#dont let it drink coffee it starts thinking about baudrillard

[boatemlag]

the impulse the fandom has to talk about grians in absolutes: he's chaotic, he's not loyal, he hates authority, etc etc, when this is just demonstrably not true. this goes along with my post i wrote last night with this impulse to distinguish between "cc grian" and "c grian"; when we work within the model it becomes imperative to separate the grian that is an organizing force behind the scenes (eg. plotting big moon, organizing events on hermitcraft, admining evos or life series) with the grian that does not like authority¹. it becomes unethical (inconsistently) to incorporate this version of grian, ie. "the real" version of grian, and not the simulacra, into his character. this leads people to discard any characterizing points that are, arguably, in character choices, that may disprove these absolutes and archetypes.

grian is actually pretty often both a stabilizing force and a destabilizing force in dynamics and situations. case study for this: grian in the vault invasion, hermitcraft 9. we can see him traverse the vault with the other "invaders", and become game master, albeit tongue in cheek. this is both grian the cc, who can be said to have helped orchestrate this vault crawl², and what would traditionally be considered "c!grian" who wants to challenge authority. since the fandom perception of grian as a destablizing force is so persistent, there are multiple ways in which this can be explained within an existing framework of character analysis without committing to the taboo of cc bleed³. rather than admitting that grian can contain more magnitudes of complexity than simply "chaos" or "order", and that the existence of a cc!grian may affect that, it is perhaps considered ethical to simple boil down this character to "chaos gremlin".

another example. the case of grian's feelings towards scar being his soulmate. popular fanon interpretation includes a variety of cases; c!grian's guilt towards the end of third life, c!grian disliking scar, c!grian repressing his feelings towards scar. this is a rare example where we actually have notes from both scar and grian (ooc) that offer a doylian explanation⁴⁵, but this interpretation is almost never incorporated into meta. there seems to be a strong line separating grian ooc and ic in this case⁶.

grian as a character is driven by curiosity, a case of lethal blue and orange morals, and a keen awareness of appearances. all of these could be said to be traits of "a watcher" in the evos sense, where the watcher is the audience. he is a character motivated by narrative awareness. i think this can lend itself to the ATUS school of thought, where he is trying to avoid the narrative. but it is certainly a compelling thought experiment to consider grian as a character motivated by the fact that he's on stage. this is not an uncommon thought, but most seem to take this in the direction of grian's dislike of being on stage. while this has it's own merits, the novelty of it has worn off for me.

grian has also stated on multiple occasions that he actively avoids watching hermitcraft streams and videos. he would prefer to experience the server in game as opposed to through the eyes of an audience member. this to me is a very shiny tidbit of information that, while on first impulse, can lend credence to the "grian is not a watcher" or more commonly "grian does not like being a watcher", there is also the far more compelling read of grian being a watcher while trying to experience the world like players do from the perspective of curiosity, or perhaps to appease an audience he knows values "authenticity".

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that is to say, who is popularly characterized as resisting authority. grian does historically prefer to engage with plotlines where he is resisting authority (mycellium war), perceived authority (3rd life, if popular opinion is to be believed, although this is not necessarily the most earnest interpretation of 3l!grian's motives) or, in some cases, audience interpretation, which can be seen as a type of authority grian dislikes more than the kayfabe of civil unrest (king ren plotline). however, within these examples, there is room for interpretation for the characterization of a grian that actually strictly adheres to rules. (see: my post on grian's morality)

it has been elaborated on, out of character, the work that went into this. grian was both coordinating the hermitpires crossover (which took place literally immediately after the vault's completion) and helping ren with his plot. part of the reason ren asked for grian's assistance was because ren was literally working himself to the bone with the orchestration of events. (see: cleo's episodes about the king ren arc during the museum arc)

cc bleed defined here as when the ooc personality or beliefs affect the choices of a mcyt character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwFbtE4YS7g " Double Life: Episode 1 - DOUBLE TROUBLE!", GrianMC, 19:06-19:19

[i dont feel like logging onto twitter on desktop to find the tweet so imagine a link to scar's tweet about people complaining about him and grian always teaming]

i could make a case for cc!grian as simulacra in itself. what we see is a curated selection of a person that we take as the "real" grian.

NOTE: i am not the first grian scholar to think of or work with this, this is simply putting to words some thoughts. if youre interested in this concept, i suggest "tempering" as probably the first fic that ever made me think about watcher grian in a different way