Issue 0B: So Here It Is

Okay. Happy Christmas children and you capitalist pigs, #HappyHolidays and #ACAB. Welcome to the Christmas edition of this stupid newsletter that no-one reads. Let's be real, no-one really likes Christmas apart from boring people - and neither do we, in fact, (I kid ye not), we were forced by the higher-ups that we had to write this.

«Um, aren't you scared that they will find out that you told people about you being forced?» - Thank goodness that there's no quiz for this issue, no, dummy, can't you reed? No-one really reads nb21, they just open it up and look at all of the pictures on it, close the tab, and then get on with their day - duh.

Let me show you this. You can write whatever you like here and no-one will notice it, see: La la ooo la la, oo oo ah ah, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, laaaa.

I kid you not, in past editions of nb21, we hid classified documents from the US government that proves that not only was the moon landing fake, but also that the Earth is really flat - not joking, but you missed it as you didn't read that!

Filler text, filler text, filler text, who cares? Who cares? Who cares? It's Christmas, the heads are going to be too drunk off of cheap booze that they are not going to read this, la la la laalalal!!!

Uh, anyway, let's get back on track here a bit...

Something, something, in this issue we're going to look at artwork that has under 404 likes as a way of sharing artists that need more love, we're also going to look at early Minecraft and what it is like to play it in 2022, plus other rubbish. Joy.

Best Comic Ever Made

Going to be honest, I'm not even fully sure what a lobotomy even is, something to do with the brain, that's for sure, either way, when he made the original now-lost version of this at six-years-old, Bruno A. would probably have no idea either, so we're even. Being sent in by the devil known as Bruno A. of onlinedevil.neocities.org, this is a recreation of one of the first comics that they recall drawing during their childhood.

In thinking about the comic, Bruno writes that the comic, «in retrospect it would make a great meme[,] and anyone who read it was like. "that's cute! what the fuck does it mean[?"]».

Artist's commentary

I've loved comics since a very young age, and would often try to make my own stories. Naturally, being a child without the knowledge of the creation process of comics, they were often hard to understand and clearly had no real planning behind them.

Most of the longer comics from my childhood went unfinished, so the majority of my stories were comic strips... which, hey, one without experience in the field might assume is easier than comics that take pages to develop.

That's not entirely wrong- longer comics take a lot more time to finish- but the truth is that strips are one of the hardest kinds of comics to make. This is simply due to the limited amount of panels the artist can use (usually they're 3 or 4 panels long). A strip with 2 or even 1 panel is extremely hard to get right.

A good example of a strip not working out as it should is the now beloved Cow Tools. Nobody got the joke, mostly because of how bizarre it was. The idea behind Cow Tools is that cows using tools is simply funny, and that's as deep as it gets. Naturally, with only a single panel, not much can be gathered from that premise alone.

Looking back at this particular comic of mine, the story behind the «joke» is rather similar: wouldn't it be funny if a teacher got a lobotomy and showed up to class all bandaged up?

... Well, I guess my first mistake was thinking that was in any way funny. In retrospect, I just found the idea of lobotomies (and, yes, I did know what that meant when I was 6) to be funny. Why? That's, um, a great question! Ahah...

To be fair to my younger self, I'm amazed at my work from back then. Not to toot my own horn, but I was pretty artistically advanced for my age, and worked on comics like crazy (me and a pal even sold a few zines when we were 9), which is pretty impressive.

I've rambled for long enough, so here's some closing thoughts:

1. Understanding comics and how to make them is actually not that easy;
2. Kids who are creative have work ethic that would make anyone jealous;
3. I accidentally predicted surreal meme culture and should pursue a fortune-telling job.

Ho ho ho. As it's Christmas, we thought that it would be nice to share some love by sharing some underrated artwork by people that (as of publication) have fewer than 404 likes on the art that we're sharing, oh, we are just so kind, what would you do without nb21? Who knows!

Twitter [Mirror, Mirror 2]

I think it's very unfair that when a person makes art that is consistently good and is unique in the way that the end product (I don't know how I feel about using this word to talk about art, but I can't think of a better one), but yet they have a low number of interactions, it's uh, it's like that one image that's probably from Instagram showing a painter who made something really nice and she has ten likes, while next to her is a ladywoman who took a selfie that has sixteen trillion likes or whatever - in other words, I wish that people who took their time in making something really good would get the attention that they deserve, in this case, Florets.

Anway,,, From looking at their social media, Florets, who I think their name is Wast Altus from looking at their signature, is a very cute art maker, whose style really reminds me of something that you would see on a French poster from the 1960s or indeed hanging on the wall of a café (I wonder how many would hang this up not knowing what a furry is, oh, we do a little trolling).

Regardless, their work is very nice, so check it out, yo.

Twitter [Mirror]

Gurr, gurr, why is this person also not as known as they should be? ULTRAV0ID (sorry people on screenreaders for that name), whose artwork is seen on the right, is the type of artist who can get their hands on a 3D art program, pick it up and not only be very good at it, but also manage to use multiple styles on it. In this case, the art has a kind of paper cutout vibe going on with a late 2010s-era indie 3D game look to it (trust me, I was there, bud). I really wish that I could say more about this bit of art, but I think it's a very good bit of work by ULTRAV0ID and is an example of how they mix together mediums.

Twitter [Mirror]

I'm out here guessing that this was done on real paper rather than on a computer, if so, good work, I am always scared to do anything on paper, especially drawing - let's just say this, if my handwriting is as bad as a comparison that I can't think of, just think about what my drawings would be like.

Regardless, this isn't about me, this is about brushy K.B. who really does have a style that I like a lot, I really feel like they managed to use colors really well in this piece, the mixing of the yellow and purples as well as the anthro character that I'm sure is smoking just a cigarette, whose body is black with red. I feel like this red goes well with the yellow itself, and of course, everything goes well with black as a whole.

I'm not fully sure as to what this is meant to be of, a demon perhaps? I can't say, but whatever it is, they look quite cool, I especially like the spike cuffs.

Some other art by brushy K.B. that I like but is not fully featured here is canned (2021) (mirror) and disturbance (2021) (mirror).

Twitter [Mirror, Mirror 2]

This counts as weird art, right? I think it must.

Carlos is a self-described freelance illustrator from Puerto Rico who makes comics and drawings with mixed elements from their «nostalgic experiences as well as aspects of [their] island life» - this will, of course, lead us to the obvious question of does this mean that Carlos had a troll come out of their toilet in their past? (No.)

Unfunny jokes(?) aside, I feel like you got to love this bit of art, I know that this is CGI as that's clearly the artiest's modus operandi, but I like how this also looks like it is clay. There is just something so wrong about this art, just the idea of someone poking their head out of your toilet is freaky in a childhood way, like how we all had a fear of the dark at one point, just the idea of the unknown.

As well as CGI art, Carlos can also do 2D artwork, such as with Boyo and Bofus - One Year Later, very cute.

Twitter [Mirror, Mirror 2]

When you follow an artist for a certain amount of time, you can really start to appreciate when they make, as the cool people (hopefully) say, a «banger» piece of artwork, this is just what scum did here with burg. I'll be honest and say that I am indeed a fan of this person's work (for reasons), so it was only going to be a matter of time until something by them would show up here, and well, here it is.

I don't know what it is that makes me like scenes like this a lot but I think it's fair to say that the colors of this help, it's always cool to see artwork made in a stylised way, and that way is using only reds, it's kind of refreshing to see something that could be converted onto a Virtual Boy. I like the look that femboy imp is giving the viewer, like their unamused at a story that the person might be telling them, or pissed that they were just called a femboy, who knows, either way, the rundown café really reminds me of my teen years when I was in college and use to go to this Eastern Europian caff, that honestly looked like it was stuck in the late 1970s permanently, but not in a cool way, more the way of how Eastern Europe was in the '70s, uh, regardless, myself and mates used to go there to buy a burger, fries, and a cola for about three DollarPounds or something stupidly low like that, oh crap, we used to go to this fried chicken place that used to sell, well, fried chicken, good stuff, uh, anyway, that had nothing to do with the art here, but as stated at the start, no-one reads this, so it's not like anyone is going to know!

rascalsludge can be found on the above Twitter link, just know that they make a lot of adult artwork, so if you're under 18, go somewhere else, idk, I'm not your mom.

Download the world here: GitHub (mirror)

It's November 2011, nothing much is happening in the world - it's quite a slow month; Obama is president of the United States, Twitter is getting more and more users, and a third example that is relevant. During the 18th of this month, Markus Persson, better known as just Notch, is at MINECON 2011 to release the first full version of Minecraft, a game that he had started work on only two and a half years prior. This was a big event, not only for Notch, but for the game as well due to it meaning that no longer would Minecraft be in beta development anymore.

Version 1.0 of Minecraft was a big one for sure as it added a lot of new features; the brewing stand, enchantment tables, nine new music discs, mooshrooms, the ender dragon, magma cubes, [takes in a deep breath] the, uh, snow golem, the-the Nether fortress and a lot more. The long and short was that this update meant a lot to the overall gameplay. Even just having a passive eye on the game, then you will no doubt know about all of the new updates that have come out since, they are impressive for sure, but this might have been the update to beat them all in terms of new content added.

I only started to really play Minecraft in 2020 or so, meaning that I never grew up with it in my childhood. Growing up in the early 2000s, I would play mostly Flash games and I only found out about Minecraft from one of my former friends, Nathan Carter, who would also be my introduction to Linux. So, I knew only one person who owned it, and sure we were very good friends, but I never touched it for even a second or cared for YouTubers who would make videos on it. When I did get the game years later, I would only play on servers, never single-player as I felt like it was too boring and I kind of wanted to be able to show off what kind of work I had done to other people. While I still think that servers are one of the best parts of the game, over the month of September 2022, my appreciation of single-player would grow a lot more as I decided to try and see what it was like to play such an old version of the game on my own.

While this version of Minecraft can be really fun to mess around with and build... well, whatever you really want to, there were a few major issues with it, mostly there was no guide! So yeah, seeing that I have been playing Minecraft for a few years now, I know how to make and craft a lot of items and I know how the game is meant to be played, but I feel like the fact that the game does not have a recipe list or anything like that is really holding older versions back as a whole - sure, the player will work out that punching a tree will break it and that you can make a crafting table and basic tools, but the game expects a lot out of the player. I really do not know how someone would know how to make a nether portal, for example. The structure of it is precise and knowing that it can only work with obsidian and a flint and steel is just not helpful at all.

I feel like the game devs were smart when they decided to add ruined Nether portals that were broken up, although this would only be added way later in 2020. Adding broken portals in the overworld was a good thing as it shows a person who has never seen a working one the rough outline of what it can look like, encouraging them to remember this shape and recreate or mend it - not that it matters all that much if the player does or does not go to this Hellish dimension as right now in this version, the Nether is disappointing in what is in there, with only three mobs (the blaze, ghast, and zombified piglin) and only one biome to be seen, that being the Nether wastes, your only real purpose to this place would be to get blaze rods and perhaps some glowstone or Nether bricks.

Even on one of the hardest difficulties, the Nether is easy to be in, your only risk is getting lost. I was very lucky in my Nether as my portal spawned very near to a nether fortress, meaning that I could collect blaze rods - so nice. The world that I spawned on (seed: 1687695093) was clearly a very good one, mostly due to the Nether, but also due to the sheer amount of monster spawners there were, also the fact that my main base was so, so near an end portal.

While playing the game, there were a few major issues that I would come across that made it harder than it should have been, the biggest simply being a very big issue that I faced in the game was the lack of endermen spawning, I don't know if this was just really bad RNG on my part, but endermen were rare to find and were even perhaps broken. In Minecraft, looking at this mob will trigger it and will attack the player, once killed, it will drop an ender pearl, with this, you can combine it with blaze powder and it will make an eye of ender, an item that is used to find strongholds and activate the end portals within them so you can get to The End and fight the ender dragon, but while playing this version, the item was almost impossible to get thanks to the endermen not getting triggered when looked at, sure they would attack you when you hit them, but there was a strong chance that they would flee away from you, and even if you did manage to kill them, the mob would be unlikely to drop anything, making the game almost impossible to finish.

When walking my dogs with my sister, I was talking to her about the issues that I would face. I told her about the problems with the endermen and them not dropping anything, and she came to my rescue, telling me that she used to watch the YouTuber Stampy and his let's play, telling me that it took them 15 episodes to farm all of the ender pearls needed and that he had to go to a desert to get the best chance of finding endermen. So that was useful to know and would save me a lot of time.

Setting up my own custom skin was annoying. As this was such an old version of the game, it doesn't connect to Microsoft or something to make sure that you are running a legit copy, so that means that your skin will be the default, in this case, Steve, so if you want to change it, you will have to make a texture pack. Oh joy.

For people that care, your skin can only be the bottom layer - so no «hat» layer. If you want to change it, as stated, you need to make a texture pack, so that certainly can make playing this older version of the game less fun, but saying that, it's not going to be a dealbreaker for most people.

Let's talk combat. I know that there was some epic drama in the Minecraft community when Mojang changed the way that fighting works, right now the way that it works is that your main weapons would be a sword or axe with a shield as a way of protection; you'll go up to a monster or player, hit them, and then wait for the cooloff to happen - the longer you wait for your weapon to charge, the higher the damage will be, so spamming your sword, for example, won't make all that much of an impact. Got that? Good lad. Now, in older versions of the game, like 1.0, there was no shield, but you could use your sword as one and in this version, you can spam your clicker to do the same amount of damage to a monster as there is no cooloff period.

Get ready to make a callout post on Twitter, but, I really feel like the old combat is not as good or as thought out as it is now. This is mostly down to autoclickers being a thing and spam clicking your mouse just isn't as fun as having to think about how to fight a monster.

I was asked by Patrick of digitalangel.neocities.org fairly early on exactly why I would want to play not only such an early version of the game, but also a version that has a lot of bugs in it. Well, this is my answer to you: I feel like by going back so much, I can have a greater appreciation of all of the new content that has since been added to the game, as well as experience what it was like to play a game that I missed out on in my childhood. Was it worth my time? Sure, I'd say so and if you are a big Minecraft fan, then I would recommend trying this for yourself, it can be a lot of fun and you will hopefully get a better understanding of what new Minecraft does exceeds in and what it fails at.

So, what's next for me and Minecraft? SkyBlock? A 100 days world? A third cool thing? Erm, no, I think I will just stick to playing in servers from now on.

The image of Santa smoking was taken from Wikimedia Commons - the page says that it's CC BY-SA 4.0, but I am doubting this and feel like it would be public domain as it does not have a copyright notice on it, but I'm not going to die on that hill. The watermark was edited out.

Fair use is claimed on the SNOW by ULTRAV0ID (2022) and burg by rascalsludge (2022) artwork that is used here as an example of one of the featured artwork(s). Fair use is also claimed on the images of the Minecraft screenshots. In this newsletter we talk about it, describing the medium itself. The material in a lower resolution that would be unlikely to impact the copyright owner(s)'s ability to resell or otherwise profit from the work(s).

Thank you to Bruno A. for his comic that has been used here, it uses the same license as this newsletter.

Oh, and a thank you for reading this newsletter. I understand that a lot more younger people don't believe in most religions, let alone Christianity, but regardless, hopefully, you have a good new year and stay safe.

In memory of the Pendragon: 1996 - 2021.

Copyright 2021 - by NeoZones, licensed under the FOPL-MDP. Please see humans.txt for full credit and thanks.