there's this feeling I get every single time I find a new piece of minecraft storytelling to watch, this deep feeling of happiness and admiration, it genuinely feels like falling in love... 🩵
I wish they brought minecon back, like I could never go to one in this economy but I just want them to exist again for my own distant enjoyment (and the minecon exclusive capes were cool)
Today for my birthday we had a in-group torture session, as any normal group of people do, where we watched the minecraft movie together
and I'll be honest, my point still stands, kids deserve stories with actual substance instead of just fast-paced butt jokes and what-not, when I was younger and into minecraft I was obsessed with machinimas that told me deep stories that made me exicted for the next episodes, that made me care enough about the charactes that I still like them until this day as an adult – timeless stories that, although silly in humor and "poorly written" at the time, still hold weight in being genuine attempts at storytelling utilizing Minecraft
if 10 year old Koffi watched this movie today he would be so disappointed in the lack of meaningful lore lol because it's just an empty story, poorly paced, with some minecraft references thrown in there, at the end of the day (mostly Minecraft legends story reused for the movie script)
that's my honest review of it, let's hope the Netflix animated series can be a bit better (or at best, better stylized to fit minecraft, cause god... we should have left the "what if minecraft was realistic" videos back in 2013, those are horrors beyond my comprehension)
Another year that me, @julisrache, @yuumalkiur and ChoiAila remade a collab art from 2023 and 2021, featuring our friends IdkSanix, Vic, InoueHeart and Dan Graeves! 💞💕
until a few days ago I didn't know what heavy cream, the ingredient, was and always thought it was weird how often I saw it being used in recipe videos I watch, until I decided to google the translation of it to portuguese
it's milk cream
why do they call it "heavy cream" in english? why does the heavy part of the cream gets the focus instead of what is made of? please I need answers
maybe is my nostalgia speaking but i am absolutely loving this new life series, it's going on my top favorite after third life, everyone feels like they're re-discovering the game and having fun with old mechanics/bugs haha
Martyn seeing the "entity slowly floating before immediately pulling back to its original position" visual bug filled me with too much nostalgia for my own good XD
you know it's bad when you read flashback as in talking about the minecraft mod and not the actual definition of the word commonly known in the english language
I don't use this blog as much as I would like to, so here's my review of Whitepine episode 7!
please beware this contains spoilers, watch the series here!
and financially support the production here!
Trigger warnings: discussions of violence, police brutality, blood, mentioned bigotry: homophobia/transphobia/misogyny/ableism, paranoia, and stalking.
How do I even start? what an episode, god!
I suppose I'll give my general thoughts and go from there.
In general, Whitepine falls into the spectrum of Minecraft machinimas that make you forget you're even watching a Minecraft video. The production is phenomenal!
From the get-go my favorite aspect of Whitepine's production was always how the music and slow burn of the scenes ease you into a sense of security, you're fully teleported to this world setting like you too could be a maid or butler from the mansion, sometimes hearing and seeing things from other characters while passing through your chores, the mundane setting helps to bring that calm feeling of a routine, only for it to rip that away from the viewer and throw them into danger and panic immediately after.
not many pieces of media can truly make you hold your breath in scenes, truly make you tense, truly and I mean truly make you dread what's going to happen next, especially Minecraft machinimas and especially in today's age, but Whitepine is patience and it guides you through all of that mundane and simple moments before showing you the darkness that envelopes this story, and it doesn't shy away from making sure the viewer feel the same heaviness in their heart and paranoia as Ivory, the character, does.
as for Ivory the producer, you're such a great storyteller, the power to make viewers truly feel the things happening on the screen is such a powerful one, you know how much you need to convey what your character feels through visual and auditory media, but also the delivery of the lines.
it makes the viewer shrink down, put themselves in Ivory's shoes, see the world from her perspective, only time can tell what sort of protagonist she is throughout the story, but god… I truly feel like I can be in her shoes, simply because this story does a great job at making sure I do.
I've seen criticism of how slow Whitepine is, but in my opinion, the slow burn is its biggest quality! only a story willing to bore the viewer with how mundane things are in their world can truly show them how twisted things can be become in just a matter of minutes, only a patience story can make the viewer feel on edge and anxious over the course of the episodes because you never know what's going to happen next, you're left with enough time to over analyze everything and your mind starts to overthink, enough that anything that happens next will shock you regardless if you're already on edge, because it was designed to make you anxious and the scenes following simply hits harder like this.
Of course, too much time wasted on informational/scenes we don't need could make the story feel stretched out, but I truly believe Whitepine is deliberately produced this way for the sake of immersion in what is like to be in the shoes of the character, living a mundane routine while paranoia takes over your mind.
End Of General Thoughts, let's discuss the episode itself shall we?
Trigger warnings ahead: mentioned bigotry such as homophobia/transphobia/misogyny
I definitely will be skipping some “minor” scenes to discuss what I have thoughts about at the moment, although I feel like I would definitely enjoy going back to re-watch every episode so far and form a full fleshed analysis, I have decided to allow the series to take me on its ride rather than try to do my usual over-analyzing I like doing for Minecraft Machinimas and lore, trying to piece everything together with any information I get my hands on (although I do have my personal theories about Ivory's origin)
Instead, I'll allow myself to only think about the information I've been fed so far, and of course, my focus is on our protagonist, Ivory.
At the start of the episode, Serapter and Ivory follow another character with the suspicion of them doing something “shady”, as followed through the rest of the episode a lot of the staff in the mansion are still tense and suspicious of each other since the murder that took off the series, although this will have much more significance later down the episode
In this segment we have a brief discussion of gender, it helps to settle more of the “traditional” setting of the story where it’s clear by their rushed and confused discussion of it that the topic is not something common, maybe even misunderstood by the average person
with the following scene with Ivory we get a wider range of the topic of sexuality in the setting of Whitepine through her discussion with Pyroscythe
It’s really a confirmation that this topic is something worth of gossiping, rather than something normalized, even though is present in the story and pyroscythe says himself “he doesn’t know why others label his sexuality and act weird about it”, which makes the line Ivory says to him after even sweeter, if only it was something she could apply to herself in her own situation…
Trigger warnings ahead: mentions of stalking and paranoia
After we go back to our beautifully piano accompanied mundane scene, we have a scene where Serapter reveals to Ivory that The Detective from the previous episodes has been spreading rumors about Ivory’s involvement with the murder to staff members of the mansion, which justifies her paranoia in thinking others are staring and judging her
we can even see him in the opening scene at the theater keeping a sharp eye on Ivory from one of the buildings
after this we get a very emotional scene, accompanied by the auditory distortion noises that accompany Ivory’s silence while she’s having an emotional breakdown, of her walking outside the house and crying in the forest, in this moment I really felt my heart strings being pulled, this was the sobbing of a person who just snapped when everything became too much, now it wasn’t only paranoia or fear, Ivory had the confirmation that The Detective was doing all in his power to disturb her life, inside and outside the mansion, all due to her not admitting to a crime she didn’t commit.
This moment truly feels like a break in the character, the usual quiet Ivory sobbing from the pure agony of everything happening around and to her.
This scene forwards is where we can all agree is the… heaviest part of the episode, in terms of writing, usually in pieces of Minecraft machinima a lot of heavier topics are implied through subtext or mentioned quickly, sometimes even implied as a joke, if they're shown on screen it's not usually with as much tension and rawness as Whitepone does and oh god, it does it so well…
the inside of the car feels claustrophobic, the car scene serves to depict this feeling of inner panic, of something being wrong, and neither Ivory nor the viewer knows what, but the car continues moving, The Detective continues being in control of the vehicle and the situation, and Ivory and the viewer both feel vulnerable.
the whole scene makes you hold your breath, wondering if we'll get a repeat of the scene at the station, you maybe even wonder if the one butler who saw Ivory be taken will say something and maybe she'll be taken out of this situation in some way…
when Ivory tries to ask where are they going, The Detective's response is one of showing control, “I'll be the one asking the questions here.” reads more as “you're not in control of this situation, I am, you're at my mercy now.”
when Ivory moves her head and notices she's being the taken outside of the city, the body language here is phenomenal, you can see her moving her head in panic once she realizes she doesn't recognize where they are going, and after getting another response of aggression, she lowers her head
almost like wishing it will be over soon.
Minecraft body language can tell you a lot about a character/player, and having the ability to utilize that to show true panic, mimicking how an actress in this position in a movie would be asked to move to show the audience her silence panic really deserves the praise.
and the scene where they actually arrive in the forest, the line “step out of the car, Ivory.” sent shivers down my spine, it felt like a death sentence and I watched with dread when I noticed he had taken off his jacket and put on the gloves.
before, you could maybe justify his actions, either by Ivory being an unreliable narrator in how she sees the world and the words being spoken to her, or maybe something along the lines of “determined”, but this scene settled his character for me, I think for obvious reasons.
This is not an emotional character acting on impulse to catch a potential criminal like you would see other depictions of police in media, this is a showcase of power, he took Ivory when there were less people in the house, he took her to a deserted forest where she didn't know where she was and there were no witnesses, he took off his jacket and brought gloves
he knew exactly what he was doing, from the moment he took Ivory he already had planned all of it, and made sure even if Ivory told anybody there would be no proof of her blood on him or any piece of fabric or Dna left on her to legally prove him of his crime
as a form of “Justice”
and oh my god, a big applause to the actor behind The Detective, his calm but aggressive demeanor breaking and turning violent the moment he's truly alone with Ivory and she still refuses to confess to a crime she didn't commit, it truly disturbed me to my core, the whole scene leading to this in fact even today a day after watching the episode I still feel a heaviness in my heart when I look back at it, like my heart is heavy and mind is foggy with fear and a deep sense of wrongness.
like I've mentioned, rarely a movie or piece of media will truly make me hold my breath, make me feel dread and fear, long gone are the times where horror movies and physiological horror actually messed with me, but this? the way Whitepine is written and every single scene is purposely put together to make you feel in the shoes of the character? this truly had an impact on me, and triggered any human emotion I needed to feel in that moment, to put myself in Ivory's shoes.
and going back to analyzing the scene and characters, was it really for “justice”? Was it really to make Ivory “pay for what she did”? or was it simply a show of power, taking over someone weaker and who doesn't align with the usual way you're expected to act in society, it's much easier to blame the visibly "weird" than to accept a "normal" citizen can hide their sins very well,
a cheap confession, a cheap jail time, to give the detective credit for getting the “guilty person" behind bars so quickly, because he is so sure there's no way in hell he is wrong, as far as to commit a crime himself.
It's clear to me Whitepine won't shy away from topics such as these, power imbalance, bigotry, mental breakdowns and violence
as a commenter under the episode has said;
(@norab9112
She finds comfort outside in the gardens.
He starts sneaking up on her.
She finds comfort in the mansion.
He starts lurking around it.
She finds comfort in the woods
He takes her to the woods and physically attacks her.)
and the ending credits song, we hear Ivory humming to the song she's playing on the piano, only for her to breakdown crying and heavily breathing towards the end... and what a genuine, sincere showcase of human emotion in a piece of media,
not a mimicry of it, not a cheap way to cause terror, true human emotions being shown in this story, true paranoia, fear and sadness.
Ivory, the producer in this case, you have a wonderful piece of art in your hands, you and everyone who helped bring this to life deserves to have an audience get up from their seats to applause your work.
This is not just a minecraft machinima, it's a showcase of raw, pure, human emotion in audio-visual form and I will wait patiently for what's to come next.
Thank you for reading my first ever review! 🌺
I made my first ever animatic! Just a silly little clip is from a recent stream with @koffizinhomc and Dee. Koffi and I were about to do a Decked Out 2 run together, and chat wanted us to do the hardest difficulty (we'd previously only managed to do well on easy and occasionally medium). We ended up failing step 2 lol
(If you like this, be sure to drop by Dee's Twitch (www.twitch.tv/dramaticherbalist) Tuesdays at 3pm EST and Thursdays at 9pm EST for more sillies!)
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