taina

i've been really into building railways in my minecraft world lately. it's such a good form of transport that i haven't used terribly much, and absolutely perfect for the short-ish distances that i'm making rail connections for so far. a few hundred blocks is easy enough to do on foot, on horseback or by boat if there's coast, but after a while it just gets tedious if you have to do the same run over and over. with rails in place, i can just hop in a cart and get up to make a cup of tea and don't have to actively do anything!

so far i haven't run into resource bottlenecks, although i'm resource-constrained on iron. i collect rails from abandoned mineshafts from time to time and occasionally craft some rails myself, and so far that's been enough.

the first section of rail is fully underground, from the cellar of my starter house to the village that i keep just slightly apart from Spawn. most of the subsequently built lines have been aboveground on elevated bridges, though the stations are underground, under the built-up areas. i'm getting to the point now that i need to start thinking about a better-organised central station at Spawn, before the underground gets too crowded.

i'd actually really like to build even more railways, but i don't have that many different places in the world yet that need to be connected. although induced demand is definitely a thing, even in singleplayer minecraft: when i build a rail line to a previously-empty place, i start spending time there and building up the area near the station. it's a good time.

minecraft has this hell-like dimension called the Nether, where iron does not occur naturally but gold ore is abundant. the Nether is inhabited by porcine humanoids called Piglins. you can barter with them by giving them gold ingots, and in return they will toss you a random item from a set list of available items. among these is iron nuggets, which is the only way (other than looting chests in Fortresses and Bastion Remnants) to obtain iron in the Nether.

it actually strikes me that it should be the other way round. the Nether's inhabitants have access to gold in their environment, but iron comes from the Overworld. so one would think it would make more sense (in terms of economical worldbuilding) to import iron and receive local gold in return. and Piglins need iron for crafting the crossbows they wield (or would need it, if they had to craft equipment instead of spawning in with it).

lore-wise, Piglins are implied to be a declining civilisation, inhabiting semi-ruined structures called Bastion Remnants. i could imagine Piglins having had access to iron in the past but not having a source of it anymore. it would seem logical for them to barter it from players, but instead i think they're trading away the little they have left. also, while gold is also found in the Overworld, it is strongly associated with the Nether, so that is why Piglins desire it.

(this is all in terms of minecraft lore. in terms of game mechanics, it makes sense for Piglins to give out iron, making it obtainable for players in the Nether.)

i don't know what it is about the "not on my christian minecraft server" meme (or just the phrase "christian minecraft server" in general) that cracks me up every time, it's just so fucking funny to me. i started Overthinking it, in particular through the lens of the Benign Violation Theory of humor (because i'm a fucken nerd and also that framework really resonates with me).

benign violation: do we need christian minecraft servers?

i think the idea of there being demand for christian minecraft servers is a benign violation of what i perceive reality to be (and therefore, funny). i interpret this to be a result of just the right combination of cultural christianity and secularisation.

on one hand, i live in a quite secularised environment, so i don't know many people who care enough about christianity to seek or create spaces devoted (pun not intended) to it.

on the other hand, both the society in which i was socialised and the regions that i tend to assume minecraft servers to primarily cater to (the Global North and particularly the usa) are so culturally christian that a specifically christian minecraft server seems superfluous, in that i don't imagine christians needing a refuge from an oppressive religious hegemony (because they are the hegemony). by contrast, a Jewish or Muslim minecraft server seem perfectly reasonable to me.

i'm sure this says as much about my eurocentrism as it does about my prejudices against christianity and my (lack of) understanding of the nature of religion.

is it really benign, and is it really a violation?

however, as i continue to think about it, i think there's also a tension between my view of minecraft as a space of freedom and playfulness and the puritanical associations of social control conjured by the warning "not on my christian minecraft server!".

because a lot of that puritanism is actually present on minecraft servers that aren't specifically christian. part of it is a logical consequence of the people writing the rules being culturally christian, and american puritan culture has a lot of influence on how "family friendly" spaces are conceived.

and did you know what minecraft realms (microsoft's native minecraft server hosting service) automatically censors swear words and anything it sees as a reference to drugs or porn? for example, the word "dispensary" gets censored because apparently one of its meanings is associated with drugs, and the string "but video" gets bleeped because (we presume) microsoft sees it as a euphemism for porn.

my earlier comments about the superfluity of specifying a space as christian in a christian hegemony seem to be more on the nose than originally expected.

a side note on BVT

i think this is exactly what appeals to me about Benign Violation Theory. there's always a way to see the violation as not being benign, which allows me to always arrive at the conclusion that i am Problematic for thinking something is funny.

i really like the events that occasionally get organised on the Patreon server i play on. this time it was horse races. it's not something i care for in the least in real life, but it can be kind of fun to play at in Minecraft, in good company. i even hoped there would be betting, even though i really hate everything about gambling in real life. but idk, i'm just a millennial getting kicks out of having fake currency in a video game, and treating the excesses of capitalism as a game in a safe environment without serious consequences.

i can't wait for the Nether update. right now, the main reason is that there will be a new thing to mine! i'm positively spoiling to go mining for netherite. it's a fun new challenge and a very cool new valuable to gather. like, i'm not excited about the material and its properties itself; i'm excited about collecting it.

i'm not the most up to date on the political and economic situation of the Minecraft server i play on. i mean, i just live in my hole with my diamonds and have no idea what everyone else is up to.

i found out today that there is already one independent state, and another coming up. also, i've been informed that i'm the reason the server's economy is in shambles: since i hand out mine products for free, most people don't really bother to go mining so no one has many diamonds (i have all the diamonds). that's why much of the trade involves bartering.

yesterday i got up at 04:00 to participate in a dragon fight at 05:00 my time, meant mostly for american timezones but i wanted to participate just because. of course i felt like complete shit and went back to bed at 06:00. i got up again at 08:30 for a second dragon fight at 10:00, by which point i felt a little less like a corpse.

it's not like i was needed for either of the dragon fights and i don't feel very strongly about the End, but dragon fights are a traditional community event. and i just really love the community on the realm so i'm happy with any occasion to do stuff together with someone

first event on the Patreon Minecraft server i play on!

the concept: we're not allowed to explore too far out in order to limit the server size and keep it stable. one of the things not found within our borders is jungle. this event was the temporary opening of the nearest jungle, mostly so we could get cocoa beans, but the event was a race to be the first team to bring a baby panda to spawn.

since i have loads of diamonds i don't do much with, i offered to "sponsor" the event by providing prize money. so i put a chest with diamonds some distance above the ground and made a dinky little panda head out of wool on top of it to make it visible. that panda head ended up serving as the semi-official finish line, and the server owner even said i did a good job on the setup!

i competed too, mostly because i came up with the name Team Panda Trans-port, because i'm trans and i'd be transporting a panda. no other trans players happened to join the event so it was just me. i was probably the first to find and breed up pandas and tried to bring back just the baby... but it grew up along the way. i ended up promoting it to my teammate.
i was the first to bring a live panda back to spawn, but only because the team ahead of me accidentally killed theirs. another team gave up and reskinned one of the players to a panda. the server owner was taking her time with two adult pandas (which i went back to help her transport) and did sort of end up winning, because she had two adult pandas to breed and was therefore the only one who had a baby panda at spawn.

mending acquired
it was really not hard, there were loads of jobless villagers in the community trading hall.

so now i have mending on my fortune pickaxe, so as long as i don't lose that i'm set and i can dig to my heart's content. it's efficiency IV, not V, but it's good enough for my mining comfort tbh. only issue is that i'm pretty much cutting myself off from my one source of emerald income, which was stone. but like, i do still have those silk touch pickaxes, and besides i never really planned to be doing villager stuff on this realm anyway.