Chapter Text
1. How did Grian, Martyn and Jimmy get their titles?
They were created. Millenia ago, after a bunch of generations, they came into being under the watchful gaze of the gods. The universe was expanding, more worlds were being created and there were more of them needed to watch over them. So they were created from the black void of the End.
Watchers and Listeners were like Werewolves and Vampires: enemies. A war came upon them when the last straw snapped, the two species fighting until the last man standing; they weren’t friends.
No, they weren’t friends but when the metaphorical smoke had cleared, it was just them standing over a field of withering corpses. They had an understanding. It came down to a truce between the last Watcher, Grian and the two remaining –but incredibly injured– Listeners, Martyn and Jimmy. Scar laughed at how close to Star Wars lore that was when Grian entrusted him with his origin story.
2. Where are Grian, Jimmy and Martyn from?
Both Watchers and Listeners originate from the End. That’s where they live their immortal lifetimes, using little windows in the void to travel to and fro places like endermen.
3. How did Grian meet his friends?
Being a Watcher –or a Listener– can be a tad boring. Spying on worlds, laughing at the mortals like the mischievous sadists they are, remaining on the sidelines whilst everyone else moved along… It’s like watching a never-ending TV reality show. Like Survivor: a lot of drama but barely any sustenance.
While it is entertaining, it can be boring.
Which is why Grian moved to the Overworld, to the cities bustling with humans and dogs and cats and birds. He disguised himself as an avian, taking after his most liked parrot species: the red macaw. A wonderful and colorful bird, the exact opposite of a Watcher’s bleak black and deep purple. Jimmy moved in a year later, Martyn came only when he was needed –when XD was sighted but that’s a whole other story.
Grian ended up in the famous block of flats. He didn’t talk to his neighbors at first, too shy and too overwhelmed to finally be one of the main characters of the stories he was so used to watching.
When Stress first came over –a dish of cake and a basket of all sorts of sweets– he’d shut the door in her face the second after she’d told him her name. Pearl and Gem avoided him for the most part but they were also curious. The first time he saw Xornoth was because Pearl got too curious.
It’s weird to have a neighbor who can sustain himself without ever leaving for work or his house altogether afterall!
To say that the demon didn’t manage to spook him would’ve been a lie. It was also the first time he got to see a true demon that originated in the End. That was a true shocker! To say that he was more interested in Pearl and Gem after that would’ve been an understatement.
Slowly, he mended his relationship with Stress, he got so close to Pearl that they were like siblings, met Impulse thanks to Gem’s nagging –which wasn’t so bad but Grian’s eye was twitching whilst she dragged him down the stairs– and then, he approached Fundy with a friendly yet lopsided smile, not knowing how to pull off an expression (wearing a scarf all the time kind of cuts that part of body language).
Being social after a war is pretty hard, what can he say? Sure, he didn’t have nightmares (because how could he have nightmares when he couldn’t hear any of the screaming? Unlike Jimmy and Martyn; they were quite unlucky) but he still didn’t know how to interact with people. He’d barely interacted with his own kind!
Down the street, he met Scar when he entered his crystal, antique and all magic-dealing-things shop.
And then, one day, Scar dragged him off to a casino for casino night, specifically to test out his Luck crystal. And Grian may or may not have made a mess of the roulette and poker tables. And he may or may not have almost had Las Nevadas collapse in on itself because he called the police on a black market dealing happening in the owner’s office.
It was fun, though! Too bad Quackity didn’t see it the same way as him. Sigh.
From that, he met Techno, the first hero to arrive on scene, The Blade . Apparently, he had history with Blackjack , as did Wilbur but Wilbur has history with seemingly everyone in the city.
Then, he was the main person the SBI heroes interrogated, out of the three, it was mostly Wilbur with Phil being the long-awaited dessert. It was then that he learnt of Wil and Fundy’s complicated father-son relationship and thanks to Wilbur visiting more frequently after the whole fiasco, they became close friends. The great, cold-hearted Blade followed (somewhat begrudgingly) and then the Crowfather.
Doc was merely a connection. He met him through Stress as he met False and Cleo a while later, though the zombie woman came with having the kids. Mumbo? Mumbo was a person he had invested plenty of his time watching before he interfered with the humans. Grian was mostly a pest Mumbo couldn’t get rid of and so the man accepted him as a constant presence in the corner of his eye –until they became besties, that is!
4. How and when did Mumbo discover his ability (exploding potatoes)?
Mumbo’s ability awakening was… a surprise, really. It happened out of the blue and a little bit out of the ground, also. It was a new development and while most people get their powers at a very young age, for him it just… happened!
He was tending to his garden behind his lovely tiny house, watering and harvesting plants when a potato exploded right into his face.
To think that he was on vacation from his redstone, film and Green Life projects. Nope. He was rushed to the hospital the moment the people living in the R&B van next door took notice of his explode-ificated state.
The fact that he made it out in one piece was considered a miracle by the doctors. He only had soot, charred dirt and the atrocious smell of burnt keratin on his face to show what had happened. A bit suspicious, given that he didn’t have a power registered in the database but there was nothing to be proven, so they all just shrugged it off.
A day, an uneven mustache and a check out later, he is back at his tiny house, crouched over his potato plants, looking at them accusingly. He is aware of the avian standing in the distance, at the treeline like a disowned variant of Slenderman but he can’t bring himself to care –he has more serious problems at hand.
He unearths a potato, rotates it in his hand. Nothing. He grabs another one. Nothing again. Was the explosive potato a prank?
And of course, that’s when it explodes.
He coughs into his hand, waves off any soot that clings to his face from the smoke, yells an “I’M FINE!” when he hears the door of the neighboring van squeak open and he finally looks down at the hand that was holding a potato not too long ago. The door squeaks closed, no one has run out to investigate, thank God, and so, Mumbo takes another potato in hand.
He looks at it intensely. The potato pulses and that’s something he didn’t take note of before. Before he can think about it, he throws it far away from himself, right at the Slenderman-reject at the treeline. His aim is spot on as he hears an indignant squawk right before the explosion.
He weighs another potato in his hands. Well. Guess he’s found a new weapon. He should’ve played more with potatoes when he was a kid.
(Basically, Mumbo had his power ever since he was a kid but he almost never touched a potato with his own hands because he always wore latex gloves to cook with –not mentioned in the story)
5. Did Boatem have End Crystal duels/blowing each other up?
Yes. Yes, they did.
After Mumbo was introduced to the group of friends and his ability became known to them, they all wanted to try it out.
Firstly, they rented out an empty field in the middle of nowhere. It’s just dirt and maybe a bit of wild grass but nothing that could spread fire to the surrounding fauna. They devised teams and they settled on a game close to Paintball.
Paintball: Potat Edition. Bomb Edition. Tag but so, so much worse on so many levels.
As cruel, inhumane and downright moral-questioning as it was, it was also good practice. Mumbo managed to get his power under control and lengthen the time between potat explosions. In the end, after a lot of playing, blowing each other up and experimenting, they found out that the trigger for the explosions was Mumbo thinking of a potato he’d touched exploding. Mumbo tried to control it better and found that imagining a ticking potato put a timer on it.
Simple enough.
Why he had that thought in the first place, is perhaps the best mystery of them all!
6. Can I steal your interpretation of Watcher/Listener powers?
Yes! Go ham with it, too and for any questions regarding them, feel free to ask me on here, Tumblr, Quotev or Wattpad -where you could ask privately! :D
Also, tell/tag me if you have a fic/oneshot inspired by this lil guy because I’d love to check it out!
7. How does Phil manage the school bills?
The one good thing about the private school the kids are going to is that most of it belongs to Phil. Well, not literally but rather metaphorically. The guy has funded most of it, seeing as his own sons went there as teenagers and Phil just so happened to have been the top donator at each school play, event or trip. No one dares tell him that the new boys are a handful and certainly none of the teachers tell him that Tubbo has accumulated so much blackmail on them that the principal can’t even expel them for any mishaps they enact.
That being said, the school bills are unusually low for Phil. He found it weird the first time, so he went to the school to check it out. They told him the bill was right and he was on his way with a shrug. Most of it was Benchtrio’s doing, to be fair but his own reputations with the school got him that little discount too.
All in all, Phil has ended up spending less than he expected on Tommy and Ranboo.
As for Sam? Tubbo has him covered too and maybe Cleo helped the kids with the blackmail.
8. Do Avians like Grian have nesting seasons/other bird traits?
Grian isn’t quite an Avian; he is a Watcher-in-Avian-feathers. However, Avians, like Phil, still exist. Each one takes after its actual bird counterpart, so it’s natural for them to follow the general instincts and behaviors of actual birds. Some even do courting dances as a little traditional routine! It’s also very normal to find at least one nest (made up of clothes, branches, trees and saplings) in the house.
In his attempt to simulate Avian life, Grian has only ever made a mess of a nest in the corner of his bedroom and he’s never bothered to clean it up after the following ten (10) attempts at making it better. (The nest is perfectly fine but he’s just a bit of a perfectionist -especially after seeing Phil’s)
9. What are Quackity's powers?
His power is Luck. He can basically make the chances of something raise or fall depending on his mood. For example, he can raise the chances of a gun finding its target or making it miss completely. It’s also the main reason he decided to build and invest in his casino!
You can understand why… just don’t tell the authorities. Rigging games is illegal, I think.
10. What was Ranboo’s connection to the End? Did Tubbo have a connection because of it too?
Being (partially) an enderborn and therefore being connected closely to the endermen, the inhabitants of the End and the wild counterpart of his hybrid side makes Ranboo a very valuable resource for Watchers and Listeners. He’s like a battery charger to them, thanks to the fact that his body produces magic that originates from the End’s void. While Ranboo can’t give it away, Watchers and Listeners can draw from it in case they’re on low power themselves (e.g. when Jimmy used Ranboo’s energy supply to teleport away).
Not the most ethical thing to do but now that the two of them are back they have a whole lot to explain.
11. Why was XD on a rampage?
XD is a bit of a nutcase. Okay, not ‘a bit’; he is a handful but that is to be expected from a god of chaos. The Overworld’s simplicity was just not cutting it for him. No shine, no shivering magic in the air, no normal-for-him life . For him, life ended when the Watcher and Listener war ended.
…He may have been a bit to blame for that one. That might have been why he just appeared on the Overworld one day.
He can’t really complain, though, because it ended up that some humans were cool. Having George, Dream and Sapnap was like being on vacation; he tried to view it that way. However, being a god of chaos and not causing said chaos came to be a tad irritating. Finding the remaining godlings of the End scratched that itch but that wasn’t the only reason he went on a rampage!
He got attached to the humans. He grew a weak spot for them and he didn’t want to leave them and return to the End alone. So why the fuck not bring the End to the Overworld? Solid plan, ay? He only wanted to share his homeland with his new friends but goddamn did he go the wrong way about it. Smol, gluttonous blob of a naughty god *holds gently*
12. What did the other villains do after Grian and Jimmy disappeared? (did they face-reveal?)
They were… distraught, to put it lightly.
Pearl was the one that was affected by their disappearance the most. Grian was like a brother to her and she was also close to Jimmy. She didn’t eat for a week following their disappearance, simply repeating the final moments of light and emptiness in her head all day. Xornoth wasn’t directly affected by them being gone but Pearl’s state of mind did worry him. Gem remained strong for the both of them, even though it was hard to push Pearl towards eating again.
Scar was deceptively calm about the situation, often wearing an unreadable expression that never dropped around the kids but it always fell when he was around Mumbo or sometimes even Quackity, the latter of the two was too awkward to console him but the guy tried his best. That’s what he gets for dealing with an emotionless assistant for years: bad socialization skills (not including blackmailing and shit-talking people).
Speaking of Mumbo, even though Grian stalked him before manning up and talking to him, he considered the pesky bird a good, close friend. He didn’t leave his workshop for a couple of days, leaving him alone to mourn his friend whom he falsely believed to be dead. (who can blame him though?).
Impulse took it lightly, only having to be there to support Gem when she got overwhelmed by Pearl’s not so glorious mood and Xornoth’s constant brooding. Fundy also spent a whole lot of time at Impulse’s or going to the SBI for comfort.
Stress didn’t have the time to grieve when she was called into the ER at ungodly hours of the night and spent her three hours of free time in the staff room to sleep. After what had happened, there were plenty of injured people and Martyn was only one Listener –not to mention that he couldn’t just show up at a hospital without security calling in reinforcements. He only sneaked in when there was a case of a void liquid victim, reverting the person to their proper age before flying out of the window.
Martyn also didn’t have the time to be worried. He knew they’d come back, eventually, so he had to revert the city to its original state before they did. Oh, and, he tried to tell this to everyone else but the story was not very believable when they didn’t have the whole context –only Scar did and he didn’t really take what had happened lightly.
All in all, the villains didn’t face reveal but they did lie low after the whole fiasco.
13. What happened to XD? Where did Grian & Jimmy go? Will their void-soaked appearance remain? Why did it happen?
When the light vanished, the Watcher and the Listener were in the End dimension. Dark sky, endless terrain of yellowish endstone and the roar of the Queen Ender Dragon as she flew above her perch and across the towering, sharp obsidian pillars.
XD was held in a cage of pure void between them, the god of chaos left to cry as he was set down on the ground like a bag of trash. Jimmy faltered as he put his feet on steady ground and had it not been for Grian being there, he would’ve fallen face first onto it. Poor guy was exhausted, relying on the Watcher’s leftover magic to get them to the End.
Jimmy really wanted a nap but he had work waiting for him, as much as his hearing would’ve liked to bail on him. The energy of the End did nothing to make him feel better.
“You are going to baby jail”, Grian huffed, pointing an accusatory finger at XD, who would’ve hissed at him had he been a cat.
Baby jail wasn’t a playpen. Nope. It was the void beneath the floating islands of the End. It’s similar to the myth of Tartarus but without the life-long torture part –any physical torture, at least. It’s more like solitary confinement but as the ancient people once said: “If a man lives in solitude, he is either a beast or a god”. In their case, they have a god.
He’d be fine for a decade or two. Maybe they’d check in once in a while but other than that? A god could live in solitude for years if they had so chosen to. XD never was much of a social butterfly, it would be easier for him.
So, to the void they dove. Grian kept a close eye on Jimmy whilst they floated just above the liquid black. Void Liquid couldn’t do much to a Watcher or a Listener but it could stick to them like glue and draw them down like quicksand.
In the void, the Queen would be in charge of keeping him there. Maybe she’d hand out another punishment for what he’d done or send him back to his domain.
For an unknown amount of time, they stayed there to recover from the fight. They stayed until magic soaked through their skin, coating their arms and faces familiarly.
When they returned to the Overworld, the void on their faces was gone, the magic used to open a gateway through the seams of the two world dimensions. The coating on their arms remained and through the days, it would be absorbed slowly by their bodies and its need for End magic.
Thankfully, they didn’t need to work to live, seeing as they could technically create paper money out of thin air with just a few words– now to remember what the rhyme for that one was…
14. What happened to George?
George left the hero scene not long after he was tried at court for bringing the apocalypse upon the world. He doesn’t know what happened during the date he was told the incident occurred. He doesn’t remember much, actually; the whole thing is all foggy. The last thing he remembers of the day is greeting Phil and Wilbur and then having to stare at the TV because they wanted to snoop through their house.
It’s what he told the judge and with his background as a law-abiding hero, the judge –mostly– believed him. He had to go through many psychology tests and double-checkings and other stuff that he doesn’t like to recall and Dream and Sapnap try to feel him in on the memories that he’s lost.
Maybe it’s for the best that he can’t recall Phil’s pained shouting or what he intended to do before Watcher intervened. The very thought makes him cry into his pillow at night and throw whatever object is close enough to him when either Dream or George try to enter his room.
It takes him three months to work up the courage to call Wilbur. Wilbur, unsurprisingly, doesn’t pick up. George gives up on the third time, taking the hint and dooming himself to the routine he’s found himself in. He puts himself to sleep not long after with his sleep spores –it’s a healthy enough coping mechanism, he thinks.
It takes another three for Wilbur to call him. George thinks he’s dreaming, at first, as he has been for the whole week. Then, he rubs the sleep out of his eyes and focus falls back into reality as his hands drag sleep sand across his eyelids.
Hesitantly, he reaches out with his hand, delicately holds the phone off of the night stand. On the third ring, he swipes on the green button. He isn’t expecting the seriousness in Wilbur’s voice when he speaks into the microphone.
“I’ve sent you an address. Meet me in five, asshole, you have shit to answer to”
Indeed, he has a lot of shit to answer to… most of which he did six months ago.
They meet at a video club, of all places, and before George can fully step inside, he is slapped across the face by an incredibly angry Wilbur.
“You fucking ass!”, Wilbur shouts as George rubs at his stinging cheek.
“Wilbur–”
“No, don’t ‘Wilbur’ me!”, the man yells at him. George doesn’t know if they’re still friends –after everything, he doubts that the option of friendship would be open for them. “You put me through fucking Hell for a fucking blob of all things! You tortured Phil, you caused shit and let other people pick up after you!”
“I–”, and Wilbur’s hands grab at the collar of his shirt and bring him so close to him that George can feel Wil’s breath ghosting over his nose.
What can he say? That he couldn’t help with evacuation efforts and help out the community because he was running to and fro court and lawyers and psychotherapists? That he couldn’t even fucking remember what had happened himself? That he had memory gaps consistently for two months straight?
He can feel heat behind his eyes and his face scrunches up in what could be a growl but any of his friends would know different. Shoving Wilbur away and stumbling back, shoulders hitting the door, he can’t help the tremble that wracks through his spine …and he explodes.
“I– I’m fucking sorry, Wilbur, okay?! I don’t even remember what I put you through, it’s all fucking blurry! I’m sorry for all of it but I can’t take it back now, I–”, fuck , “I didn’t want to do it– I didn’t know what I was doing!”
“You were being controlled”, a voice cuts off his rampant rambling. When he looks up, fumbling to wipe the tears out of his eyes, he sees that Wilbur has stepped back –alarmed, confused, surprised even– and he realizes that they aren’t alone in the shop. There is a clerk behind the counter, sunny blond hair and bright eyes, riffling through a box of blue cases.
“Who are you?”, he asks and he hates how his voice cracks mid-sentence. The guy looks at him, locks eyes with him, puts his forearm on the surface of the counter and leans in close.
“I am the god police”
Wilbur snorts.
15. How did the villains get away without prison time? Did the SBI accept Grian?
Turning a blind eye to this whole situation is easy enough, surprisingly. After the whole god fiasco and the court case, the authorities minimized their search for the Watcher and the two Listeners (though Martyn still kept a low profile). The villains were viewed like heroes for a short while, even if most of them stopped their villainous activity altogether.
Phil can’t say that he was very surprised when he saw Grian’s face under the misplaced scarf of the Watcher. Part of him had already found out but the rest of him had just refused to accept that he’d been fighting a dear friend that whole time. He doesn’t consider arresting him for more than a second when he has a bit of time to himself, pacing through his office at the newly-rebuilt SBI HQ. Wilbur took it… Not so well but he’ll come around eventually –he’s mostly mad that Grian kicked him in the face that one time over Wil apprehending his kids.
Techno… Well, there isn’t much Techno can do as a toddler but he sure can glare . His burning, red gaze was enough to send Grian running when they’d broken the news to him. Thank goodness that Martyn wasn’t finished with the city because he’s afraid Grian wouldn’t be with them for long had Techno been his normal, tall, brutish self.
The truce ended up extending well past the fight at the stadium, which was great for the villains. Phil made sure to visit, clear things up and settle the issue of arrest. He didn’t arrest anyone; he chose to turn a blind eye to their actions and assign himself to another villain group. Someone in the whole city had to have outshined them at some point!
Everyone lying low for months was a huge help too. This and running away before the heroes could come to their senses after the battle are the only reasons none of them got prison time.
When Martyn comes around to revert Techno from a baby food-spitting toddler to his brute self, Grian doesn’t dare leave his apartment. He’s magically reinforced the door, he’s double locked it to, added about five different locks too because it’s Techno we’re talking about here and the guy can bust down–
He busts the door down. Grian yelps. Their eyes meet. The Orphan Obliterator is held over the man’s shoulder.
“So, uh, how have you been?”
Techno raises an eyebrow.
“Grian”
“Y-yes?”
“Run”
By the end of the day, Grian has tons of bruises and cuts from becoming Techno’s personal punching bag and Techno has apparently forgiven him for his lies after that five-hour marathon.
It’s nothing that a bit of magic can’t fix so Grian doesn’t hold it against him.
16. What about Sam and Doc?
Who would dare chase after the G.O.A.T.? His mech and some of his other creations came in handy, at least, in the world-revival thing. Sam made him put in the effort to help the poor city that he’d ravaged with dynamite and gunpowder and all of his crazy, overthetop creations.
“You’re sentenced to community service, man”, he had told him, in the tone that a disappointed father would use on his kids. Doc never liked it when Sam got all parent-child with him but he had been right in the fact that he had to pay for his heinous crimes in some way.
Community service is better than jail time.
Moving in with Sam and Ponk and Tubbo was not related to that. It was related to Doc running from the popo and simultaneously overexerting himself doing his best to serve the public and Sam half-carrying half-dragging him to the couch. The doctor not being able to doctor? Unheard of!
Tubbo wasn’t all that thrilled about it but at least he got double the redstone knowledge.
(His teachers were not so thrilled. Let’s just say that almost bombing a bank isn’t as lonely on his list of redstone crimes anymore)
17. How does Scar enchant? Is he the only enchanter? Could enchanting be learnt?
Enchanting requires a special sort of magic and spells to work. Lots and lots of spells, runes and the like. It can be learnt if you have the right tools in hand, though it can take a lot of time. There are some people –mages to be exact– that practice enchanting but it is incredibly rare to come across one.
Scar is the only known enchanter in the city and only the heroes (and some villains) know that he has an enchanting set-up in the back room of his crystal shop. He uses his vex magic to do his work and dare he say it works like a charm! He is well sought out in the hero and villain work, who just so happen to also make up 100% of his clientele. It’s not really a secret but his services as a Vex hybrid are for the filthy rich and not for the common person.
Half of the spells he uses he has already memorized through years of repetition, while the other half sit in books that collect dust on the bookshelves. There are some ancient scrolls too, which Jellie has paid extra attention to and scratched through the paper like– well, like paper.
18. Some Watcher lore snippets (Martyn's explanation of Shadow (Watcher) Lore)
A small bit that I’ve taken from Martyn’s lore is that people hear Watchers the way they want to hear them: mostly in rhymes like Martyn heard them in his Last Life episodes.
So, I took the concept of rhymes and gave Watchers and Listeners the ability to create things if they say a poem about what they want to create. Yes, this includes light beams and converting ruins into their original glory!
As for their teleportation ability, that’s hard-coded into their nature. However, they can’t create two portals at the same time. For example, they can’t open two portals in the Overworld to travel from point A to point B but they can open a portal to the End and from there, they can return to wherever they want in the Overworld.
Interdimensional teleportation takes a lot out of them so they don’t do it often unless it’s a clear emergency.
19. Sequel?
I want to finish my fanworks first before I even think of writing a sequel. Long time readers of my account have witnessed the many WIPs that sit at the bottom of my fic-list and it is honestly bugging me. I have also started writing a book alongside my online projects so balancing that is going to be fun!