#redwinterrises

[acerace]

...you have opened my eyes to a vast universe of VintageBeef lore that I was unaware of. I knew about the New Hermit Order, of course, and the UHC invention, and I've watched a few of his CTM things but -- I will take all the info and lore you feel like giving out because Beef is amazing and my knowledge is so small.

Vintagebeef my beloved <3

So the thing is, right, until about 2016 I only watched two (2) youtubers- Vintagebeef for Minecraft and aDrive for Pokemon (and funnily enough both of them are named Dan irl). So I've watched most of Beef's videos over the years and have a general knowledge of most of his stuff, except because it's been like a decade I don't remember where most of the lore comes from XD

The thing with him is that he doesn't do Lore tm the way other mcyters often do lore- he doesn't have an extensive RP series to draw from like Grian, doesn't have a solo world with steadily increasing amounts of lore like Etho or Zisteau, and while he's played on SMPs and been involved in storylines before it's not really the focus of his episodes unlike with Evo or Legacy or Empires

So where does that leave us?

IRL, Beef always has multiple series running at the same time. Often he's playing on an smp while doing a singleplayer, often modded, series as well as a CTM or modpack with a group of friends. For example, right now he's playing on Hermitcraft, doing weekly Pixelmon and Building a Zoo episodes, and a CTM map with Slip. And to me, this translates to one thing: Beef is an adventurer. He travels frequently- he explores a world and when he decides he's done, he leaves for the next one. That's the basis of my personal interpretation of his series and his character for my writing.

Ok so reading this back, this got extremely long and didn't explain much in the way of lore, somehow? If anyone has any additions to add please do so, I am very definitely leaving out a lot and would love to see what other lore people remember and are using for Beef! I didn’t include the Hermitcraft stuff since my memory of season 4 is blurry (his base was themed after the Martian, that much I know, and he and Iskall were buddies :D) and most of the s5 NHO lore is best watched from Bdub’s perspective from what I remember, and the only s6 stuff is a single line in Hermitgang and then the Area 77 arc with its possibility of an NHO reunion which we did not get rip. And s7 of course had the cloning machine and also the Podzol Party as the main lore. So all the original rambling is still below the cut though it is very long, and I'm gonna bullet point the main stuff here instead:

Actual canonical things:

Invented UHC and was the only survivor of the first ever uhc (Mindcrack UHC s1)

Married to an ender dragon (one of the UHCs I think), later father to a different dragon (Mindcrack season 3? I think?)

Might not have legs if you choose to take that joke as canon (Mindcrack s2)

Was a wizard (RAD)

is a zookeeper (Building a Zoo) 

Had a wife and kids (Sims in Minecraft)

Part of the Trial of the B Team court case (Mindcrack)

NHO founder, founder of the Podzol Party (Hermitcraft)

Created a cloning machine that sort of works (Hermitcraft)

Played the Forest which is I believe the first time he and Keralis played together (look up the trigger warnings for this one, it's a horror game)

Was the creator/owner of Sourceblock SMP (featuring some familiar faces if you know Legacy, Empires, or MCC) and there is literal magic from a mysterious sourceblock of water that teleports people and summons mobs and probably more stuff that I haven't seen yet since I'm still watching it myself

Things you can infer:

Good with animals (Life in the Woods, Pixelmon, Ark)

Is a car nerd (irl and all of the car games he's played)

Is a highly experienced adventurer who has traveled through dozens of worlds both vanilla and modded, across multiple dimensions (Twilight Forest, the Aether, the Betweenlands, Limbo), completed dozens of monuments, fought in blood sports, survived apocalypse after apocalypse, tamed dinosaurs, and played a lot of prop hunt and golf with your friends

If you're looking for what to watch for lore purposes, I'd say the Mindcrack UHCs and Team Canada's RAD series are pretty good, definitely Sourceblock and HC s5, plus the Diversity CTM maps and Ruins of the Mindcrackers maybe? And Mindcrack Prank Wars for the chaos and the origin of Team Canada. And if you can handle horror than the Forest is fun and if you don't do horror you can watch the Pojkband play golf or prop hunt they're hilarious I love them sm I want a Pojkband reunion So Bad 

Beef's first series was a singleplayer series in beta 1.4_01 though he had played the game extensively before that, and was a big fan of Guude, having watched his own Minecraft videos. The series was functionally a hardcore one where if he died Beef would delete the world and start again! I haven't actually Watched this series so idk if he died or how often lmao. When Guude made Mindcrack, which was btw one of the very first Minecraft SMPs, he also hosted a competition for people to join, and Beef submitted a video (which is still viewable on his channel I believe!) and won, and was added to Mindcrack in season 2 :D (fun fact, Guude said that even if Beef hadn’t won he would have added him anyway) 

Two running jokes emerged from Mindcrack- pulling a Vintagebeef and Beef doesn't have legs. The first is a reference to Beef dying of fall damage (I believe the exact instance was him trying to jump into his swimming pool and failing spectacularly) and after the incident, every time someone died of fall damage they were pulling a Vintagebeef. The second joke comes from Guude, who joked that the reason Beef wasn't going to a convention was because he didn't have legs, and then he pranked Beef's base by building a giant pair of legs at the entrance to his castle so you had to walk between them to get into the base. This joke has long since died and both Beef and Guude feel pretty bad about it iirc because there were people who genuinely thought Beef was disabled and were emailing him supportive messages and stuff oops. So if you go looking on the Salad or find old Mindcrack fics, you might see references to Beef having prosthetic legs!

Mindcrack also brought about the creation of several Player groups- Team Nancy Drew, Team Canada, and GOB to name a few relevant to Beef. Team Nancy Drew consists of Beef, Pauseunpause, Guude, and Baj, who formed to investigate a prank on one of the members but I forget who. They're named Nancy Drew after the detective! Team Canada also formed in retaliation to pranks, with it consisting of Beef, Etho, and Pause, the three Canadian members on the server (not including Adlington who moved to Canada but never joined the group). There was also a Team America who pranked them with American flags everywhere. GOB is Guude, OMGChad, and Beef, who played stuff like the Ragecraft, Pantheon, and Monstrosity ctms together but that's way down the line lol

Team Nancy Drew is also notable for inventing UHC. It was Beef's brainchild but it was the four of them who first played it! The first UHC had the four of them working to kill the dragon with no natural regen, with everyone dying but Beef, who "won" the UHC. The second uhc was still dragon focused and iirc is where Beef married the dragon? Memories are hazy but they do kill the dragon in this one I think. UHC was then revamped as a pvp event and became a regular Mindcrack game every few months, featuring most of the Mindcrackers and several special guests, including Dinnerbone, who as we know Thanos-snapped Doc's arm out of existence as a result of Doc killing him in one of them

In one of the seasons of Mindcrack, Beef invited swedish Mindcracker and good friend Anderzel to go caving with him and invented ABBA Rules caving, where the winner takes it all. ABBA Rules is a game where each ore (and also dungeon loot like nametags) is assigned a point value and the person with the most points at the end wins and gets to keep all the stuff collected from the game.

In Mindcrack season 3?, Beef punched the ender dragon in an... awkward area, so when the dragon died and left the egg behind, Guude said Beef was the father of the egg XD I don't remember if I watched s3 so I have no idea if anything Happened with this concept but *history of the world voice* you could make lore out of this!

So Team Canada has played a Lot of CTM maps (which fun fact were pretty much invented by another Mindcrack member, Vechs, with his Super Hostile series! Super Hostile has a bunch of things called "Zistonian", which are references to another Mindcrack member Zisteau, who has a very wild singleplayer series with even wilder lore but I digress). In Ruins of the Mindcrackers, they had a running joke that Beef was Etho and Pause's mom, which is a joke we can leave in the past actually /lh. They also played all the Diversity maps, Sky Factory, Terra Restore, Uncharted Territory uhhh and a couple more ctms and adventure maps! Each map kinda has its own story so in Diversity 3 for example they were trapped in a simulation? I think? Team Canada also recently played the Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons modpack, aka RAD, in which Beef was a wizard with a magic staff that could do anything from summon lightning to control hostile mobs.

Sourceblock SMP is a vanilla survival 1.14 series that ran for one season and the series starts with each of the Players being drawn to a strange sparkling water source that, once they touch it, brings them to the Sourceblock world. It also summons a giant zombie at one point. There's probably more lore for this series but like I said I haven't watched it all the way through yet 

He has a Patreon server called VintageCraft and has done a series or two on there as well, and played a few UHCs with them, so lore that how you will! 

Beef also played a few popular mods, notably Pixelmon, Life in the Woods, and Feed the Beast, with LitW being singleplayer and the other multiplayer. He's also recently played the Zoo and Wild Animals mod a lot. He did a short series with the Minecraft Comes Alive mod where he married one of the villagers and had two children, so that's canon now :D he’s played a Lot of Pixelmon starting when the mod first came out iirc (he chose Turtwig in his first series and built a Grass gym, then made a Normal gym in another series in uhh 2016) and he still plays to this day. Quite a few Hermits played on his Pixelmon servers with him, like Wels, Etho, Iskall, Stress, Slip, Zueljin, and also Guude and Phedran (a Mindcrack adjacent player and creator of the LitW modpack) and a few Mindcrackers on the older servers 

Mindcrack and friends played a lot of other games too- 7 Days to Die, Ark Survival Evolved, Unturned, to name a few, so you can pull a lot of lore out of these as well. Speaking of friends and non-Minecraft games, Beef teamed up with Pause, Keralis, and Slip (a former Hermit) to play the horror game the Forest, which saw them stuck on an island trying to survive against terrifying mutated human... things. They played it a few times as the game updated but as afaik it's the first time Beef played with Keralis and possibly Slip and since the game starts with the Player's airplane crashing, that could totally be how Beef first met them in-universe 

I... think? that’s everything I mentioned in the tags? There is probably way more stuff I’ve forgotten that stems from inside jokes and things that happen within each series, but I hope that was a) helpful and b) at least somewhat comprehensible lmao 

[darkleweather]

Coming into a new-to-me fandom like Hermitcraft is a TRIP because I keep seeing jokes about things like “Etho’s competing in the Olympics” and “cam accounts”….

And I’m like “I barely know Minecraft. I barely know who these people are. What is going on?!?” And I usually just end up going to @redwinterroses (cause she’s the one who got me into this thing in the first place) like “look it’s your fault I’m here in the first place, now please explain this extremely specific fandom thing to me” 😂

[betweenlands]

So chatting this over with a friend: does RK realize he and Renbob share a face?

hi so i may have started actually cackling irl

[riacte]

Okay okay okay but: dramatic time. The king and his blondes trio (King's Blades? Royal Three? Red Three? Red Hearts? Is there a name yet?) and they outsmart or outfight the entire server. They get to the end. So who turns first.

Agshshdhsh first I’d like to start with a disclaimer that I don’t really mind who joins 3rd Life, I’m not pressuring anyone to join/ form a certain alliance, it’s just fun to play around with this concept :)

Honestly I don’t know if there’s a name lmao. I’ve seen Ren and Martyn be called Treebark (which is kinda clever tbh) and Ren and False be called Pogsupremacy. There are like five people who use these names though lolol.

So let’s assume all three are on their last lives and everyone else is dead and spectating. Also let’s assume the bonds between Ren + Martyn/False is stronger than the bond between (the nonexistent) Martyn + False.

Of course they declare this a triple victory, but the ghosts want them to fight to the death. So who’s going to die first?

False does the least roleplay and is probably the “least invested” in the alliance, and she would’ve probably tried to murder Martyn and Ren (in that order) in the end, but she knows they’ve been betrayed twice and False goes “well. I feel bad :/ they don’t deserve this” and doesn’t murder them.

Martyn has been kinda sus of False (jealous? Lmao) but didn’t do anything to her because they’re on the same side (and Ren will be Big Sad and no one wants Sad Ren). They’re friends, but the two are more loyal to Ren than to each other so they’ll probably fight each other first.

Ren knows Martyn and False will probably duel it out and he’s the one holding the alliance together. But he also can’t bear to have one of them fight him, nor can he bear to see their friendship dissolve when it came to survival. Ren briefly wonders if he should sacrifice himself, but decides against it because he doesn’t want Martyn and False to die to each other on bad terms.

So they decided on a three way fight with wooden swords only on Blackstone Alter. Ren sees Martyn and False discussing before the final fight and his heart sinks. Are they teaming up to take him down first because he’s not as good at PvP? Is he going to be betrayed by the hand and the queen? His closest allies on the server? Three way fights are hard because it often ends in a 2v1. Ren thinks he might be the 1.

They give long dramatic speeches and roleplay and lots of “ye”s and “my lord”s but after the ghosts get impatient, they start to fight. Ren braces himself to have two swords in his face—

Only to see False and Martyn leap at each other. There’s no hostility in their eyes, just regret and mutual agreeing “I would rather fight you than Ren”.

The two time their fight carefully so that they die at the same time, and with each other’s swords in their hearts, they collapse on the ground with a smile.

Ren automatically wins, but he has to witness his hand and the queen kill each other, not because they want to, but because they’ll rather kill each other than hurt Ren.

[ink-ghoul]

Hi yes please let's chat s8. XD My irl hermitcraft-fan friend's first response on "pearl might be joining???" was to laugh and ask "but who's going to design Grian's build's now?" XD

hsjkjsdsjh

I play this game where everytime Grian builds something I just wait him to say "btw, thanks to my friend Pearl for helping me with this"

[mallowbees]

...also what the heck I swear I was already following you but NO MATTER problem solved

sHDHDHG A!! <3 <3 wait wait also while you're here please take this shitpost that happened while I was doing the sketch

[ID: A sketch of a comic with Ren and Martyn. The hand written text bubbles have been replaced with text. It reads as the following "quit your job" "what" "join my Minecraft server". END ID]

[bdoubleowo]

"“This chapter will be the last one” I say."

Well the good news is you'll soon be caught up!

The bad news is that then you'll be like the rest of us, waiting for our daily chapter like pigeons swarming a french fry. XD

Welcome to DatD btw

Ah, no I meant last one for the night, I’m not quite caught up yet. It’s 1am here. I woke up “early” (earlier than normal for going to bed at 2am) for my video. I need to sleep

However I’m deep in the sauce now I’m not escaping. I’m on chapter 13 rn

[wither-rose-circus]

I once had an English prof who tried to dock me for using the word "tome" (as in, "dusty old tomes") because she didn't believe it was a real word. A college professor.

I literally had to pull up the Miriam-Webster website and show her the definition and she still was like "Well, you shouldn't use obscure words."

Lady, since when is "tome" an obscure word. XD

I swear to god it’s always fucking English, English either gets you your best teacher of the year or your worst one, there’s no in between

The one I mentioned earlier was my very first college English professor and he was the biggest fucking stickler I’ve ever met (I nearly lost my scholarship over his class because the C I got from it knocked my GPA under the 3.0 minimum, so I had to pray I got good enough grades the following semester to average it out)

Meanwhile the following English teacher that next semester was one of the easiest graders I’ve ever had (she did weekly page-long written responses that I consistently got 100s on despite writing them the morning of their due dates based on spark notes summaries)

[the-phantom-ender]

*gently ushers that one angsty braincell back towards your brain*

kjhfkjhdkfg. i dont have it in me to write anything fully coherent. however. i can manage a little bit of nonsense because what am i if not a sucker for prose when it comes to things i cant word right normally.

It was meant to be a last hurrah. A final effort to rise above their enemies. They had to take every chance they could, Ren knew that. False, Martyn, and Illumina were all very strong. They just... took on the wrong fight at the wrong time.

He was out before he knew what hit him. It was all in good fun, but this was a chance to prove that he could rise above it all. The Red Winters Solstice, if you will. Yet he could do nothing in the end, and watched helplessly from the skies as his hand and his team were picked off, one by one, all over again.

[hir4]

I am VERY happy for you (/gen) and look forward to all the fanworks that come out of this.

But also for right now I'm cheerfully pulling the blinds and turning up the volume on this other show I'm watching. XD

JASJASJSAJ. Red just so you get an idea, this is like all the popular kids have thrown a HUGE freaking party TOGETHER, after not being able to throw parties for THREE months.

Yesterday we were all surviving with crumbs, and now we have a whole freaking banquet, and we are eating like crazy.

[redwinterroses]

There’s an Empires SMP collection on ao3 if you want to look at some stuff

Yeah! I have had that bookmarked ever since someone added my Puppet Show drabble to it. :D

[acerace]

you're the blog I found out about Empires from so I blame all my probable future obsessions with this series on you. XD

hehe I'm not even sorry I watched Pixl's dramatic, lore-y, rp-y intro and was hooked, what can I say

It's also at the perfect time, bridging the gap between HC s7 and s8 and 3lsmp s1 and s2 :D like a new builder-focused rp series on the new update?? heck yeah

[bat-connoisseur]

🌹🌹🌹!!

Three roses!! Damn I wish I'd thought of that! three lines for you!

'He had failed.'

'“You think I’m here on behalf of anyone else? What does it look like I’m doing, Evil X? I’m finishing what I started.”'

'The air, which usually had the odd spore floating through it, seemed especially thick with spores today, and the disquiet in his chest deepened, heavy and sickening.'

[betweenlands]

this was my dash and I laughed out loud because no they don't go together but yes they do

[sinister laughter] Number 14 is a song about necromancy

[impulstor]

skizz is out of town tonight for Friday Night Stabbin' -- I missed Astro when I was listing the others lol.

thank god you both are more aware of things than i am LOL

but I can't believe this means there'll be no come and knock on my door tonight. so sad 😔 /lh

i am thoroughly reassured though, thank you both!! <3

[bread-tab]

tumblr user bread-tab! thank you for the song recs! I shall be going through them slowly tonight and tomorrow; I appreciate the list :D

you're very welcome! :D