#i aint tagging all the mcytblr subfandoms. if people like this essay then they'll reblog it
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oh ok this is going to be an entire essay. Oh fuck. Okay yall buckle up i have a lot of thoughts on this topic let's go
Inventory Headcanons in the MCYT Universe, specifically relating to Fanworks and Common Interperetations of the Minecraft Inventory in art and writing
+ my personal ideas for how it works because yippee autism
Part 1: How the Minecraft Inventory Works Inside the Game
Okay, starting off simple here. If you are reading this, then you probably know how the Minecraft inventory system works. I do not care. I am covering all of the bases here.
This is a screenshot of the Minecraft inventory! (I am aware that it was taken before the update that added the offhand slot, but bear with me here.)
All of the slots that are shown here except for the armor slots can hold any 64 items or blocks, with exceptions for containers of liquids, tools, armor, and weapons (nonstackable). Exceptions are also made for snowballs, eyes of ender, ender pearls, and buckets, which stack up to 16. The crafting grid can contain any 64 items as well, but these don't stay in place after you exit the inventory screen.
All of these slots are carried physically on the player itself, which has caused a LOT of discussion amongst the Minecraft community on how the fuck this 6-foot-tall square man is able to hold uhhhh [checks notes] 4 billion pounds of gold. Damn.
The answer, naturally, is that this is a very simplistic video game not meant to be realistic at all (it's cubes, goddamnit) and Steve can just do that. Moving on.
For the purposes of this essay, we are going to be completely ignoring the physical feats of this inventory and focus specifically on the mechanics of it.
1a: The Boring Stuff (Mechanics of How it Actually Works)
The inventory can be accessed by pressing a button on your keyboard, Switch joycon, phone, Samsung Smart Fridge, VR controller, or whatever the fuck you guys are playing Minecraft on these days. Here's a list of the default settings used to open the Minecraft inventory.
PC or anything with a keyboard: E
Xbox 360, Xbox One controller: Y
PlayStation 3, 4, and Vita controllers: The green triangle
Nintendo Switch and Wii U (wait WHAT): X
Mobile Devices: The … on the right hand side of the hotbar
Items go into the hotbar first when picked up and into the top-right corner of the inventory first if the inventory is empty and the hotbar is full.
You can close the inventory by pressing more buttons on the keyboard which I won't include here. Just look it up.
1b: Shulker Boxes and +NBT Chests
The shulker box is a placeable item in game that is obtained by visiting the End. It has 27 item slots, which is 9 less than the full player inventory, and unlike chests and barrels it does not drop all of its contents onto the floor upon being broken. You cannot access the contents of shulker boxes while they are inside of your inventory.
If you placed 27 stacks of gold blocks into 36 shulker boxes and placed all of those inside of your inventory, that would be a fuck ton of gold in there. This is a well-known fact.
Also in Creative mode you can middle-click a filled chest and get the entire chest plus its contents right in your inventory which will be there which I wanted to mention. Oh right. Creative mode. I should pr
1c: The Creative Mode Inventory
You can access the entirety of the game's materials in Creative mode except for a select few of them, which players have naturally figured out how to get anyways.
1d: INFORGOT TO MENTION THIS BUT YOU CAN MAKE ACTUAL MODIFICATIONS TO THE IN-GAME INVENTORY.
With resource and data packs, you can change the color and opacity of your inventory. You can also hover over shulker boxes to view their contents without having to actually place them on the ground and open them.
Modifications to the game (colloquially shortened to "mods") can also increase the inventory size. I will not be focusing on these because the possibilities are literally endless here and I am tired.
Part 2: A Slightly Unhinged Analysis on Fanworks and Fanart on General that I have Pulled Straight Out my Ass.
Okay. So we have an inventory. How the hell does this translate to fanart, fanfiction, etc?
For the answer to this, we are going to have to take a look at how people actually take the universe of Minecraft and translate it to a semi-realistic or realistic style. You thought it was going to be a straightforward post about interperetations of inventory in Minecraft but it was me, Dio! I should really turn this post into a video essay.
2a: Canon Compliance, Canon Complicity, and This Is Only Technically Minecraft but I Have To Add It Here Anyways for the Sake Of My Autism
Generally in fanworks, there is a scale on how strict the work keeps to the actual canon interperetation of the universe. This also applies to the stories being told within the universe but don't worry about it I'm not poking that lion today.
The points I have labeled on the scale (really oversimplified) are:
Type 1 (Hold very strict to the game mechanics and how the inventory works within the game.)
Type 2 (Still within the universe of Minecraft, or in a setting that at least resembles Minecraft, but with some creative liberties taken with how game mechanics and inventories work- sometimes completely ignoring them for the sake of whatever the creator chooses.)
Type 3 (Not even in Minecraft at all. I'm only including this here for the amount of characters from roleplays that are placed in other video game settings or just fuckin' into real life.)
I think those explain themselves and if they don't then I have failed as a writer.
Part 3: The Part People Actually Clicked On The Readmore For (Types of Inventory Descriptions and Depictions in Fanworks)
3a: Text-Based Works (Fanfiction and Meta-Posting)
Generally in Minecraft-based or Minecraft-adjacent settings (type 1 and 2 works), authors either do not mention the inventory at all, bring it up in passing but do not explain how it works, forego the inventory entirely in favor of real-world storage solutions like pockets, bags, and boxes (almost entirely restricted to Type 2 works), or come up with creative in-universe ways to explain the inventory, some of which use the Minecraft enchantment system.
Authors who do not mention the inventory or mention it but don't explain how it works in the universe can't really be expanded on due to its meaning meant to be interpreted by the reader.
Of the authors who do elaborate on their inventory systems, there are a couple ways I have seen this done:
Real-world solutions (pockets, bags, etc), sometimes used in conjunction with fantasy solutions.
Edited real-world solutions, such as infinite pockets or small bags always on the player's person.
Sigils, magical objects, enchantments, and things of that sort that allow the player to access their inventory via gestures or tactile movements. This also includes the use of holographic displays and in-game commands.
Straight-up summoning or storing the relevant items at will.
This gets an honorable mention because it's fucking hilarious but there was this one tumblr post like "the player says e and teleports into a pure white room"
I KNOW there's more out there but these are the examples I've seen around Tumblr and ao3.
3b: Visuals-Based Works (Fanart, including comics, animatics, and posters)
Most visual interperetations of the Minecraft inventory are type 1 or just use the "real-world solutions" option. You don't see a lot of these in the wild in my experience, but from the things I've seen, some popular visualizations of the Minecraft inventory include:
Holograms and command screens, often used in conjunction with the in-game chat as a multitool
Straight-up summoning at will
Backpacks! People draw them to look SO COOL on a character-by character basis.
all of these designs fucking slap so hard by the way i dont make the rules. mcyt artists are out here doing the work of renaissance painters for zero dollars and next to zero credit
3c: Other Forms of Media (Live-Action Adaptions and Plays, I Guess?)
I have ZERO idea how someone would translate the Minecraft inventory to a real-life setting but I assume the result would be a Type 3 real-world solution, due to real life not having magic and also not being in the Minecraft universe.
If anyone ever figures out how to carry 162 million pounds of gold on their person without instantly eating shit and dying, firstly I respect and fear you secondly hit me up my back fucking sucks and I have too many books in my backpack at any given time.
3d: Customization Within Universes and Cross-World Universal Items
Many artists in the MCYT fandom, whether their wheelhouse be writing or visual art, have been in several subsections of the fandom or are actively in several at once. Due to the overlap in creator circles and the fact that Minecraft is over ten years old at this point, this is quite normal and the same creator behind a character may be on several different servers or have several different characters currently being played at the same time.
Due to this, many artists and writers have developed different designs for several iterations of the same character, for lack of a better way to explain it. This can be expressed in clothing changes, nonhuman characteristics, and, a common one that popped up alongside the rise of the DSMP, universal communicators.
Communicators are not in the game as a physical object. Rather, they are an entire fan-made concept that allows the characters to chat universally across a server they're in, no matter how far away. (Hermitcraft is an interesting case here. I'm looking at you, Solar. I saw that radio range comment in DATD.)
Since inventories do not share their contents across multiple worlds, the same is also true for most fanworks including them. Nevertheless, there are some exclusions and more permanent items on some characters, varying between artist and character. Some of these include:
Emotionally significant items (i.e ones that remind them of friends, family, lovers, etc)
Little trinkets hung from belts or keychains
Items that aren't really affixed to the character but are either shown in the character's Minecraft skin or are prominent in fanon (i.e, Slimecicle's glasses, Xisuma's helmet having admin-y properties, Pixlriffs' Empires SMP Season 2's character having glasses and sometimes a knee brace)
These items and how they may apply across some servers but not all could be an entire post of their own. Fanon is huge and I'd love to document that but that is Not the point of this essay. Maybe later.
On the subject of different designs for different characters, I'd like to bring up:
Sort of relevant to section 3d: different inventories depending on characters
Basically, some characters could have bags. Some have holograms. Some have magical tattoos or sigils that let them access it. Some defy all known laws of God or man and do some crazy shit with their inventories just because they can. It all depends on the artist or author's preferences, baby!
This often is related to headcanons and character designs. It can also vary for server, universe, etc.
Which NOW brings me to,
Section 4: Thoughts? You have thoughts on this? Share your thoughts maybe?
yeah i have no consistent anything for anything. really it just depends on the setting and what i'm in the mood for.
for example, in our Type Two fics like Ashes AU and Twice, generally the characters use real-world solutions with modifications (enchanted bags, etc). But for quicker oneshots and crackfics, we tend to elaborate on inventory space and let the game mechanics do all the work.
The Summary:
Fandom is huge and theres so much layers to this shit its legitimately unreal. I could write an entire thesis paper on the MCYTblr side of things alone and I might just do that when I hit college, if I ever do. For now, though, I'm just gonna sit here wondering why the fuck I dedicated an entire section to how the minecraft inventory works like what the fuck dude. why did i do that.
thanks for reading. i write words. follow perhaps if you would like to see more?
#mcyt#mcytblr#minecraft#ray's tag#i aint tagging all the mcytblr subfandoms. if people like this essay then they'll reblog it#this one is a doozy#essay#fandom meta#fandom#writing
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