‘And I'm alright with the movies that make jokes 'bout senseless cruelty’ is a lyric from this album that resonated with me as a teen, due to how it perfectly encapsulates the stuff that my typical sense of entertainment was created from. In adolescence, and as a teen in general, I was highly inclined to watch and engage with this kind of media, whether in shows or movies. This was because it often gave the plot a sense of drama as well as some manufactured outrage that I’d always expect and still enjoy thoroughly. In a sense, this interest in these fictional but oftentimes violent and tragic shows reflected a core part of my psyche as a teen-which was to try and find out more about the world and force myself out of my comfort zone. For the most part of the decade of life preceding high school for me, I was a relatively introverted student and person that didn’t often engage with people other than to occasionally get help, accept rewards for work or share my work. This was mainly related to simply being disengaged a majority of my teenage years, feeling forcibly obsessed with the latest trend or new content to watch simply due to habit. In a sense I also was playing catchup, as a lot of things such as main social media apps were widely distanced from me as a kid due to focus on schoolwork and lack of instinctual interest to reach out and discover them in the first place. This led to me personally discovering ‘Instagram’ when I was 14, and Snapchat about a month or so after. I think that disengagement, both from trends and social media that people around me frequently interacted with, had me feeling that I was almost trapped in a box when it came to understanding what my potential friends would like, further curbing socialization as I was pushed more to watching YouTube videos and streaming(read pirating) movies online. In a sense, the ‘senseless cruelty’ of those movies and shows I interacted with made the most sense as an isolated teen, where these dramatized characters spoke to every pent down impulse I had or action I wanted to do. As a result, I could relate easily and felt connected to them more than some actual ‘friends’ I thought I made in high school. Eventually though, as I made it past 17 years old, I reached out and socialized more, likely due to external factors like getting a job and being made to talk with people more in advanced classes. This line simply struck a chord with me as a memorable instance of the main focus within my early teens, that being obsession with any of the wild and unexpected shows/media available to me.

My favorite aspect to the vast collection of activities and events you can take part in playing Minecraft is the simple objective of survival however you choose. I’m personally not as much of a Creative fan due to the entertaining work ethic and consistent development present in Survival Mode. From building your first few tools in an effort to light up the first night, to creating your first house as a base of operations, the various methods or techniques in the process of ensuring those milestones are resonant to my daily accumulation of knowledge throughout school in order to benefit myself in future. Furthermore, these differing-and sometimes completely random-choices I make throughout every 10-minute day in the Minecraft World allow for constant learning and discovery to occur, as well as always keeping me entertained with what the next day may bring in terms of weather or mobs. The appealing nature of Survival Mode also is depicted through the travel and accumulation of experience aspect readily present in the game itself, including gaining experience through a multitude of ways besides simply gathering sustenance. You can gain experience from killing mobs, selling goods, mining rare or common ores in different dimensions like the Nether, and all this variety to the game’s ’final objective’ in Survival make it continually enticing to me. Simply put, there doesn’t have to be an end to Minecraft if you don’t want it to end! Traveling the near endless server space to collect rare supplies or simply for fun only amplifies this point. With that being said, undoubtedly the activity of engaging in the multitude of activities present in Survival is my favorite, and holds a special place in my heart since I discovered the game in childhood.