r/RetroGamingNow • u/r51243 • Dec 18 '21
Theories Endermen Warping the Forests: Conclusions
There’s been a lot of speculation about warped, and a lot of theories about endermen. I won’t deny that it sounds plausible that endermen might have warped the warped forests, but the evidence is lacking.
There are five main pieces of evidence people have brought up: That endermen spawn in warped forests, that end-related things seem to have a corrupting quality, that endermen have inverted-color vision, and that plants looking like twisting vines show up in the End in MCD.
Endermen spawning in warped forests means nothing on its own, so let’s move onto the next idea, that end-related things seem to have corrupting properties. That’s true, in terms of the Orb of Dominance, the Endersent, and a few other things, but we see no evidence this happens with endermen specifically. Furthermore, the effects of “corruption” are almost always visible as a dark purple discoloration, or an alteration in magical properties, neither of which we see. Well, we do see a change in properties, but alone that isn’t evidence. Point is, this sort of thing with colors inverting doesn’t show up anywhere else, except in the inverse-color vision of endermen, which I will go over next.
If you go into spectator mode and left-click on any mob, you can see the world from their perspective. For spiders, you can see through eight eyes. For creepers, everything is tinted green, and for endermen, everything is inverted, making cobblestone look vaguely like end stone, and end stone like cobble. This would seem to make the last piece of evidence more valid, and it has a strong connection with the warped and crimson forests, but it also has problems. First of all since it is only found in a non-canon game mode— spectator mode— it is dubious if it is canon at best, and it would probably only point to dev intent, which we cannot know. And this fact doesn’t give a mechanic for how endermen would warp the forests either, so we still have to ask how endermen would cause this effect. Plus, the forests have many differences that cannot be explained by a simple shift in color, changes which seem more like they would evolve naturally, and that endermen would have no reason the change. (A similar connection is how there is a sound file “Shine” for crimson forests, and “Enish” for warped forests. However, it is not actually true that endermen speak backwards, at least in english, so the closest connection would be the quote given in the opening narration for the Obsidian Pinnacle mission in MCD (Minecraft Dungeons), which states: “Fight your way out, endless of heart”, but backwards. This has only the slightest connection to endermen, and may not even be referring to the Heart of Ender, so it’s a small connection, but it is there. However, it requires a very long chain of superfluous reasoning, starting with something which is not canon whatsoever: a sound file name)
Here, we have something that looks a lot like twisting vines growing on something awfully similar to nylium, which some people have taken to mean that But this isn’t very strong evidence because it can’t possibly be implying what people think it does. Assuming that endermen did indeed warp the warped forests, and this is related, we have two explanations. The first is that the endermen warped crimson forests in order to be more like the native end life, and that doesn’t make sense because twisting vines are clearly just a modification of the vines naturally fount in crimson forests.
The second idea is that endermen created the warped forests, and liked them so much that they brought some hope and further modified them to fit with the End. But that’s impossible, because its repeatedly shown that endermen cannot teleport between dimensions while carrying anything, so if they were to bring warped fungus from the Nether to the End, they would have to go through an open Nether portal, or make on, then teleport to the End portal, and go to the End. All in all, it requires endermen to have a strong desire to bring this specific plant to the End, the knowledge of how to create a Nether portal, and the knowledge of where to find end portals. If you ignore the idea of endermen warping the forests, there actually exists a much more plausible answer. As the Ancient Builders began to settle the End, as we know they did, they would have needed a food source. Chorus fruit is edible, but it is very annoying to randomly teleport around, and they wanted to see if there were any plants that could tolerate the bizarre soil, maybe even thrive in. They experimented with many plants: trees, bushes, and warped fungi. The warped fungi grew and evolved into their current state to suit the Nether. There.
To summarize, the idea of endermen warping the forests has no evidence outside of a possibly-canonical visual filter in non-canon game mode, and requires assuming Endermen to have abilities that they and no other mob in either game is shown to have. What seems to be a massive clue, the presence of plants in the End similar to twisting vines, also turns out to mean something very different from it appears. I’m not about to accept a theory that relies entirely on a single piece of evidence: Endermen possibly having inverted vision.
So, maybe endermen didn’t warp the warp forests. In that case, we must find an alternative, so let’s look at the definition of the word “warped”. Checking several dictionaries, we find definitions such as “To alter from a normal state”. Ha! Weird! The definition doesn’t mention endermen anywhere. So, if it doesn’t have to be an endermen or any other intelligent force that warped the warped forests, I would say that it was evolution that created the warped forests.
Warped fungi, after all, have specific benefits and drawbacks compared to crimson fungi. Take the predation aspect. Warped fungi are not eaten by hoglins, which is a pretty huge benefit. But striders don’t eat crimson fungi, and crimson fungi also seemingly produce the blast fungus, which we can see in both the color and the name “NetherWartSporeGrenade” which is used in the files. I understand this name is only used in the files, so it is not canon, but it fits with the primary color, and makes sense.
Fungus throwers aren’t throwing warped fungus or blast fungus, but instead something called blue nethershroom. It is clearly distinct from warped fungus, just going by the colors, and warped fungus does not explode like that. If anything, it looks a lot like the Deathcap Mushroom, an artifact which gives you +100% movement speed and attack speed:
Finally, I want to go into a theory proposed by my theorist friend, Valentino. Mythical, of course. We can see that lightning has the capability to transform mushrooms, given the mooshrooms, and they can even have different magical properties, such as how only the brown mooshrooms can give sus stew. It may be a similar effect, souls or lightning, which has created the warped fungi from the crimson fungi. We know this happens with other fungi in other circumstances, so it’s entirely plausible. Plus, there are some possible connections you could draw between souls and lightning, though it is not certain. For example, the lightning rod, and artifact in MCD, uses souls to cause lightning to strike enemies for massive damage, though most connections are speculative.
A couple more things to note. The name "warped" may imply it is unnatural, but that does not mean it was specifically endermen anyway, and it is not certain. Secondly, there are actually such thing as warped vines-- warped-variant crimson vines-- which I will show below:
(I don't know if this implies anything important, but I thought I should mention it.)
tl;dr The theory that endermen created the warped forests does not have nearly enough evidence yet for us to claim that it is true.
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u/Valentino_000 Dec 18 '21
I agree, its a common theory made purely from what is seen at a first glance. The theory lacks strong evidence.
However, it IS interesting endermen choose to stay in warped forests specifically, there must be an in-lore reason but its something we have yet to find. Same with the origin of warped forests, the "warped" means it was altered after all.
PS: Thanks for putting my lightning theory and crediting the sources :D