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syra-mfs · 2 months ago

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I have kinda this stuff by resources + I had been on Minecraft fandom since 2011-2013. Most of this stuff mentioned are real by an older player. 👌

That's how I made my Herobrine desing!

OH MY GOD HIII anothr herobrine fan!! can you actually tell a few fun facts + your sources?? It's been so hard finding anything else besides the original story or the notch's brother thing (which is kinda dumb imo)

hiii lovely to hear from you anon!! o/

REAL ANSWER:

first things first: I'm so sorry to let you down but I did mean fun facts for my intepretation of herobrine specifically (i.e. headcanons). that's on me I should have worded it more clearly. sorry :[

best I can do is talk about characterization the community at large seems to agree on, where it differs from "canon", and where I think those traits came from; and how I try to tie those concepts into my own ideas. hopefully you can still get some value out of this post even though it's not what you were looking for <3

(FAIR WARNING THIS GOT LONG AS FUCK BTW)

When I want a refresher on the ancient texts, I usually just reread the Herobrine page on the Minecraft wiki, which has a solid, very well-sourced overview of how the 'pasta was developed and then spread like wildfire. I was GOING to talk about how interesting it is that there's two archetypes that most interpretations of Herobrine can be sorted into: the more passive and creepy one, and the actively dangerous one; but while rereading his wiki page to write this response, I discovered that the Minecraft wiki has already acknowledged and discussed it! So just read the wiki's take on that instead, because it's good to have in mind for everything I'm about to say.

According to the wiki, the original creepypasta and the Brocraft streams are considered "canon", because they came first and were so instrumental to how the character is perceived, and everything after that is considered a fan-made adaptation or variation. I disagree with this a little bit, because I think it's worth noting that many things widely associated with Herobrine, have fuck-all to do with the original 4chan post or subsequent streams. The community perception of him as evolved long past the original "canon".

And the thing is, I don't think that perception is necessarily any more or less canon than the 4chan post or Brocraft streams. The Brocraft streams that helped launch Herobrine as a concept into the stratosphere weren't involved with the original post at all, they just thought the idea was cool and ran with it. Even the very post that dubbed him Herobrine was based off spooky stories about a white-eyed entity that were already being passed around the forums. My point is that from day one, Herobrine has been a creepypasta made not just by one person, but by the entire community. It makes him feel much more like a real urban legend than just a story someone else wrote, and I think that feeling helped contribute to his cultural impact.

Brief aside: I think it's really cool that the stories about an unnamed entity with white eyes came first, and then someone put a name to it. It feels so fitting, it's almost like we all started noticing his presence together, and one person managed to uncover his name :]

The following is a list of characteristics that the community at large agrees represent Herobrine. I see these in almost every interpretation of him, across both the stalker and vengeful archetypes outlined by the wiki. Points in italics originate from "canon".

watching players [4chan post and Brocraft streams]

building/carving out structures with no discernible purpose, stripping trees of their leaves [4chan post]

a literal ghost in the machine [4chan post and Brocraft streams]

seen as a glitch or virus of some kind [related to the above, also perpetuated by Mojang via "-Removed Herobrine" in patch notes]

association with gold/netherrack/redstone torches [originated from first known Herobrine mod (a server plugin), further perpetuated by that really popular Herobrine mod DanTDM reviewed in 2014]

association with redstone traps [also originated from that popular mod (to my knowledge), and in my opinion somewhat perpetuated by the game itself by the generation of man-made structures that contain traps but no explanation for their existence lol]

some level of control over/communication with mobs [unsure of origin, possibly that Herobrine mod in conjunction with YouTube machinima and animations?]

can fly and often floats instead of walking [likely popularized by YouTube machinima and animations, artists on tumblr seem to unanimously agree on this point]

As you can see, the community perception of him takes inspiration from much more than just the first conceptualizations of the character. (Though of course this is just my perception of the community perception, so maybe I just live in an echo chamber and I'm way off!)

Isn't that just so fucking cool?! I find it so fascinating how these throughlines developed from an innumerable amount of fanworks across multiple art forms. I find it so interesting what features are universally agreed-upon to represent Herobrine, and which ones are specific to an individual perception of him.

LESS BRIEF ASIDE: You'll notice how, despite this "fact" being a prominent part of the canon, I haven't mentioned him being Notch's dead brother. The reason for this is simple: I agree with you in that it's fucking stupid. I mean, it makes sense in the context of the original post—it's a creepypasta, you gotta tie in a mysterious, tragic death related to a relevant figure somehow. But removed from that context, like most interpretations of Herobrine are going to be, and it just makes the viewer kinda roll their eyes (especially since Notch hasn't even been involved with Minecraft for like a fucking decade now). TL;DR= good for pasta, bad for character.

But hey, that's the beauty of something that is both an urban legend and "a character". Every version of Herobrine to exist is essentially that person's OC anyway, so you might as well tweak canon for a better character/story. Also, he's public domain forever, and that's beautiful in of itself 😌

LENGTHY ASIDE: I also want to spend a second discussing 2019 mineblr and the popular interpretation of Herobrine at the time; because that's something I was personally there for, and I think it's neat how different that characterization was compared to those around it.

During the 2019 mineblr resurgence, Herobrine seemed just as popular in that corner of Tumblr as he'd been on YouTube 5 years prior. At the time, mineblr seemed to agree on a few key traits that separated this characterization of Herobrine from most others, namely:

trans gay icon

not merely a neutral observer at best and aggressor at worst, but rather benevolent, or at least misunderstood

ASIDE-CEPTION: Logically, I know the idea of trans gay Herobrine most likely would have happened on Tumblr at that time anyway. But for fun, I like to think it was jumpstarted entirely by the trans icon herobrine skin and his more popular sequel, trans icon herobrine but with better pants.

The idea of him being Notch's brother was usually ignored altogether, and when it was acknowledged, it was to present Notch as the villain—a complete reversal from the roles given to them by the community in 2014. That's because by this time, Notch had gotten... Weird on Twitter. Like, QAnon weird. So, many of the people who had grown up with this game and the cultural movement around it felt betrayed (of course this can also be attributed to his lack of involvement with the game, but have you noticed that no one calls enchanted golden apples "Notch apples" anymore?).

I actually think this factored into Herobrine's resurgence in popularity on mineblr, and the perception of him being more misunderstood than truly malevolent; because the wider Minecraft community had slotted him into this like, "anti-Notch" role for so long, if Notch turned out to be awful, then obviously the anti-Notch had to be good, right? But I digress.

ANYWAY. It's very interesting to me that Herobrine the creepypasta is easily defined; I mean, just look at the original 4chan post. There, done. You defined it. But Herobrine the character is not. In fact, by nature, he is almost undefinable. Which is itself a trait I try to incorporate into my own characterization (example: he doesn't consider himself a specific species, he's known only as a "highly autonomous cosmic anomaly". that's as specific as he can get), because I think that feeling of ambiguity (and on a slightly less meta level, that feeling of not knowing what the fuck this thing is or what it might do) is essential to the "feeling" of Herobrine.

So, the question isn't what makes Herobrine (character) Herobrine, because that is, and always will be, impossible to answer. Instead the question becomes, what makes him Herobrine to you? What bundle of concepts do you find the most compelling? I can't answer that for you, but I can answer it for myself.

Other than what I've already discussed, my #1 external source of inspiration for this character is... the scene in ElementAnimations' An Egg's Guide To Minecraft where they uncover this ancient, forgotten temple and accidentally free Herobrine/fail to stop a summoning ritual (don't rember the specifics). I was like, 11 years old and that shit never left me. That feeling of coming across something so much older than anything you've ever known, so much larger than yourself, and then somehow it becomes tangible and real, is fucking unparalleled. Gravity Falls is also a big inspiration here, specifically the sense of mystery and tension and awe in the last scene of the last episode of S1, and the entirety of "Not What He Seems" (EPISODE OF ALL TIME. OH MY GOD). That's what I want to capture.

(Unfortunately much of We Are The Daylight was written when I was 15, and 15yo me did not capture it successfully. But hey, it can only go uphill from there!)

So that's the core idea behind of my interpretation of him. It's also important to me that I tie in not just canon but community concepts of what represents Herobrine into my own characterization. And how do I go about doing that?

A lot of my ideas stem from the idea of him being a glitch in the system. Because I write Minecraft from the perspective of it being a real world populated by real people, just one that happens to operate on what we see as video game logic, that would make a glitch into kind of a cosmic horror in-universe, right? Something that breaks the laws of reality as we know it? And once I made that connection, so many cool art opportunities opened up to me... I would love to go into detail on what that means for his psyche and how he sees the world but that is NOT within the scope of this response I fear. I will say that he can suck all the light out of a room (based off lighting errors in-game) and make human eyes appear out of the shadows on all the walls (based off the scary gif linked to Brocraft viewers after the Herobrine stream) <333

That's also why I write him as a shapeshifter, he just folds his consciousness into a bundle of energy and picks a pre-existing form (i.e. in-game model) to manifest. The form that he takes most often, which is humanoid with pointed ears, sharp fangs, claws, and a glowing blue tongue (and sometimes a tail) is essentially a mob that he coded in for himself. And yes, he loses his grip on his physical form when overwhelmed, and yes, it looks fucking awesome. I ❤️ THE MANDELBROT SET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I first started writing him in 2019, I made him trans basically just because, y'know, it was the thing to do. Everyone else was doing it and who was I to dissent? But as my understanding of his character, and my own trans-ness (I don't use any and all pronouns for cis reasons!) developed, it became a fundamental part of his psyche I can't imagine him without. Post-transition, his gender identity isn't really important to him/something he thinks about most of the time, but the experience of being trans is something that never leaves.

can't tell you how I tie in the ghost in the machine concept because it's tragic backstory you haven't unlocked yet. soz. I can tell you that my design for him isn't just stylization; he picked such a desaturated skintone on purpose because he liked how subtly off-putting it made him look :D

In personality, my interpretation is generally a distant observer who only gets up close to fuck with people lmao. He finds a lot of joy in creeping others out or just making them jump, which is inspired partly by his jumpscare-esque appearances in the Brocraft streams, and on a more meta level, partly by his status as a viral hoax irl. It seems only fitting, right? It also depends on when in the timeline we're talking about, because his behavior changed as he. y'know. changed as a person.

man, almost everything else I was gonna say is related to the fucked up way he perceives reality, which would need to be explained first. uhhh he can control non-sapient mobs (such as animals or undead) by manipulating their pathing, but it takes some focus. I made the leafless trees a spontaneous, involuntary response to strong emotion (usually, but not always, fury or frustration) because it's fucking cool. He's associated with the Nether because he learned to swordfight from piglins and spent a lot of time there, and picked up some of their culture in the process too. He likes building traps because he's interested in redstone devices in general; and he especially likes technical contraptions that do something insane that shouldn't be possible (à la Docm77 and the Hivemind).

I hope that was at least entertaining/interesting for someone, if not as informative as anon requested. I'm sorry I didn't have what you wanted, but I thank you for the opportunity to talk about how fucking cool I think this community-made character is (and about my own take on it) :] <3

JOKE ANSWER:

wow I'm so glad you asked!! I get all my information from the critically-acclaimed We Are The Daylight, widely regarded to be awesome and cool and sexy and objectively correct all the time. no relation haha lol

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