Work Text:
In Minecraft, the players are built different. In the hierarchy of the universe they can amass more power than any mobs, even intelligent ones like villagers, endermen and piglins, due to their ability to travel between worlds.
Players are “born” on their first world (or server) and depending on that world’s level of difficulty that’s how many lives they have. This is when they’re most vulnerable; if they lose all their lives, they die for good. Once they reach maturity, (20ish but it varies) they can start hopping to other worlds and servers and become functionally immortal. If all your lives get used up in a world you can never go back there, but you respawn at your last spawn point on a different world. You only permanently die if you lose all your lives in all the servers and worlds you’ve ever visited (or other special circumstances I haven’t figured out yet). Which makes everything a little more low stakes. Those on their last life on the DSMP know it’s not the end of the world if they lose it. They won’t be able to return to the server, but their friends will be able to find them on other worlds. This also let me include subtle references to other content like the manhunts or Phil’s hardcore world and the ways living in those worlds might affect the characters.
As for how any of that works accounting for Ghostbur, limbo, and Ghostboo…? I’ll admit I haven’t figured that out yet lol this is just how I decided things work in the fic.
So how does that change the question of age? Well, I try to conceptualize it using the same rules as elves, or any other fictional race with a stupid long lifespan. Once you pass puberty, age has more to do with your internalized identity than a specific number, and gradually your body will reflect that. (However, people don’t regress in age, not even if they have memory loss. That’s just not how time works.) So, people can age at different rates, leading to all kind of complications and confusion.
Let’s take Fundy for example. (Keep in mind this is still my headcanon specific to KINT.) Fundy is relatively young. He was born on the DSMP and was an adolescent during L’Manburg’s war of independence. During the time of peace between L’Manburg and the wider SMP he hit the point where he could start hopping around servers. Once he did, Dream and his friends started regarding him as around their age and they started hanging out (because I say so since I love their friendship.) To Fundy, this was invaluable because they treated him like an adult, an equal, something he didn’t get back in L’Manburg. Fundy wants to be an adult NOW, but his father’s infantilization of him messes with his own self-perception.
So that’s how you can get Tubbo and Tommy who are technically older than Fundy and got more respect than him, but they still act like teenagers. Recent events have made those two finally start to grow up more. And the same goes for Dream, Sapnap and George. Dream has been in a kind of Peter Pan slump, running around with his friends in a perpetual state of feeling like he’s in his mid-20s. But recent events aren’t just making him experience character growth, they’re making him grow up. Eventually his physical form will reflect that.
What about Techno? Well, I think Dream and Techno’s characters have the same amount of life experience (time spent hopping around servers), but they’ve aged differently. Within that time Dream was, within the mechanics of the universe, able to amass more power and become a player who can not only join various servers but create them. Techno on the other hand went through this whole solo anime-protagonist warrior’s journey and when he wasn’t alone, he was with Phil. So they experienced roughly the same amount of time (give or take a few decades) but Techno “aged” a bit more.
It's all kind of wishy-washy and ill-defined but that’s my take on it. I’d love to put together a stricter set of rules if any of y’all have ideas or theories you wanna discuss in the comments. :)