“Alright, chat, that’s enough
Minecraft
for one day. Agatha should still be streaming for another hour, so go watch her. Or else!! Peace, nerds.”
I cut the stream, shove my viewers onto Agatha’s page, and check in with my assigned manager just to make triple sure there isn’t anything else I need to do before calling it. As soon as I get the okay, I leap off the computer and throw myself onto my big, comfy bed.
I breathe a sigh of relief and sink into the covers. The pillows, the blankets, the mattress, all of it perfectly calculated to be impossibly soft and supportive. I could stay here for hours, away from the rest of the world, away from all those glaring screens and the hordes of people behind them. A nice, happy break from the torments of the internet.
Instead, I immediately open my phone and start texting my friends, because I’m a digital addict and incapable of feeling shame over that fact.
Alexandria
: heyyyy good stream good stream
Alexandria
: she lied as easily as she breathed
Mike Trout
: easier, even!
Alexandria
: i hate minecraft
Mike Trout
: Hey you take that back right now what the fuck
Mike Trout
: You’re going to make me and my smoking hot girlfriend cry
a single femur
: Is the girlfriend thing going to be a recurring bit or do you just need to get it out of your system today?
Mike Trout
: Wouldn’t you like to know! Smile
Alexandria
: okay that’s not true it’s fine, minecraft is fine, but oh my god i need a break from the fucking SMP bullshit. gonna scream and cry and rupture seven nineteenths of my organs if i have to spend any more time on that server this month
I’ve been playing
Minecraft
on and off stream for weeks, having joined the Visage survival server a month ago in preparation for doing collabs with other performers. I set up my base, I hoarded useful items, and I laid extravagant plans to mess with my prey.
It was all incredibly, atrociously, mind-numbingly boring.
Here’s the problem: the Visage server is completely sauceless. There are no fun mods to get into, everyone’s swimming in endgame materials, and there are a bunch of behind-the-scenes rules that limit what kind of griefing you can get away with.
Pit and cage traps are fine, along with anything else easily circumvented, but TNT traps? Lava inside a wooden structure? Any trap with a serious risk of harm to a player’s belongings or builds? Absolutely not.
Despite the kayfabe that surrounds our battles in Forks being such an emphasized part of the performance, it’s almost completely absent in the game world. Witches and magical girls have their rivalries—they even live on separate islands—but they share the same Forks-themed spawn town, frequently give each other gifts, and almost never kill each other.
It’s boring! Where’s the action? Where’s the excitement? They could have built warring kingdoms obsessed with control over resource-rich biomes between their respective bases! They could have put all of the witches in the Nether to come pouring out of portals! It could have been modded
Minecraft
with magic versus machines or rival companies racing to complete moon rockets! They could have done any amount of sincere fucking roleplay!
But alas, I don’t live in any of those far more interesting worlds. Instead, I got the neutered, dull, toothless version of an SMP, reduced to papering walls with funny signs and pelting other players with harmless snowballs.
Alexandria
: this is all mordacity’s fault
Mordacity
: I say that every day
a single femur
: I say thatFUCK
Mordacity
: get sniped, idiot
Alexandria
: if you hadnt introduced me to those youtubers who dropped nukes on each other i wouldnt be in this mess! id be fine, happily lapping up the milk of mediocrity!
a single femur
: When they say ignorance is bliss I do think they’re speaking aspirationally. Perhaps you should consider a lobotomy
Mordacity
: first of all they’re not “those youtubers” they’re the Yogscast. put some respect on their name, clown
Mordacity
: and second yeah no i did that on purpose to make this worse for you
Alexandria
: AUGUGH i cant even tell if youre serious or not because you’d absolutely claim credit either way
Mordacity
: that’s the mordacity guarantee ba-by
Mike Trout
: What if instead of playing Minecraft on stream we all played Minecraft together on a server hosted by my smoking hot girlfriend?
Mike Trout
: her name on discord is Samantha Altwoman and she has very pretty eyes and she’s even more normal than me
a single femur
: Do you actually want me to invite her
a single femur
: Because we will have to hold a vote
Mordacity
: eh, the sanctity of the space was disrupted the moment we let that loser A join us, so i vote yes
Alexandria
: i was here first you absolute goblin im going to strangle you with your own intestines and melt your hands to your spleen
Alexandria
: also can she keep a secret about the witch thing that’s my only real concern
A ping from my other phone steals my attention. Visage hooked me up with a work phone when I joined to make it easier to separate my social media accounts and not accidentally post personal details to my professional persona. I bought a bedazzled case for it so the awful texture would discourage me from doomscrolling while on the wrong profile.
Agatha Cain
: Hey, taking an ad break but I’ll be on again soon, just wanted to say thanks for the great stream and hope you’re doing good
Samantha Altwoman
: Hello! Nice to meet you! TC 450k
Samantha Altwoman
: Just letting you know up front that I am not an LLM and not currently being paid by Microsoft!
Samantha Altwoman
: Ooo we’re doing movie night? I know a one hour video of aquatic sea life making noises that we can watch! It has captions!
I grab an edible from the cupboard, then a second. That’s going to be the best way to experience this movie night, and may future Rachel deal with the consequences so that I don’t have to.