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#you can clearly see my bias for Ren shine thru
riacte · 3 years
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Happy Birthday to HC7!
Wow man, I can’t believe it’s an actual year... so I’mma go off the tangent for a bit.
I’ve been following HC since May 2019, but I only watched Grian (and eventually Ren) in HC6, so when HC7 started, I was excited to branch out. Unfortunately I couldn’t watch as many episodes as I like but still, I feel like I’ve known a lot more about the hermits and their projects this season!
The beginnings of HC7 always gives me good vibes. It’s just so... humble. Magical. Exciting. The hermits are stripped off their elytras and rockets and gear and shulker boxes and they have to start from the beginning, in the old-school way. And you get to see them do all their crazy grinds and builds from the very start, when they had nothing but determination and motivation.
I was also really proud of how the hermits grew MASSIVELY in the beginnings of HC7, especially Scar and Iskall. I was ecstatic to see more hermits reach 1mil subscribers, because they deserve that and so much more. HC fandom was also growing exponentially, with many fancontent made of wizard Scar and Pesky Bird and Bumbo Baggins and the infamous Doc-Bdubs divide (I mean, they’re the popular creators, but it still makes me super happy and gives out the GoodVibes). I remember staying up till 3am, totally engrossed in HC fanfic.
I know for y’all in the Western world, HC7 starts with quarantine and Covid, but since I’m in Asia, Covid has already been going on for like two months when HC7 began. The hermits provided a lot of comfort for me when I was sad or just bored. Like... the world is changing, but Hermitcraft is still there, as cheesy as it sounds.
I remember the night the HC7 E1 episodes were uploaded, I was vibrating with excitement. I was telling my friends to watch them. I had no idea who to watch first but I remember I clicked Impulse. I stayed up past 12am and I think I watched most of Doc’s episode and wondered why tf did I stick to Grian when there’s so much more out there.
Gradually more episodes came out, including those of my faves Grian, Scar, and Ren. And I was super mega happy to see Grian and Scar be neighbours because that’s all I wanted in S6, actually. A proper collab between those two crazy builders and cat lovers with chest monsters. And I was beyond excited to see that practically everyone I watched at that time (Grian, Mumbo, Scar, Stress, Iskall) lived in the same jungle. (Ren was the exception but he later moved in and I kinda lost it).
Early HC7 Jungle Gang and their builds have a very special place in my heart just because it’s so hopeful and funny and full of possibilities. I loved watching Grian annoy Mumbo, I loved every bit of Scar’s magical village, I loved Iskall bringing a brown panda to Stress’ place as a gift. Bdubs VS Doc was also extremely entertaining, and I still laugh over how cute BeeDoubleO is. And Ren! Ren’s Loser Island was so quaint and charming and cute and I’m so sad he blew it up lol. Something about his starter base just gets me. I even modified my survival starter base after his.
And the streams! The stream weekends! I was never into watching streams but HC7 convinced me. The hermits saw that we liked them, and kept on making them. I don’t remember a lot about the streams, but I do remember popping into Ren’s late at night, and he talked about living alone and the pandemic and how this Minecraft stream united people from all over the world, and he started listing out the countries people wrote down in chat, and I just started crying. It sounds stupid and parasocial, but fuck man, I really love the hermits.
I remember when there was a time Ren uploaded at 12am Saturday for me, so when I had a rough week, I would tuck myself into bed and refresh my feed until I saw Ren’s new weekly episode. (Ren’s my comfort YouTuber.) It was like... a habit of me, like when I felt bad I would be like “at least there’s gonna be a new Rendog episode by the end of this horrible week :D”. And that made me happy.
And then it sort of became a habit... I watched different hermits according to my moods. Whenever I felt more attentive, I watched Grian. Tired and bored? Stress. Wanted to calm down? Xisuma. Wanted to laugh? Bdubs. And when I just wanted some comfort? Ren.
Hermitcraft and its community has given me a lot of joy. I would go longer about how I met friends etc etc but I started being active because of Blue Bats lmao, and that’s a different story.
Just wanna send the hermits and the community some love <33 sorry this got so long lol, I really am very nostalgic haha.
To me, there really is something magical about Hermitcraft, and I don’t fully understand it, but maybe that’s the beauty of it.
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