#Aris Paracosm rambles

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

So we all know Canary Jimmy, but what about Albatross Jimmy? Hear me out on this:

Okay, so firstly, Jimmy has a very big personality. He is loud, highly interactive with those around him, and is impossible to ignore in any situation. Plus he's usually depicted as one of the tallest members of the Life Series. Is that not fitting for the bird with the biggest wingspan on earth? (On top of that, albatrosses are seabirds, which is definitely helpful in bridging some gaps with the Codfather.)

The Canary Curse in of itself is based on the concept of Jimmy's death foretelling the tragedies that are about to occur for everyone else, but what if Jimmy's death is what *brings* the curse? I was thinking about Rime of the Ancient Mariner again, and the albatross there is supposed to be an omen of good luck until the titular Mariner shoots it down with his crossbow. After a while of still waters and horrendous thirst, every sailor on that ship drops dead except for the Mariner, who is bound to the albatross, cruelly spared only by Life-In-Death (Watcher symbolism anyone?).

I know there's a headcanon stating that Skizz is the cause of the Boogeyman Curse (I don't know who created this headcanon, so please tell me if you know), and Albatross Jimmy only strengthens that: Skizz is the Mariner.

Skizz causes Jimmy's final death in Third Life with a bow of all things. He effectively “shoots him out of the sky." And not only did the chaos increase in Third Life immediately after, but every season Skizz has been present for since has involved the Boogeyman Curse in some way.

The only series Skizz was not in was Double Life, where there was no Boogeyman Curse. How would the curse continue if there is no Mariner to accompany the Albatross? Easy answer: Tango took on the role of the Mariner for Double Life, as the cause of Jimmy's first death via Dare To Flare all way back in Third Life. Since this death was not as permanent as the death that Skizz caused, the intensity of the curse was not near as strong, and resulted only in the Ranchers being soulbound (which became a very wholesome, comforting thing for them rather than staying a curse).

Since the curse is primarily based in the events of Third Life, Jimmy dying first may not continue to be a requirement for it as the seasons go on (as evidenced in SL and RL), but what it does require is 200 final deaths total before the curse can end.

Including Real Life, there have been 89 final deaths across the whole of the Life Series, including all six wins assuming that the winners died after each season anyway for the series to continue. Therefore, also assuming an average of 17 players for every subsequent season, there would need to be seven more seasons of the series to accumulate 200 final deaths, in which Skizz would be the final winner.

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

Definitely cliche, but I’ve been watching Hermitcraft since S6 through Grian, and I knew Tango existed then, but I really first noticed him via the DO2 opening day vod. YouTube recommended it to me the day he posted it, and I was stressed from college, so I watched it to take my mind off things.

Since then, I haven’t missed a single vod, watched every S10 episode as it released, and I went back and watched every Life Series episode (multiple times), every Create Series episode, every S9 episode (in the span of three days too), every Among Us vod, the Plate Up vods, and am in the process of watching the S9 vods.

Tango really is my favorite content creator of all time, and I relate to him more than I have any other character. The whole concept of “very talented/smart individual who’s also oblivious and silly and makes weird noises and is a good friend while being an introvert” is something that deeply resonates with me, and I wish more people would give him the love and attention that he deserves.

sometimes i feel like tango is underrated. like i know he has a lot of fans but when people talk about hermitcraft its often grian mentioned first, or etho, or xisuma. all awesome creators obvi but it just blows my mind that i never hear ‘yeah tango is what got me into hermitcraft’

(me too it was actually gem that had me discovering hermitcraft)

the man is a master builder and he can create unfathomable machines in mc and he is so charismatic and engaging. man can literally do anything. like is there anything he’s bad at?

anyway just thoughts. felt like tango needs an appreciation post. and im curious if any of you lovely mcyt fans out there actually did find hermitcraft via tango and/or if tango is your Favorite Hermit.

[thebadchoicemachine]

m so excited to read more of your writing!! it'll be amazing no matter what :DD

ggsjsn thanks you

Like I said before it’s probably not going to be coherent at all and probably more notes than content but I love the space we have here so much.

I’m friends with a cat, I’m friends with an angel, an evil fish I used to work for has discovered I’m a fae and also I’m a literal ball of ink. We all just made a little world bit by bit just by interacting and joking and it’s so moldable!!

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

“He’s kinda my hero.” -Tango about Jimmy on today’s (8/9/24) stream (approximate timestamp 5:10 on the YouTube upload)

… I’m losing my mind. It’s like they’re actively trying to destroy us.

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

Okay, I’m curious. So many Team Rancher fans I’ve encountered are also involved in STEM, so I’m doing a poll to see if it’s a common thing. (Special thanks to @basil-the-bulbasaur for the idea!)

For the purpose of this poll, involved in STEM can mean any of these:

-have/had a career in STEM

-studying a STEM field in University

-intend on studying STEM or having a STEM career in the future

If there’s enough STEM people here, I may do a follow up poll later to see if we’ve got common focuses (for example, I myself am a geologist and I’ve met more than one geologist in this fandom.)

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

While I still have time to make predictions, here’s me manifesting teams for the new Life Series.

Explanations below

Team JEPTS: Deepfrost Court/PET Postal plus the Valley Girls (can also be viewed as Ranchers plus Etho, Pearl, and Scar). This one’s pretty self indulgent since it’s all my personal faves, but I think the dynamic would be incredible. Plus, Scar and Pearl deserve to have as many teammates as they want after the tragedies that were their own wins in previous series. Can we protect Jimmy from the bad luck this time?

They’re doing Their Best: I’ve wanted Skizz and Lizzie to team for a while, and adding Mumbo to the mix makes the sad wet cats of the server.

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss: BigB is gaslight, Joel is gatekeep, and Gem is girlboss. Gem and Joel alone are two of the most powerful fighters on the server, and adding BigB’s charisma would make the whole team op.

Treebark Symmetry: please False, please False, please False. I need FalseSymmetry in the Life Series, and of course it would be amazing if she teamed with the theater kids. Pleaseeeeeeeee

Cracked: Impulse, Cleo, and Grian are just really really good at the game. As much as I’d want Tango to win, I’m predicting Impulse as the overall winner this coming season.

It would be so funny: no explanation. Scott + Bdubs. Forces that be, make it happen please.

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

ArisArisArisAris Aris Aris please I'm begging you canwe see wips for Deepfrost drawing

please please please can we be permitted a tiny glance inside the brain of tumblr artist aris-has-a-paracosm?

Yes can do! <3 Here’s a little bit about my art process for the Deepfrost art :)

So here’s a screenshot from the sketch. (It wasn’t completely done at the time, but it’s the only screenshot I still have of that part.)

I sketch in any color other than black so I can more easily see my lineart later, and red is often what I default to. I also had two-point perspective grid lines set up, but I didn’t really adhere to them. As you can see, DF’s face did undergo a little bit of editing before the lineart happened. I opted to go for a toothy grin rather than the open-mouthed smile he originally had here.

Speaking of lineart:

Regardless of what brush I use, I always make sure that my lineart connects neatly to itself for each part of every drawing (separate lineart layers for each component.) There’s no gaps anywhere, so it makes it to where I can easily use an inverse selection to put a base color layer directly beneath. My base layers are always in gray going from lighter in the background to darker in the foreground.

Next up was rendering the background:

This is- … this is definitely a “rest of the heckin’ owl” kinda thing XD. The buildings were in three layers with the windows drawn in vertical lines and then erased in horizontal lines.

Here’s a gif to show that? Please excuse my atrocious Timelapse quality :’)

Once the windows were all on there, I used alpha lock on the layer and then just randomly recolored windows based on reference photos of cities at night. Once the windows were done, I used some airbrushing for ambiance.

Next up was the base colors for the foreground:

Here, I was mainly focused on the outfit and ice detail. All of this was important to get the way I wanted pre-render, and absolutely nothing about lighting was considered here.

Afterwards was DF’s rendering:

I had two separate shadow layers and one light layer, keeping my light source and his three-dimensionality in mind the whole time. Here was where I also did lineart recoloring and cleanup.

And then all I had left was to render the ice, the rooftop, and add the snow! I don’t fully know how to explain this part either, but I primarily used a soft airbrush and a medium nozzle spray paint brush as well as an eraser in both of those settings as well.

So yeah! That’s the basics of my art process! I like to joke that when I draw, my brain lives in my hands so I don’t think too much about the process while drawing. I had a lot of fun with this and hope you liked seeing the process :D

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

So this ^^ happened on Tango’s stream today, and it’s directed towards Grian (he used one of G’s farms for a resource and understandably wanted to let him know that he used it),

But I honestly think it’s so funny and so fitting that he’s joining in the neck kisses bit now since the bit originated in his house (Deepfrost Citadel). He was right there for the start of the bit, so it just makes so much sense to me that he would do this, and I sooooo look forward to seeing Grian’s reaction.

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

Of course! <3 I adore all of your fics, but These Cyber City Walls is definitely one of my favorites, so it’s super cool to see what you do and don’t like about your world building processes!

Maybe it’s because futuristic is one of my favorite genres, but you absolutely nailed the aesthetic of the city so well. Incredibly immersive and I could envision every little detail! And I love it so much when writers put self inserts as background characters! I have one of those myself actually haha. And Jimmy getting his flying license made me so emotional. I loved that arc so much!

And I fully get the creative block with the tech. It can be really difficult to come up with new things that aren’t derivatives of things we already have now. I like to think of that like the Secret Colors the mantis shrimp get to see that we don’t. If it doesn’t exist to us, it’s hard to envision.

(To anyone reading this post, go read Rora’s fics if you like Team Rancher and AUs! 🫵 Do it! Go read! You won’t regret it! They’re all amazing! And part of what inspired me to start writing fic myself!)

For the ask game: These Cyber City Walls, 11 and 12? 👀

Aris! Thank youuu! This made me so happy!

Ooh! Cyber City!

11: What do you like best about this fic?

I really liked The Opening Scene, specifically XD Like, the whole thing with Jimmy running through the city in the rain with the sort of dystopic cyberpunk city around him - it was, without a doubt, one of the most immersive scenes I've ever written. It established the city as a whole to me, it showed off the aesthetic. I wish I could have made the whole story that immersive the whole time and maintained that sort of tone and vibe the entire time.

Fun fact: Soup Kitchen Girl with the purple circuits on her face that Jimmy talks to about uni and her boyfriend is me. It's my "author cameo" XD

I also really liked writing Jimmy reclaiming the skies, and then the parallel of the opening scene during the climax where I wrote the same journey in reverse but now the city was being destroyed, and Jimmy was no longer alone

-

12: What do you like least about this fic?

Coming! Up! With! Cyberpunk! Technology! I am so bad at, like, creatively making up the tech that would be in a futuristic society. Like, the cyberpunk element of These Cyber City Walls was, largely, cosmetic at best. Like, the glowy bits were mostly just decorations. The circuitry in people's skin was decorative XD I wish I was more creative at being able to implement a lot more cool, futuristic technology into the world and make it feel more cyberpunk rather than just normal, modern, contemporary tech with like extra bells and whistles

Thank youuu! <3

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

What’s this? Aris dropping a Team Rancher one shot? Well that’s new. Enjoy! :D

(This has been sitting in my drafts since between sessions 2 and 3, and I decided to drop it before anyone perma-dies in Wild Life. This is pre-session 5 right here.)

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

YouTube wraps are out! … how *on earth* did I manage this??? Did i really watch that much Tango this year???

(The rest of my wrapped is below if anyone is interested)

I don’t remember watching Genshin this year, and I watched exactly two Jimmy Gartic streams, so those lower two are offset by how much time I spend on the others. Blame Friday Night Stabs for the amogus

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

I am too far gone. I was given a rather large hat, and as soon as I put it on, my internal thoughts went “oh wow! I can’t wait to reunite with my cowboy-coded soulmate in a train tunnel after we were wrenched apart by a brutal death game! :)” This brainrot is nuts

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

1) Alien Manifestation - Keiichi Okabe (NieR Automata OST)

2) The Greatest Living Show - Toby Fox and Itoki Hana

@mellioops @aliferous-ly @sincerely-nines @abeterger + anyone else who wants to join! (only if you want!) <3

Reblog with 1) the song currently stuck in your head and 2) a song of your choice

Tag people if you want, have fun! :)

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

Aris Masterpost

Hello everyone and welcome! I feel like my blog is now big enough to warrant one of these, so here’s a masterpost!

This will be updated with new tags and links in the future.

^ A little self portrait for y’all so you have a face to the name.

Basic Info:

- she/her, adult (21), college geology student

- #Actually Autistic Woman in STEM

- artist and writer

- professional yapper who tends to talk too much sometimes

What’s On This Blog?:

This Blog is pretty much entirely Hermitcraft and the Life Series, especially Tango Tek.

Tags:

(all included in the tag section of this post)

#Aris Paracosm art —my art tag

#Aris Paracosm rambles —my textpost tag

#Aris Paracosm answers —my ask answering tag

#FinFault au —the tag for all art and ao3 links related to Finality’s Fault (my sci-fi dystopian Team Rancher fic)

Boundaries and Disclaimers:

- Do not use my art for AI purposes

- No reposts of my art please (rbs are welcomed!)

- I try to keep this blog relatively pg

- I sometimes rb ship content

- I don’t always tag rbs

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

I know I say this every time I reblog your art but you're so good at shading (art in general but the shading stands out to me) like hello??? That's metal. As in that shading it looks like metal woahg :0 but also as in that's metal!!! ]B)

And the writing!!!! Who allowed you to be this good at writing and art? It's too impressive, AND you're in STEM? Aris, is there anything you aren't good at? (Rhetorical)

Oh no I see you're on Tumblr now. I can't get caught leaving asks of love and appreciation! Hey look over there! Maybe that rock has fossilized invertebrates!

Runs away

Heard in distance "YOU'RE REALLY COOL, OK"

Basil, this is so sweet omg!!!!! Upon seeing this ask, I immediately had to spin around in circles for several minutes because my brain was feeling all the happy emotions at once! <333

Thank you for the shading compliments! I absolutely adore drawing shiny things to the point where I often go out of my way to include metal or other reflective bits in my art! For FinFault, it would have made more sense for me to have incorporated silicone, plastics, or ceramics into Jimmy’s design like a lot of modern robots, but art gremlin brain insisted on all metal so I could do the fun lighting bits on him every time >:). I’d love to do a metal-painting tutorial at some point if I have the time!

And I’m so glad you like my writing!! I’ve been writing for years, but prior to FinFault, I’ve never shown it to anyone other than my mom and my childhood friend, so I’m so happy that I have a style that suits the story I’m telling! And yes, I’ve always loved STEM too, especially all the earth sciences! I like being a jack of all trades as much as I can! (I know your question was rhetorical, but I’m pretty bad at most sports, and I can barely dance to save my life XD)

And Uno Reverse!!!! You’re really cool!!! 🫵 And I like talking with you about arthropods!!! o(^▽^)o

[aris-has-a-paracosm]

Hi Aris!! I was wondering if you had a sona i could draww? :>

I do!! :D

It’s been a long time since I’ve drawn my sona, so I had to update her designs, but here’s the two forms of Aris!

My cubito lore for my sona is that she’s a camera account without a player, and her more human looking form is her attempt to disguise herself from the watchers so she doesn’t get assigned to a new player. I headcanon that camera accounts lose their sentience while actively recording for a player. However, even when not recording, they still get an almost incessant urge to archive and organize information.

You are more than welcome to draw her if you’d like! <3