Wandering imaginative landscapes: Part four
Hermitcraft: An imaginative space
Creolization requires the heterogenous elements put into relation to ‘intervalorize’ themselves: that is to say, there must be no degradation or diminution of the being, either from outside or within, in this contact and intermixing.
--Édouard Glissant, Introduction to a Poetics of Diversity, p. 8
Glissant’s creolization is another way of imagining the chaos world–the unexpected result of diversity scaffolding relation and resulting in something unexpected. It is the intersection of diversity and respect and sometimes, opacity. It is a space where equals meet and affirm each other in their difference and become enriched for the experience. But again, we have to imagine this creolization into being. We have to practice it. Glissant spoke of this in terms of cultures and literatures, but I believe the same may be true of digital gaming spaces. We began this journey together with my revised question: How can digital worlds act as spaces for imagining different ways of knowing and being?
We traveled through a Dungeons & Dragons chaos world, explored an intersection between the Puritan work ethic and a contemporary Korean novel and imagined languages and worlds in multiplicities. And now we arrive at the destination—Hermitcraft—a Minecraft gaming community realized through the YouTube videos of its players. Whether we are prepared or not, equipped or not, digital worlds are real for those who inhabit them. They are a language in whose presence we teach and learn and communicate.
GoodTimesWithScar is a Minecraft YouTuber and a Hermit. He was interviewed on the Imp & Skizz podcast,[1] and talked about how YouTube gaming spaces have created opportunities to share experiences and understanding and inspiration[2]:
Skizzleman (S):
Let me, let me segue that into another question because your, your insight into what it is to- I mean, obviously we are all very well aware and I, I’m hopeful you are too, you are, you are so much more than a disabled creator, you’re an amazing creator who happens to be disabled, but it does offer a, a different set of optics on, on what that experience is like that is gonna be pretty foreign to a lot of people, right? It’s kinda weird and then- and this is not- so that I’m very- I can’t- let me be as clear as possible, this is obviously not the same thing, it’s not even close to the same thing, but the limited amount of experience I have with that is when we had to- I had to come clean because [speaking ImpulseSV] you and I were pretty consistent in our releases and I had to come clean that I had a huge relapse. I have MS and I had a huge relapse and it took me out of the game for a little bit and that was weird. And I remember being like, why was I keeping it so secret? You know what I mean? I don’t know what that was, but I just…I don’t know, I don’t- So to hear that you did that too, to begin with, that must have been a pretty big day when you just sort of put it all on the table there.
GoodTimesWithScar (GT):
Yeah, it was. I remember I made a video about it. It was after being in the hospital for about a month, umm. So what happened was I’d been- my nutrition has always been kind of up and down. Feeding tubes, PICC lines, TPN, umm, and so I, I’d gotten down to like 115 pounds, and I was still making videos but I was 115 pounds and umm, I’m like, I’m like six foot something, so you know, that’s not super healthy and I was in the hospital for like a month of them putting in a tube, that didn’t work. Doing another surgery, doing this and that and then eventually putting me on TPN, which is, they put a PICC line in, thread it up your shoulder and then you get nutrition via basically IV. Umm, and once that, that happened and I was like stable, I finally made my video and I’m like hey, you know I do deal with these challenges and these challenges mean that sometimes I might be gone. But don’t take that as that I’m just done or that I’m lazy or anything, it means that I’m still passionate, I’m just out of the game for a little bit.
S:
Yeah.
GT:
And by doing that it changed the dynamic of my channel because now people like understand me more, connect to me more, and know that uh, yeah, I’m, I’m not just- I, I’ll be back is basically wh- what I wanted from that and the audience has always been incredibly supportive umm of that and I think, yeah, I think it’s important to be open with the audience about those things. It doesn’t mean you have to go into every single detail imaginable, but just to have that little connection and it definitely inspires other people.
S:
There you go. That's exactly right, yeah.
GT:
Other people will see it, yeah. You know-
S:
You have it right, there.
GT:
-they’ll see that and they’ll be like, I’m going through something very, very similar and now I can see this person doing this and accomplishing that and it’s like, why can’t I do that? I’ve always said like, a person with a disability or, you know, a chronic medical condition lives their life on hard mode, and there’s going to be obstacles, they’re a little bit higher up. But there’s always ways to sneak around, under the obstacle, over the obstacle, it just takes a little bit of ingenuity and a little bit of open-mindedness that you can do something because it is so easy to just put blinders on, to isolate yourself. But if you just try to be a little bit open to there actually being possibilities it will make your life as a disabled person much, much better. At least I’ve found that it is.
By being clear and honest and direct with his audience, Scar creates space for his viewers to imagine his world as a person with disabilities. This opens up the possibility for understanding difference and barring that, at the very least, it opens up options for opacity—we don’t have to be able to completely understand his experience, in our bones the way that he does, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot share and build with him. It also creates space to imagine living and being on another time and at another pace.[3] When Scar has to take time away from his YouTube work, it doesn’t mean he’s run afoul of the Protestant Work Ethic and is the “skiver” from Hwang’s character’s imagination. It just means that he is working on his own time and in his own way. And his audience (including me!) is very clear that this is okay. His well-being is the most important thing and besides all that, he's worth the wait.
Concerning Minecraft, Hermitcraft, and the Hermits...
Minecraft is a sandbox video game created by the Sweden-based company Mojang in 2011. A sandbox game is one in which gameplay proceeds according to the player’s choices, limited only by the game’s framing architecture. In Minecraft, this includes little to no direction and a framing architecture that consists of several different biomes (e.g., desert, forest, extreme hills, savannah, ice plains, mesa) containing varied resources that can be gathered by the player to build structures and battle computer-generated mobs. As Daniel Vella[4] aptly describes, “in allowing the player the capacity to reshape the landscape in her own image, the game invites the building of a constructed world in which to dwell” and in the case of Hermitcraft, within which interaction occurs and storylines are developed.
While Minecraft can be played by a single player inhabiting the game space, the Hermits play on a common SMP[5] server, which is a shared space where multiple players can interact within the same game space. The Hermitcraft server structures gameplay by virtue of the fact that it is a vanilla server (meaning that that game structure is, for the most part, not modified from its original form), whitelisted (meaning that the gameworld is private and restricted to members who must be invited), and is set to survival mode (meaning that players can be killed by both computer-controlled mobs and other players, and that building materials must be sourced—either gathered or farmed). These affordances directly structure the interactions that take place in the Hermitcraft gameworld and the storylines that are generated. In other words, the construction of the built environment itself structures the subsequent interaction that takes place within it, i.e., co-authored storylines that build and reinforce relationships between the Hermits and between the Hermits and their audiences.
Hermitcraft, similar to television, is organized by seasons and presented in episodic form. Begun in 2012, there are now ten completed seasons. The eleventh season began on November 8, 2025.[6] Participating Hermits can and have changed from season to season, with the current season including 25 active Hermits.[7] Although of little consequence to those outside of the Hermitcraft community, being invited to Hermitcraft is a big deal and doesn’t happen that often. In what might be called Hermitcraft’s “modern era,” only five new Hermits were invited—Grian in Season 6, GeminiTay and Pearlescentmoon in Season 8, and Skizzleman and Smallishbeans in Season 10.
The Hermits themselves, beyond just Minecraft players sharing a gameworld, are also YouTube content creators, meaning that each Hermit’s exploits in the gameworld—their playing of the game through resource-gathering and building and their interactions with other Hermits—are recorded, edited, and posted to YouTube for public viewing.[8] While each Hermit controls the structure and content of their videos and their posting schedule, broader, server-wide storylines require some measure of coordination. In an interview on the Spawn Chunks podcast,[9] one of the Hermits, Grian, was asked to what extent certain storylines are pre-planned or scripted. His reply (referring the Hermit Civil War storyline in Season 6) gives an indication of the balance between scripting and improvisation, coordination and individual action, that takes place on the Hermitcraft server[10]:
Umm but obviously with something like the war a certain degree of organization has to happen because it’s– it’s a huge group of people. You can’t just say “right guys, let’s have a war.” You’ve got to have meetings to say like “right guys let’s make sure we schedule this properly so you know your uploads don’t go out of sync so that people can follow the story. But when it comes down to what is actually made, that’s down to the Hermit. Like that’s down to their content. We don’t typically tend to interfere with, you know, I don’t tell anyone what they should upload, but yeah, a certain degree of organization has to take place with a project that involves so many people otherwise it would have been a colossal mess and it probably wouldn’t have ended up where it did.
There has to be some measure of collaboration and coordination, but ultimately, each Hermit develops their own content and edits and frames it themselves. The Hermits are not only gamers, but are also colleagues, working and playing together in a gameworld that can be likened to an office. They have to find ways to collaborate, to “live” together, and to get along in and through their diversity.
The Hermits collaborate across three continents and eight countries (Canada, England, the United States, Sweden, Portugal, France, Australia, and Germany).[11] Although in some ways, the Hermits share a lot in common (Euro-American cultures, mostly male (there are only 5 female Hermits), mostly English as a first language), there are many ways in which the Hermits are a diverse group, including age, in-game build styles, video formats, their approaches to privacy and their identity, and play style, not to mention the ideas and inspiration that they each bring to their shared gameworld.
GeminiTay (Canada) is the youngest Hermit, in her late twenties, and DocM77 (Germany) is the oldest, in his late forties.[12] Their cultural worlds and generational touchpoints are quite different. DocM77 is a technical player who uses redstone[13] to push the boundaries of the game and discusses, at times, the travails of being a parent, while GeminiTay tends toward cozy builds and deadly pvp and has discussed her college experience and what it’s like to be a female gamer.[14] Mumbo Jumbo (England/France), who is also a filmmaker, is a technical builder with a methodical approach. His videos tend to highlight the redstone contraptions he builds and are framed and bookended with “chapter” titles (though it should be said, his builds and the stories they tell have just been spectacular). Pearlescentmoon (Australia), on the other hand, is an artistic builder with a flair for bringing organization and civic services (e.g., fire department and postal service) to the gameworld and whose videos tend to flow more organically according to whatever she happens to be focused on at the moment.
Keralis (Sweden) shares with his viewers many details about his life in the physical world. He often talks about his children and “wifey.” In stark contrast, ZombieCleo (England) shares almost nothing about her personal life. She only recently revealed her face (in 2026, during the Hermitcraft Gamers Outreach charity event) and one of the few details she’s shared is that she was a teacher prior to becoming a full-time content creator. This blending of digital and physical identity has resulted in hilarious interactions in relation to various Hermitcraft storylines. For example, during Season 7, both Keralis and ZombieCleo participated in the Hermitcraft Big Base Swap, where they were randomly paired and required to swap the bases that they had each been building all season long. They ultimately decided to share each base 50/50, but then had to decide how to handle the bedroom situation, given Keralis has a “wifey,” who, incidentally, is not a Hermit and therefore does not “live” in the Hermitcraft gameworld.[15]
There is also a lot of diversity in the play style of the Hermits. GoodTimesWithScar (United States) is a very social player and lover of shenanigans. If shenanigans are afoot on the server, it is likely that Scar either instigated them or is somehow involved. His videos are full of interactions with other Hermits and while he does not fully immerse himself in role-playing, he actively creates and assumes multiple “characters” for the sake of a storyline and a bit of fun.
Xisumavoid (England) is much more comfortable playing mostly on his own, with his videos comprising discussions of his technical redstone builds (often built in service to easing the lives of the other Hermits) and instructions in case the viewer would like to do the same. This is not to say that he is unsocial—in Season 10 he was an active member of The Neighborhood (a group of Hermits who had chosen to “live” near each other and actively cooperate on the server)—but that he seems to find his comfort zone in speaking directly to the viewer.
With so many Hermits and so many play styles, Hermitcraft occasions the opportunity to explore perspectives by watching different Hermits’ points of view. In xBCrafted’s Season 10, Episode 6,[16] you see him going about his business and talking with other Hermits when suddenly, there is an explosion of TnT, xBCrafted is killed, and blocks and Hermits fly everywhere. It is unexpected and startling and you might be tempted to get angry at Smallishbeans and Grian for wreaking such unnecessary destruction. But watching Smallishbeans’ perspective in his Season 10, Episode 4,[17] you see his despair and frustration at having attempted (and failed) multiple times to kill xBCrafted as part of the server-wide game Demise. You see his friendship and collaboration with Grian in the project and his elation at eventual success. And watching both episodes, you see how the three of them come together to rectify the base and make xB whole again, because, as Grian often says, “We prank hard, and we clean up harder.” Storylines and different Hermits’ perspectives show us that there are multiple ways of seeing the world, of understanding it and making meaning of it; that there is more than just my side of the story.
It is in these ways, in perspectives and work styles and patterns of interaction, that the Hermits’ diversity reveals itself. And it is in their shared work and interactions that it is possible to see a glimmer of Glissant’s chaos-world, a world that allows difference without diminishment. “Difference is not what separates us,” Glissant writes. “It is the elementary particle of all relation.”[18] He continues:
…what I am prepared to envisage as a universal is the realized quantity of all the differences and that alone. I do not claim that this realized quantity ends up as a sort of unity that would abolish the particularity of each of the differences. (p. 119)
Glissant’s vision can be seen in the way that the Hermits are each allowed to be themselves, structured or unstructured, technical or creative, full of shenanigans or pedagogy, and yet together they create a unified gameworld alive with diversity that they share with their viewers. They make space for each other’s perspectives and approaches and this enriches their play. Watching their differences intertwine and intersect in beautiful and hilarious ways helps us to imagine how we might live and work alongside diverse others in the physical world.
[1] Impulse & Skizzleman. (Hosts). (2023, May 5). Welcome Scar! Pt1 (No. 39) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Imp & Skizz Podcast. YouTube.
[2] I transcribed this myself, so any mistakes are my own.
[3] Incidentally, I Live a Life Like Yours by Jan Grue really made me consider what it means to live and work on a different time. It is Grue's reflections on a life with spinal muscular atrophy and interweaves history, memory, philosophy, and what it's like to move through the world in a different way. It is truly beautiful and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
[4] Vella, D. (2013, October 2-4). The wanderer in the wilderness: Being in the virtual landscape in Minecraft and Proteus [Conference presentation]. The Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Bergen, Norway, p. 13. https://gamephilosophy2013.w.uib.no/files/2013/09/daniel-vella-the-wanderer-in-the-wilderness.pdf
[5] SMP stands for survival multi-player and is the description of one mode of Minecraft gameplay. Another mode is creative.
[6] https://hermitcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Hermitcraft_Wiki
[8] Increasingly, the Hermits are also streaming their game play live and then posting those unedited videos to their second or third YouTube channels. Live streaming is another vector of community interaction in that Hermits are able to directly address and interact with their audiences through a live, scrolling chat function. The unedited videos of these streams also offer a glimpse behind the “edit curtain,” showing interaction and game play that hasn’t been “interpreted” through the Hermit’s editing.
[9] Pixlriffs & Duggan, J. (Hosts). (2019, March 12). Getting Creative with Grian (No. 030) [Audio podcast episode]. In Spawn Chunks. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wykr11z2BX4.
[10] I transcribed this myself, so any mistakes are my own.
[11] These are the countries the Hermits currently reside in, not necessarily the countries or cultures they were born into. For instance, Mumbo Jumbo recently moved to France from England and VintageBeef, who is Portugese-Canadian, recently moved from Canada to Portugal. Also, I should mention that American Hermits are located across the United States, with Hermits in various states, including, for instance, Arizona, Tennessee, Florida, somewhere around the Great Lakes (maybe Lake Ontario!), and somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
[12] I should note that these ages are my informed guesses, after having scoured various sources around the internet. For many years, the oldest Hermit was TinFoilChef, who joined Hermitcraft in Season 2. Sadly, he passed away suddenly (there was an announcement on the HermitCraft reddit subthread) during Season 9, on August 13, 2022, at the age of 63. He was known as the truest Hermit (with a very cool laugh), just mining away, and doing his own thing while occasionally wandering the Hermit gameworld and wondering at all of the activities the other Hermits were getting up to while he was down in the mines.
[13] Redstone is a resource in Minecraft that functions very like electricity. Redstone dust can be mined and then used in combination with other crafted components to automate things like crafting and resource-gathering through the configuration of redstone “circuits.” That's about the extent of my redstone knowledge, to be honest.
[14] Impulse & Skizzleman. (Hosts). (2023, November 17). The GeminiTay Way! Pt1 (No. 67) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Imp & Skizz Podcast. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iucYoRZVIlc&t=3055s
Impulse & Skizzleman. (Hosts). (2023, November 24). The GeminiTay Way! Pt2 (No. 68) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Imp & Skizz Podcast. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McY2Koo4Tnk
[15] Keralis. (2021, March 13). We found the secret base! [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfaRgdjhW08&list=PLs6cC73V4fpvUrk9VrNv-YUpr5XuHh18N&index=61
ZombieCleo. (2021, March 13). The discovery [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qgkTEtSLco&list=PLVO4L4qtJmBonAKh9Zcb7yyfjVsG4U9CR&index=45
[16] xBCrafted. (2024, February 19). Grian & Beans strike AGAIN! [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38Q_d7IQk3U&t=465s
[17] SmallishBeans. (2024, February 17). 74 TNT & cyber train! [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b5XuLMakaM&list=PLdv581HMnwPfM57DpScBLhfQqRHYlQyv3&index=4&t=871s
[18] Glissant, É. (2020). Introduction to a Poetics of Diversity (C. Britton, Trans.). Liverpool University Press. (Original work published 1996), p. 119.
