I want every town, I need you to know--for no reason, or so I'm told

(from the Minecrafting album)

Okay, so one more pic of Fawkes dancing with the homicidal slime. And yes, more Minecraft. :p

(from the Minecrafting album)

There are times when Minecraft gets surreal beyond description. This is one of those times. Even if I tell you how it happened, it may not make sense.

First, there are now undersea animals in Minecraft. Squid, namely. They're completely passive, but do give off ink when panicked or killed. They're also very curious.

Fawkes--being Fawkes--had found another bit of endless cavern under the ocean near what he was crafting into the underground island base for the first set of caverns. Being Fawkes, mainly, he just dug a hole in the ground, put in a bit of ladder to keep the sea out, and stuck some torches up.

The light drew the squid. They went to investigate what the bright light at the bottom of the water was. Fawkes, meanwhile, left to go get me and show me the new tunnel.

When we got back, the tunnel was full of squid. I mean, packed. Packed. Everything making small wet sounds, tentacles flailing...And, being virtual creatures who still seem rather confused at this whole 'existence' thing anyway, they don't simply expire out of water...

And that's how I ended up with 28 bowls of squid ink. Okay. So, moving on...

(from the Minecrafting album)

Another day, another texture pack. This one, unfortunately, I let Fawkes talk me into downloading the McPatcher set of water/lava fixes. This was the first thing in all my time playing Minecraft that actually broke water and lava. For the next month or so I had extremely ugly water and lava, instead of the smoothly shimmering, radiantly glowing water and lava I had before.

I was very disappointed.

But we'd also reached a very deep point in the endless caves, and had run into slimes of various sizes. At one point, Fawkes and I lost each other, and were trying to find each other by--I kid you not--calling out X/Y/Z coordinates in chat. At this time I ended up slightly below him, and we heard the wet liver sounds that meant a slime was near. I happened to look down and notice the pool of lava, and the slime frolicking playfully in it.

Still makes me shake my head. Slimes can dance on lava. So damned unfair.

(from the Minecrafting album)

Yeah. If ever there was something that could really truly depress you utterly in Minecraft...this is it. Slimes are really hard to kill, split into smaller slimes when you kill the big ones, all sizes of slime have an insane amount of push, and very little will kill them.

*sighs*

(from the Minecrafting album)

All right, all right, already, we get it, you're nigh-invulnerable. You don't have to act so happy about it--

Wait.

Are they...staring at us?

(from the Minecrafting album)

I don't even remember what world this was from, but it was an epic cliff. Truly epic.

(from the Minecrafting album)

MUAHAHAHAHA...Proving that Girl Genius fandom persists, even in Minecraft.

What was the Madboy-in-residence building? A monster harvester. Monsters spawn, far below, in deepest shadow; monsters fall off into rushing water; water carries them down, up, around, and down again; then forward into a lava blade that sets them on fire and collects their drops--string, gunpowder, bones, feathers, and arrows, namely. AKA, everything you need to make bows, fishing poles, blocks of silk, TNT bombs, bone meal, wolf bait, and arrows--in addition to dropped arrows, yes--which you must admit, is diverse and useful.