"Ayivel: who wants to handle the clud's instagram?"
I volunteered to help, Alian volunteered to handle it. We were told to duel; Alian chose a trident, and I, of course, chose love for love conquers all.
And so it began.
Earlene (flagship essay): The Line Between Love and War
Looking at the effects of tridents and love as they impact the survival of other beings can be shown in the game Minecraft. Minecraft is a game originally released in 2009 (i’ll skip this part where i give a brief history lesson on minecraft since if you’re reading this, you play minecraft and don’t care all that much about its history because minecraft beta was very crappy and we want to move past that, and wow this explanation might have been longer than the history I was going to put). In the gameplay of the most recent edition, there is a utilization of both tridents and love. The trident is native to the seas under the use of the Drowned, zombies who dwell underwater. Trident users are often more rare than bare-handed drowned, but for good reason. Tridents are extremely powerful long-range weapons that are capable of killing you in just a few hits. If a player were to swim in a sea full of these trident-wielding monsters, they’d be dead in seconds. If a player were to kill one of these particular drowned and get their trident, they’d wield that kind of power, which can lead to a reign of destruction and can kill even the most passive mobs out of awe at how powerful the trident is.
A trident or love? It’s hard to say which one is more important in the world, after all, tridents can be a tool that we, as a society, need to kill terrorist groups and bring world peace, while love is essentially the concept of world peace itself. However if you take a close look at what love can do compared to tridents, you can make a clear conclusion that what the person who handles the instagram account needs is a user of love, not one of tridents.
As opposed to the trident, love in minecraft can save many mob’s lives and improve the well being of the player themselves. The most prominent case where this can be seen is in the taming feature of the game. To tame an animal in minecraft is to feed an animal their preferred food in order to convince them to love you. The taming of the most popular pet, the wolf, can give you a life-long companionship that can not only stand as a cute companion, but can also serve as your protector. In the game, if you have a dog with you and a hostile mob starts attacking you, your dog will jump into action and assist in killing the mob for you. The help of a pet in killing a life-threatening mob will obviously lead to higher life expectancy within the game. In addition to it increasing within the game, life expectancy can also potentially increase in real life. In real life, owning a dog can increase life expectancy by 24%, and this with the fact that people spend 11 hours a day on average on technology, means that aAAAAvirtual dogs are almost as included in a person’s life as a real-life dog would be, which can lead to the conclusion that a person can live longer by about 24% if not a bit less than that.
Love also appears in the game through the breeding function. My attention span is stopping me from writing about this anymore. There’s too many gaps in the arguments and this was hastily written so I don’t really have the energy or determination to fix any of the gaps as of right now so I’m just gonna talk about whatever since that’s what I do have the energy for. Just kidding, I don’t have energy for anything right now. I want to nap, but I always want to nap. It’s like my body is trying to tell me that I should just sleep forever. It’s tough living a happy life while trying to make it big in the world, even as a teen, and sometimes the will that my body has to sleep forever embrace me in a warm hug and they say “It’s ok. It’s ok. I will always be the one that loves you.--- wait I’m getting too dark. So airline food, amirite? I always used to get confused with the word “amirite” because i thought it was some weird southern saying that i hadn’t gotten around to learning, but it turns out it’s just “am i right”. More like “Are you joking?”, amirite? haHA, I am amazing sometimes. Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Thanks for reading this far if you did.
Alian: buddy you brought love to a trident fight? Cringe *heart noises*
despite you naming the essay “the line between love and war” many people would agree that they are one in the same. love IS war; meaning that love is in most cases a war all in its own way. This is important because you even mention how tridents are important because of their capabilities in combat (which is very high mind you). This leads me to believe that tridents would be useful in love as well as war meaning that it can fight on both fronts of the line that you imposed. this versatility cannot be overstated as it shows just how important tridents have been to society.
Tridents have been used as a weapon of war for a very long time which means they’ve been a weapon of love since it’s conception. This fact points to the belief that although love itself has been around longer than the trident its effect on love has been undeniable. if you have someone you love a heartfelt letter it’s entirely possible they might enjoy it and think it’s sweet BUT it’s also possible they might NOT like it whereas with the trident it’s near impossible for anyone to get a trident as a gift and not go “ this is a sick trident”; this shows the power that tridents hold over the battlefield that is love.
Tridents have been popular for a very long time. if I asked any random person on the street how many cultural outlets tridents have been a part of I would bet you they wouldn’t know the answer; this shows how numerous the tridents have been throughout history to the point of being innumerable. This is not even mentioning the fact of POPULAR media that has had tridents in its stories/games such as Minecraft, the hunger games, Poseidon in Greek myth (which by extension includes the game Hades and the Percy Jackson series), and even Game of thrones (albeit as a river name but if it's important to name a River after it, it must be very important) . All of these examples and more have tridents present in them but a large percentage of them have love present in the stories but only as an afterthought to the combat AKA the WAR that is happening in all of the aforementioned universes; in all of these universes the love takes a backseat to the war that is taking place while the trident is always in the foreground of the story. This shows how tridents have been more impactful than love itself for millennia.
Earlene: well i WAS gonna study decathlon, but we've got more pressing matters to attend to
While I do concede to your proposed reaction in the situation when they get a trident, but you must think of the repercussions from getting a trident at all. Most people have never wielded a trident in their life, and if they were to suddenly get an epic trident, they would simply lack any sort of capability to use it (except for Danny Devito. That guy can do anything.). Say if a young child were to receive a trident as a gift. Temporarily, they will be happy, but being an impulsive youth, they will likely play with it and potentially harm other people. The extent of their harm can go so far as to potentially muder their friends and family out of their inability to control the sheer power of the weapon, and guess what? The child is now orphaned due to the fact they were given such an OP weapon that a majority of grown adults cannot handle, much less a child.
Furthermore, if a child were to receive love as a gift, there would be almost no negative repercussions. “Oh, you’re getting too much love and attention from your parents who love you and are present in your life? What, are you gonna cry? Pee your pants, maybe?” Getting a heartfelt letter, whether from a complete stranger or from a close friend, can mean so much more than a trident. A real trident that you can throw and summon lightning with can be found in your average Costco, or maybe Walmart if you’re in a good city, but you cannot buy a card that tells your deepest emotions from the bottom of your heart. An overall conclusion drawn can be that love can be more personal and less lethal than tridents can.
Again, I conceded to the claim that tridents have been popular for the longest time, BUT I disagree with your take on the media’s focus on the tridents, but rather it is on the love and relationships built within the worlds; in minecraft, we more so see the player’s interaction with other mobs (e.g. dogs, cats, parrots, villagers, cows, etc.) than we do of tridents; in the Hunger Games, the whole story revolves around Katniss’ love for her sister and Peeta; in the Percy Jackson series… ok, that one you got me on-- he’s legit the son of poseidon, i won't argue against that (i’m omitting greek myths (I can't remember any of them) and Game of Thrones, so I’ll concede those examples to you). Also you had said in the beginning that love IS war, and mention in you last few paragraphs that it is one of the main focuses so haha checkMATE my dude >:D