Theory of Theories
What are Minecraft Theories?
There are a lot of questions that rise when playing Minecraft, such as: what are creepers? Why are endermans so scary? Why are potions magical? These questions exist because of something greater, the Mysteries. The game can tell you things about its universe, villagers trade with you, crafting tables are used to craft items, the deeper you go the more resources you’ll find, etc. But then there are things not so clear: when the sun goes out, under the faint glow of moonlight, monsters arise, creatures of dead corpses that want to kill you, evil witches that resemble villagers and the creepers that explode if you get too close to them. That. is a mystery, there is no clear reason for why that happens, one Mystery can give rise to a lot of questions, and while one question can be solved with an answer, Mysteries need longer, more complicated solutions. To find these solutions, we create theories.
However, theories are not alone, within these “solutions of mysteries” we also have Headcanons and Fanfictions.
The main difference is the proximity to the canon or noncanon. Theories owe to be as close as possible to the canon, Headcanons have more freedom and fanfics have almost full freedom thus can be apart from it.
Still this is not always the case, another classification would be theorizing “For Fun” and “For Glory” where the first one goes about having fun while doing the theories, making up your own stories, and “For Glory” exists with the purpose of finding “The most likely explanation”. Headcanons can also be used to describe lesser theories, they are usually more “personal” in a way, as things you believe as an individual but have little actual evidence, even then, some headcanons are so simple yet elegant that they turn out to be really close to the canon.
In many ways, theorizing is similar to philosophy, in the sense that whoever theorizes about minecraft already knows that there isn’t a definitive answer for anything, and that the devs will never answer everything. There are fundamentally unsolvable mysteries and questions that make up the “charm” of Minecraft’s lore.
So at the end of the day, theories that are “For Glory” owe to be as close as possible to the canon, so that way they can find the most likely answers to the mysteries, and build up a cohesive lore. But, how do you do that? and what even is the canon?
The Canon
Minecraft is a franchise, it has a lot of games, board games, novels, etc. When trying to figure out the canon we try to find out what media forms part of the “Minecraft Universe” a term used a handful of times by the devs when asked about lore and canon. The Canonicity Guide already does a great job at establishing what media are canon and which aren’t, so here we’ll just go a little deeper about certain aspects.
Quotes from Laura, game designer of Minecraft Dungeons
From the withering effect podcast
MCD lore and canon
"We have a very close connection with the vanilla team, we talk with Lady Agnes and Jens a lot"
"We actually build everything IN Minecraft"
"The lore is all connected, Minecraft is one big universe and within that universe there is, you know, vanilla and then Dungeons and so on, so forth"
"It's one big universe and we explore, you know, we explore different parts of the universe"
"We just conceptualize things as if they were able to make it in vanilla"
"Technically they (illagers) are an intention/integration from the Dungeons side of things"
"So yeah, the Arch-illager felt like a natural enemy and then we wanted to have this mystery with the Orb of Dominance, having this intrinsic, hidden, evil power in the background"
"So now with the release of our latest DLC we tied that with the end, which is another, you know, HINT to the lore, idk if i can say much more but, yeah"
Minecraft Dungeons Arcade is an arcade adaptation of Minecraft Dungeons announced on March 5th, 2021. The game is developed by Mojang Studios in conjunction with Play Mechanix and it was released in the third quarter of 2021
The Canonicity Guide lists the Arcade edition as canon, for various reasons, here I will only expand on one of the reasons that has most lore, the events of each Arcade level happening before the events of the normal Dungeons levels (excluding the DLC themed ones)
In MCD the end of the cacti canyon level is the beginning of the Desert Temple level, and you can argue the same happens in Arcade.
At the end of Arcade’s cacti canyon you enter a “spider temple” hidden in a cave, then fight a cave spider enchanted by the Arch-illager right there. In that room there can be seen some doors and an upper floor.
In the Desert Temple level of Arcade, the hero enters from a stone stairway behind them. A theory suggests that the spider temple connects to that entrance to the Desert Temple, that being also the reason why the Nameless One was waiting for the hero, since the Arch-illager appearing in the spider cave to power-up the spider would imply both of them knew about heroes messing around in the temple.
Then at the end of the Desert Temple, when defeated in Arcade, the Nameless One falls and lies down. In the original game, the Nameless One is seen laying down before the fight.
Apart from that, in Arcade the Nameless One constantly lurks the hero into a place where he finally fights them. He will also summon undead mobs with his staff to trouble the hero’s path. The Nameless does not do that in normal Dungeons because there he is already defeated and “resting” over the tomb
The Obsidian Monstrosity is a boss fight in Arcade, having its head and one of its arms separated when defeated. In the original game, it’s seen in a broken state, appearing without an arm and with a tilted head.
In the Squid Coast level, the Arcade version shows the start of a small raid, at the end the hero defeats a mage and royal guard that were enchanted by the Arch-Illager. The important thing is this happens during the sunset and one cleric saw everything from a safe place in a tower.
Then, in the intro cutscene of MCD during nighttime we see a celtic (probably the same one) explaining what they saw to a group of villagers, right before the big raid happens.
In Soggy Swamp of Arcade you travel through stone ruins, but at the end of the level after fighting an evoker you can see at the distance a “village” of witches. That “village” is the level you play in normal Dungeons
The Creeper Woods level of Arcade tells a separate story of a hero who encounters an Enderman who follows and lurks the hero through the forest. That Enderman is oddly aggressive towards villagers who didn’t even look at its eyes.
After seeing those villagers in the camp, they escape and hide, but later we find not very far away a group of illagers getting closer to the camp.
Then in normal Dungeons we find out the same villagers of the camp but this time being imprisoned by illagers, and apparently they also took over their waggons.
As explained in the guide, Minecraft Earth is canon, but here I will expand in some of its contents that might be useful in lore:
Adventure Structures
An adventure was a location on the map where one or more players could have a survival-mode adventure. In an adventure, players were allowed to fight mobs, collect additional resources that are unavailable with tappables, and collect rewards.
Adventure structures were divided in: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Epic.
There are up to 159 Adventures, some of the most interesting are:
If you want to see the full list check out: Minecraft Earth Adventure Solutions
Not canon
The canon status of Story Mode and Legends was greatly explained in the Canonicity Guide. But as a summary: Minecraft Story Mode is NOT canon. And Minecraft Legends is a canon legend within the minecraft universe.
Minecraft Mini-Series is a Canadian-American action/adventure animated web series based on Minecraft. The series is produced by Mojang Studios and Xbox Game Studios in collaboration with Atomic Cartoons and Mattel Creations, with Christopher Keenan serving as executive producer, and premiered on October 26, 2017, on the Mattel Action YouTube channel, with the final episode being released on May 10, 2018.
The series had only two short seasons and it was made to promote and sell toys, the minecraft mini figures that were also based on old texture packs that were greek-themed or for halloween.
The story apart from having these non-canon creatures also has things like command blocks, a lot of them. If you haven’t guessed yet this media is not canon.
The House Analogy
The Minecraft Universe is a house. The house has different rooms, it has the vanilla room where there lives the zombie, the skeleton and the Ender Dragon among others. There is the Dungeons room where the redstone golem, the necromancer, the iceologer, and many others live. Mobs can move from one room into the other, zombies and skeletons can leave the vanilla room and enter the dungeons room, pillagers leave the dungeons room and enter the vanilla room. When mobs decide they want to visit another room they can carry “features” with them. For example when the pillagers decided to visit the vanilla room they carried the crossbows with them. However they can’t just walk freely to any room in the house, because each room has its own set of rules.
These rules are what we call the gameplay mechanics, visual artstyle and game context. For the pillager to enter the vanilla room it has to follow its rules, such as tweaking its gameplay mechanics, simplifying its animations, a slight retexture, and fitting within the game’s context (that is, appearing in raids and outposts).
While some mobs and features can gain access to other rooms by following their rules, some others just cannot do that, like for example the Arch-illager who just can’t enter the vanilla room because of the game context rule, if he wanted to enter he would have to really change his context within the vanilla room to fit in with its rules (that is, add him as an easter egg or another solution)
So, the Minecraft Universe is a house, the house has different rooms in it which are the games, content from those rooms (mobs, features, etc) can move freely from one to the other as long as they follow each of the room’s rules.
Now keep in mind they are still part of the same house, and rules only apply to each room individually, rules can only state how its members should behave and look, so mobs can follow the rules but it will not change their nature. Rules are a matter of convenience, not a matter of lore. The rooms might have different rules but they are not different houses, they are rooms within the same house. In other words, Minecraft games show us parts of the same world.
To get this idea think about another example. There are things in the house that affect all of the rooms, or more than one room and are independent from the rules. Like say the electricity supply of the house, if the CGP is in the Dungeons room, it only takes for some member of that room to turn it off and the whole house will run out of electricity. This means there are things that “rule over” the whole house and are not tied to one of the room’s behavioral rules.
Also keep in mind that there is a huge blank space between the rooms, that space is the purest form of the minecraft universe, it has no rules but the ones of the house’s structure itself, and that’s what lore is about.
Theories are, in a way, structures, you grab a couple of ideas and they are supported by evidence, the pillars of your theory, then you take more evidence to support other ideas that will defend your theory (the walls of your theory), and keep building some sort of structure that will indirectly try to mimic the minecraft universe (house)’s structure.
Minecraft Theories try to be as close as possible to the universe’ structure, because the rules of each room are written over the lore, remember, rules don’t change the house’s structure; maybe a theory is weak and could fall apart easily, until we find a new canon source, a whole new room of the house that has the content we were missing and that couldn’t be seen in the other rooms because of their rules.
This whole “support” idea is very handy, there are theories that require both MCD and Vanilla to work, there are Mysteries in MCD who’s resolutions can be found only when looking into another room. Theories should look at the universe as a whole and not as separated rooms with some things in common. The best way to answer the Mysteries of the lore, is to look at the house as a whole, as one big thing, knowing that there are rules which set the difference between the rooms, but that at the end of the day they all form part of one same canon and one same lore.
A Case for The Novels
Books are a great form of media, they have more freedom when it comes to telling stories, in fact here you outright write down stories, so these might offer a more direct look into the lore, right?
Well, it all depends on the status of these books as canon or not. The Mobestiary for example was used by theorists for a long time, until someone asked themselves “How do we know this book is canon?”
You see, the book has some actual weird stuff, to name a few it implies illagers are unable to breed, shulkers move really fast instead of teleporting, endermites spawn sometimes when endermans teleport (this was only in a snapshot), guardians being hollow inside (based on the 3D model, when at the same time they put a depiction of an elder guardian with its insides and also lack of the sponges) They also had stuff like the insides of a ghast looking like a robot for some people, or the creeper that had an actual TNT inside its skeleton, making people claim creepers were artificial. It also shows endermans and endermites having organs (something that contradicts other canon media) not to mention many animal diagrams were outright stupid even if we are talking about an in-universe naturalist who can just dissect them.
So all of this went down the rollercoaster until someone decided to ask the big question to the author himself.
This quote saying the stuff in the book is not holy facts but rather the theories of a naturalist already downgrades the utility status of the book, as one might say this is an in-universe naturalist and their experiences and findings about the creatures were real even if their theories are not. The book itself is also referred to as a “mob guide” so this would be more of a fancy guide than a lore book like from other games. We have yet another quote regarding its canon:
However take this one with a grain of salt, HelenAngel is the former Community-Manager of Minecraft, who has been called out for (probably unintentionally) “lying” about lore and stuff, spreading misinformation.
But do not worry fans of ROTAI, we have more evidence that this novel is canon:
This time directly from a MCD dev during a Q&A, it's such a straightforward and simple answer, that denying its canon status would be objectively wrong, cry about it if you don’t like that.
So this has been the case for a long time, the only canon book is ROTAI and that’s it. The book itself is special in the way it describes the Minecraft world, it uses what I would call “real life logic”, blocks are mentioned but only once in the novel, to refer to a literal chunk of metal that was magically cut to form a staff. This is very interesting since it makes a lot of sense to assume that lore-wise the minecraft world is not blocky, just think about it! items in the game already imply this, such as slimeballs, snowballs, clay balls, ender pearls… Then items that you can both have a 3d model and item depiction like the Eyes of Ender, Cake, Turtle Eggs, Sniffer Eggs, Spyglass, Goat Horns… The more you look the more you realize that the blocky-voxel-pixel aesthetic is but an artistic lens to look at the world and not a fundamental aspect of it.
Even in Minecraft Dungeons we see 3D models that are free to use more complex non-cubic designs:
It is good to know ROTAI has so much freedom that it can describe the world without the block or pixel limitations, even without the gameplay ones such as having an inventory somewhere in your pockets that can carry unbelievable amounts of item-form blocks of material. In other words this book managed to pass over every room’s rule… somehow. Wouldn't it be interesting to know more about the making of this book? perhaps with an author interview?
“I didn’t want to just tell the story, because as a player you’re telling your own story, and that’s half the fun of playing Minecraft Dungeons. If I tell that story in a novel it becomes the canon version, and nobody wants to be told they’re playing the game wrong. “
This here is a very, very interesting quote, we can even overlap this to vanilla as to why they always say minecraft doesn’t have a plot or story but rather you make your own, they do not mean minecraft doesn’t have lore and we have to make it up (therefore all headcanons have the same truth as fanfiction or theories) but instead what minecraft (vanilla) doesn’t have is a plot for the character you are playing with. That’s why Steve and Alex and everyone else are placeholders, “you are the one in minecraft” whatever the character does is up to you.
However, both Vanilla and Dungeons have a lore, a backstory, something that happened within that universe but partially unrelated to you as a player. In other words: The lore won’t force a backstory for your character, but rather for the world you are playing in. One of the reasons lore is left so ambiguous is to also not force world-backstory into your playing experience, that way you can make your own interpretations of what’s going on around you. But when speaking about canon media, in this case novels, that are not so limited by a core gameplay aspect, how do you write a story that sticks to the lore Mojang has in mind?
We know little about Matt’s writing experience on this novel, but he probably had to go through some green light filter for the devs to confirm it as the only canon book. It does have some deep-lore aspects that are not very related to the story but more to the lore in general, so it's safe to assume he could ask things to the Mojang staff or the Lore Department, or even that the Lore Department gave him a ton of worldbuilding information beforehand plus the intro cutscene for him to expand a whole novel on.
So it was all good and great (for the most part) for the theorizing community, until something happened, a new spin-off game, Minecraft Legends was about to be released, and soon before it, came a novel centered around that game, also written by Matt Forebeck: Return of The Piglins (ROTP)
Everyone was very excited, this might be yet another canon novel! How many secrets will it uncover? let’s take a look at its writer interview:
Well holy striders this already confirms our hypothesis of him asking stuff to the developers!
This all sounds hella interesting, now we even know this is an actual story and not part of the legend, so what about the story itself, what’s it about?
Upon reading the novel you will find that it describes the events in a very lore-friendly way, real-life-logic, human in-universe characters that are not outside-real-life-video-game-players. It also gives some lore information regarding stuff like Piglin society, the legend, zombification, human society, etc.
It was such a new important source of information that theorizers couldn’t help but to have direct confirmation of it being canon, just in case we needed it. There was no Minecraft Legends Q&A, sadly, but the good old theory gang won’t take a “no" for response, they went to twitter.
HURRAY! YIPIE! Everyone, let's go party! We have confirmation!
Oh… well what the hell just happened?
This was weird. Weird in many ways, one being why would the author say he believes his novel to be canon and moments later be told by someone at Mojang that “it's not canon per se”
This brings the question… Did he write it thinking that it would be canon? Then can we consider it canon anyways? What does he even mean by canon per se? And is this placing ROTP in the same bundle as all of the other weird wacky meta minecraft novels?
The answer is, complicated, but very interesting as well.
"not canon per se" - "they exist in their version of vanilla minecraft" - This here reminds me of a quote from the Jens Design Principle book, about Minecraft being a “Multiverse”. Don’t take it too literally tho, this isn’t a spiderverse kind of thing, more of a meta aspect of the game related to how the player interacts with the world. The player not as an actual character called Peter Player that has THIS specific backstory and THIS specific motivation and- no, the player as a figure, as a placeholder that you, me, and every player of minecraft incarnates when we play.
Every minecraft world (our worlds) exists at the same time, with an unimaginable level of freedom. Wanna dig a giant hole in an ocean monument? build pixel art of super mario? make a suspicious shaped figure? you can. When the Design Principles book says Minecraft is a Multiverse it is referring to the freedom they should give to players to build up their own stories (as said before here in this document)
But now going back to the novels and that “canon per se”. What I mean is, sure they exist in their own versions of vanilla minecraft, which would also mean that the novels don't (or are not allowed) to take place within the spin-offs. With the obvious exception being ROTAI (and also being the only canon one)
The thing is, isn't it interesting how he mentions that they exist in their versions of vanilla? This isn't like ROTAI which is not fully in MCD either, ROTAI takes place in the minecraft universe as a whole, and is not attached to the laws that rule MCD (the gameplay mechanics, etc). In other words, if we remember the house analogy for spin-offs being rooms of the house, then ROTAI is in neither of the rooms but in the whole house at the same time, more-so is the purest view at the "true" minecraft universe, or like a view without a roomrule lens but only a novel limitation lens.
But here is the thing, Matt says (he was told) this piglin novel and most of the others take place in vanilla, we don't know exactly how many are most of them. But we do know that most novels follow an in-universe story while just a few are meta-oriented with real life characters being involved in some way with the fictional video game (like being suck into the game or being actual real life people playing in a modded server, like Story Mode lol)
So, this would mean that all of the other minecraft novels that tell in-universe stories happen in vanilla, or more-so they are like our own worlds, like literal player SMP fanfiction but trademarked to sell with a Mojang seal.
Now this wouldn't sound surprising at all, until you start to wonder,...
How much "fan" is in this "fanfiction" ?
We know some writers had a lot of creative freedom, when the writer of The End asked the devs about advise, she was told that she could write "literally anything she wanted", in the case of Matt with ROTAI was the exact opposite, he knew beforehand that his novel would be 100% canon to the franchise and minecraft universe, he even told how he struggled to make hero characters since that would make them the actual characters and take the player component of MCD (us) apart from its real story, so he wrote about Archie instead.
But this then puts novels like Castle Redstone on a weird place, where some sort of past actual lore was made for the story, one that relates to one of the defeats of the ender dragon but seemingly also to the MCD mainland, which should be impossible if they are set in the vanilla context, or well, if most of them do…
Illustration of the MCD mainland in the endpapers, same as in the ROTAI book. The journey of the story would fit within the MCD mainland, also implying the existence of castle redstone behind the mountains
Then we also get suspicious coincidences among novels, such as witches having chests filled with glowing blaze powder, or that time "the wither entity spoke to Zetta to try and summon it" that part added nothing to the rest of the story yet it was there and looked like it had thought behind it.
(Context can be found in: Expanded Wither Entity Theory)
So this rises a new question, if the minecraft novels that tell in-universe stories are set within the vanilla context, and they are not canon "per-se", yet not fully uncanon either, then could it be that certain background details or worldbuilding aspects present in the novels are actually part of the canon minecraft universe?. Or in other words, if the events are not canon (because they would be like player stories, in a way) then could the world-backstory be? the descriptions of how certain things work?
This can be further explored and theorized upon, like ROTP having clear MCL worldbuilding within that vanilla context, and why would Matt even think that his novel was part of the canon? could it be that he was given some background information advice to write over that? Could that be happening with most of the minecraft novels?
Just think about it, if we discard the meta-novels, it could be that the base for a minecraft novel is given by the Lore Department itself, considering how much they care about it that they EVEN have one for Minecraft Earth. it's likely they are aware of the lore potential a literal novel has, and could give some advice and context for writers to use as a base. Thus being also a possible explanation as to how a bunch of amateur players, who said they've been playing the game weeks before writing, could manage to pull over some really suspiciously "oddly fitting" ties to actual lore
Oh and by the way, the novels having half realistic half gameplay things (like humans somehow carrying stacks of dirt) is not really a problem... at least not anymore given the theory I proposed for the house analogy. In the house analogy, the house is the whole minecraft universe, the canon, there are rooms and in those rooms live the contents of each game, MC, MCD, MCL, MCE, etc. Things can move in and out of the rooms almost freely, but one concept to keep in mind is that you can't just walk into a room, these have their own set of rules you must follow if you want to stay around (this is what we call gameplay mechanics and artstyle design) so, an endersent can't just leave the MCD room and enter the MC room without following the rules that vanilla imposes (in other words this would be mobs having slightly different gameplay mechanics or visual styles)
In the novel's framework, the stories are set within the vanilla context, so it would make sense for them to follow some of the rules that come with it, like being able to hold stacks of blocks, while also depicting a realistic non-cubic world in some sentences. A weird but truly unique mix between what is a blocky fanfiction and a realistic canon backstory... such a blurry line between the real and false things that surround the lore
Alright, time to work, let’s see if we can find some actual evidence for this other than our speculation.
First let’s ask a question, when did lore really start? This might sound stupid, everything has lore in it! it was always there!. Well… not really, stuff changes all the time, I think we can all agree the lore of the nether was not the same at its conception as it is after the nether update, just to name something, or villages before their update. Stuff gets updated all of the time, but apart from updating the lore, there has to be a moment where lore really started, where they really began to build-up a concrete backstory and logic to the world and its characters.
In the old days of Minecraft, Story Mode could be the answer!- or maybe not, since it was not developed by Mojang, and Jeb said in his book that the concept for story mode was players on a server… so is the most meta thing ever, as said as well in The Canonicity Guide. But we also have a very interesting interview regarding Story Mode, that dates back to October of 2015
“It cannot be an official canon or mythology, because no such thing exists”
This is interesting for two reasons, one being that they said no such thing as canon or mythology exists (or existed) And also because mythology is a term also used 7 years later by Marc, but this time in a positive view:
So it is very clear lore started somewhere, Mojang sat down one day and said “we gotta write down some lore guys”, but when? With the development of Minecraft Dungeons? … Well actually that’s a great candidate!
Minecraft Dungeons is perhaps the more lore-oriented game of the franchise, even more than legends given its variety and the impact it had in the theorizing community and minecraft theories as a whole, it was also the first minecraft game (you don’t count story mode) to tell an actual story with actual in-universe characters, and have an actual backstory lore that forms part of the Minecraft Universe.
To keep things simple, think about villagers, they are such a fundamental aspect for the lore that they are of great significance in the earliest events like the Legend that saw their rise. Some even say that the rise of vindicators was the “fundamental event” that starts a part of the mythology and changes the overworld forever, something no one has found yet (so it wouldn’t be piglins invading)
In other words, illagers are fundamental to the lore, and they were born in a MCD development office. (also fun fact there was a MCL poster all of this time laying in a MCD office, so who knows since how long MCL has been in development, but likely both projects were closely related)
It seems as if immediately after being born for MCD, Jens decided to include them into minecraft, This was in 1.11, the exploration update.
They were actually introduced to the public in the 2016 minecon, september 24,
About MCD’s development, it was intended to be a game for the Nintendo 3DS, we don’t know exactly when, but it was likely during 2016.
Keeping in mind that the Story Mode interview that claimed there is no such thing as lore was published in October of 2015, we could draw a line to when minecraft lore really started, that being 2016.
But if we look at the novels, they all came up since 2017
So now we know there was already lore when the novels began, now the next step would be to decide what novels are meta and what novels are from in-universe characters, and if those could be considered “canon” like ROTP.
The Island and The Crash are meta, they are about real life people who experience the virtual video game. The third one, The Lost Journals, is the first novel to relate the events of an in-universe character.
First interesting thing is the presence of enchanters in the book, these might or might not be the MCD illager enchanters, but still worth thinking considering the date.
AHA! We find ourselves mentioning some “rules”, it's interesting how he had to actually edit the meal scenes, it would imply the writers don’t have that much creative freedom after all, sure they can make up whatever story but they have to stick to the rules of the minecraft world.
Don’t forget he also mentions “little plot involved” this is already different from the "there is no lore bah" of the 2015 interview, which is true, the vanilla context has little plot involved within it, does it have any actual plot other than defeating the dragon?
The next novel in our list is The End. in this case the writer was also a noob who barely knew the game, but this time she was given much more freedom
One thing to keep in mind, she asked what to write about, and they gave her freedom for the story, this doesn’t mention anything about the lore or worldbuilding. The other relevant thing about this novel is that the protagonists are not humans but endermans, some novels do seem like being protagonized by villagers instead of humans, like The Dragon, but it's not that clear.
The next one: The Voyage, was also written by a noob!
And that’s pretty much all there is to this novel, the story appears to be very self-contained, not much going on in regards to the other lore, at least as far as Im aware
Next one we have The Shipwreck
And we are back to meta novels
This doesn’t seem like much, but it does imply some sort of indirect rule, the fact the story contains mermaids might be an indication that to get full creative freedom you gotta have it be real life people in a modded server, in other words, no way this story was going to be in-universe characters because there is no such thing as ocean monument mermaids in minecraft, so the novels do have their limitations.
The mountain is a sequel to The Island, so let’s jump right into… The Dragon…
This is the novel quoted in the Expanded Wither Entity Theory, it's a very strange novel that while it has some moments of “block” logic, it will also casually explain brewing stands as real life objects with real life logic to them like being oxidized or broken. But of course the elephant in the room is the freaking Dragon Egg that the Witch Meryl has.
This is a very… weird situation, since we don’t know where to put the fact Meryl has a Dragon egg, is it just a plot thing therefore not as canon as the worldbuilding? or is it part of the world-lore? That's a… complicated question we still have no answer to, And the novel likes to keep the secret as if it was intended to be kept a secret.
Now that other elephant in the room, the scene quoted in the Wither theory:
"She then says to Zetta that magic is unpredictable, but she’ll know who’s in charge once she becomes comfortable with it.” [...] “Although she is able to find the rabbit, a voice whispers at her, asking her to build a scarecrow out of four blocks of soul sand and three skulls; the latter were buried in a chest behind the house. Zetta never questioned the voice as she took some soul sand from under the porch and placed it in a T-shape; she also gathered the three skulls, which were black in color, and began to place them. Just as Zetta was about to place down the third one on the left side, Aunt Meryl bursts out the door, pleading with her to not place it. The voice whispers to Zetta to place the skull down; she is mere inches away as Aunt Meryl tackles her to the ground, making the skull land in an area filled with daisies. Aunt Meryl exclaims to Zetta that she isn’t ready, and that she almost created something; she bites her tongue to prevent saying the name of the mob."
…ok now just seriously think about this. Did she just answer her own question or is this implying she actually asked the question to the Mojang team and the whole wither deal came out?
"turns out some people are more influenced by the whispers of those trapped souls than others"
So, she didn't make that up, when some question "turns out" to be something, is because you got the actual answer.
Considering that the entity deal also has a... weird relation of "something being in charge with magic" and that "something" being related to the wither or, you know, the whole wither entity theory, it having nothing to do with the rest of the plot AND the writer literally saying she introduced it because she wanted to know was going on with soul sand and apparently eventually asked... Then yeah, this further supports the idea of the Lore Department giving advice and information for the novels.
Next we have Mob Squad, a chill one, and the following quote from an interview:
This time the interviewer is the one saying there are laws of the overworld, similar to the “rules” mentioned before.
Sadly, this was the last interview of the novels, with the exception of ROTP much later (which we’ve already seen)
The following novel was The Haven Trials, a VERY meta novel where the protagonists have more to do with the real world and moving to another town than with the actual modded server they are playing in, but this one is also the last meta novel of them all. The ones that came after are:
Mob Squad (sequel) Never say Nether: interesting fact being piglins referred to with They/Them pronouns like in the later ROTP novel (this does not happen with villagers and humans, implying that piglins might be lore-wise asexual or agender).
Zombies!.
Mob Squad: Don’t Fear The Creeper.
Castle Redstone: Has MCD mainland in the cover and the adventure fits it for some reason.
Zombies Return!
(The Village is likely the return of meta novels, and so far the only one. Being a continuation of The Mountain) Little is known about the upcoming novels, but The Outsider implies “a new kind of zombie that can do things no zombie should be able to do—working together, stealing resources, and terrorizing the folks who live outside the city’s walls.”, and the Journey to the Ancient City mentions another character who has defeated the Ender Dragon before
One strong piece of evidence for this new vision about novels would be finding connections among them, these could be the behavior of certain mobs like witches, piglins or villagers, or things like at least 3 novels implying the death of the Ender Dragon, with two different people doing it (Lord Maharajah and Opal) with The End saying “a cycle always begins when something kills the ender dragon” which would complement the other novels implying the dragon can and had been killed multiple times. Now this would be a hard and long task to do, but the doors are open for brand new possibilities, a whole new field of theorizing can be born.
To conclude this chapter, I’ll coin the term “Quasicanon” to refer to these in-universe novels that have “blurry canon” characters and events but a “canon” worldbuilding.
Although keep in mind, this is just a framework to make theories, you can also just ignore the “quasicanon” and consider one where only MC, MCE, MCD, Arcade, MCL and ROTAI are canon therefore have meaningful lore.
Something else to keep in mind is, no one owns the lore, no one can force you to theorize in a certain way, however what this document shows is systems to use when theorizing. We don’t force them because 1. It would be just outright wrong. and 2. We don’t even have the power to. What we owe is to give our view into how to approach the lore so that, if people find it useful because of the reasons we said, then they can try these systems to make their own theories.
And also, everyone can give their opinions and criticism to any theory. We think everyone should respect each other's freedom to use any system to theorize. This means we should try not to be pretentious about the system, avoiding expectations of everyone agreeing to use one system because it works best or, even worse, just because we like it or because we don’t like certain sources that are considered canon.
Remember that lore is ambiguous and since this all drags from a block game, theorizing should be fun for everyone in the community. Even if arguments happen, because they are just unavoidable and not everyone argues in the most peaceful way, that’s not “wrong”, it's just a reality we have to accept and do our best to not intentionally ruin someone else’s fun.
The Theorizing Community
Now, what is the theorizing community? We can describe it as just a bunch of people interested in a funny block game’s lore who create Theories to solve Mysteries within that lore. Even if the theories are huge or small, if the mysteries are as hard as real life science mysteries or just “how does rain work?” they all are technically part of the community; even if someone made only one theory one time and posted it somewhere or instead made 30 google documents of theories. Even if that someone doesn’t even know the term “Minecraft Theorizing Community” at all, they should be respected just as that person who made 30 google documents.
This community has spread in many places where the minecraft community itself lies, like in YouTube or Discord. For example we have channels like RetroGamingNow which used to be more focused on story-driven minecraft theories and now has a more “internet mysteries” kind of content.
Or the Game Theorists channel, many might already know how biased its theories are, to the point of claiming stuff that is, in practice, objectively wrong. it also tends to be pretentious with its claims to the point of using phrases such as “I SOLVED THE LORE”, without mentioning the insane amount of cherry-picking when it comes to research. This has pissed off part of the theorizing community mostly because of how it spreads misinformation with its videos that reach the most public interested in lore and know little about the canon and how “dumb” these theories are. (But hey, it also happened with the FNAF and BATIM communities)
There is also the “Lore de Minecraft VE", a spanish-speaking channel that is one of the only ones to use MCD in a proper way, it has made many “documentary” kinds of videos, they’ve done a better research in comparison with most youtube theory channels, which has led to very interesting theories.
On the other hand of the Spanish spectrum we have “Miguel Gamer”. Its theories are just part of its content but it should be noted that they shouldn’t be taken seriously. Many believe these are even worse than the Game Theorists ones, because, it's even more pretentious, has even more cherry-picking and makes wild sensationalists claims about everything to call the attention while just spreading more misinformation. People from its discord server have also claimed that the moderators mute and delete messages from people who show the evidence of the Mobestiary being not canon (because without the Mobestiary, 90% of these theory videos will crash down)
There are also discord servers used to share and discuss theories! in the official MCD and MCL servers there are channels for lore and theories, RGN also has a discord server with a minecraft-theories channel and forums, the MC Ideas Academy also has a video explaining what they call “quasilore” and a channel in their discord server. Overall, there are many places to make, share and discuss theories, there are probably even more out there in the internet, and perhaps, one day, we could put them all together into one grand theory that resolutes many Mysteries at once, or maybe not and they will be like small islands of answers scattered around an endless ocean of questions. However it is, it will certainly be a journey.