Tango and GeminiTay visit Etho post-charity stream travel while Grian interacts via chat. Etho says he and Joel were alone all week and everybody teases him.
19 minutes into Tango's "I AM THE MASTER" stream, April 2024
Transcript:
Tango: So, Etho, what did you do all week by yourself? Were you lonely?
Etho: Dude, it was so dead on this server-
Tango: It was so quiet! I know.
Gem, overlapping: Did you miss us?
Tango, overlapping: He DID! He did!
Gem: Awww!
Etho: A little bit... It was just like- It was like Joel and me, and...................... and that was about it... And Cub came back eventually.
Gem, overlapping: Of COURSE you mention Joel first.
Gem: Not your neighbor, Cub. JOEL. Joel's top of the list.
Etho: But I couldn't even go see Joel because it would've been awkward to, like... just be alone.
Gem: You poor thing...
Tango, reading Grian's message in chat: 'Joel is enough for you.' Yeah...... I see more statues popping up- Who's making them?
Etho: Not me! Okay, something weird is going on- I don't know the deal behind it-
Tango, laughing: Uh-huh...
Etho: I've made two statues... Total.
Tango: Which ones did you make?
Etho: The Joel one... and the other one's... a secret.
[End]
Next, Tango and Gem tease Etho because they're pretty sure the other statues he built are the giant Etho statues, implied to be something he put in front of Joel's base himself. Etho says this is "not confirmed in his video."
Can I... talk about the theory that winners help craft the next game?
Because, and I really can not say this enough, it puts So Much into perspective.
Everything starts out Normal. Three lives, simple, cut and dry, there hasn't been a winner yet. No one to help craft the game. (And there's something to be said about how simple it really was. Not even a real expectation of the world becoming pvp or combative. No idea of the war to come)
Then Grian wins. The green killer, the man who vowed his first life to the one whose life he took. The next game the boogie man is born. A mechanic that allows and, in fact, demands, a green kill. People can trade lives back and forth, currency and debt wrapped up in one. (can we still be friends? Said the red partner. A life time later and reds are hostile, alone. Maybe it's an answer: No. Not anymore)
Scott wins this time. He refuses to play the game. He will not kill his team, he will love and he will do so fiercely and with all of himself. The next game people are attached through to their very souls. Every bit of damage to one soul is done to its twin. There is no boogeyman. (There is no way for a widow to be left without their love)
Pearl wins and she wins a blood bath. Spent the game draped in red, only wolves for company. Sitting in her tower, shivering in ice, maybe she wanted it to end. To see where it would. Limited life rewards you for killing, limited life has a clock tick tick ticking down, you always no how long you have. A curse yes, but a blessing too.
Now It's Martyn's turn.
And what a turn it is.
Keep your secrets, says the disloyal man, keep them well. Everything hurts, everything Matters, says the man fracturing with every loss. (What if we could love each other without hurting? Says The Hand, who never wanted to be coated in blood)
More importantly, Martyn has always seen the watchers below the surface. Now, they're right here in front of him. Something that could almost... be rebelled against, no? Something that someone else could finally point to and say: hey, hey isn't that familiar?
WEEKS ago I saw a post about how BigB is very much like Scar in the way he's also totally maxed out his charisma stats in a way that just make people believe him automatically and go along with his shenanigans. The only difference is that he doesn't flaunt it the way Scar does, so he floats under the radar.
That in off itself is fantastic news, but it also means. Grian definitely has a type, and it's the funniest thing
Wl art dump too o7 I desperately need to draw wl more too tbh, man i miss canada </3
(also to the person asking abt recordings of this, you guys prob saw a bunch of ppl posting their povs of wl and some fl already; i have not recorded anything from fl or wl but am thinking about recording season 3!🫡)
What is the life series? What is it all about, really?
Ask the avian, the first victor, in a comfy red sweater and wings sprouting from his back, and he'll say with a forced shrug, as he leans against a tree, it's about life. Bonding, alliances made and alliances torn, enemies made and battles won. It’s all rather poetic, and rather fun to watch.
The way he says the last word causes the camera of the mind to stumble back, and hastily zoom in on another figure in blue. Crystals are swirling around his head, oh so shiny, as he says with quiet defiance in his eyes, it’s a game. Entertainment, for those who want it, and torture, for those in it. Uncertain and unpredictable like all games. The best bet is to cling onto whoever you know and hope you will survive.
A shift yet again, onto another winner, strolling around. Her hoodie is blue but flickers red every once in a while, like lightning. Her wings rustle as she says with a cynical chuckle, it’s the world. Your fate is shaped and you’re always, always inevitably linked to it somehow. The choices are made; you just follow them. But maybe others will carve a different path.
Ask the survivor, in a green shirt and blondish hair. He’s sitting at the seaside, and he says as a new wave converges with the shore, it’s a death match. And don’t you forget it, because in the end it’s all about who survives, and anyone who clings onto other ideals is foolish and dead. There’s no need to kill time when you can simply kill.
Etho sending Joel a letter in the mail telling him to take down the giant statues of Etho at the entrance of his base... "I know you hold me in high regard, but maybe your obsession has gone too far and I think it would be for the best to take those down-"
Joel, sending a letter back: "Wasn't me. Someone worked really hard on them though so I moved them to your base."
This one is really me seeing a frame in grains 2nd session of Scar standing in the wheat right after he was killed, waiting for his timer to go down and my slavic brain going brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
(Mini explanation for non slavs: Południca (referred to in English as "Lady Midday", "Noonwraith" or "Noon Witch") is a slavic demon, which appears in the wheat fields during noon time. They usually carry either a scythe or shears. Noonwraiths stop men in the fields and ask them difficult questions, if the person answers them wrong or tries to change the subject, they cut his head off. Very often those demons are young women who died tragically before, during or short after their wedding (also its my favourite slavic demon, love them)
I've noticed something about the Traffic SMPs: Each season is modeled after the previous winner's path to victory.
Third Life is the "base" form. Every season follows the same general rules that Third Life followed- (roughly) three lives, only red lives can kill unprovoked, the last one standing wins. Green-yellow-red as the life system's colors. The mechanics of Third Life exist in every following season, and it is only the seasonal gimmick that changes.
And the winner of Third Life was Grian. Grian, who spent the game trying to make up for a life he never meant to take. Trying to pay Scar back for what he did. 'Giving up' his own lives, in a sense. Grian, who regularly worried and fretted about how many lives his partner was on, and who would have had far less anxiety had his partner been able to have more lives. Grian, who broke the only-reds-may-kill rule from the very beginning.
Last Life, then, echoes these truths. Players are able to directly gift each other lives. They could hold onto as many lives as they were able to gather, with no upper limit, and could spawn in with double as many as they had in Third Life. There was a special role designed to push greens and yellows to kill before they were red. Grian implemented these actions into his time in Third Life, and so the universe gave him a world defined by them.
And then Scott won Last Life. Scott, who was defined in Last Life by his undying loyalty. By his connection with Pearl and, later, with Cleo; and by his refusal to betray them until it was absolutely necessary. Scott, who denied the bloodlust of being the boogieman because of a refusal to betray those he cared about.
Then Double Life implements soulmates, people who you cannot betray. Soulmates, who are bound by the fabric of the universe to each other, who are expected to trust each other implicitly and stand alongside each other until death does them part. They are defined by their loyalty to each other, and by their inability to kill each other. Just as Scott acted in Last Life.
So, then, the question becomes this:
When the victor of a Traffic SMP is defined by loneliness, by an air of doom that follows her, by being isolated from all who meet her, what mark does that leave on the world that follows?