minecraft musings

i watch a lot of youtube. in fact, i watch way too much youtube to the point where i think i might be clinically addicted to it. these past few months, though, i’ve seen a very strange string of words pop up time and time again all over my front page. at first, it was only in the title of a couple of videos, but like many things, the term gradually became more and more prominent until it became a veritable touchstone of our cultural zeitgeist. that term is “two week minecraft phase.”

there are a countless number of videos about the two week minecraft phase, ranging in topic from “why it happens” to “how to make it last forever” to “why it’s not a big deal.” of course, like all social phenomena, i don’t think it applies to everybody and i don’t think it’s a hard-and-fast rule. unlike many social phenomena, though, i think it’s observable and has some substance to it.

i was only invested in minecraft very casually until the nether update release cycle (2020) and i didn’t quite start spending many of my whole days at a time playing minecraft until around when the wild update (2022) dropped. for a while there, i could reasonably say i underwent a few two-week minecraft phases. you know, servers we all decided to stop playing on, single-player worlds i’d abandon after getting elytra, group projects that would come and go…

from what i can find, people started talking en masse about the two-week minecraft phase during the trails and tales update (2023) release cycle. i might have seen a couple video titles about it scroll by in my peripheral around that time, but i didn’t really start thinking much about it until all the tricky trials (2024) hype got my youtube homepage back into the swing of showing me minecraft content.

until then, the idea to motivate me to play minecraft–besides short-lived SMPs with friends–was with a challenge. obviously, the most trendy thing about minecraft for a while were the “i survived 100 days” videos, and i wanted to follow suit by doing my own silly challenges! for example, spending my time in a skyblock world, getting all the achievements in an old version, superflat worlds, desert-only worlds, big dripleaf superflat presets… you name it, i probably did it.

once the first tricky trials snapshots started coming around, i wanted to play some minecraft to honor it. i was pretty sure none of my friends would’ve cared to download a new version of the game before it’s even stable just to play on one server, so i made a single player world. what would this world come to be, though? if i were a couple years younger, the answer would have been something like “try to survive in a world with a trial chamber and nothing else” or “make a superflat preset with tuff as the ground block,” but… i thought about it for a second.

as much as i don’t think the best selling video game of all time needs much more praise, minecraft is… more freeing, satisfying and all-encompassing as a creative experience than any other video game i’ve ever played. i always loved testing my skills with it, but… wouldn’t it make more sense to try and use it as a creative vessel every now and again? if i’m filling my free time with it, why would i fill it with a challenge–with work and marked effort–if i know i have nothing to prove?

that’s where the tonilands came from. technically, it was still a challenge because i set the world to hardcore mode, but i’d gotten so used to hardcore mode by that point that it was barely noticeable. after so many challenges, it gets a bit easier to survive! this world was… not meant to be a challenge, though. instead of going into it with thoughts of proving myself, i went into it with a plan of… allowing myself to relax. i let myself take some time to get my bearings before i went through the progression rigamarole and got better tools.

two things set this world apart for me: setting generation to “large biomes” and using a seed map to find a seed that would spawn me in the middle of a relatively underutilized or rare biome. in this case, i chose a badlands-centric seed! choosing large biomes would ensure that i had to set up shop and spend the majority of my time in this biome while also having the ability to leave if i needed resources. that would give me more of an incentive to build sustainable and renewable infrastructure!

clearly, the idea worked pretty well, because now i have a lovely little orange world with a few more builds on it than is shown in this screencap! (this was actually fairly early on in the world’s history.) the irony, though, is… i spent exactly 2 weeks and 4 days on this world before switching gears and starting another challenge world.

the hard truth to swallow is that things just get boring sometimes. anything appealing on the surface will lose its luster and become a bit at some point. an easier truth to swallow is that some things are more inherently boring than other things! and while… yes, i did brush off the tonilands pretty quickly–and no, i haven’t played on it since–i’m never gonna say it was a boring 2 weeks and 4 days. (well… at least, it wasn’t boring in the sense that i was unentertained and i found any of it pointless. moreso boring in the sense that i was drilling holes in the world and mining for precious valuables.)

a few more minecraft experiences later–some, of course, lasting longer than others–we arrive at the present day. not dissimilar to the position i was in when i started the tonilands, i find myself staring down the barrel of the beginnings of a brand new minecraft update. i will admit, i’ve already tried a couple times to make some fun out of the pale garden. i truly believe that i could! it’s itching me that i haven’t used this amazing new wood type to build something i find impressive or appealing. it looks like the type of material i could use to make something that seriously speaks to me!

my most obvious ideas on how to get there, though, aren’t quite fully baked. i could definitely start playing on the tonilands again, very lightly use chunkbase to find the location of a pale garden (because they’re extremely rare) and procure some saplings to conserve back at home, but… i get the feeling what i have in mind for a pale-oak-centered build specifically wouldn’t quite fit with the tiny, silly builds in the middle of the tonilands.

i’ve attempted to survive in a single biome pale garden world a few times by now, but unfortunately, the only naturally available food is rotten flesh. let’s hope that changes soon! ironically enough, i also looked for pale gardens in the seed for my old 1.19 hardcore world (that i still haven’t died on and i’ve kind of just neglected playing for a while) and i found a couple pretty big ones… absurdly close to spawn. so close, in fact, that they’re only in places that i already generated in 1.19! thus, that’s off the table.

that all said, getting sad about not having any food in the pale gardens and not being willing to risk my life for nether food on hard difficulty–while dying to stupid shit in the game regardless–reminded me of something very specific. i wrote and produced a tiny, silly minecraft song three and a half years ago (holy shit…) called underwater dungeon. it spins a tale regarding how i’m really not as fantastic at survival minecraft as i make myself out to be, as well as how i’m hopelessly unable to admit it.

to put some things into perspective, though, i wrote this song before minecraft 1.17 came out. the number of hours i’ve actively spent playing the game since then is almost certainly in the quadruple digits by now. i’d like to make myself believe that my survival minecraft skills have improved a little bit in that time. that said… i think this song i spent about 10 minutes writing might still be a bit more meaningful to me than i would’ve expected.

for context, underwater dungeon is based on a true story. it was a story of love, loss and coping that i endured on a modded-world-generation minecraft server sometime in the first half of 2021. i was crossing a vast sea on a boat and my eyes beheld what seemed to be a sprawling and exciting dungeon sequestered into the ocean floor. i hopped out of my boat, dug into the dungeon and was met with more monsters than i was equipped or skilled enough to do away with. i died shortly after, losing all my stuff to the unfamiliar and uncharted underwater dungeon. i never went on the server again.

time really is a flat circle, isn’t it? i just think it’s a bit poetic that my own answer to my problems lied under my nose the whole time and took me full-circle to a simpler time. i should stop playing minecraft on hard mode, because i believe i’ve proven myself “worthy of the challenge” a number of times by now. i’ve gone hundreds and hundreds of days in vastly differing but similarly bone-chilling realms without perishing a single time!

minecraft is not just a video game, but a creative tool in and of itself that deserves to be treated like one, and i know that because playing with “keep inventory” turned on or using a fullbright resource pack… are the same as tracing. parts of the extended playerbase are quick to shout “it’s cheating and nothing more!” because it all comes back to the idea that nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain and difficulty. which… yeah, wasn’t teddy roosevelt’s best quote ever, but i digress. i could go through every way in which it’s horrible, but why would i do that when i can just conclude that like all social phenomena, i don’t think it applies to everybody and i don’t think it’s a hard-and-fast rule.

i know my experience isn’t universal, and that makes me… unbelievably happy. one person who’s always inspired me to keep playing minecraft (and to keep creating in general) even when it gets tough is the amazing ph1lza. it’s fairly well known at this point that this man maintained one of the most unbelievably impressive minecraft worlds of all time for five years in hardcore mode. i believe many other hardcore youtubers (possibly including the man himself) have gone on record saying they play in hardcore because they find it makes their world feel more special, knowing it could be stripped from them at any point.

it might have taken a second for me to come to terms with, but as much as i’ve stated i don’t like being vulnerable on the internet, a comforting thought comes to mind. at the end of the day, even through all of my struggles through the brambles of learning confidence and self-esteem… the art i sit down and dedicate time to creating feels special to me regardless of its mortality. what’s comforting about this is that i see it as a sign of maturity; i see it as a sign of growth. maturity and growth, as fantastic as they are, tend to remind me of my own mortality. that’s another essay for another time, though.

my point is this: playing minecraft on easy mode, or using a seed-map to find rare structures or biomes, or after turning on a “keep inventory” rule, or anything like that… isn’t cheating. although i’m not naming names, a lot of terminally online numbnuts will try to convince you about the case. cheating inherently implies a lack of honesty: a lie by omission. when it comes to this game, if you are telling the whole truth, then you’re not cheating. in fact, i think most of life is the same way, so don’t hold yourself back! ♥