#had to put my thoughts somewhere

[ishikawayukis]

sf9 concert thoughts under the cut

so first things first while i knew they were amazing performers i was actually surprised because for some reason in all their live shows or videos i saw you could always hear the recording more than their voices and i gotta admit that i did expect that yesterday as well, but was proven sooo so wrong, jaeyoon sanghyuk and taeyang’s voices are so stable and nice live, they were able to hit inseong high notes without an issue and maybe it was the way the songs were arranged but you couldn’t tell oh this part was supposed to be sung by someone else. same with youngbin’s rap parts, hwiyoung covered most of them and he did an incredible job (also a win for me as someone that biases both of them LMAO)

they’re genuinely SO funny as well, even if my korean is basic as hell i got the gists of most of what they were saying and they’re just very entertaining and know how to keep their audience engaged

i was so pleseantly surprised by taeyang’s solo he’s a fucking STAR literally couldn’t stop grinning the whole time because oh my god this dude was born to be on the stage, incredible voice, incredible dance, incredible guitar playing that i was not expecting at all LMAO

hwiyoung’s solo made me cry and i still don’t know why lmao like he showed his vcr and it was very lovely and then he came out and i wouldn’t say his song was sad (sanghyuk and jaeyoon sang ballads that were definitely moodier if that makes sense) but he came out and my eyes immeditaly started watering and i wasnting sobbing but tears were for sure falling LMAO he was so so good as well i was just in a trance watching him enjoy himself so much

chani’s dance solo was INCREDIBLE that boy can fucking dance and makes it look soooo effortless like anyone can do it but you know that’s not the actual fact, incredible energy. also chani had this go girl give us nothing energy for the concert but in the best way possible LMAO like he’s one of the few idols that can pull it off without looking like he’s being lazy, he has this like nonchalant type of dancing that is just very interesting to see and you kinda can’t stop looking at him

zuho is also a fucking star his solo was SO fun he engaged so much with the audience and you could tell how much fun he was having just being on stage and being able to share his song with fans. i think he was the one that engaged the most with the crowd and that’s saying a lot since all of them engaged SO much.

putting sanghyuk and jaeyoon together because they gave me similar vibes solos wise, they both sang ballads and they were both just, incredible, genuinely incredible, both of their voices are so sweet and so suited for ballads, you can’t help but just look at nothing but them while they’re singing (also the girls behind us cried with jaeyoon’s solo which same girl i get you LMAO)

for all the groups songs they made an incredible job of arranging them for 6 people, but not gonna lie i did miss the other 3 a lot i wish i would’ve seen them i think it would’ve made me concert even better for me (and that’s saying a lot LMAO)

during one of the ments we noticed that some girls in fronts of us were taking pictures of someone in the audience and we were both like ??? who is it there, and trying to look as well but i was like no no i’m gonna look at the stage that’s what i paid for, and the moment i turn around i see some shenanigans were about to happen so i tell my friend look at the stage, and bam, shirtless sanghyuk in all his glory, it was genuinely kind of a shock LMAO they almost started doing a strip show like my guys please chill. so after that they did say that youngbin was in the audience, and he was where we were looking to after, and well, a bitch cried LMAO like i realized it was him and idk man, a lot of emotions youngbin means the world to me so being able to see him even in the audience was a lot (again when i say i cried i mean like, 3 tears or so) they asked him to do the sf9 greetings and it was sooo sweet, and he danced a bit of easy love

WHICH all the olders songs were sooooooooooo so fun to watch, the synergy between the audience and the members was so so good, and honestly i was pleasently surprised again when they asked us to stand up and people in my section were actually jumping up and down too and not just standing there

that brings me to the thing that i didn’t like which was the audience trying soooo hard to get their y/n moment, hwiyoung was passing by saying hello taking pics with phones at fans at the floor section all crowed towards him with their phones which made my friend and i very :// because are they there to enjoy the concert or just to get some cool pictures. a lot of phones were out and while i found it coold that they allowed that it also made me sad to see people focused on filming rather than jumping with all the encore songs that were honestly so so hyped

they finished the concert with shine together and while that’s by far one of my favorite songs ever i wish they would’ve started the encore with that one and ended it with dance with us because leaving with this kind of sad vibe felt very weird, they went from “YEAH LET’S JUMP LET’S HAVE FUN” to this very slow song and it was a bit jarring (alas i did shed a tear because i am an emotional bitch) that being said after that all the members went around saying bye and jaeyoon screamed at each section thank you without his mic which honestly felt so so genuine. i guess that’s what i felt the most with all the members, the genuine vibes of loving to be in the stage and loving to see the fans

overall it was just, so so so fun, loved that they did a ballad version of believer, now or never is still and will always be that bitch, maybe i don’t hate jungle game as much as i did before, and honestly i’m just so so happy i got the change to see them live and enjoy such a fun concert, i love them so much and idk, very very happy

[turtleblogatlast]

Leo learns something about himself 🏳️‍⚧️

Based roughly on this old post.

Bonus:

[Leo is taking the fact that he was born biologically female simultaneously very well and also not so well but overall he’s mostly coping with the fact that it was Draxum that just essentially gave him the turtle equivalent of ‘The Talk’.]

[thyinum]

Being Ukrainian in this world is like trying to build a card tower during an earthquake that just doesn't fucking stop. 

Sometimes the earthquake becomes less noticeable, and you manage to build a nice structure from the things you enjoy and keep your mental stability, but then at one moment the earthquake becomes stronger. Your card tower is now ruined, you suddenly feel a lot of rage or grief that's been building up all this time, you can't do anything because you're too overwhelmed and scared. Despite all of that, eventually you pull yourself together and start building the tower again. 

But the earthquake is still there. It is always there. It never ends and it feels like it won't ever end. People start gaslighting you that there's no earthquake or that it's not important compared to other earthquakes.

And it's a cycle I and every Ukrainian have been living in for 2.5 years now. Someone has lived in it since 2014.

I don't like to whine about it, because there are indeed people whose experience is worse than mine. But living like this is still mentally exhausting.

[ingoodjesst]

have you put the pieces together yet, detective

[deoidesign]

Thinking about vampires, death, life, and the space they occupy in between

[wingsthephoenix]

hello alternative horror tumblr. do you hear me

[canisalbus]

So i remember an ask mentioning your mortal enemy, Felis Atra and their cats, and i thought it'd be fun to draw what Felis Atra's version of your italian dogs would be.

I think they would be called Butter Knife and Flamengo! Butter Knife is not his real name, it's an nickname given by his peers because of how harmless he is. I choose Flamengo because that's the name of Vasco's rival football team here in Brazil, so i thought that was the perfect name :)

Cat Machete was slightly inspired by the Oriental Shorthair cat because of their long noses and thin head shape.

Cat Vasco was inspired by the Scottish Fold cat, because FLOPPY EARS. I gave Flamengo longer ears and orange fur to make him more like his look-alike.

The last doodle is a reference to this ask (https://canisalbus.tumblr.com/post/728923918314946560/me-i-am-machete-ear-fan-number-1-those-ears) and contains the tumblr ask stand-in dog, whose cat version was inspired by the American Curl cat! They have round ears that are slightly floppy outwards.

Final notes: I know cardinal clothes don't come in vibrant blue, but i was ADAMANT on switching Machete's and Vasco's clothing color patterns. I would draw the rest of Butter Knife's and Flamengo's clothes, but i suck at designing cool outfits.

Speaking of outfits, for Machete's iconic void outfit, i figured it would be fun to make it more baggy for Butter Knife, in contrast to Machete's, that looks very tight-fitted. I think it's cute, it kinda looks like a sweater. Also i can't imagine a Machete doppelganger without high heels boots, so those HAD to stay.

Oh, and just to be clear, i'm not like, claiming ownership of these guys or anything. I just thought it would be a fun exercise. Hope you like them!! I love your art and your characters.

.

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌

[lover-of-mine]

[goodobservationshirley]

[fictionadventurer]

I keep thinking about Lewis' review of The Hobbit, because he claimed that the main thing contemporary reviewers compared it to was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Was fantasy in that poor of a state that Alice was the closest thing they could think of? Comparing that chaotic fever dream to Tolkien's intricately crafted world? Lewis does specify that the comparison is that both books are by an "Oxford professor at play", but they're otherwise so different that putting the two in the same category baffles me.

[wyvernity]

sss day my favorite national holiday WOOOOHHHH

bonus

[delusionalbitchinthehouse]

Swiss hurt/comfort because I love him. So, so much. Featuring Dew being the absolute best.

It's a peculiar feeling, being the only multi ghoul in the Ministry. Sure, there are some who come close, like three-elemental hybrid Aurora, but Swiss remains, to this day, the only ghoul to detain control of all five elements. Well. "Control" might be a strong word.

He is good with fire, has always been drawn to this element specifically. Quickly started hanging out with the fire ghoul bunch after his summoning, feeling like he might fit in best with them. He is good, yes, but no more than that. Good. Average good. Nothing like the effortless and precise mastery of the element displayed by the fire ghouls.

Air comes relatively easily to Swiss. He has Cumulus and Cirrus to thank for that. Summoned at the same time as them, he remains very close to the girls, and spent countless afternoon practicing with them, learning how to weave breezes and gusts of wind, earning countless praises and kisses whenever he made progress. Still, Swiss has none of the girls' grace or range when it comes to manipulating their common element.

Surprisingly, he is quite good with quintessence as well. Quintessence, this mysterious, elusive element that's known to be so hard to control, somehow doesn't give Swiss as much troubles as he'd expected. In Aether's opinion, it might be that Swiss is so very curious of people, his mind craving connection, which would encourage the spark of quintessence within his grasp. But of course, because there always is a "but", Swiss is far from fully in control of it. He would never try what Aether successfully does to calm pain, soothe nerves or various other things.

When it comes to water...well. Swiss can, with a lot of focus, fuck around with weak currents, direct some droplets to splash someone in the face, or even, thanks to Rain's patient efforts, developpe small gills which allow him to breath semi-decently underneath the surface of the lake, but that's about it. Swiss, as much as he sometimes wishes he could, will never slink through the currents with the water ghouls' elegancy, silent and blending in so very well with their element.

Which leaves earth. Ah, earth. Swiss can feel it, the thrumming under his skin whenever he's surrounded by the element, in the forest guarding the Ministry's grounds or even Primo's beautiful rose garden. Yet Swiss can barely access to that power keeping itself just out of grasp, almost as if it was taunting him. No amount of time spent in the greenhouses helping Mountain, listening to his advice or copying his careful gestures can change that. But Swiss knows it's there, can feel it, and, on rare occasions, has his suspicions confirmed when flowers sprouts around his horns after being subjected to especially intense emotions.

So that is what Swiss is. Jack of all trades, master of none. And it gets to him, sometimes. He knows, realistically speaking, that people like him. That the Clergy sees him as a blessing, the Siblings are irresistibly drawn to him, that the ghouls are all over him. And yet, sometimes, he cannot help but feel like an outsider, a freak, something that shouldn't be, or at least shouldn't be that way.

It's often Dew who notices first when Swiss starts spiralling that way. Everyone always underestimates how perceptive and attentive to others the fire ghoul is, but Swiss has been on the receiving end of his quiet comfort enough times to know Dew cares, a lot. And somehow, when Swiss is overwhelmed by the objectively speaking irrationnal feeling of not belonging, Dew always manages to reassure him.

Maybe it's because the fire ghoul remembers his water days, when he struggled to connect with his element and felt like a disappointment, even with Mist always fiercely supporting him and expressing her pride in what Dew grew to become. In any case, he always find the words to appease Swiss, or, when words aren't what he needs, what to do to make him feel better.

A hand slipping in Swiss', an arm slung around his shoulders. A press of forehead against his, a cheeky kiss at the corner of his mouth. Sometimes, understanding that all Swiss needs is to be smothered with affection, Dew simply throws himself at the multi ghoul and wrestles him onto his back with surprising strenght before calling for a cuddle pile.

It's harder to feel like an outsider when your packmates are all purring and making happy noises on top of you.

[biscuitscheesebiscuits]

Reading physical copies of The Queen's Thief series for the first time and realizing that the maps in them are inconsistent???

[archersartcorner]

Tit Barry Syx. Sorry, hold on - Big Barry Tits. Okay hold on one more try. Big Titty Syx - okay you get the point.

Bonus:

^ Definitely the galaxy’s Most Straightest Man

[my-catsface]

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.

That movie will have none of that for me.