May 13th 2025 - Minecraft Nostalgia
This is just going to be me recounting my history with Minecraft. A lot of details are very foggy and vague in my mind, but this is the most detailed way I've thought about all of this in probably forever.
I first played Minecraft when I was 7 or 8 years old. But, before that, I didn't understand why every other kid around me always talked about it. My best friend was always saying I should get it, and though I can't remember my exact response, I think I always just told him I wasn't interested or something. Yeah, something like that, even though I probably just didn't know what they were talking about. On the contrary, I would always watch the older kids at the summer daycare playing it on their iPads, too interested to look away. Eventually I caved in and decided I did want it in the summer of 2014. I begged my mom until she finally walked into the living room saying "Alright, you want to get Minecraft?"
At that time Minecraft Pocket Edition was in version 0.9.0 or so. There wasn't much to do and there weren't many mobs in the game as there were on the computer edition at the time. But I wasn't yet aware of that. In my first world, I went around the entire world replacing every block with yellow terracotta, thinking it was like gold. When an older kid gave me access to the daycare's wifi, I would try to join the worlds I had seen those kids play on, but they would either leave the world, kicking me out, or yell at me to leave in an annoying tone, almost every time.
There was also a world called "eggheads" in which I remember buildings a sponge castle with what I imagined to be school cafeteria inside. Around it were a bunch of other ugly buildings you can imagine a 7 year old building on a flat world. I don't really know why I called it "eggheads", but I think it had something to do with this object or character from a Penguins of Madagascar game on the Leapfrog Leapster Explorer I had. The world had nothing to do with that thing, I guess I was just thinking about it for some reason.
I remember after I had gained this love for Minecraft and returned to school, there was this kid who tried to convince me there was a version of Minecraft for the Wii. I would always talk to him about it, asking if there were different blocks. He would always reply affirmatively, until one day at lunch when he told me "yeah, it was all a lie." The reason I was so interested was because I had also been gifted a Wii for the Christmas of 2013 and was always playing on it. I'm still unhappy about him leading me on like that for what may have been a month or two, but felt like the whole school year to my child mind.
In the summer of 2015, I had my first experience on an MCPE server thanks to this one older kid at that daycare who said a lot of bad words. He introduced me and my best friend at that daycare at the time to the LifeBoat server. This was prior to the xbox integration that Bedrock edition has now, so you had to login by typing in the chat before you could do anything. From the main hub, I remember there being four games, one of them, The Walls, dysfunctional for a long time. I usually played survival games and spleef. I miss spleef. I became addicted to playing online on MCPE, since I didn't even know it was possible before then. This was also the first time I discovered you could download skins or make them yourself. I'm realizing this was also my entryway into using the internet by myself, since I started going on planetminecraft to look at skins without my mom knowing. That soon turned into looking at YouTube Minecraft videos and looking up even more servers to play on.
Playing Minecraft online was also my first experience being perceived as a girl online. Mind you, I was not a girl yet. Knowing what I know now, I think this was a pretty obvious early sign of not being totally gender-conforming, as I don't remember anything else that could have motivated me to just decide to play as a girl online. I went onto planetminecraft and found a skin I liked and would play on servers with it and a really stupid username that I will not share :/ . In Minecraft, I pretty much had two versions of myself. I never played as a girl when I wasn't by myself at home.
Somehow, I found this service on the internet that allowed people to run their own servers. Each IP address was formed with a series of numbers that preceded the service name. Something like 1239034.servicename.net I think. I wish I remembered the service's name (I think it started with an L), because just by finding some of these addresses I was able to make my first and only online friends (or acquaintances, depending on how you see it). I just joined this one flat world server and the owners never questioned it, and I played on that particular server for awhile, becoming friends with the few people on there. It was a creative world, and we built statues of each other and houses together. I also remember going on LifeBoat and inviting one person onto that server, and she became a regular as well.
I think there multiple servers actually, because there was another world in which there was this guy whose iPad spacebar didn't work SoHeTypedLikeThis. I'm not really sure how I became friends with these people the way I did. I can't remember all the details.
This online activity ended when my mom found me suspiciously trying to hide the Kindle Fire. When she opened it and saw the chat of the other people, she yelled my name from downstairs saying "WHAT. IS THIS?" I was running down the stairs desperately, repeatedly shouting "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!!" because I knew she didn't approve of online interactions like this. My Kindle was put into parental controls mode, and I wasn't allowed to touch the Kindle or anything Minecraft related (not even the books, for some reason) for awhile. I never spoke to anybody online again since then. Who knows, maybe some of those people were some creeps. But I was never stupid enough to outright say my address or my name. I think my mother may have been a little too dramatic with her protection like that, but I understand her perspective. She didn't want bad things to happen to me. But when I look back at that event, I find it interesting how that really is the reason I can't talk to people through the internet very confidently anymore, even though it's been so long (It's not like my social life in the non-digital world is filled with confidence either anyway). I've actually been trying to change that by making this website, but I haven't made any progress it seems.
During this period of time when my Kindle was stuck in parental controls mode, I was very scared to talk to my mom about Minecraft, because I'd assume she'd interrogate me on if I was online again. The kindle wouldn't let me update the game either, for some odd reason, so I was stuck in an outdated version of Minecraft for about a year. Because of this, the summer of 2016 was spent (in terms of Minecraft) in a world called "Pig City", in which I transformed a regular village into a rainbow pig themed city. It was more like a park, since it had random rollercoasters and other bullshit everywhere. While everyone around me at that same daycare was able to update their game and get new mobs and stuff, I was stuck there, building rails and pigs.
I really wish my younger self wasn't so stupid with how I handled my world files though. I had a habit of deleting worlds my friends and I worked on. We built entire cities and then I would say something like "We have to learn to let go :(" for no reason and delete the world. If there was a way to see those worlds again, I would do it in an instant. We spent ENTIRE SUMMERS on some of those worlds.
I remember one of them from 2017 was called "Springy Hills" (despite it being a flat world). We later changed the name to "Awesome Town" because Springy Hills sounded weird. The picture with the weird green skin on the gamescreenshots page was taken in this world. Each person who joined the world built at least one house (usually more than one for most people if we're being honest). And these houses were not your ugly diamond houses, these had some more depth to them (at least in our minds) We had a whole road system and we built statues of each other's skins. There wan't any sense of organization to this place, so buildings didn't always look good near each other (that's the charm of these old worlds). One time, my friend was really upset with the rest of us, and he walked far far away. When we eventually made up, we established a second city where he ended up. That second city had more of theme of red and white I think, at least until this one jackass blew up our houses there.
In middle school, my friend and I would play Minecraft in the waiting area before school. This world was another flat one full of random stuff and a very small sense of organization. The world was loosely separated into multiple districts like Wolf District and the Fox District. I actually still have a copy of this world, because by this point I had learned not to delete worlds that were precious to me (...for the most part). In fact, here are a few pictures of it:
The hospital in the Fox District
A Tree Castle
Snowman on a fireball that is actually an alien spaceship
One of my houses that is actually a design I remembered using in Awesome Town
Farmhouse made of concrete
The first building in this world
A building from a Keralis tutorial video
A library
A house made of wood in a style I've used since the Pig City days
Rainbow Pig, the mayor of Pig City, makes his appearance in Doodle County, standing on the tree castle
In 2020, I remember making a survival world on my xbox with my brother. We lived in a taiga biome in a village we built. One day we decided to build a cobblestone wall around it like it was a castle. I remember spending lots of time traveling by boat to faraway locations in order to get certain items. That was until I decided to enable cheats and just start doing /give. But it was pretty good-looking place. Unfortunately, it was one of those worlds I decided to delete, probably because I felt the original soul of it had been erased when I turned cheats on.
After that world, I began working on what would later become Inimoa. I won't talk about Inimoa here so much because I have a whole encyclopedia I'm working on for that. However, the early days were interesting. I started by building things from tutorial videos. This is was during the time in my life when I was very fixated upon Japanese things, so every building had that kind of style. This was when I built fish village and the castle nearby. Since this was still on the xbox, my brother and I built everything by hand, no commands. It was really tedious. At one point my friend (before she was really my friend) really disliked me, and she threatened to blow everything up. I remember being very worried about that and kicked her from the world each time she tried to join after that.
When I got Java Edition, I completely stopped using bedrock edition. I converted the worlds I still had to Java edition. Eventually, the only world I played on was Inimoa.
I probably talked too much. I mostly meant to focus on the things I miss from Minecraft's pocket edition days. NEVER DELETE THE WORLDS YOU SPEND TIME AND EFFORT ON!!!!!!!!!
This is just going to be me recounting my history with Minecraft. A lot of details are very foggy and vague in my mind, but this is the most detailed way I've thought about all of this in probably forever.
I first played Minecraft when I was 7 or 8 years old. But, before that, I didn't understand why every other kid around me always talked about it. My best friend was always saying I should get it, and though I can't remember my exact response, I think I always just told him I wasn't interested or something. Yeah, something like that, even though I probably just didn't know what they were talking about. On the contrary, I would always watch the older kids at the summer daycare playing it on their iPads, too interested to look away. Eventually I caved in and decided I did want it in the summer of 2014. I begged my mom until she finally walked into the living room saying "Alright, you want to get Minecraft?"
At that time Minecraft Pocket Edition was in version 0.9.0 or so. There wasn't much to do and there weren't many mobs in the game as there were on the computer edition at the time. But I wasn't yet aware of that. In my first world, I went around the entire world replacing every block with yellow terracotta, thinking it was like gold. When an older kid gave me access to the daycare's wifi, I would try to join the worlds I had seen those kids play on, but they would either leave the world, kicking me out, or yell at me to leave in an annoying tone, almost every time.
There was also a world called "eggheads" in which I remember buildings a sponge castle with what I imagined to be school cafeteria inside. Around it were a bunch of other ugly buildings you can imagine a 7 year old building on a flat world. I don't really know why I called it "eggheads", but I think it had something to do with this object or character from a Penguins of Madagascar game on the Leapfrog Leapster Explorer I had. The world had nothing to do with that thing, I guess I was just thinking about it for some reason.
I remember after I had gained this love for Minecraft and returned to school, there was this kid who tried to convince me there was a version of Minecraft for the Wii. I would always talk to him about it, asking if there were different blocks. He would always reply affirmatively, until one day at lunch when he told me "yeah, it was all a lie." The reason I was so interested was because I had also been gifted a Wii for the Christmas of 2013 and was always playing on it. I'm still unhappy about him leading me on like that for what may have been a month or two, but felt like the whole school year to my child mind.
In the summer of 2015, I had my first experience on an MCPE server thanks to this one older kid at that daycare who said a lot of bad words. He introduced me and my best friend at that daycare at the time to the LifeBoat server. This was prior to the xbox integration that Bedrock edition has now, so you had to login by typing in the chat before you could do anything. From the main hub, I remember there being four games, one of them, The Walls, dysfunctional for a long time. I usually played survival games and spleef. I miss spleef. I became addicted to playing online on MCPE, since I didn't even know it was possible before then. This was also the first time I discovered you could download skins or make them yourself. I'm realizing this was also my entryway into using the internet by myself, since I started going on planetminecraft to look at skins without my mom knowing. That soon turned into looking at YouTube Minecraft videos and looking up even more servers to play on.
Playing Minecraft online was also my first experience being perceived as a girl online. Mind you, I was not a girl yet. Knowing what I know now, I think this was a pretty obvious early sign of not being totally gender-conforming, as I don't remember anything else that could have motivated me to just decide to play as a girl online. I went onto planetminecraft and found a skin I liked and would play on servers with it and a really stupid username that I will not share :/ . In Minecraft, I pretty much had two versions of myself. I never played as a girl when I wasn't by myself at home.
Somehow, I found this service on the internet that allowed people to run their own servers. Each IP address was formed with a series of numbers that preceded the service name. Something like 1239034.servicename.net I think. I wish I remembered the service's name (I think it started with an L), because just by finding some of these addresses I was able to make my first and only online friends (or acquaintances, depending on how you see it). I just joined this one flat world server and the owners never questioned it, and I played on that particular server for awhile, becoming friends with the few people on there. It was a creative world, and we built statues of each other and houses together. I also remember going on LifeBoat and inviting one person onto that server, and she became a regular as well.
I think there multiple servers actually, because there was another world in which there was this guy whose iPad spacebar didn't work SoHeTypedLikeThis. I'm not really sure how I became friends with these people the way I did. I can't remember all the details.
This online activity ended when my mom found me suspiciously trying to hide the Kindle Fire. When she opened it and saw the chat of the other people, she yelled my name from downstairs saying "WHAT. IS THIS?" I was running down the stairs desperately, repeatedly shouting "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!!" because I knew she didn't approve of online interactions like this. My Kindle was put into parental controls mode, and I wasn't allowed to touch the Kindle or anything Minecraft related (not even the books, for some reason) for awhile. I never spoke to anybody online again since then. Who knows, maybe some of those people were some creeps. But I was never stupid enough to outright say my address or my name. I think my mother may have been a little too dramatic with her protection like that, but I understand her perspective. She didn't want bad things to happen to me. But when I look back at that event, I find it interesting how that really is the reason I can't talk to people through the internet very confidently anymore, even though it's been so long (It's not like my social life in the non-digital world is filled with confidence either anyway). I've actually been trying to change that by making this website, but I haven't made any progress it seems.
During this period of time when my Kindle was stuck in parental controls mode, I was very scared to talk to my mom about Minecraft, because I'd assume she'd interrogate me on if I was online again. The kindle wouldn't let me update the game either, for some odd reason, so I was stuck in an outdated version of Minecraft for about a year. Because of this, the summer of 2016 was spent (in terms of Minecraft) in a world called "Pig City", in which I transformed a regular village into a rainbow pig themed city. It was more like a park, since it had random rollercoasters and other bullshit everywhere. While everyone around me at that same daycare was able to update their game and get new mobs and stuff, I was stuck there, building rails and pigs.
I really wish my younger self wasn't so stupid with how I handled my world files though. I had a habit of deleting worlds my friends and I worked on. We built entire cities and then I would say something like "We have to learn to let go :(" for no reason and delete the world. If there was a way to see those worlds again, I would do it in an instant. We spent ENTIRE SUMMERS on some of those worlds.
I remember one of them from 2017 was called "Springy Hills" (despite it being a flat world). We later changed the name to "Awesome Town" because Springy Hills sounded weird. The picture with the weird green skin on the gamescreenshots page was taken in this world. Each person who joined the world built at least one house (usually more than one for most people if we're being honest). And these houses were not your ugly diamond houses, these had some more depth to them (at least in our minds) We had a whole road system and we built statues of each other's skins. There wan't any sense of organization to this place, so buildings didn't always look good near each other (that's the charm of these old worlds). One time, my friend was really upset with the rest of us, and he walked far far away. When we eventually made up, we established a second city where he ended up. That second city had more of theme of red and white I think, at least until this one jackass blew up our houses there.
In middle school, my friend and I would play Minecraft in the waiting area before school. This world was another flat one full of random stuff and a very small sense of organization. The world was loosely separated into multiple districts like Wolf District and the Fox District. I actually still have a copy of this world, because by this point I had learned not to delete worlds that were precious to me (...for the most part). In fact, here are a few pictures of it:
The hospital in the Fox District
A Tree Castle
Snowman on a fireball that is actually an alien spaceship
One of my houses that is actually a design I remembered using in Awesome Town
Farmhouse made of concrete
The first building in this world
A building from a Keralis tutorial video
A library
A house made of wood in a style I've used since the Pig City days
Rainbow Pig, the mayor of Pig City, makes his appearance in Doodle County, standing on the tree castle
After that world, I began working on what would later become Inimoa. I won't talk about Inimoa here so much because I have a whole encyclopedia I'm working on for that. However, the early days were interesting. I started by building things from tutorial videos. This is was during the time in my life when I was very fixated upon Japanese things, so every building had that kind of style. This was when I built fish village and the castle nearby. Since this was still on the xbox, my brother and I built everything by hand, no commands. It was really tedious. At one point my friend (before she was really my friend) really disliked me, and she threatened to blow everything up. I remember being very worried about that and kicked her from the world each time she tried to join after that.
When I got Java Edition, I completely stopped using bedrock edition. I converted the worlds I still had to Java edition. Eventually, the only world I played on was Inimoa.
I probably talked too much. I mostly meant to focus on the things I miss from Minecraft's pocket edition days. NEVER DELETE THE WORLDS YOU SPEND TIME AND EFFORT ON!!!!!!!!!
May 13th 2025 - Page Creation
I have created a journal page. I don't know how often I'll really use it. If there are ever so many entries that the page is too long, I might sort each entry by year and into drop-downs. Maybe I'll redesign the look someday too, but maybe not.
I have created a journal page. I don't know how often I'll really use it. If there are ever so many entries that the page is too long, I might sort each entry by year and into drop-downs. Maybe I'll redesign the look someday too, but maybe not.