#emberdragon34

Recently, though, Xisuma started giving out stickers. Whenever a hermit does a good deed, they get a sticker. And Xisuma has all kinds of stickers -- spaceships, cats, music notes, bees, googly eyes. Whenever a sheet runs out, he runs a poll of potential replacements, which always leads to some fun shenanigans, voter fraud, bribery...

Some hermits keep their stickers on a little poster in their base, some hermits have whole books detailing each good deed, some hermits use them to bedazzle their communicators and tools, and some just end up with clothing covered in stickers.

Either way, everyone wins, and everyone gets wonderful stickers! Yippee!

Literally.

xB is one of the ancient builders, who built the ocean monuments, and commands the guardians to guard them.

Keralis is a primordial Watcher, who was initially, as xB loves telling people, a mass of eyes within an infinite black voidlike substance, sent to watch over the construction of the Minecraft worlds.

Upon realising he was being observed by this blob of eyes, xB challenged it to a game of tic-tac-toe. Unfortunately, Watchers aren't familiar with the concept of Not Winning, so when xB won, Keralis insisted it was rigged, and they had to have a rematch. ('You're writing down everything! That's hardly fair!' 'Yeah, cuz you don't have hands' 'Exactly! It's not fair!' 'Then why don't you grow some hands and we can have a fair rematch')

Except, of course, that also didn't count. So there had to be another. And another, and another, for about 15 actual millenia. Keralis slowly became the form we all know and love: mostly human, aside from the occasional excess of eyes, from his insistences that xB having x-y-z was an unfair advantage.

Now, every single competition, and minigame, and game, xB and Keralis play is technically just a rematch of that original tic-tac-toe.

Xisuma and Cub have known about this since S4, but they haven't confiscated it, or told anyone, because it's, contradictorily, one of Scar's comfort items.

Scar got the crossbow in TCD, (The Crafting Dead), the glitched out zombie apocalypse server where players and mobs alike were out for his blood 24/7. Having a weapon like a crossbow was important, as even if it he couldn't or didn't use it, just having jt was enough threat for most players to leave him alone. For Scar, the crossbow is a reminder of safety, an insurance, if worst comes to worst. If he's stressed, or having nightmares or something triggers his TCD trauma, he'll find the crossbow, holding it and aiming it, and reminding himself that, if everything goes wrong, he's got something to protect him.

On top of this, taking it would very quickly trigger Scar's trauma, even if it was a trusted Hermit. Once, in early season 9, just letting Cub hold it for a moment almost caused Scar to have a panic attack at the intrusive thoughts, about being defenceless if Cub tried anything. Even though it was Cub, and he knows Cub would never, ever even think to do that, the thought that he could was still too much. So taking it away forever, where Scar doesn't know if they've kept it to use later, and the loss of that security would be devastating for him.

And Xisuma and Cub know and understand this, and know Scar keeps it somewhere safe and hard to reach in his Vex-defence safe room, where he can't hurt anyone, whether intentionally or accidentally. So they let Scar keep it, and they let it be a comfort to him, even if universal server law says he can't.

Trying a bit of a new style, bit more sketchy than usual :P

Happy ~3 3/4 years to one of my favorite (and first ever) fics, Freaks by @emberdragon34! Genuinely the one of the only reasons I keep Wattpad on my phone anymore lmao

SILLY GAME TIME!

A series of daily silly questions and activities started by @jkl-fff, but with all of my craziness instead...

Today's question:

You have been offered a chance to hang out and do an activity with one of the c!hermits.

Which one do you choose?

-Stargazing and eating homemade cake with Cub

-A daytrip to a petting zoo with Scar, cuddling and feeding whatever animals you want

-Fishing with Grian (zero mending book drama)

-Book club with Joe, and you choose what you read

-A gig with Xisuma to see whatever band you want

-Board games with Tango, playing whatever games you want

-Horseriding with Bdubs

-Deep seas diving with xB

-Hiking with Gem (whatever terrain or difficulty you want)

-Roleplay/theatre/LARP with Ren, and you decide what do perform

-Just hanging out with Skizz in a pillow fort with very adorable and lovable dogs (including Kevin Bubbles Malone Refrigerator Jimmy Mad-eye Dougan)

-Arts and crafts with Cleo, with infinite craft supplies

Severe anxiety about people i think are cool aside, it's a hard choice between petting zoo with Scar, or arts and crafts with Cleo.

On the one hand, i mean, it's Scar. C'mon. Also animals are really nice. And I'd probably go with this one, assuming I don't have to worry about allergies, bugs, or sensory stuff.

Pearl, particularly S9 Pearl, is a brownie

In particular, he loves silly novelty ties, and basically has one for any eventuality. Golf? No problem, he's got a tie with golf clubs on. Moon about to crash into the server? Well, this old thing has the whole lunar cycle on it! Zedaph wants to give his sheep socks for the winter and Cub's suggested stealing one of each of Scar's socks until it's impossible for him to make a matching pair, and you've caught them in the act? Mumbo's got a whole set of ties with sheep-in-socks!

Grian used to gift these ties to him, as a safe simple gift (since Mumbo is notoriously difficult to gift), searching for the craziest ties he could.

Mumbo's favorite tie, in fact, is a novelty tie with a whole bunch of little ducks and geese dressed as gentlemen - tailsuits, cravats, top hats, canes, moustaches. It used to be known as his 'Fancy duck tie', but that's been shortened down to just being his Fancy-ducks. Once when he lost it, just before a party, he ran around his base repeatedly squawking 'WHERE'S MY FANCY DUCKS?!' (this definitely isn't based on my IRL frog socks)

However, Mumbo barely wears any of his novelty ties anymore, and just wears his red ones instead. Because Mumbo is a fidget, and Mumbo fidgets particularly with his tie. And when his fingers are covered in redstone dust that doesn't like washing out of clothes, it's a lot better to wear something that's already red.

Mumbo does bring out a novelty tie every so often at a party, or rent them out to other hermits.