#How to Parent like a Piglin

[aelincreativ]

How to Parent like a Piglin: Chap 9

Technoblade is Tallulah's parent AU with a lot of fluff and a big what if where I throw the anarchist bourgeois pig in a monarch's outfit at the Federation and watch what happens.

[datapacks]

Snapshot 25w02a

Mostly just summarizing this from the article on minecraft.net, but:

New pigs. There are now cold and warm pigs!

New "pink petals" style blocks, for leaves on the ground as well as a new "wildflower" yellow flower.

Leaf piles can be made from smelting leaves, and can be used as a fuel source.

All leaf blocks now generate particles under them.

Yes that includes, for some reason, spruce leaves. They all also share a texture, tinted differently based on biome tint, seemingly.

The new pigs babies are based on the parents, not the biome.

Lodestones have a new crafting recipe, using iron instead of netherite! This makes them much more obtainable.

New sounds for iron blocks.

Zombified Piglins nerfed for farms heavily, must be killed by players.

Farm animals can spawn in badlands!

Bubble columns more optimized.

The pale gardens are now larger, and can generate woodland mansions!

Creakings can be nametagged, making them persist during the day! Apparently, if they're stuck with a player, they will still despawn, as well as if they get too far away from their heart, but still a nice change. Nametagged creakings are still resistant to damage and such too.

Creaking Hearts now have a new texture during the day.

The creaking heart & eye blossoms now use fixed time, as opposed to being effected by the weather / dimension brightness.

These are all the changes that most players will be excited about, but I'm going to put the more technical stuff that I usually focus on in a readmore so I can get this out sooner!

THE PIGS ARE DATA-DRIVEN. YOU CAN ADD YOUR OWN PIGS.

Tamed animals can now be owned by other entities than players.

Text components now use SNBT instead of JSON. This might have some neat ramifications, but we'll see. Might make text components more powerful, like variable text in books.

Fill / Clone / Setblock commands can now surpress block updates, giving massive new options to builders who use commands.

New "weapon" item component, makes making weapons easier than before, + shield negating can be applied to any item now with this data change.

"potion_duration_scale" component, which heavily hints that we may finally be getting data-driven potions very soon. This is basically how the game would normally handle "extend this potion, make it shorter if its a splash potion, shorter even more if its a tipped arrow"

"tool" component, allows players to specify whether a tool should be able to break blocks in creative mode, like how swords cannot.

[charlybvnny]

Michael's final moment

A Michael_Beloved animatic about his final moments, because he is an underappreciated character, and has so much potential.

A ramble about him under cut.

TWs:

- bugs

- bones

- talk of death and decay

- I think there is a slight flash but I'm unsure? So flashing warning just in case

michael is an underated npc / character and people should utilise his dynamic more often. i will explain:

he's stuck, he has nothing to do, nothing he can do. because he's an npc, his life will never begin because he's not living. people overlook him and don't pay him mind, his own parents don't pay attention to him. it's not that they don't love him, they do, they just don't have the time nor ability to look after him, atleast not properly.

people treat him more like a glorified pet because he is still an npc, no one should, realistically, love him like a son, at most he is a pet. but he's one of, if not the only, npc on the dsmp that is canonically considered a son, not a pet. shroud is technically a pet, yoghurt is i think considered fundy's son? but if you check on the wiki, michael is the only one of actual listing and not just an addition of another. michael is his own person, and yet is still an npc. he can't do anything, and yet is his own someone. he is someone, not someone's addition. he's not tubbo's son, or ranboo's son, he is michael.

and yet he's still stuck in his room. still stuck having to go along with other people's wills. because he is code. he can't do anything but follow his code.

and so with the charactarization of michael, making him his own person, it allows him the ability to think, yet not do. "i think therefore i am" and yet he can't think. not actually. he still has to follow his code. if you hit him, he must attack back, its in the code. so you can characterize and personalise michael all you want, give him hopes, and dreams, give him depth, but in the end, he is an npc. he can't leave his room, he can't make friends, he can't go explore. he is stuck in his room. just like how rapunzel is stuck in the tower.

in this essay i will explain why michael's song is "when will my life begin"-

[shots fired i bleed out as someone drags my body away]

Ok but in actuality, the rotting aspect of Michael is so great for potential in fics;

michael can be used in fics and i'm heartbroken people don't. see, michael is a zombie piglin, he is quite literally rotting. he is a sick, dying child of neglect and no one uses this to their advantage. do no fic writers see the potential devestating catastrophe of michael? how angsty it could be if he's used right?

I like Michael, can you tell 🥺

And you don't even need him to be a piglin in fics either, he could be a dying plant, or an injured yet beloved pet. He has potential please people listen to me 😭🙏

You can make him disability rep, please I love disabled characters in fics (if done right) and there's so much potential here.

I was messaging my friends while making this too, and I was shattering their very souls with my angst, and the thing is, you can shatter your friend's souls with angst too! Please use Michael, even if he's just a side character in your fic, if you got Tubbo, or Ranboo, please include Michael in some form, like a melted candle, or a torn doodle.

Anyways continuing on with angst!

They say the eyes are the route to the soul, and I like to think piglins only die when their souls are damaged. Only when their light fades.

Michael's usually twinkling eyes, now dull and a sullen blue, holding nothing but pure sorrow, and childish hope now shattered. His parents aren't coming. No one is coming. He's going to die alone. He's going to die, without embracing his parents one last time.

His body so decayed and rotten his ribs are fully out, spiders finding a new home where his once beating heart of love was, and yet he allows them to stay, allowing the bugs to feast on his carcass, because it's something. It's another being simply touching him. And so he lets the bugs eat his dying self, because at least it's something, a distressing comfort to accompany his final moments.

He's not alone. Not yet. It's fine. He's not alone. He won't die alone.. he thinks with his last thoughts, salty tears prickling his eye as he tries to comfort himself, just as his parents would if they were here.

I hope you cry, I hope you sob, I hope those silvery drops of sorrow prick your eyes and roll down your cheeks. If you are angry at me, perhaps you should scream into the bottomless pit of my soul, maybe a shard of guilt might scream back one day. Today's not the day though.

[aenor-llelo]

Orphan’s Path is one of the most beautiful pieces of fanfiction I’ve ever read- it just /perfectly/ encapsulates the boundless creativity that was my favorite thing about the MCYT fandom. Beyond just the storytelling though- the WORLDBUILDING just astounded me. From the more story-based beats like Sky and Moon’s Landing, Lagos’s splintering, and the Manifold, to the more general MC worldbuilding like totems of undying being created via ritual, pearleye, and ofc all the new months and the longer years and the server mechanics!

There are so many worldbuilding aspects I look at and go “i don’t know how they came up with this idea but i am going to aspire to reach for this level of creativity every time I try and tackle Minecraft as a setting.” I’m sure having multiple heads to put together for ever-fresh concepts really helped too!

I was wondering- did you have any sort of..personal guidelines or jumping-off-points as to how to approach integrating things into the Orp universe? Questions you’d ask yourselves or a theme to keep in mind with each new feature you figured out? Because I’d be delighted to be able to create with the same spirit y’all did. It’s inspired me ever since I first read Orp, and I think I’ll always look to it as an example of how much you can do when you’re handed a few pieces of lore and are determined to carry it all the way home.

a lot of what you're describing for how i approach worldbuilding boils down to "yes, and?" like taking even the most innocuous offhand stuff and deciding to find ways it does work. accepting it as true in some form and figuring out how this affects other things.

and the most important thing is you have to be willing to do this even with ridiculous shit. because all jokes come from something real, and you gotta not be embarrassed about writing a story or thinking about something stupid. be willing to look at something ridiculous and go "why ISN'T this stupid" first, "why IS this stupid" second. sometimes, it really can't be anything but stupid! but if you let a silly element breathe, that's where you can find a certain meat to a story that sometimes doesn't exist anywhere else.

fear is the mind killer. cringe is also the mind killer. you gotta shank any sense of shame or embarrassment that can come with engaging the premise YOU decided to create and explore, and a huge part of that is acknowledging the implications of seemingly (or genuinely) unserious elements of something at face value. writing off a character's silly name, goofy theme song, or meme humor is easier on yourself, sure, but it's so much more interesting in the long run if you don't. the absurdity of a setting is part of the setting! don't pretend it isn't!

you CANNOT get "piglin family units dictate the societal structure of the nether" in orp without first accepting "orphans killed my parents".

[nomsfaultau]

[Mandatory Family Reunion Philza: “First, I would like to apologize. I did not foresee how badly the testimony [in which Philza hired actors pretending to be Techno's abusive criminal parents to testify against him, triggering him to the point of questioning his own sanity, in an attempt to prove Philza right about xy&z] would impact you, especially after being forced to relive what those monsters did to you. I realize everything feels very uncertain for you right now. But the Piglins really did reveal their involvement with the Nether at our dinner together, remember? We were both there. Can’t you trust that at least?”

Techno: “They said– no. Be-be-because. No, you hurt th- the Piglins.” And it almost sounds like a question, wild hope tangled with harrowing fear. 

Only a moment does Philza toy with the decision of convincing Technoblade the torture of the Piglins wasn't real. Wouldn't it be kinder, if the thought distressed him so? But no. Philza is merely trying to help his son, and would never exploit his mental illness like that.]

I hate him so so so much oh my GOD. pHiLzA woUld nEvER eXPloiT His mEnTAL iLLneSs BRO SHUT TF UP YOU CAUSED THAT MENTAL ILLNESS.

[galactic-mayhem]

ok now that ive had time to collect my thoughts here is my review of the minecraft movie. spoilers kinda but who cares honestly

- this shouldve come out in 2010

- jack black plays himself

- the characters arent characters and none of the dialogue is comparable to that of real people

- jack black and jason mamoa have gay sex halfway through the film

- also, JB and JM are the only people who actually want to be there (or at least they're the only people who want to entertain the idea of it) and it shows

- why did we need the piglins to be villians when illagers literally also exist in the movie and are shown to be villainous

- also, why is there a gay piglin

- the theme "creativity is good and you shouldnt be ashamed to be creative" is a decent enough message but this movie doesnt make that theme worthwhile at all despite it shouting it at you every chance it gets

- the fnaf movie did the trope of "kids lose their parents and the older sibling has to take care of the younger one" better because there were actual stakes to it outside of the a plot

- the entire movie happens in the course of a single day

- the transition between in game noises and stock sfx is jarring at best

- jack black has not one but three musical numbers, two of them come completely out of left field

- also, jack black's quirky "son of a biscuit"-style censorship never stops being out of left field

- dance party ending

- the mcyt cameos are not well planned at all

- enchanted golems are cool and should be added to the base game

- too many checkovs guns that go unfired (the literal nighttime, evokers, real world ingredients in crafting, diamonds and redstone kinda, many more)

- the movie refuses to decide on a main character

- the sister doesnt do anything at all

- to go even further than that, the female duo gets almost zero screen time by themselves when the male trio gets close to a half hour (likely more) on their own

- what the fuck was that exposition my friends and i were crying laughing about it

- green screen work is bad and obviosuly bad

- the only two ost tracks in the movie was an orchestral arrangement of Minecraft c418 and pigstep

- we gotta stop with the all 80s music movie osts. it worked for fnaf because fnaf is meant to be anachronistic and "talking in your sleep" gets used as a leitmotif, minecraft doesnt even attempt that

- we never hear about the end but steve has at minimum 3 elytras

- no jokes about any actual game mechanics

- the movie isnt even really about minecraft at all

- apparently charlie moistcritical said this movie could be a minecraft tutorial, hard disagree, this movie teaches nothing about how to play minecraft

- the c plot is a middle aged woman trying to get with a villager

- the villian's backstory is she lost a talent show. that's it. its also when we hear pigstep

- i hate to keep throwing the fnaf movie comparisons but it also did the dead-end town trope better. the limitations of living in bumfuck nowhere idaho are kinda sorta mentioned but in a tell-not-show way

- none of the jokes are funny for the reasons they want to be

- its an entire two hours long

- post credits scene introduces alex and nothing else

- no herobrine

- the literal children left disappointed

If you're gonna see this movie, do what my group and I did and sneak people into the theater. The film is not worth the movie ticket cost to see.

[splintergirl13]

So anyways I'm sure SOMEONE has mixed avatar the last Airbender and Minecraft before in a story right? Because i think there's literally a mod pack for it right?

Been daydreaming about it.

Aether- water because of the portal and I imagine it gets very cold up there so thinking ice and snow

Nether - fire obviously

Overworld - earth but with a focus on agriculture, mining, and construction

The end - air - teleportation is just really fast movement - flight abilities

I'm thinking both mobs and inhabitants gain these traits. Thinking like how badgermoles were the original earth benders. So sometimes the inhabitants of the world take on similar mob traits. Like people of the nether are very strong and bulky like piglin

It being more common that people are born into two lands. Kinda like bolin has lava bending in theory because his parents were fire and earth benders.

Steven Minecraft being the avatar, but because his parents come from each of the lands. Dad was a Netherborn who's parents were nether and end people. A bit of piglin and a bit of enderman in him (not that they breed with mobs they just adopt the land/mob traits) hence purple eyes and strength. Mother was of the aether and overworld descendants. And or a separate love story that Steve's grandparents were someone who fled the aether and fell in love with someone on the oberworld. But also Steve not feeling like he belongs anywhere because he's a little too much of each world

Herobrine is a child of the void. An outsider, adopted by the realms as a watcher. Mutilated against his purpose by the aether and cursed. But he knows he must have a little nether in him because he can control fire very well. And perhaps a little end?

Alex watches over Steve as he grows. She's a daughter of the overworld and the end. Meaning she can do sand bending or create a big old dust storm or tornado.

The aether being the 'and then everything changed when the aether attacked' kinda situation where they think they are superior so they want to wipe out the other nations

But anyways herobrine grabbing Steve one day to take him away and Alex is like dude what the heck he's not ready! And herobrine being like they're going to blow up this village right now we gotta MOVE and Steve being like first off how do you two know each other and Secondly who is this guy and Alex what do you mean not ready!?

And herobrine trying to accelerate his training. As he only has mastered earth bending at this point and hasn't really even tried the others. The two of them aren't positive he can do other bending but Herobrine says there's some sort of prophecy and Steve perfectly matches it. Which leads to good conflict later as Steve can be like you got the wrong guy! And then immediately bends something he hasn't don't before like air. And Alex and Herobrine smiling wide and being like nah you're it. But Steve still doubting himself until he can bend everything.

So Alex is like "we aren't sure if you're the chosen one but we're willing to stake our lives on it"

"Why do you think me?"

"Your eyes mostly." Herobrine said, bringing his white voids in closer with a smirk. He could feel the heat coming off of the other. "Us weird eyed people have a lot of secrets"

And of course because it's me Herobrine and Steve fall in a slow burn love lmao. Alex is cautious about this happening because she knows herobrine and he's a bit of a player since he floats between worlds and Steve's very much not since he's been somewhat sheltered. Alex like no Steve. You can't fall in love with him. You just are attracted to hot danger outsider man

Herobrine teaching Steve about fire and Steve accidentally starting a small forest fire. And herobrine steps in and goes 'fire is all about... control' and they're totally about to kiss before Alex scolds them for training after dark since someone will see the fire. And herobrine is like ah another day then and Steve's like or... we can take this underground....

[emberunderscore]

FableSMP EPIC the musical AU

whole thing comes from the perspective of Midas (as Quixis specifically) being Scylla, which means Icarus has to be Odysseus, which is also fitting tbh.

this is only based on the released sagas bc i dont have the vibe of the future characters yet (i dont look at a whole lot of snippets). also dont think about any of the blood family stuff too hard - theres nothing weird dw but it just makes stuff complicated with the gods

Monsters

Scylla - Quixis Midas

The ideas of Scylla being human turned monster, Midas is human turned Quixis, which in this universe could be something of a replacement for monstrous, which also works with 

Spooky bitch Midas propaganda

Look at my edit to be even more convinced

Polyphemus - Leviathan/Vorago

Probably makes most sense with Leviathan

Instead of the parent/child relationship with Poseidon they're siblings (ocie is poseidon)

Humans/Dead people

Odysseus - Icarus

Icarus has to be Ody because of Midas being Scylla

The song Monster

The conflicts within the plot work well with Icarus’ own relationships

Eury and Ody see each other as brothers, even though it isn't’t blood. Maybe they’re not blood related in this AU

Eurylochus: Rae

Brothers!!

Rae is seen as the leader of Lodestar, which works well with Eury’s place as the voice of the crew

Penelope: Centross??

prison duo

but it actually works because Icarus would do anything for him. just look at season 3

he's probably not smart enough to be penelope but the agenda is more important than that

Telemachus: Oscar

Ik Oscar isn't Icarus' kid but he is Centross and theoretically Centross would've been the one to raise him anyway

See Legendary

Polities: Athena

Optimist

Song open arms

"everything's changed since polities"

Perimedes: Caspian

Perimedes is the one who stabs Odysseus in the back to stop him from killing Eurylochus in Mutiny

For Rae? Cas wouldn't hesitate

Tireseas: Haley

Dead prophet

who else

Ody's dead mom: Isla

Isla is Icarus' mom??? In this AU??? /s

Gods

Zeus: Fable

Orignially this was Epros but I was convinced to change it

Massive ego

Yellow

Actual reasons in this post

Athena: Enderian

This could also be fable but I dont think Icarus would defy him like how he does

Goddess of the Mind, need I say more

Aeolus: Aurelius

They have the vibes I think

Aeolus is gender and so is Aurelius

There are a lot of options I think

I like the idea of the Winions(?) being the piglins they had in their bunker

Poseidon: Ocie

Ocean

At the beginning Ocie is so ready to kill people, she does not care for human life. Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves

She would do that for Vorago

Canon compliant beef with Icarus 

Circe: Momboo

My first thought was Ven because I'm a fucking dumbass

It makes so much more sense than Ven

Plant lady, plant witch

badass

girlboss

pretty woman

Hermes: Rakai

They have the vibes

One of the very few gods to tolerate Icarus

gender

Apollo: Malitae

Apollo sounds so fruity in god games

Apollo cares most about music in god games which is a form of expression so i think it fits for Malitae to be him

Hephaestus: Nexus

In god games Hephaestus' thing is trust, he's pissed that Ody betrayed his crew

Nexus is the Goddess of Loyalty so it fits really well that she'd be upset about that

Nexus was also a knight so being a god of blacksmithing isn't too far from that

Aphrodite: Soul

Aphrodite cares about Ody's mom's broken heart

If we thing of it in the context of soulbonds it makes sense that Soul would be upset about that

Ares: Netherum

Ares is the only one in god games to match Athena's power, which checks out - major god to major god

Maybe its a bit ooc for Netherum themself

But god of destruction as the god of war. thats something

Would totally step in for Soul

Hera: Perix

In this AU we ignore family dynamics- Perix is not married

Calls Athena "baby" (kinda gay)

Fits the vibe

can you come up with a better idea? no, nor could I (credit to Sardar106 for this casting lol)

Calypso: Ven

They're so "This could never really happen but let us pretend"

"I wish we could've been something"

Look at this post (person who reblogged has better words than me go read that)

thank you for coming to my au talk. please share your own thoughts and opinions (but also remember that i am objectively correct all of the time /j)

Updated after Wisdom Saga

[lifesteal-headcanons]

Ahem here we go again. I LOVE human Clownpierce, but my other favorite headcanon is actually Piglin Clownpierce. Hear me out on this ok. Hear me out.

So back when I was a wee lad, I really liked Technoblade, and that lead to some personal headcanons of Piglin culture. The most prominent thing I ended up adding to my overall Minecraft headcanons is how Piglin naming conventions worked. Piglins tend to be named after skills, personality traits, etc. that their parent hope their children will have. Sort of like Chinese naming conventions! They also can be named after prominent physical features. That’s how they get the first part of their names. They go by that name until early adulthood, where they gain a second name, usually based on a skill and/or ability they now actually have after growing up. (If I didn’t explain this right, think of it sorta how Warrior cats get warrior names, except they never have the Kit, Paw, thing, just the prefix.)

Then of course, they go by both names combined. (EG. Technoblade would’ve been first named Techno by his parents, then he’d have gained “Blade” as a second name when he was an adult, because he was a skilled fighter. So then he’d go by Technoblade, though calling him Techno and Blade separately are still allowed)

So, obviously this was made to fit Technoblade’s name because it is somewhat unconventional compared to other peoples names, but now it makes sense in the lore in my head! But!

It also ended up working very well for Clownpierce, who follows a similar naming convention. So yeah, basically, that’s how I got to Clown being a piglin. Long story, kinda rambling, teetering on the edge of not-lifesteal-related-at-all. Sorry

-🃏Anon

.

[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.

[lynnbecks-gaming-sideblog]

Ok so I agree that the Minecraft movie looks bad. But also like almost every alternative idea I've seen including my own one feel more like fanfilm ideas than something I can imagine a major studio making. So, here's how I imagine a good (or at least not terrible) "mainstream" Minecraft movie could work (please bear in mind that I'm thinking from the perspective of what I, personally, believe a studio would approve, while also trying to make it at least somewhat Minecrafty, also sorry if this sounds bad, I'm not a writer or director or whatever):

Make it animated, obviously. Go for the Minecraft trailer style, but - and I cannot stress this enough - make it have dialogue, like yeah a movie with no dialogue might sweep the film festivals, but cinematic releases of dialogue-free movies are rare. In regards to face animation, they could just flap around the characters' mouth-pixels or whatever. No 3D modelled mouths, like I'm probably in the minority here but I do not like how Minecraft characters look with 3D modelled mouths.

Keep the isekai aspect. You can do a lot with that, especially if it has an ensemble cast (more on that further down), since you can then have some of them actually know the mechanics and have like. A character arc of teaching their parents or whatever how the game works. And there's maybe like two live-action sequences? Like one at the start and one at the end.

Make. The antagonists. Illagers. Other people have said this and I agree. It makes more sense than Piglins and also it means that the Nether could be saved for a potential sequel. However,

The movie should break away from just including stuff that exists in/works like the game, like this is the one criticism of the Minecraft movie that I 100% disagree with. Like people are like "Lol, this thing isn't in Minecraft! This isn't a real Minecraft movie!" then turn around and go "Minecraft Story Mode is the real Minecraft movie!" when like, that game has so much fucking stuff that isn't in the actual game. Let the Minecraft movie have made up stuff in it, but make it actually good made up stuff (and not like. Ghast hot-air balloons or chained buckets or whatever the Minecraft movie actually has in it). Give us whales and giant smashy-smashy Illagers and one (1) Redstone-powered mech and stuff.

I cannot stress enough. Ensemble cast. It could just be my bias but I do think it should have an ensemble cast. Like maybe two and their parent(s). Like a lot of the Minecraft Movie overhauls/preemptive rewrites I've seen are all like "it's just Alex and Steve surviving" and like. No, that would be too "boring" for a feature-length mainstream animated family film.

The soundtrack is cool cinematic covers of the Minecraft soundtrack, but specifically the more recent tracks for rights reasons or whatever.

Herobrine shouldn't be referenced.

"Defending the base" sequence during the first night in the Minecraft world, and then at some point later on there's a brief bit where all the characters are using the skills they've learned throughout the plot (e.g one of them is really good at Redstone and has set up like piston traps or whatever).

Sculk is used as a Chekov's Gun; there's a vein of it growing under the main village, and as the characters fight and defeat Illagers, it grows, and then when the protagonists are on the ropes, the sound of the Illager leader unsheathing their sword or whatever alerts an entire chain of Sculk Sensors that activates a Sculk Shrieker, which then causes a Warden to appear and save the protagonists.

I am mostly out of ideas but uhhhhh the Ender Dragon is also saved as a potential sequel thing. Ok bye.

[metfell]

yess would love to hear ur older Michael thoughts :]

to me michael grows up to be someone who is obsessed with exploring. i think being brought up in a very isolated corner of the smp with very overprotective parents would leave him in a place of wanting to know about the world but being afraid to actually step foot out into it.

i think he gets into cartography. the nether is a very confusing place to navigate and compasses dont work, so i reckon having a way to actually orient yourself in the overworld would be something he would enjoy and want to engage in more. he makes maps of the server, finds old maps from different eras, and preserves the maps found in the rubble of the old museum.

i actually headcanon him as straight and asexual. i think as he fully matures he gets ridiculously good with riptide tridents, not only because of his love of the outdoors but also because his trident doubles as a walking stick.

he never learns ender because i dont think ranboo would even know the beginnings of how to teach it to someone else, but hes fluent in both common and piglin after he starts exploring the nether.

he lives in a small house near where the community house was, a bit to the left of eret's castle down past the courthouse, on a river. he does a lot of fishing in his free time. he's not much for snow, as its way too cold for someone meant for the nether.

i think hes a bit distant with his parents, but still friendly enough with them to have a good time. tubbo and michael spend time working on his maps, with tubbo telling him stories about the server as if it were through rose-tinted lenses and brushing aside the severity of some of the conflicts as tubbo tends to do. with ranboo, michael and him mainly make conversation while he's out exploring, with the two mainly discussing whatever it is theyre currently doing at the moment. ranboo is the type to really want to connect with michael, but because he wasnt there a lot when michael was young, he doesnt really know how to, but the two of them are both giving a really honest effort.

he gets along decently well with tommy, and tommy made a special knit hat for him that covers the exposed skull half of his face. i actually imagine him going through a phase where he tries to cover up and hide the skull side of his face as much as possible, probably when he starts trying to explore the nether more. by the time he's like 21 though, hes a lot better about owning the zombie half, and has one of the piglins he meets in the nether carve "tattoos" into the bone. tubbo thinks it looks cool as shit.

[gabbyelle]

@ren-cerati You've asked me to post this so I will.

This is basically from this post and is Minecraft lore that me, @ren-cerati, @l0tu5-5t4r, and The Devil (idk their Tumblr) made.

Uhh okay so

Info:

Name: Gabi

Pronouns: She/her

Race: Human.... nothing else.

Backstory:

Shes from a long line of soldiers who aren't famous but are respected due to their efforts and the fact that they always have someone in their family serve. Her dad as a single parent since Gabis mom passed away, but when Gabi was 10 her dad had to go and serve in the war. Gabis dad left her with her maternal grandparents in a village that's very isolated.

Now Gabi is left in this village until she's fourteen and the village starts getting more rundown since people are leaving, the village is not getting any kind of help whatsoever from bigger cities nearby, and is lacking in everything.

The villagers then start to starve and get more prone to illness so Gabi decides to venture out and see if any of the bigger cities/villages nearby will help.

Shes able to convince a city nearby to help and makes her way back to her village.

But she finds it completely destroyed and everyone is dead. Gabi is able to find out that her village was destroyed in a battle between the end and nether.

She then decides to join the war, which is a challenge since she's 15, but is able to join.

Gabis had climbed the ranks pretty fast and had become what is basically a killing machine. Shes only focused on fighting others but someone was able to get close to her, the superior commander shes assigned to is basically a mentor (and father figure but she hasn't figured that out yet) to Gabi.

Everything's okay... until... plot. Anyways so yeah everything's fine for like 2 years until Gabi gets heavily injured during one of the last battles of her station.

Gabi is so injured that she's basically unable to move for a year so her superior commander decides to take care of Gabi with his wife. (Who's gonna tell Gabi that they've basically adopted her)

Gabi is able to mostly heal after almost two years, but she still has really bad chronic pain and is permanently physically disabled.

After her stay with her superior commander she decides that there is no way for her to return to either regular society or the battlefield.

So she becomes a hermit farmer, isolating herself from the world and becoming a farmer.

Gabi is pretty content with her life now, until a little piglin showed up at her door.

Heres some art my amazing, glorious, awesome, and magnificent buddy @ren-cerati did

Though the last one is mine.

Uhh she's very silly guys

Some fun facts about Gabi:

- She loves food and literally anything sweet but isn't a big spice fan.

- Some of her backstory and mostly future stuff is VERY loosely related to Chinese mythology.

- She barely ever takes care of her hair but absolutely refuses to cut it.

- Gabi sees everyone else as children and refuses to believe that Renceren and Xyneth are older then her.

- Shes illiterate she never learned how to read.

- Sunflowers are her favorite flower.

- Shes very good at cooking and really loves baking.

- Bro is very antisocial.

- A big thing that she represents is hope.

[ishika-star]

Here’s my Grapeduo swap au! I looked at these two and thought “wow, they’re actually really similar” and wanted to see how they would act in each other shoes.

(i took the pictures in the middle of night so they’re kinda blurry 😔)

Basically Purple is from the Sticks Fight Website and Green gets to have not-great-horrible-ok parents! Some notes:

Green basically has the same backstory as Purple - Navy sucks, Orchid Dandelion dies, he gets into Minecraft - but in this AU, Green gets validation and attention from his channel Greenzilla where he posts Minecraft vlogs and pranks

Purple looks at the CG for validation and compares themselves to an imaginary standard that they THINK that their friends hold them to. Purple can’t catch a break

Green still has his fishing rod and Purple has their elytra

Purple and Red are basically the Orange and Green duo in this AU. They’re each other’s ride or die and an unstoppable force in prank wars. Orange doesn’t have a BFF to have matching sunglasses with tho :(

Despite Purple’s love for causing chaos and destruction, they’re actually the most likely besides Orange to make a plan before rushing into action, much to Orange’s relief

Since the whole thing with their parents never happened, Purple would probably lean more into the chaos causing, property damaging side of them

Purple’s probably somewhat more upbeat and less anxiety-ridden while Green’s ego is 20x bigger and 20x more easier to bruise

Green is probably more prone to anger too. And has a crazy superiority complex

In AvM S1, Green is ruling the Macbook. Except the economy runs on daily MrBeast challenges for Green’s channel so the economy is crashing and everyone is miserable. He tries to steal the Dragon Egg because “I STEAL THE ENDER EGG AND BEAT MINECRAFT (SHOCKING)” would make a fire video title (also bc Green thinks that if he shows Navy this video and his channel, then Navy would actually feel proud of him. Green. Buddy. Stop trying to use your channel as a way to reach out to your absent MIA father)

then AvLoL happens and ig the only change to that would be…idk fixing that one weird plothole. Why DIDNT Purple just destroy the tower?????

I haven’t fully figured out AvM S3 but King would probably make Green think he’s the actual “ruler” bc “I CONQUERED ALL OF MINECRAFT” is way cooler then “I HELPED SOME RANDOM STRANGER CONQUER MINECRAFT”. King pretends to serve Green while planning to betray and steal the Minecraft block from him. It’s a whole thing. Green would probably some sort of cheap staff prototype while King would own the actual staff.

Very weird relationship with King and Green. Green has spent the past few with people not meeting up to his very high expectations and King (and his parents) is no exception. Except King is also the only parent-aged person he’s met in a few years so he cuts King some slack because Green WANTS King to live up to the standards he put HIS parents at. Which his pearents have not met. At all. Even if he tries to deny it. But Green is also pretty observant so he notices that some things about King doesn’t add up. But he’s kinda desperate for social interaction so he just kinda passively ignores it and stays paranoid. Also he likes the control of being King (gotta fuel the superiority complex). Ruling is fun. He probably introduced the MrBeast Challenges to the piglin for content

King finds Green and his channel a nuisance, but he also needs help finding the CG so he just deals with it. And Green is the only consistent social interaction he’s had for the past few years. Plus Green is surprisingly useful and insightful????? He would ditch the kid for a slice of pizza and a sprite tho

Idk how Noteblock Universe would go since Purple doesn’t really seem like the comforting type?? Idk I feel like this would go much more differently tho. Purple would be very direct with how they feel

…and yeah! That’s how far i’ve gotten tbh. Yay. Maybe i’ll make a more organized follow up post later

[nomsfaultau]

I hope Techno and Tommy are prepared for the baby Raveneger to hatch. New babies always make for an adjustment period. Also will the new baby think it’s siblings are food or playmates, both could be dicey.

Well, the unhatched chick is noted to be dog sized and Technoblade is able to carry it. A bit hard to gauge bc dogs notably come in a number of sizes and Piglins may very well be stronger than humans. Still, thereabout that size. Tommy at most might potentially be viewed as an ambitious feast, but I wager at least initially they are not on the dining table. Good chance they're pecked a lot. In part because they wear shinies. Likely as Chick-Chick gets older and bigger, they're solidly in the playmates range. I half suspect Techno might get imprinted on as a more caretaker role, too.

I skimmed light research and found this really cute article about chick playing eagerly explaining why baby chickens need to play and ough my heart! So cute! So yes, Chick-Chick is definitely playing a lot with Rose-Chick and Gold-Chick, especially as they get older. They do have toys, and the cliff top for running around. Tommy and Techno are also really good at preening. Admittedly closer to primate grooming, but still, lots and lots of petting.

Techno: He is SO on board for this chick. Literally melting so baby so cute. Now, while [Philza] makes it abundantly obvious he views Techno as a chick, Techno is a lot more nebulous with his found family terms. He sidesteps Tommy's demands to know if he's a kid, or brother (annoying, next question). He doesn't really see [Philza] as a father per say, at least initially thinking of him as a rival parent. Except, Techno also says: "I am NOT anybody’s father! Bruuuuuh. Do I look like parent material??" So, Techno would also be very wishiwashi about labeling his relationship to Chick-Chick.

On that note. He would kill for Chick-Chick. Techno definitely adopts a more caretaker role, super determined to help with providing food and safety and armor for them. He'll INSIST he's terrible with kids but is great at playing and Chick-Chick adores him.

Tommy: UM OBVIOUSLY that's his sibling. What else. Very initially, Tommy is over the moon because he's not the youngest anymore! But very quickly gets stressed and jealous and sleep deprived from the constant care the baby needs. Cause like. It's a nest, he can't just go to another room. Has a mini arc about feeling like he's losing attention and love less, Techno does not pick up on it AT ALL but [Kristin] straightens that out. Has lots of fun playing with Chick-Chick but as they start to grow FAST soon it gets a bit dangerous for him to play. After Tommy gets injured, Techno makes him some better armor and they try to reign in Chick-Chick's rough housing because, not a lot of space and two people that can't actually fly without their offbrand elytra, and one who is very small. Once things smooth over though Tommy is very on board with his new sibling, falling into that thing slightly older kids do where they very seriously insist on educating the baby while knowing very little. Tommy gets a bit bossy and starts 'Tommy's School for Filling Cho Brain' where he lectures on how to scam people and talking to girls.

Also, potentially Techno and Tommy could learn more of the Ravengence language as [Philza] and [Kristin] teach their chick to speak! I reckon Tommy would only pick up a few words, but Techno is enough of a try hard to get some basic stuff down. As much as his biology can allow at least, he's probably able to understand a lot more than he can say.

[foxglovewritesstuff]

the new priority // bedrock bros drabble

Summary:

Phil turned his eyes towards Tommy. “It’s pretty unlike Techno here to run away from a fight,” he explained.

“I did not run away!” the piglin man- Techno, protested. “I just had… new priorities.”

or

Tommy is in danger and scared, and he's rescued by a stranger who brings him safety in that moment and for the rest of his life.

Words: 1k

Warnings: None

The fire was warm. Tommy could feel the heat from the torch next to his head as he pressed himself against the stone wall. The guards were coming from him. All he wanted was walls around him for a night, but when he thought that, he didn’t mean the walls of the castle dungeon.

Voices echoed down the hallway. Really, if they were quieter, maybe they would’ve had an easier time catching him. Their tendency to be heard didn’t make Tommy feel any less terrified. This is who he was, and he hated it. A bird jumping at the slightest noise, ready to take off. Quick and small, always fearful of not being quick enough.

Tommy bolted. He was good at that. Running. He slipped through the doors out the side of the castle and into fresh air. The forest. It was less than a hundred metres away, he could make it. The noises of the guards chasing him grew louder, and he sprinted into the forest.

There, he could lose them. There, he could lose the hurt that chased him like the guards. There, he could lose himself.

Twigs scratched at his legs as he ran. Were they behind him? How close? He just had to run. Run, run, run, and maybe he would be far enough. He couldn’t be caught. He couldn’t.

His lungs were burning, were the footsteps he heard his own or the guards’? his legs were starting to tire, he wanted to lie down and be taken, he wanted to run far far away- he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and then it was too late. A strong arm grabbed him and yanked him behind a thick tree. Tommy almost screamed, but a hand covered his mouth. No no no no-

“Shut up kid, you’re gonna get us caught,” a gruff voice muttered. Tommy stopped struggling.

The guards grew louder, and Tommy heard them nearby. So close. He was so close to getting caught. Was he already caught?

“Where did he go?” a harsh voice said.

“Listen, kid,” the man holding Tommy breathed, “I can get us out of here, but you’re gonna have to trust me.”

Tommy nodded.

The man let go of him and stood up silently, which was impressive for his massive frame. Tommy got a good look at him for the first time, and his jaw dropped. A piglin hybrid?! This was the coolest. Well, it would be even cooler if there weren’t guards mere metres away. Long pink hair in a braid, scarlet irises, a thick red cloak. Why was he wearing a cloak that thick in this weather?

The piglin man picked up a stone and threw it impossibly far with enough force to make Tommy flinch. The guards fell for it.

“I can’t believe that worked,” the man shook his head.

“Um, who are you?” Tommy asked. “And are you a piglin hybrid? Your hair is so cool and- whoaaa…” he trailed off as he saw the axe on the man’s back.

“Okay, where are your parents?” the man asked, and Tommy scowled.

“I don’t have parents, bitch, hell if I know.”

The man opened his mouth slightly, then closed it. He nodded. “Do you need somewhere safe to stay?” he asked.

“I- yeah. Yeah, that would be nice.”

“Come with me.”

Tommy followed the piglin man for several minutes until they came to a horse tied to a tree.

“Uh, this is Steve. Steve this is…”

“Tommy,” the boy supplied.

“Tommy.” The man nodded. “Hop on.”

Tommy stared at the tall horse in front of him before lifting his leg as high as possible and shoving it into a stirrup. Wordlessly, the man grabbed him and lifted him fully on, before climbing on. He took the reins, sitting behind Tommy.

As soon as Steve started moving, Tommy let out a gasp. “Holy shit! He’s so fast! Even with both of us on!”

He felt the man nod. “Yup. I bred him to basically just be the best horse ever.”

It wasn’t exactly comfortable, Tommy was sitting forwards on the saddle, bouncing with every stride, but he could feel the warmth of the piglin man behind him, and despite speeding over the ground with a stranger, he felt almost safe.

After a long while, the horse began to slow. Snow fell gently around them, and the ground was covered in a healthy layer of it.

“Whoa! The snow! This is so cool.”

“C’mon, we need to get you to Phil. He knows how to deal with children.”

“Hey, I am not a child!” Tommy told him indignantly. He felt better, as if he had left his fears behind as Steve carried him away from them. He realized he probably should’ve been scared of the piglin man in front of him, with the massive axe strapped to his back.

The man started walking, and Tommy hurried to catch up. “Who’s Phil?”

“You’ll see.”

The man walked right up to a house- two houses attached? Tommy couldn’t tell- and opened the door.

“Hey, mate!” someone called from inside. The man waited as footsteps drew nearer.

Tommy’s jaw dropped for the second time that day. The man that appeared in the doorway had blond hair, a green and white striped bucket hat, and crow wings.

“Oh! You brought someone back!” Tommy frowned. This guy didn’t sound angry, surprisingly. “Well? Come inside!”

Tommy followed the piglin man in, and relaxed as a blast of warm air hit him. They entered a room with a fireplace and a few armchairs scattered around.

“Who’s the guest?” Phil asked, once they were seated.

Tommy looked at the piglin man. He glanced at Tommy and said, “This is Tommy. I found him getting chased down by guards at the castle. He doesn’t have… well anyone, really,” he finished, looking at Tommy again.

“No blood… you didn’t fight the guards?” Phil raised an eyebrow.

“No, we took Steve back.”

Phil turned his eyes towards Tommy. “It’s pretty unlike Techno here to run away from a fight,” he explained.

“I did not run away!” the piglin man- Techno, protested. “I just had… new priorities.”

“Thanks for saving me, big man, and bringing me here. I can leave if you’d like-”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous, you have potential, and Techno needs a new friend anyways.”

“I- really? You’ll help me?”

Techno nodded. “He asks a lot of questions, be prepared,” he told Phil.

Phil smiled. “Rest up, Tommy. Want me to show you our potions tomorrow?”

“Yes! I wanna see that axe, Techno- can I call you that?”

“Go rest, kid,” he said, but voice was fond.

Tommy grinned and pulled his chair closer to the flames in the fireplace. He was safe. He felt warm, his heart was warm. The fire was warm.