flockofcrowsinablockhouse

I've been playing minecraft since before wolves were added. I remember Endermen coming out, and just how much me and my siblings loved them. We were hardly alone. They're one of the most popular mobs in the game.

Because here's the thing about Endermen, they were the very first mob added to minecraft that felt ALIVE. They came before villagers, back when piglins were pigmen and only existed in zombie form, back before there was anything even remotely human that you could vibe with. Even after Villagers, even after Piglins, there's still something special to Endermen that captures players' hearts.

I think it comes down to the fact that Endermen are functionally useless to the player if you don't murder them. They can't trade or barter with you. They have no dungeons or fortresses for you to take from. They can even be quite annoying depending on what blocks you make builds out of. Endermen have little regard for the concept of personal property.

But, despite all of that, an Enderman isn't hostile to you by default. You never have to fight them. All they ask is that you look away. As long as you do that, then they're more than content to exist in your presence. Going about their day, doing their own thing, picking up blocks and moving them around.

And people love them. They love these alien creatures who have nothing to offer but their existence. I know so many players who go out of their way to not bother Endermen when they encounter one. Players who find one and keep it in a boat just to have some company. Endermen are adored by players just for being there.

Why? Because we were alone. We were alone in a world, and then we weren't. Endermen are strange and useless and dangerous but they are alive. They made us less alone. They were willing to exist with us peacefully when nothing else was. And that was more than enough to prove their value. They were friends to us, because they were there.

The glitch is: no matter how deep you are in the mines, no matter if you've holed yourself into bedrock and broken every torch and covered the earth above your head, you will see the sun. Not the whole sun, no, but if you stir, the sunrise will peep in shattered fragments between the edges where the blocks meet until you go still again. If you move you will see the sun. If you are moving, breathing, or living at all, you will see the sun.

It's distracting, sure. It's strange. But it's so wholly Minecraft I hope they never fix it. Creepers, Herobrine, the Farlands-- they all happened on accident. They still exist in-game, in art, or will lurk at the end of bug fixing logs forever. They're symbols of Minecraft itself, proof of the human-ness that lives in every line of code. They're part of the game about being human that so famously states:

"A fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, and the universe said I love you because you are love."

Player, you. You. You are the thing the sun shines for, the thing the sun keeps safe, the thing the sun is relentless in its search for, tearing through the earth to shine on, reaching the darkest and deepest spaces of the world to find, and as long as you breathe, you, player, you, will see it. Regardless of whether it's intentional or inadvertent, the universe will always, always find a way to reach you. Why?

Because the Player was the universe, and the Player was love.

Wake up as the sun hits your eyes. Wake up as it streams through the windows or between the atoms and pixels of the earth itself.

these tags that someone left on my nether post. these tags.

Who are we, the player, to say that the nether is unfit for life? Who are we to look into the roiling fire and infinite redness, to name it hell? Who do we think we are? It wasn't meant for us. We got here by passage of magic, to a world we weren't built to live in, weren't created to survive.

We look upon the creatures we see and call them vile. We gaze across the land and call it dangerous. Everything, everywhere, can hurt us, so by nature, the nether must be evil... right?

Before you came, the striders carry their children on their backs. The wither skeleton stand guard of their own fortresses. The ghast waft about their own sky. But they know you are different. They know you are Wrong, and your Wrongness leads you to tear what they know apart, and when they fight it's only fit that you see them as evil.

The nether is hell. But it is only hell for us.

Do you want me to go into my overly complicated hellifish lore? no? Too bad.

Medusa: Blazes, Ghasts and Striders are all hellifish, one of two main native classes of animals in the nether, an example of predators, scavengers, and prey, respectively. They have pretty much the same life cycle but not the same behaviours. Blazes form into pyres which reside in hives unless they are swarming, in which many pyres are often present. Ghasts and striders are solitary, only swarming when necessary, though striders are known to form loose pyres with the other striders in the same seas as them while ghasts wander.

Since my other Nether worldbuilding post was received pretty well... I'm back on my bullshit!

This time featuring zoning and biomes of the Neath: Lore below cut

The nether is not meant for you. Your blood boils and the sand you stand on cries out and grabs at your feet. It's just as lawless as the land above, but the evils of this world are as striking as a match. They do not shroud themselves in leaves and sea and earth, hiding from your human eyes. The nether is not meant for you.

But perhaps it wasn't meant for the creatures here, either. Perhaps the land turned them vile and bitter, instilled in them a taste for blood as red as the fire in which they were born.

You hold this creature in your hands now, one you found abandoned within the remains of its kind, and you can see the humanity in its withered white frame. The poetry that echoes around everything, that the universe is kind, and you are the universe itself. Within this creature is the part of yourself that aches to leave.

I will give them the love and care and warmth you wanted to give them, if only you were able to fight a little longer.

I will tell your child of how hard you fought for them, how you gave every part of yourself to ensure your child survived. how you used your bones for their shelter, your meat for their hunger, your tears for their thirst, used your life for theirs. they will know of your sacrifice, and that the sacrifice was of love.

I will give your child what you could not, in your honor. they will know of the warmth of love instead of the scorching heat of despair. they will know of open skies instead of restraints and cages. they will know of happiness and full bellies and gentle rest and of ease.

these should have all been yours to begin with, and yours to give to your child, but my forefathers stripped that of you and your kind. whether I am doing this of my own morality, to atone for the sins of my ancestors, out of guilt that should not be mine, out of kindness from one creature to another... I do not know.

This is my final apology to you.

Where did you get blaze powder for ender chests. Where did you get beetroot seeds. Why do you know what a boat looks like?? Are the shulkers only in cities because they're guarding them or because they moved in ages ago and adapted to the environment? Why is the front door built for someone two blocks tall when the only guys around are enderman??

the respawn anchor drags your dead and burning body through the hellscape you've sent it to and stabs it through with lightning until you're up and feeling considerably worse than how you did at death. the box will spark and hiss and scream at you to feed it again, or you won't be making it back the next time you're pitched into molten lava.

"i am kind," the universe says. "so i provided you with a world that you could've easily chosen to remain in. player, you cannot sleep here. you forfeited your right to a bed by leaving the confines of my great kindness. if all that you seek is within you, you can do without me."

[Player was killed by Intentional Game Design]

We know of at least two diagetic writing systems used in the world of minecraft— enchanting table language and some form of the Roman alphabet. We know that some form of the Roman alphabet is diagetic, because it exists in the world already before the Player arrives. Whoever built the desert temples assigned significance to the letters "TNT" enough to put it on their explosives. Pictographic writing also seems to exist, based on naturally-generating chiseled blocks, but that's harder to definitively state isn't purely decorative.

Villagers also presumably use some form of writing, given that they have librarians, but whatever that writing is, it doesn't seem to be legible to the Player, since we can't read books until we write in them ourselves.

The villager/illager species definitely creates symbolic art, given the use of banners by the illagers and of creeper face symbols on clerical robes. Piglins also use symbolic art, given the snouts carved into bastions, and it seems reasonable to conclude that they have some form of language.

This gives at least three languages in the world of minecraft— Piglin, Villager, and Desert Temple. Possibly a fourth, with Enchanting, but that could just be the writing system used by villagers, given that the Player doesn't seem to be able to read it.

What would those languages be like? What kinds of poetry are written in the Hnnngs and Hrrs of the villagers, or the grunts and snorts of the piglins? Could a piglin and a villager learn each other's languages, or are they too different not just in terms of vocabulary but in terms of the physical features required to communicate? Do piglins carry information in the flapping of their ears? Do villagers produce complex tones by resonance in their large noses?