Edited my blog master post cause the last one felt fake as fuck also I’ve considered starting to actually blog because that’s what this site is for but idk
When Minecraft first added horses, my brother and I dropped everything we were doing to play it.
We booted up the Xbox, opened a new world, and I waited diligently for his controller to pair for split screen. When it finally did, we set to work building the shittiest, ugliest, most lopsided stable ever. We didn’t add beds, because it wasn’t a house. It was a stable, we knew that. But we added stalls for the horses and an outside area, because of course, the horses should have sunlight.
When we found out they could jump over blocks and run faster than other horses, we set out to make the most elaborate obstacle course we could imagine. We raced against each other over and over again, using different horses and different rules until we were finally bored, hours later.
This post is going to be exactly what you’d expect. I am generally not a person who devotes lots of time to stuff like this. Other people have said better things about the quality of the Minecraft movie trailer (why is everyone backlit?), or how it doesn’t make sense (why are all those piglins normal in the overworld? Why are they even attacking?), and others have already shared their personal thoughts like I’m about to do.
But I have memories and experiences that belong to me, and I want to put them somewhere. I’m aware this won’t reach very far, it won’t change anyone’s mind, and it isn’t exactly full of revolutionary takes. But it’s mine, and I need to say it. And here seems as fine a place as any.
The only game my brother and I ever really played with each other was Minecraft. We’re about as different as you can imagine, with different interests and different ideas. But when we were both much much younger, we loved to play Minecraft together. Of course, that makes sense! Being young kids, we didn’t exactly have an allowance to spend, so our gaming options were in the hands of our parents. They didn’t agree on much, but each of them knew what Minecraft was. They knew it was safe, and they knew it was something we could share (IE: they didn’t have to buy twice), and so it was added to our collection.
And because we had no one else to play with but one another, and nothing else we could really play together, it was always Minecraft we turned to. Different as we were (to the point there are jests between us about being swapped for someone else at the hospital (my money’s on him)) we could find common ground on the same game. I liked to play creative and build houses, but he liked to mine and thought creative was cheating. To compromise, we turned keep inventory on and he would collect materials so I could build our house. We didn’t even know there was a wither. We didn’t even know there was an ender dragon. When we finally finished a house, the game was over for us.
But we would always come back to it. Always build a new house, maybe in the desert or underground. Always rush to our Xbox to play a new update until we were properly bored again.
Eventually, we learned there were worlds built FOR us. It started simple; we found a Christmas map with a giant tree and a massive workshop, and marveled at how beautiful the world was. But of course, there was already a giant house built, so what was there for us to do? We couldn’t built one here, it might ruin all the other houses. Ah, of course! We’ll just live in this one, we thought. So we mob proofed as much as we could, and explored a place we couldn’t even begin to comprehend was made in Minecraft of all places.
Eventually, when we explored it all, we wondered what to do again. We couldn’t just exit and start a new world, we’d just be going back to the exact same place. So we made a story.
He was supposed to be an elf. But he had a frog skin so he couldn’t be an elf. He had to be a winter frog. It made no sense, but it didn’t have to. I was supposed to protect all the “reindeer” because otherwise the winter frog (who we decided was very mischievous) would release them. Naturally, I, armed with a blaze rod (the only thing that could melt the winter frog), would search up and down the place as he would jealously hide his part of the screen, and when I found him, I would hit him. When he made it to the roof of our giant house, he would declare he had won, set off as much tnt as he could, and then we would have to load a new world to play it all again.
I look back on that story, and I think it’s stupid. I think it’s probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done, and as a self-acclaimed writer, I should be ashamed. I’m not. It’s stupid, and it’s childish, and I was a stupid child when I played it. But more importantly I was a stupid child having fun with my stupid brother in our stupid game. And we loved every minute of it. I’m not ashamed of it because it’s nostalgic, because it’s a memory of joy that I hold as close to my heart as I can.
Only a few years later, when my brother and I could finally play on separate systems, we discovered the ender dragon and the wither. Maybe we knew about them before, but we had never beaten any kind of boss before and we were under the impression that those sorts of things were much too hard for us.
So when my brother came to me with a radical idea to beat those bosses, I was doubtful and so… excited. What if we DID beat them? What if we beat a DRAGON? I was instantly in. He had a plan, but he wanted backup, and of course we were each other’s number one choice. Thick and thin. Still are, I suppose, but back then we didn’t realize we could stand up without always making sure the other wasn’t actively falling down.
He agreed we needed creative mode for this. He said it would be hard, but he knew what to do, so for the first time we should use creative mode to get all the items we would need. Nobody ever wants to work something up in their head and then have it all fail in the end, so we made sure it wouldn’t.
I manually enchanted our sets of armor, our diamond swords, our bows. I stacked our gear neatly away with as many “super gold apples” that could feasibly fit in a chest, and declared us ready. We each took our gear, and set off towards… the nether. We could get blaze rods from the inventory easily, we knew that, but we were excited to test out our new gear. We never had a reason to enchant before, so how exciting would it be to test everything out? I discovered my favorite enchantment in the entire game was fire aspect.
When we got our rods (and our pearls) we put them together and shot an eye of ender into the air. We diligently followed the trail we were making on foot (because that was just how you did these sorts of things), and when night fell we didn’t just sleep or skip it. We pulled out wool, made some honestly really ugly tents, and put our beds under those. When we woke up, we left our tents there and kept moving.
The thought was that anyone else who had this world after us would find the tents and be able to use them. We had a pretty rudimentary (and quite incorrect) idea of how Minecraft world seeds worked at the time.
Eventually, we got to the spot where all the eyes stopped. My brother dug down. I jumped in the hole he was digging, but he made it pretty clear that I had to stand in the corner of the space or he’d hit me with his enchanted pickaxe and not be sorry about it.
The fortress was a maze. It was dark and there were mobs everywhere and it looked like a glitch of a structure. But we never gave up. We knew what was waiting for us at the end (pun quite intended). When I found the library, I walked right through it and kept moving (for what use are books to a soon-to-be-dragonslayer), and when I found the portal, I called my brother’s name over the shittiest microphone the world had ever produced, and teleported him over.
He set to work on filling the portal, and I set to work on dealing with the annoying silverfish. A spawner destroyed and a gate created, we readied ourselves. We didn’t place beds down because we didn’t expect to lose, and we didn’t jump in right away, because we didn’t expect to win. Eventually, one of us worked up the nerve.
The end, as many of you know, is an odd place. It is light stone and it is dark skies. It is filled with pillars that aren’t buildings and there is an alter of a stone that cannot (ordinarily) be broken. We knew what the end looked like. We thought it was something new to be there.
I remember staring off into the distance. I remember mentioning how small the end was, considering we had treked at least twenty times its size in the nether and the overworld combined just to get there. I also remember how panicked my brother was at the realization there were endermen LITTERING the place that you were absolutely not allowed to look at.
After dealing with the endermen my brother looked at, we were finally ready for the real fight. We heard the dragon when we got there, we could see it fly in and out, we were very aware of its healthbar looming ominously at the top of the screen. But we knew the dragon had to wait, too.
We aimed, missed, then aimed again at countless pillars until we saw the satisfying explosion signal our first few victories in the war. We knew the ones in cages had to be handled differently, though. We had to march up there and take them out ourselves. The only issue? I forgot to pack blocks. We had stacks of golden apples and tons of junk picked up on the way, but we had thrown most of what we got away in the lava under the portal to clean our inventories.
So, mid fight, we mined. Tunneling underground to avoid the wrath of the dragon, we mined until we each had a stack of end stone (because that would surely be enough), and then climbed. Once we reached the top of an obsidian pillar, we hacked away at the iron bars until the floating core was exposed to us. Without any hesitation, we would strike at one. As end crystals do, it would explode, and then it would throw us off of our platform.
Seeing as neither of us were particularly good at water bucket clutches (at the time we weren’t even aware that had a name), we simply fell to the ground, and let our enchantments eat the damage. It felt powerful. The same blow and the same height that would easily kill us before were nothing to us now.
When all of the crystals were gone, we turned to the dragon. It had seemed almost passively disinterested in us as we struck at its crystals, but we were sure it would be mad once we took out the final one. Instead, I thought it was scared. It ran away constantly and never stayed in one place for too long. That made sense to me. That was good game design. Of course it was scared, there was no chance it could beat us. There were two of us, one of it, (hundreds of useless endermen minions) and no way back.
I don’t remember who got the final hit. I guess it didn’t matter. It’s not like there was an achievement to tell us with all of the creative we had slipped in and out of (but never for the final fight). What mattered was we had done it. We won. An achievement that’s so lackluster today it means almost nothing. But to two kids with terrible headsets and elementary school the next day, it was everything we had hoped for. The dragon went down easily. Not because the boss fight was easy, no, it went down easily because we were that skilled at it. It wasn’t a bad fight, it was exhilarating.
We looked up how to collect the egg. We knew you could do it, we just didn’t know how. My brother clicked on it a few times, and it teleported enough for us to realize we were doing it wrong. With the fight over, we agreed creative was fair game again. I dug a big underneath the egg as my brother supervised up top to make sure it wouldn’t teleport away if we didn’t both look at it. I placed a red stone torch two blocks underneath the egg, and then mined up.
It fell with grace. The moment it landed on the torch, it popped away and slid into my inventory. Excitedly, I flew up and dropped it to him, then pulled a NEW egg out of the creative inventory for me. One for him and one for me. We both got one, because we both did the fight. Not our fault the game only tried to give us one.
We jumped into the portal after. At the same time, just like how we entered the strange realm in the first place. That was my first experience with the ending story. The message from two strangers to me, the player. Me, who explored this world, sure, but countless other worlds like it. Me who knew all the crafting recipes by heart and knew rotten flesh would always give you hunger but raw chicken would only give it sometimes.
I love story games. I did then, and I do now. I love when something makes me feel some way, when something carves its place into me and establishes itself as important. I think Minecraft did that long before I experienced its “end,” but I think that was the moment I realized I loved this game. It felt like everything I had done meant something, every action culminated into where I was there and then. I also thought, when it concluded, that my brother—who preferred action and fighting to stories (yet another difference between us)—would have skipped the ending of the game for being cheesy.
He didn’t.
When my brother and I could buy (with permission) a world from the Minecraft store, we would have to agree on what it was. The first one we bought was the Greek mashup pack, because he loved the hydra skin and I loved the harpy one (it added WINGS, what wasn’t to love about wings in Minecraft?) and we both loved greek mythology. Not that we were well versed in it, of course. When we loaded that world up, we experienced that Christmas one all over again. Years on, and it was the same feeling. There was a beautiful new world for us to explore, there was beautiful MUSIC we had never heard before, and there were countless hidden secrets we could find.
But we eventually ran into the same problem. We couldn’t build a house, there were already houses here! We couldn’t fight the enderdragon, it would mean leaving this place behind and that would just be pointless. Besides, we had done that already.
So, eventually, we made another story.
I won’t go into detail about this one, but you can imagine it was about the same as before. We made up something dumb, and played our hearts away following it.
I am not a kid anymore. I am not easily blown away by the ocean monument or amazed that the moon changes form in game. I don’t laugh aloud when a villager “hrrs” or burst into tears when I lose all of my stuff in a cave.
I dont think the stories I made with my brother over Minecraft are anything important. But that’s not what my point is. None of this is really what my point is.
My stories weren’t good, but that doesn’t mean Minecraft can’t have a good story. In the early days of maps and pumpkin headed men and signs that told you where to go, there were countless wonderful stories. Hell, even now there are countless wonderful SMPs made by communities, and most of them are created for the express purpose of telling. A. Story.
And they’re beautiful. Some SMPs are only between friends (and perhaps they’re short lived sometimes), some SMPs are beloved by hundreds or thousands (or perhaps millions) of people.
Most SMPs inspire artists and animators and everything beyond and between to make things. Beautiful things, from the soul and the heart and the nostalgia of creating. They’re things made with love, for love. The Minecraft movie is made of money, for money.
The biggest argument FOR the Minecraft movie is that it’s meant for kids. I understand. I understand I am not its target audience, and if I am, then something has gone horribly wrong in the nostalgia bait department. But honestly? I don’t even think it’s marketed to kids. Kids arguably love a good story. I would know, I very much was one. I think it’s marketed to parents much like mine, who know the name Minecraft and know it’s safe and figure it’s a fun thing to take their kids to.
And I think that sucks. Because there could have been something better.
Minecraft is not a story game. It’s a sandbox. And the best part about a sandbox is that it can be anything you make of it—which means that, ironically enough, you can turn it into a story game. I think modders probably display that the best (the create mod would’ve blown my mind back then).
But that’s unrelated. The point is that Minecraft can be anything. But to make it into anything good, you have to really love it. You have to spend time developing what you want, be it your story, your resource pack, your mod, your challenge, your lovely world, your book(s), it doesn’t matter. You have to love whatever it is a lot, and you have to want to spend time on it to make it. Like I said before, the Minecraft movie was not made with love in mind. It was made with money there instead. I understand why. I understand every action that was taken for it, and I understand that it is not going to be a detective pikachu, a sonic, a Mario, or even a fnaf movie.
It’s just going to be another stereotypical “bad videogame” movie. And I think that’s a shame, because there could have been something beautiful there. There could have been something that makes someone sit in the theater with their brother and remember a horse race or a Christmas game or a valiant fight. There could have been something that reminded me a lot of when I had nothing to do but waste time with my favorite person in the world and build the ugliest house imaginable.
But there’s not. That’s okay. I understand. But I don’t want to see it. I love stories, and I love Minecraft, and I love the feeling of being a kid.
Hello. I’m cat. Welcome back to my first addition of fucked up food recipes.
I have quite a history of doing stuff like this, and unfortunately I never learn my lesson. That being said, let’s get to it.
Fair warning: this comes with pictures. While none of them are inherently bad there are some of these that you could look at and go “yeah I would actually throw up if I didn’t know what that was” so be warned this isn’t just a food crime it’s a gross food crime.
I used chocolate almond milk because I’m lactose intolerant and I’m using Mac and cheese because I don’t really give a fuck about that.
The sprite is there because chocolate sprilk is one of my favorite drinks (I cannot recommend it to anyone even if my heart was full of malice), so the thought came to me. Why not try chocolate sprilk Mac and cheese?
Milk makes Mac and cheese creamier, and who knows what the sprite would do! So it’s an experiment.
I decided to start the dish with chocolate milk instead of water, filling THAT to the line.
I could have definitely added sprite in at this stage, but honestly I wasn’t sure if carbonation would act right in the microwave, and I figured I could always try it different another time. I also thought maybe warm sprite would be the worse alternative to “lukewarm sprite mixed with warm milk” but I’m making a dish i called Mac and Parasite Water so what do I know.
Big mistake I didn’t account for. You can’t just put chocolate milk into the microwave for three and a half minutes. Apparently it rises and overflows. Anyone with even a shred of common sense may have anticipated this, but I am not a smart person (I’m making this dish after all).
What I ended up doing from here was watching the microwave and deciding to open it if it overflowed again. Most of it was done spilling out so I let it continue for about a minute and a half and took it out at the end (cleaned the microwave after).
I will say this was probably one of the peaks to this little project of madness. The smell? The smell in my room was SO good. Go figure warm chocolate would smell good but NO. No this was beautiful. Amazing. It just reinforced that what I was doing was good and just, and in that sense it was a siren.
Anyway from here I just sort of mixed the Mac and cheese around and let it take in the chocolate milk. Still emboldened by the smell of warm chocolate, I thought to continue.
Here I did actually do a little taste test just because I was curious, and honestly it was a little underwhelming.
The best way I can describe it is like… processed something. There was some richness to it with the chocolate, sure, but it really was just still processed noodles. It’s like if you rolled honey into playdough until it was a jam (if you squint) and spread that out on wheat bread. That’s kind of what it tasted like and I would know because that’s also something I’ve done.
At this point… I added the cheese.
Now. The first thought that struck me when I was done mixing it was “god damn this looks awful.” The second thought that struck me was “you know, this place actually feeds me if I really want food.” My final thought was “I wonder what the cheese will look like.” The answer?
UNHOLY MUCUS. Not the most unappetizing looking thing I’ve ever eaten but GOD DAMN it was CLOSE!! It was certainly CLOSE.
There’s many words that would be good here. Goo. Sludge. Goop. Muck. Grime. The word I will choose to use is “slime” because it strikes close to my heart.
I was in too deep. My smoke was too tough. If I didn’t eat this, They’d kill me. So I took a bite.
I say this with no ounce of exaggeration: It was GOOD. It was REALLY GOOD. The milk almost entirely covered up all the processed part of the cheese, and the cheese itself covered up the weird processed flavor of the noodles. The texture was absolutely top notch, too.
I would genuinely, GENUINELY, eat this again. In fact, I took three whole taste test bites as opposed to the singular one I was planning to take. It was so good I was almost worried about continuing with adding sprite. But I’m not one to back down from a challenge nobody imposed upon me, so I trudged on.
I added the sprite.
I added the sprite up to the top of the Mac and cheese itself and suddenly my meal was very… very angry at me. I almost apologized to it, but it would have been hollow. But I didn’t feel anything. If meals can be made with love, this meal was not made with that. It wasn’t made with hate, though. No. This meal was made with morbid curiosity. This meal was made with divine hubris. I knew before I took a single bite that I had poisoned my ambrosia.
I wanted to discard it, to cast it away. It would be my monster and I it’s Frankenstein. Alternatively it would be my ai daughter thing and I it’s Ayin Lobotomy Corporation. But I’m not a fan of waste so I continued. I took a bite.
The taste? The taste was… bad. It was awful. I couldn’t even believe it was the same dish. It was like an acidic pond. The sprite overpowered both flavors and took the reins, beating the cheese and the milk into submission for its dominance. I took a bite and it tasted like penitence for all the sins I haven’t yet made. If there is a God, then there is his devil. And if there is a devil, this is what he eats. I have experienced a great fall from the light, and I wish nothing more than to be allowed to climb up and embrace it again.
I wanted to pray. But I knew mercy had closed its ears and wailed.
Once I ate the rest of the noodles I was suddenly made aware of my newest problem. The broth. As the milk and cheese mostly stuck to the noodles themselves, I was getting mostly noodles, cheese, milk, and whatever sprite my spoon picked up. That meant that for the most part my meal really was just the noodles.
No longer.
Now I was left with the reason this dish has gained its name. Look upon my next picture with horror, I beg of you.
The remnant powder of the cheese was just… left there. Sitting. Sitting in a bowl of chocolate milk and sprite and tears. I realized I had to drink this. I looked at the same thing you’re looking at now and I realized I needed to DRINK that.
Thats about when the meal got its name. Gazing at my unlovable child I decided then and there that it looked like it would give me horrible unthinkable internal parasites. That’s what the little spots of cheese reminded me of. (Another contender was mold brew!) But I don’t like to waste things. I needed to drink it.
So I did. I took the cup, pinched it in on itself to make two points, and lifted one to my lips. I raised the cup up quickly, just desperate to get it over with.
In it went. Almost smoothly. And what did it taste like?
Nothing.
Even water has a taste. Even chocolate sprilk itself has A Taste. This thing? The parasite water itself? No taste. Nothing there. It was almost… disappointing. I even swished it around in my mouth for a bit to try and get SOMETHING. But it was for naught.
My meal ended. It experienced life and death the same way that I would, and yet I think myself better than it.
Nyaaa~ time for the ending notes!
Wow that meal certainly Was! For anyone who wants to make this I would honestly recommend losing the sprite part of it and just making chocolate Mac and cheese.
It was honestly really good at that point and I’d say it was a really big highlight! SO.
If you make this forget the sprite, and ALSO either use less milk in the microwave or monitor it more closely than I did so that you don’t have any spillage (or do exactly what I did and just be ready for some paper towels.
