one notable occasion) the bed lighting on fire because somebody placed a torch too close to it.  No naming names.  So, yeah.  It’s not exactly ideal.

Their solution, which works well enough if you ask Jimmy, is this:

One person gets the bed.  (This is rotated daily.  However, bed privileges are often traded in exchange for doing menial tasks like mining, or making sure Scar’s rollercoaster still works.)

One person gets to sleep on the ground.  (Somehow, not the worst?  Jimmy thinks he’ll end up with a bad back eventually, but that’s a future problem.)

One person keeps watch.  (Should they be rotating this throughout the night?  Yes.  But it’s a formality… for now.)

If it works, it works. And it does!  Promise!  Jimmy really couldn’t be happier with this arrangement.

It’s only once they’ve settled in, after the first week, that he starts noticing… problems.

—

It’s Scar’s night with the bed.  Really, it was supposed to be Jimmy’s.  Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that Scar was an expert salesman, and had been swindled into giving it up for… twelve bamboo and a couple of cherry blossoms.  Utter junk.

So there he is, stewing a little bit as Scar settles into bed with what Jimmy thinks are obnoxiously contented sighs.  Lizzie’s already half asleep, curled up in the cherry blossoms, even though she’s supposed to be keeping watch.  

Just as he resigns himself to a chilly night, there’s a rustle behind him that’s not pink bedsheets or pink flowers.  No, instead it sounds like… feathers.  Jimmy narrows his eyes.

He shuffles around, making as little noise as possible.  And, yep, there’s Grian, wings tucked in close to his body, creeping towards the three of them.  What is he doing here?  He’s still dark green, there’s nothing he can do to any of them.  There’s no sword in his hand, or TNT, or–Jimmy squints–any creeper following him up the mountain.  It’s just… Grian.

And then there’s another rustle, and this time it really is from the bed.  Scar sits up, hair mussed and eyes bright even in the dark.  He’s staring right at Grian.

Jimmy doesn’t really know what he’s expecting, but it’s certainly not for Scar to lift a corner of the pink sheet in a silent invitation.  And he definitely doesn’t expect Grian to take him up on that offer, curling close to Scar in the bed with an ease that feels almost practiced.  Jimmy blinks a couple of times, as if he might be hallucinating.

No, Grian’s definitely still there, one wing spread over the bed like a downy blanket.  It’s… weird, yeah, definitely, but there’s also… not really anything wrong with it?  Obviously, if they were conspiring or something, that’d be a whole other thing.  But it really looks like they’re just sleeping.

Jimmy closes his eyes back to slits.  He’ll just… keep an eye on them.  Or something.  After all, this is probably a one time thing.

—

It was not a one time thing.

“That pillow smells like waffles,” Scar tells him confidentially, “I’d know it anywhere.”

“He’s sleeping here even when you’re not?” Jimmy blurts, before he remembers he’s not supposed to know anything about that.  That being the several nights Grian has wound up on top of the mountain, in the bed they share.  Only when Scar is there, of course.

Nevertheless, Scar seems to take it in stride.  “Well, you know how it is!”

No.  No, he definitely doesn’t.

Still, he doesn’t say anything when Grian creeps back into Scar’s bed that night, pretends he doesn’t hear them talking in hushed voices (though he certainly can’t make out what they’re saying).  He could only imagine what would happen if Lizzie found out.

Jimmy is woken up by her shriek.  He blinks, blearily, up at the moon, which is still very high in the sky, and mourns the rest of his sleep for a long moment.  Then he refocuses on the situation.

Grian is sitting bolt upright in the bed, wings flared out and eyes wide and shiny in the moonlight.  Scar has tumbled off, and is propped up on one elbow, also staring.

Lizzie stares back at them, mouth wide open.  She whirls on Jimmy.

“Did you know about this?”

He does the best to rub the sleep from his eyes.  “Know wh–”

“That he was sneaking,” Grian groans and faceplants into the pillow, “around here at night?  That he was–oh, I don’t know, stealing!  Or something!”

“I don’t think he’s stealing,” Scar says thoughtfully.  “I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed.”  Grian mumbles something into the pillow that Jimmy can’t make out.  Lizzie wheels back around to point a finger at Scar.

“You!  Don’t talk!  You’re fraternizing with the enemy!”

“...Is he the enemy?”  Jimmy wonders.  “We haven’t really had any problems with these guys yet.”

“Fra– fraber– fasternizing seems like a very strong word.”

“I didn’t ask you!”

“Lizzie,” he says.  “It’s late.  Like, really late.  Can we deal with this in the morning?”

“And let him stay?”

“C’mon, can’t a guy just sleep with his buddy?” Scar pipes up from the ground.  Jimmy and Lizzie wince simultaneously, and he’s pretty sure Grian does too, though his face is currently buried in the pillow.

She stands there for another couple of moments.  “Oh, fine, whatever.  Don’t come to me when he steals all your valuables!”  She storms off to the other side of the mountain, which… isn’t really that far away.

“...rude,” Grian says, muffled by the pillow.  Scar climbs back onto the bed.  Jimmy closes his eyes, even though he knows he won’t get another wink of sleep.

They never do deal with it in the morning.  Lizzie fumes for a couple of days, but even she gets used to it.

—

Jimmy had half-expected Lizzie’s discovery to stop Grian and Scar’s late-night sleepovers, or for them to at least be more subtle.  The problem is, Grian just keeps showing up.  It’s like he’s figured out their (nonexistent) schedule.  Jimmy has to deal with his smug face as he flops down onto the bed next to (or sometimes on top of) Scar, feathers draping over the edges of the flimsy frame.  It’s insufferable.  Half of him–the very yellow half–wants to kill him, just to make him go away.  It only gets worse.

And then he kills Grian.  And then Scar kills Grian.  And Jimmy can’t help but think oh, well, there’s the end of that as Grian explodes Scar’s reputation board along with the last scraps of his own reputation, wings bristling with undisguised rage.  As he tells his teammates that he and Scar are top of the list, that he’ll kill them and kill them ‘til they’re out of the game.

He’s wrong, because of course he is.  Because it’s Scar and Grian.

He’s trudging back up the mountain, body aching all over from new bruises and scrapes, but silently gloating in the amount of kills he’s managed to make this session alone.  And then he stops.  And stares.  And thinks, oh, come off it, really?

Grian’s in bed with Scar.  Yes, again, even though it’s Lizzie’s turn and he’s honestly starting to get annoyed for her.  She’s already standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed.

“I know I’ve said it before, but he really is the enemy now,” she tells Scar as Jimmy approaches.

“I can hear you,” Grian says, miffed.  “Besides, you’re fine, Lizzie.  Or, well, you’re not, ‘cause you’re allied with them,” he sweeps an arm towards Jimmy, “but you’re fine.”

“Aw, he’s harmless.”  Scar loops his arms around Grian and squeezes a bit, which causes him to puff up remarkably like an angry cat.

“You’re dead,” he hisses, but Jimmy’s finding it very hard to be intimidated by him when he’s curled up in Scar’s arms, face half buried in his chest.

Lizzie looks towards him, a little helpless, but Jimmy doesn’t have a solution to this either, other than–

“Make another bed?” he tries.

Lizzie draws herself up.  “Absolutely not.”

Right, okay.

She clearly sees the skepticism in his face.  “It’s the principle of it, Jimmy!”

“The principle.  Not the fact he’s threatened to kill us, or that he blew up Scar’s reputation board–”  “Oh, I am still annoyed about that,” Scar remarks quietly, like he’s just remembering, “--or anything like that at all?”

Lizzie grumbles wordlessly.  Grian sprawls his wings farther across the bed (and Scar) as if he’s daring them to kick him out.

“Fine.”  Lizzie sounds like she’s trying not to kill Grian herself.  “Finefinefine.  But!” she points at Scar.  “It’s your funeral.  Except it won’t be!  Because we won’t hold one for you!”

Jimmy nods, because he’s not really sure what else to do.  Scar just smiles, and Grian just shrugs.

“I can arrange that funeral,” he says.

“Oh!  You would?”  Scar sounds positively delighted.

“No– not like that.  I mean I’m going to kill you.”  Grian tries to explain, but Scar just seems star-struck, eyes bright even in the darkness.

Lizzie rolls her eyes and stomps away.  Jimmy follows, casting a last glance at their one-sided argument.

No, definitely not a one time thing.

—

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Grian informs him, the first time it happens.  He’s huddled close into Scar’s side, gray wings tickling his shoulder.

“Oh, yep, totally,” he reassures him, but he must sound a little disbelieving, because Grian presses a finger hard into his shoulder.

“I mean it, Scar.  One time thing.  I just don’t have a bed of my own yet.”  Then why didn’t you go to Mumbo or Skizz? he wonders absently.  He doesn’t really care, at the end of the day.  Grian’s right here, after all, and Scar would be an idiot not to take advantage of that.

So he just smiles, and lets Grian get comfortable.

One time thing, indeed.

(And if he makes a point to steal all of the Spanners’ wool out of their chests the next day?  Well, that’s nobody’s business but his own.)

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cool af skin