Life SMP Series

Fandom
Name:	Life SMP, Life Series, 3rd Life, Last Life, Double Life, Limited Life, Secret Life, Real Life, Traffic Life
Abbreviation(s):	3L, LL, DL, LiL, SL, RL
Creator:	Grian
Date(s):	4/20/2021 - Present
Medium:	Minecraft Server(s), MCYT
Country of Origin:
External Links:
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The Life SMP Series is a YouTube series that takes place on a private Minecraft survival multiplayer (SMP) server. It was created by Minecraft YouTuber Grian, and its first season debuted on April 20th, 2021. The server makes use of the proximity chat mod and a variety of datapacks to create unique game mechanics that change with each season. There are currently five seasons in the series: 3rd Life, Last Life, Double Life, Limited Life, and Secret Life. As of April 2024, there is also a one-off April Fools episode called Real Life.

The Life SMP Series centers around a limited life system. In order to reflect the number of lives a player has, the color of their name changes as they lose them. Green-named players have three remaining lives, yellow-named players have two remaining lives, and red-named players have one remaining life. Once a player has lost their last life, they are permanently "dead" and set to spectator mode for the rest of the season. Dead players are no longer involved in active gameplay, but may continue to observe as a spectator.

The worlds for each season are contained to a relatively small area by using world borders, making sure players do not stray too far from each other. This also creates a limit in the amount of valuable resources that are available, such as iron and diamonds.

Green and yellow players are instructed to live peacefully and survive. They are not allowed to engage in player-vs-player combat (PVP) except to defend themselves, and are encouraged to use their time to gather resources, form alliances, and have fun. Environmental hazards such as hostile mobs, lava pools, and falls from great heights pose common threats that can end in the loss of a life. When a player goes red, their alliances are nullified and their new goal is to kill as many other players as possible. The season ends when there is only one participant left alive.

The series is recorded in three-hour sessions on a weekly basis, in which all or most of the active members play on the server at the same time.

Members of the Life SMP Series include:

• BDoubleO100 (Bdubs)
• Bigbst4tz2 (Bigb)
• EthosLab (Etho)
• GeminiTay (Gem)
• GoodTimesWithScar (Scar)
• Grian
• ImpulseSV (Impulse)
• InTheLittleWood (Martyn)
• LDShadowlady (Lizzie)
• Mumbo Jumbo (Mumbo)
• PearlescentMoon (Pearl)
• Rendog (Ren)
• Smajor1995 (Scott)
• Skizzleman (Skizz)
• SmallishBeans (Joel)
• SolidarityGaming (Jimmy)
• TangoTek (Tango)
• ZombieCleo (Cleo)

Participatory Seasons For Each Member

	3rd Life	Last Life	Double Life	Limited Life	Secret Life	Real Life
Bdubs	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Bigb	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Etho	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Gem					✓	✓
Scar	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Grian	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Impulse	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Martyn	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Lizzie		✓			✓
Mumbo		✓			✓
Pearl		✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Ren	✓	✓	✓			✓
Scott	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Skizz	✓	✓		✓	✓	✓
Joel	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Jimmy	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Tango	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Cleo	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Seasons

3rd Life

3rd Life SMP is the first season of the Life SMP Series. Base mechanics for the series as a whole were introduced this season, including a bordered world and the color-coded life system. Players had three lives, and with each loss of a life their name colors would change, with green players having all three lives, yellow players having two remaining lives, and red players only having one. Green and yellow players were not allowed to engage in PVP with others except to defend themselves, but red players were allowed to attack other players at will. Helmets were banned for the purpose of keeping the players' head visible, making it easier to identify them from afar. There were no rules against red players maintaining alliances with green and yellow players, and as such partnerships between red and green or yellow players were permissible.

The winner of 3rd Life was Grian.

Last Life

Last Life SMP is the second season of the Life SMP Series. The life system was modified for this season so that players were randomly assigned two to six lives at the start. Any player that had four or more lives were dark green in color while players with three lives were light green. Players gained the ability to transfer lives between each other with the "/givelife" command, allowing players to use their bank of lives for bartering and solidifying alliances. A new mechanic called "The Boogeyman" was introduced, in which any number of green or yellow players had the chance to be given the "Boogeyman Curse" at the start of each session. Boogeyman players were tasked with killing a fellow green or yellow player. If they did not secure a kill by the end of the session, they automatically became a red player at the start of the next session. If a player became red, their alliances were to be immediately abandoned and they were only allowed to team with other red players.

The winner of Last Life was Smajor1995.

Double Life

Double Life SMP is the third season of the Life SMP Series. The traditional three-life system returned for this season. A new mechanic called "Soul-Bound" was introduced, in which players were randomly assigned a partner at the beginning of the first session to be connected to for the entirety of the season. Soul-bound partners had shared lives and a shared health bar. Any damage taken by one player was also taken from their partner. If a player lost a life their partner did as well, and if a player died permanently their partner died with them. Players were expected to (but did not have to) team up with their soul-bound partner. Like with previous seasons, player pairs that turned red became hostile and were allowed to attack other players.

The winner of Double Life was PearlescentMoon.

Limited Life

Limited Life SMP is the fourth season of the Life SMP Series. Rather than the three-life system for this season, players had a "Lifetime" and were granted 24 hours of life. For every death a player experienced, they would instantly lose 1 hour of their remaining lifespan. If a player successfully killed another player, 30 minutes were added to their remaining lifespan. Players with more than 16 hours left in their lifespan remained green and were not allowed to engage in PVP except to defend themselves, while players with 8 to 16 hours left in their lifespan became yellow and were allowed to attack green players. Players with less than 8 hours in their lifespan would turn red and were able to attack any players. "The Boogeyman" mechanic from Last Life made a return this season, in which any players had a chance to receive the "Boogeyman Curse" at the start of each session. Boogeyman players were tasked with killing another player before the end of the session, and would drop to the next color if they failed. Successful kills granted boogeyman players 1 hour to add to their lifespan, and any players killed by boogeyman players would lose 2 hours of their lifespan.

The winner of Limited Life was InTheLittleWood.

Secret Life

Secret Life SMP was the fifth season of the Life SMP Series. The three-life system returned again. Players were given 30 hearts per life instead of the usual 10, and any damage a player took did not regenerate. All participants were able to give a single free heart to another player once per episode with the "/gift" command, which did not affect their own health pool. "Secret Tasks" were introduced as this season's twist, where players recieved a randomized task at the start of every session that they needed to complete without other players knowing. Upon successfully completing their task, players turned their task book in to the "Secret Keeper" at spawn and were rewarded with up to 10 hearts of health and/or a variety of additional gifts dependent on their health status at the time. Players that completed their task with less than 10 hearts missing received full health and an assortment items to make up for the rollover, while players that turned in their task with more than 10 hearts missing received the full 10 hearts back and no other gifts. Those that failed to complete their task by the end of the session or otherwise failed to do so secretly got nothing. Alternately, players also had the option to exchange their assigned task for a more challenging one, which granted 20 hearts of life upon successful submission. If a player took the challenging task and failed to complete it, they lost 10 more hearts as punishment. Once on their red life, players were not allowed to attack players at will as they could in previous seasons, but were instead given a continuous stream of "hostile" tasks that allowed them to cause direct damage to other players.

The winner of Secret Life was GoodTimesWithScar.

Real Life

Real Life SMP was a one-off April Fools episode for 2024 where the traditional rules of 3rd Life applied (players only have 3 lives, last person alive wins, no additional mechanics) except all of the participants had to play with VR headsets. Expectedly, everyone died rather quickly.

The winner of Real Life was ZombieCleo.

Notable Groups

3rd Life

• Desert Duo - (Grian & GoodTimesWithScar)
• Renchanting - (Rendog & InTheLittleWood)
• Crastle - (ZombieCleo & BDoubleO100)
• Flower Husbands - (Smajor1995 & SolidarityGaming)
• Dogwarts - (Rendog, InTheLittleWood, Skizzleman, Bigbst4tz2, & EthosLab)

Last Life

• Team BEST - (BDoubleO100, EthosLab, Skizzleman, & TangoTek)
• Southlands - (Grian, InTheLittleWood, SolidarityGaming, ImpulseSV, & MumboJumbo)
• Fairy Fort - (Rendog, LDShadowlady, Bigbst4tz2, & ZombieCleo)
• Shadow Alliance - (Rendog, InTheLittleWood, Bigbst4tz2, & LDShadowlady)
• Gatekeep Gaslight Girlboss Alliance - (Smajor1995, PearlescentMoon, & ZombieCleo)

Double Life

• Team Rancher - (TangoTek & SolidarityGaming)
• Boat Boys - (EthosLab & SmallishBeans)
• Box Boys - (Bigbst4tz2 & Rendog)
• Divorce Quartet - (InTheLittleWood, ZombieCleo, PearlescentMoon, & Smajor1995)
• Secret Soulmates - (Grian & Bigbst4tz2)
• Broken Hearts Club - (Rendog, InTheLittleWood, & PearlescentMoon)

Limited Life

• Team TIES - (TangoTek, ImpulseSV, EthosLab, & Skizzleman)
• Bad Boys - (Grian, SmallishBeans, & SolidarityGaming)
• Clockers (GoodTimesWithScar, ZombieCleo, & BDoubleO100)
• Nosy Neighbors - (PearlescentMoon & Bigbst4tz2)
• Mean Gills - (InTheLittleWood & Smajor1995)

Secret Life

• Heart Foundation - (Skizzleman, TangoTek, & Bigbst4tz2)
• Mounders - (MumboJumbo, BDoubleO100, PearlescentMoon, & SmallishBeans)
• Roomies - (ZombieCleo, EthosLab, & Grian)
• Gem and the Scotts - (GeminiTay, ImpulseSV, & Smajor1995)
• Big Dogs - (InTheLittleWood & SolidarityGaming)

Real Life

• N/A

Fandom

The Life SMP Series is a popular fandom in the Minecraft YouTube (MCYT) sphere. Its reliance on interactions between players, unique game mechanics, and improvised storytelling have gotten many fans invested in particular groups and story arcs that form naturally within the games.

Most members of the Life SMP Series are also members of other popular servers, such as Hermitcraft and Empires, which has led to quite a bit of overlap between fandoms. This is further encouraged by the players referencing the Life SMP Series in their respective "home" servers, allowing fans to make connections between them.

There is a significant amount of shipping content in the Life SMP Series fandom. The most popular fandom ship is Scarian, which is the relationship between GoodTimesWithScar and Grian interpreted romantically. Other prominent romantic ships include Flower Husbands (Smajor1995 and SolidarityGaming), Treebark (InTheLittleWood and Rendog), and Ethubs (EthosLab and BDoubleO100).

The similarity of the life colors (green, yellow, and red) compared to the colors on a traffic light have led to the fanmade "Traffic Life" series nickname. This has in turn led to the usage of the prefix "traffic-" to denote fandom subcommunities on different websites, such as "trafficblr" on Tumblr and "traffictwt" on Twitter. The prefix is also used in the #trafficshipping tag, which is used to categorize posts and fanworks that contain shipping content for easy search and filtering.

Fanworks for the Life SMP Series cover a wide variety of mediums, including (but not limited to): digital artwork, traditional artwork, animatics, animations, fanfiction, fansongs, and cosplays. Many fans have also created their own "trafficsonas" to place in the Life Series setting, and some have also configured similar datapacks to the ones used in the series for their own Minecraft servers.

Fanon

Because of the improvised nature of the series, it is difficult to execute a storyline exactly as planned. As such, widely-accepted fanon is often the result of coincidences between each season rather than player-intended plot lines.

One popular analysis is the "Winners Theory", in which the last player standing of a season wins by breaking rules or expectations, and/or the next season's gimmick is likely to reflect the previous winner's playstyle. For example, Grian won 3rd Life by killing other players while he was green, despite it being against the rules. During 3rd Life, Grian was allied with GoodTimesWithScar, stating their partnership was due in part to him owing Scar a life. The following season introduced the Boogeyman mechanic that allowed non-red players to kill other non-red players, and also introduced the ability to give and receive lives, mirroring the indebted nature of Grian and Scar's relationship.

The idea of "curses", or repeated, thematic occurrences among players is also popular in fanon. One such example is seen with SolidarityGaming, who has been the first player to permanently die in the first four seasons of the series. This has led to him being compared to a canary in a coal mine, in which his death serves as a warning of the dangers that will follow for the rest of the game and signals the beginning of the end. The phenomenon has been dubbed the "Canary Curse" by the fandom, and fanart of SolidarityGaming often depicts him with yellow wings, referencing his association with canaries. In Secret Life, the first player to die was LDShadowLady, which has lead some fans to interpret the curse as broken. Another popular curse is Grian's "Icarus Curse". Grian is often directly responsible for the death of his closest allies, thus anyone who gets too close to Grian becomes like Icarus flying too close to the sun. This is supported by the name Grian meaning "sun".

The current roster of winners are often depicted with celestial imagery. Grian, as previously mentioned, is represented by the sun. PearlescentMoon tends to be depicted with lunar symbolism in reference to her name, while Smajor1995 is associated with stars in reference to his Starborne origin on Origins SMP. There has been quite a lot of fandom debate on what celestial body—if any—represents InTheLittleWood. He has been depicted with several different symbols in fanart following his Limited Life win, the most popular of which includes Mars, Earth, and a comet. GoodTimesWithScar's symbol has yet to be fully settled on as well. While celestial symbols are the most popular motifs to associate with the winners, some fans have taken to using other types of representative imagery instead, such as tarot cards and flowers.

The presence of powerful, omniscient entities called the Watchers within the Life SMP Series universe is perhaps the most prevalent headcanon across the fandom. The concept of the Watchers originate from Evolution SMP, where they initially acted as a representation of the audience. In the context of the Life SMP Series, fanon depictions of the Watchers take on a more malicious role by being the ones responsible for the players being trapped in an endless death game. Their inclusion has become semi-Ascended Fanon due to canonization from InTheLittleWood's perspective of the series. He has made it clear, however, that the Watchers are not canon to any other members' videos and has described their appearance in his own as somewhat of an Alternate Universe, which he has dubbed the "Eyes and Ears AU". Watchers tend to be depicted with eye symbolism, wings, and/or the color purple. Additionally, similar quasi-canon entities called "the Listeners" are also popular in fanon and are meant to act as an opposing force to the Watchers. Because Grian's participation in Evolution SMP ended with him joining the Watchers, he is commonly headcanoned as either being one himself or otherwise being strongly associated with them. This is further supported by him being the creator of the Life SMP Series, and thus the one directly responsible for the players' participation in the series.

Fan SMP Ideas

Many fans like to create their own premise for a season of the Life SMP Series. Original mechanic and gimmick ideas can often be found in fanfiction, where the story is set in a non-canon era of the series. Although genuine concepts are common and sometimes even proposed in the comment sections of the members' YouTube videos, joke ideas are also prevalent in the fandom. One of the more popular jokes is the suggestion that all the participants could meet up in real life and have a LARP-like battle. It is possible—although not confirmed—that members of the Life SMP Series saw this fandom joke, which then led to the creation of the 2024 April Fools VR episode.

There are accounts dedicated to posting about these ideas such as bad-traffic-smp-ideas on Tumblr.

Fanworks

Fanart

Victory or Death by Sabira Langevin

"Your Red King Has Risen!" by KingTheGhast

Animations and Animatics

BANG! - Last Life AMV by Rusty_Courage

Broken Lives || 3rd Life SMP Animatic by kishdoodles

Curses - Last Life Animation by chrisrin

Here we go! [ Life series AMV ] - Bang! by noxlotl

[Running Up That Hill] || Double Life Animatic by Everen

The Sea Shells Collab | (60+ Artist Third Life PMV) by Tibby Caps

TIMES UP! - Life Series AMV by Rusty_Courage

We Raise Our Cups || ♔ 3rd Life SMP Animatic ♔ by FantasticalRain

where is your rider | 3rd life animatic by genesis frog

W.I.T.C.H | A Double Life Animatic by heavyhandedhex

Fanfiction

dog at the door by fluffy_papaya and iamsolarflare (Teen+)

Fanzines

3rd Life Zine [1st Edition] - 3rd Life Fanzine

Traffic Zine [2nd Edition] - Last Life Fanzine

Traffic Zine [3rd Edition] - Double Life Fanzine

Traffic Zine [4th Edition] - Limited Life Fanzine

Alternate Universes

From The Archives (MCYT) by Sixteenthdays - an ongoing The Magnus Archives inspired AU for the Life SMP Series and Hermitcraft

Gemcyt by chrisrin- a Steven Universe inspired AU for the Life SMP Series and Hermitcraft

Fanwork Events

Driving After Dark - 18+ Fanwork Event

Resources

• Life SMP Series Tag on AO3
• r/ThirdLifeSMP
• The Life Series Wiki on Wikia