Main Character Energy Is a Lie

Why AI could turn us all into NPCs

🌸 ikigai 生き甲斐 is a reason for being, your purpose in life – from the Japanese iki 生き meaning life and gai 甲斐 meaning worth 🌸

I’m about to start a new Minecraft world.

I know, I know. Stay with me, because this is actually about you and AI, and whether you’re the protagonist of your own life or just wandering around a village bumping into walls.

Minecraft just dropped its latest update, the Tiny Takeover, which introduces new super cute baby versions of all the mobs, including some that would normally try to kill you.

“Mobs” in Minecraft is shorthand for “mobile entity”, referring to any AI-driven entity (creatures, monsters, NPCs) that can move around the game world, as opposed to stationary objects like blocks.

Tiny zombies, reimagined as adorable little threats, something you want to scoop up and take home. There’s something in that, isn’t there? Taking things that should alarm us and making them so cute (or agreeable) we forget to be cautious… Is AI our ‘Tiny Takeover’, reimagining the friction of life into something adorable and effortless? … but that’s a thought for another day *ahem*.

Today I want to talk about something that started as a Minecraft dilemma and turned into a question about how we’re living alongside AI.

New world or forever world?

Every time Minecraft releases an update, I face a choice. Do I start a brand new world, fresh and full of all the latest content, ready to stumble across baby mobs and new biomes within minutes of spawning? Or do I go back to my forever world... the one I’ve been building for ages, block by block, where every structure holds a memory and every landscape tells a story of decisions I’ve made over time?

New worlds are exciting. They’re full of possibility, everything is undiscovered. You spawn in and anything could happen… but my forever world? That’s where I’ve built something. That’s where purpose lives.

The catch is that if I want the new content in my forever world, I have to travel. Far. Beyond the edges of everywhere I’ve already explored, out past the known borders of what I’ve created, into ungenerated territory where the update’s new features finally appear. The new stuff doesn’t come to you, you have to go find it.

I think about this when I hear someone waxing lyrical about abandoning their current workflow to start fresh with the latest AI tool. New model drops, new world. Clean slate, infinite possibility, instant access to the shiny new thing. I get it, that fresh start energy is intoxicating.

I’m wondering though what we’re leaving behind every time we do that. What forever worlds are we walking away from?

The NPC problem

If you’ve never played Minecraft, or any game really, let me explain NPCs. Non-player characters. They’re the villagers, the shopkeepers, the figures who wander around the world following scripts someone else wrote. They trade the same items. They walk the same paths. They make the same sounds. They exist to serve the player’s story, not showcase their own.

The internet gave us “main character energy” as a kind of aspirational identity. You’re the protagonist. You’re the one making bold choices, driving the plot, living cinematically…and in no surprise at all to anyone who has been reading my essays I LOVE this concept for all of us, I want everyone to wring every drop of joy and magic possible out of life… but I’m increasingly noticing in the how some people are trying to push AI to us, and what they want it to be doing even more of in all of our daily experience, the i-risk of AI.

AI autocompletes our sentences and suggests our next purchase. It predicts which podcast we’ll choose, which route we’ll drive, which email we’ll write. It generates social media captions and drafts our messages and even, if we let it, shapes the rhythm of our thinking.

If someone else, or something else, is writing your dialogue, predicting your movements and scripting your interactions... are you the main character? Or are you the NPC?

NPCs don’t know they’re NPCs. They go about their routines feeling perfectly purposeful. They think they’re choosing to walk that path and say that thing and trade that item. They have no idea that every decision was made for them before they rendered in on screen.

This is a glitch in ‘Main Character Energy’, if AI predicts your next word and a recommender engine predicts your next desire, you aren’t living a story you’re fulfilling a forecast. The difference between a protagonist and an NPC isn’t the outfit, it’s the unpredictability of their soul. If your future is a solved equation, you aren’t the player; you’re just the code.

Main character energy is not a lie exactly, but it can become one. A costume of authorship worn over a life increasingly shaped by autocomplete.

Main character energy was supposed to be about agency, authoring your own story… but if AI is ghostwriting a significant chunk of your life... suggesting your words, curating your choices, smoothing every edge... then “main character energy” has become the aesthetic of protagonism without the substance of it. You look like the hero, you feel like the hero… but the quest was on rails the whole time, the destination decided before you headed out.

The Sandbox

This isn’t all set in stone though. AI isn’t a linear game with a fixed plot. It’s a sandbox.

Like Minecraft.

A sandbox game gives you the tools and the space and says build whatever you want. There are no mandatory objectives handed to you. No quest markers. No narrative arc unless you create one. The game is as boring or as extraordinary as your imagination makes it.

I wrote down a thought ages ago in my essay ideas bullet journal spread > AI is like a sandbox game, which can be awesome with imagination, but we need the guides and the innovators to help show us the art of the possible.

In Minecraft, there are creators who do exactly this. Pixlriffs is someone I watch religiously. Week after week, he creates content that is carefully, consistently brilliant... his survival guide is aimed at beginners but deep enough to keep longstanding players engaged. He makes the complex accessible without ever dumbing it down. He’s the person who shows you that the tools you already have can do more than you thought.

Then there’s Mumbo Jumbo, who is something else entirely. Mumbo is a joyful artist who takes a blocky, simple game and creates things you would never have believed possible. Filmic stories with layers of vision and sound and character. Intricate redstone machines that feel like magic. Animation, beauty, focal points that make you forget you’re looking at cubes. He doesn’t just play the game, he transcends the medium… He’s a relatable and whimsical and talented human whom I adore.

Both of them, in very different ways, show us what it means to be a main character in a sandbox world… by bringing imagination, skill and creativity to an open-ended space.

That’s what we need with AI. Not people who accept the first autocomplete suggestion or let algorithms curate their entire existence. We need the Pixlriffs... the careful, consistent guides who help everyone understand what the tools can do. And we need the Mumbos... the wild, joyful innovators who show us what’s possible when you refuse to let the medium limit your imagination.

I call this Purpose Prompting. The practice of bringing your questions, your values, your weird specific human curiosity to AI, rather than just accepting what it offers you. In watching these creators, I think it also goes deeper than prompting. It’s about whether you approach the sandbox as a player or a spectator. Whether you build, or just consume what others have built.

The forever world is a solo project (and that’s ok... mostly)

I love playing Minecraft with my family and friends the most. There’s nothing like building together, exploring together, laughing together when a creeper blows up your carefully constructed front porch. Multiplayer is where the joy lives for me (also why I was an obsessive World of Warcraft player and Guild leader for many moons hehe).

I have to come to terms with the fact nobody else in my life currently seems to want to build a forever world with me.

They want the excitement of starting fresh. New world, new adventure, new dopamine hit… and I understand that, I *so* do. So I give them what they want. We start new worlds together and it’s brilliant and fun and social.

Then I go back to my forever world alone.

It’s where I’ve invested the most time, the most care, the most of me… and building there is cathartic and relaxing and genuinely developmental in ways I can’t fully articulate… but it’s mostly a solitary pursuit. The deep work of building something that matters over time, block by block, doesn’t tend to draw a crowd.

There is another way, though. In Minecraft, there’s a community called Hermitcraft where a small group of creators (Mumbo among them, with Pix doing a wonderful weekly recap) build together in the same shared world for a year or two at a time. They each have their own projects, their own styles, their own corners of the map... but they’re building alongside each other. Collaborating, visiting, riffing off each other’s work. It’s not quite a forever world. They do eventually reset. It’s something rare and beautiful, a group of people who’ve found each other and said, yes, I want to build in the same place as you, in my own way, for a meaningful stretch of time.

I think that’s what we’re all looking for, really. Not just in games. In life. In work. In our relationship with AI and purpose. We don’t need everyone to share our forever world. We just need to find our Hermitcraft... a few people who want to build in the same direction, even if they’re building something completely different.

This is what building purpose feels like in the age of AI. The world keeps offering fresh starts. New tools, new platforms, new ways to reinvent yourself with zero friction… and the social energy follows the new. Everyone’s excited about the latest update, the latest model, the latest paradigm shift.

… but the forever world... the ongoing, evolving, deeply personal project of figuring out who you are and what you’re for... that’s slower work. It’s less immediately exciting, and sometimes it’s lonely. Unless you find your people.

The best of the new stuff doesn’t come to you. You have to travel further to find it. You have to push past the edges of what you’ve already explored, into uncharted territory, carrying everything you’ve built so far with you.

That’s a main character journey.

Building in a world that keeps updating

I don’t think AI is the enemy, I never have. A sandbox is just a sandbox. It’s morally neutral, creatively infinite and only as meaningful as what you bring to it.

I’m a geeky gamer girly, of course I ADORE Claude and all the magical things it can do.

But I do think we’re at a moment where it’s dangerously easy to become an NPC in the most sophisticated sandbox ever built. To let the autocomplete finish our thoughts. To let the algorithm author our tastes. To start a new world every time the update drops, never building anything that lasts, never travelling far enough in our forever world to discover what’s out there beyond the edges of the familiar.

Main character energy was never about aesthetics. It was supposed to be about authorship. About writing your own story, even when it’s messy, even when it’s solitary, even when nobody else wants to build in your world with you.

So here’s my question, and I’m asking it genuinely. In your relationship with AI... are you building? Or are you just spawning in, picking up whatever’s nearest and following the path that was already there?

Because the sandbox is open. The tools are extraordinary… and somewhere out there, past the edges of everything you’ve already explored, there’s new territory waiting.

But you have to walk there yourself.

I did start the new world. The baby mobs are ridiculously cute… and then I went back to my forever world and built something new there too… because both/and, always.

Sarah, seeking ikigai xxx

PS - This week’s journal prompts, if you’re up for some… grab a pen and answer honestly;

1. What’s your forever world? The thing you keep going back to build on, even when nobody else seems interested. Why does it keep pulling you back?

2. Where do you keep starting new worlds? What’s the fresh start pattern... and what are you leaving behind each time you do it?

3. Look at your last week. How many of your decisions were actually yours, and how many were suggested by an algorithm, a notification or a default? Where are you the main character, and where are you following someone else’s script?

PPS - 🎮 Main Character Energy Card Generator

Copy and paste this into Google Gemini:

“I want you to interview me, then create a character card IMAGE based on my answers.

You’re going to help me discover my Main Character Energy profile. Ask me these questions ONE AT A TIME. Wait for my answer before asking the next:

1. What’s your name, or what name would you give your character?

2. When you have a completely free day with no obligations, what do you actually end up doing? (Not what you think you should do... what you really do.)

3. What’s the thing you keep coming back to build on in your life, even when nobody else seems that interested? Your “forever world.”

4. Think about a moment recently when you felt completely like yourself. What were you doing?

5. What’s something you know you’re brilliant at but rarely get credit for?

6. What’s something you admire in other people but haven’t developed in yourself yet?

7. Pick a visual style for your card, or describe your own: Pixel Art, Solarpunk, Dark Academia, Vaporwave, Painted Fantasy, Neon Noir... or tell me a game, film, or art style you love and I’ll design around that.

Now, based on my answers, you MUST generate an image of my personalised Main Character Energy card. This is the most important part.

Before creating the card, analyse my answers and:

• Choose a unique character class for me (don’t use generic titles... craft something specific to who I am, like “Quiet Architect” or “Chaos Gardener” or “Reluctant Oracle”)

• Identify 5 character attributes drawn from my answers (e.g., Resilience, Vision, Curiosity, Warmth, Precision... whatever fits ME, not a preset list)

• Max out 3 of those attributes (8 to 10 out of 10) to reflect my strengths

• Set the other 2 lower (4 to 6 out of 10) as growth edges... areas with potential, not weaknesses

The image should look like a character selection screen from a beautifully designed indie video game, in my chosen visual style. Portrait orientation. Include all of these elements:

• My character name in a stylised game font at the top

• A symbolic character portrait in the centre (an avatar, silhouette, or emblem... not a realistic face)

• My unique character class with a small icon beneath the portrait

• The 5 attribute stat bars, clearly showing which are maxed and which are growth edges

• A one line character tagline you write for me based on my answers, in the style of a game loading screen tip (e.g., “Builds slowly. Means every block.” or “Finds the plot twist nobody else saw coming.”)

• The text “Main Character Energy · seekingikigai.online” along the bottom edge

Use colours from my chosen visual style, but include touches of turquoise and cherry blossom pink as accents.”

PPPS: This week’s soundtrack is “I Feel Alive” by Jack Black, from A Minecraft Movie... what else could it be? *grin*