The inconsistent use of pronouns (it Vs them) and asking for the player's name but then almost exclusively referring to "the player" spoiled it for me a bit. But I liked the overall idea.

It's consistent; 'it' refers to the player and 'them' refers to humanity as a whole

It is really good, isn't it?

Also, mandatory reading for context: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/i-wrote-a-story-for-a-friend

Old HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33904251 (989 points | Dec 2022 | 747 comments)

Can't believe people here hated it so much! Really shows the side of HN

It is really good! And thanks for the context, such an interesting read

Thanks for putting up the context. Thoughtful of you.

Oh wow. I found this by him too: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/the-ihole-by-julian-gough-fic...

Really good! Not sure how I've missed this guy. I guess I never did play Minecraft all the way to the end.

Thanks for linking this. It's very "discoverable" but I probably wouldn't have found it, or realized it existed, without reading this comment.

It reminded me (in a distant way) of the poem program “Now Press Return” by Roger McGough, on the BBC micro Welcome disc. That program also started by prompting you for your name. What a funny coincidence.

I always thought this was pretty kitsch but it's cool that he made it public domain.

I feel the <3. Thanks for sharing!

Really liked the end of the poem. Honestly could have done without my own name in there, since it was a little jarring, and dispelled the dreamlike quality of the poem.

The original (in Minecraft) used the player handle so the site sortof has to ask you your name to reproduce that

Oh. It's Minecraft.

YMMV -- I was a little creeped out by a blog that required my name, so I put a fake name. It was an extra level of indirection I could have done without.

Oh, I wondered why some people were visiting theeggandtherock.com from Hacker News. (I popped over to check.) I see, it’s downstream of this…

Yes, a very nice Brazilian guy set up theendpoem.com the day after I put the End Poem in the public domain.

There are a number of such sites now, in different languages. Someone recently did a Japanese translation. People have put it to music, made little films, used it in comics, and so on.

I saw a great live/virtual reality hybrid show in the Barbican in London, where they’d translated it into Mandarin, and an old woman sang it. (The text also appeared in English, beneath the dome of a virtual temple.) Lovely to see it out there in the world. Feel free to play around with it, that’s why I gave it away.

Thanks for sharing your creativity with us, Julian.

It’s an absolute pleasure! I love seeing what people do with my words.

hi Julian - good to come across you again... remember reading iHole. What else have you been up to recently - any new things to read?

Highly recommend Julian's whole blog, The Egg and the Rock, which others have linked to on this page.

It's mostly about a theory of the cosmos which I think he calls "evolved-physics holism". This post is a good place to start:

https://theeggandtherock.com/p/in-which-i-tell-you-about-my-...

It will change the way you think about the universe (and not every blog does that :). He is great at weaving compelling visions of strange phenomena occurring at vastly different scales from our human one, eons before the present time, in galaxies far, far away. Which is something science desperately needs!

I'm going to be a bit vulnerable here...

I really had a difficult time parsing that, and I'm still not quite sure I fully understand it. I found myself losing concentration when I knew it was going to require my full attention to understand it. I still don't think I understand it. Perhaps I'm not trained to read this style of writing, or perhaps my brain just isn't capable.

At any rate, I'm glad other people seem to enjoy it!

That's fine, of course. No work of art is meaningful to everyone. I think it's admirable that you earnestly tried to engage with it; you didn't dismiss it as pretentious or vapid because you didn't get much out of it.

I read the poem as elevating the player -- and humanity in general -- as 'dreamers', those who create worlds. It hints that building worlds in simulacra and in reality may not be so different, and there may be a higher consciousness yet to be discovered.

There are a few reasons why the poem is meaningful to me: it promotes a feeling of connectedness between all humans; it implies my time playing games is not time wasted; it uses imagery that conjures strong emotions of sadness and happiness; the prose and rhythm are beautiful. Also, Minecraft is one of the precious few games that's both wildly successful and also 'bares the soul' of its creators a little by including something like this. Strong creative expression is a joy to see.

Unfortunately I entered the name Yo Mama because I didn’t really know what to expect, but apart from the unintentional comedy, it’s decent poetry and interesting.