Cave Spider Roller Coaster - AVM Shorts Episode 14

AVM Shorts: Cave Spider Roller Coaster is an episode part of the Animation vs. Minecraft Shorts, being the fourteenth and last installment overall in Season 1.

Plot
With the group reunited after the events of The Dolphin Kingdom, Second Coming and the Fighting Stick Figures must find their way out of a complex hollow network of a mineshaft, in order to reach a portal back home. Blue, Yellow and Green hear echoing noises throughout the gallery, they notice that The Second Coming and Red had vanished. Surprised, they look around in fear, as one cave spiders grab Yellow and takes him.

Following the creature, Blue and Green stumble upon a mob of spiders, feeding their Spider King. Green baits the spiders with his fishing rod, whilst Blue hurries over to his unconscious comrades and tries to shake them awake, only to discover that they had all been poisoned, and their health was half gone. Blue gives them each a drink of milk from a bucket, and they all wake up with a kick, Blue grabs Yellow and they run away back down the tunnel they had entered by. Just then Green jumps down from the wall, rolls, them jumps up and follows his comrades.

To escape the army of spiders, they must all ride in a single mining cart, and it was a good thing they were all skinny stick figures, or else all five of them never would have fitted in there. However, the arthropods chase after them, riding more carts. With much struggle despairing spiders away, the stick figures fall down due to an obstructed portion of the railway. They escape such a fate by being carried by spawned chickens, reaching a platform and a portal present in it. A unit, however, informs the King, who immediately runs in an attempt to stop the sticks and consume them.

The King spider reaches the fugitives, who barely escape the dimension. The King confronts and defeats all of the Fighting Stick Figures. Moments before killing The Second Coming, it is distracted by a random Wither, which fights the King, whose fate is unknown. Upon arrival in the Nether, Second Coming pulls the four back to consciousness, and cross the place back to the portal which leads them to the desktop. The group destroys the portal and settle home peacefully.

Plot Description 2
Notes to the readers:

''The "viewpoint" mentioned in this article refers to the imaginary camera that filmed the whole video. It can move up, down, left, right, or zoom in or out to create different visual effects for the viewer.''

I'm not well acquainted with the various Minecraft objects, which is why I usually describe the objects instead of naming them.

I will assume all of the stick figures are male, except for Blue, who will be female.

When the episode begins, The Second Coming, Green, Yellow, Blue, and Red are walking in single file along a low cobblestone tunnel that sloped gently upward, with The Second Coming leading, holding the drawing of a Nether Portal the Dolphin King had given them in the Dolphin Kingdom.

After a few seconds of walking, the tunnel they were following leveled out. The group continues on for a little longer, then the tunnel came to a dead end. They look at each other, puzzled, and The Second Coming checks the drawing again.



The stick figures turn around and head down another, steeper tunnel, and as this tunnel also leveled out, The Second Coming scratching his head as he examined the drawing. At this point, tthe viewpoint zoomed in towards the group, so that for a few moments Red was completely outside the viewpoint. There was a faint "shthwop" sound at the rear of the group. The stick figures stopped and turned around to see what had made the noise.

The long dark tunnel behind them was completely empty. There was no sign of Red.



As the viewpoint zoomed out to show the long expanse of empty tunnel, for a moment, The Second Coming was also outside the viewpoint. There was another faint "shthwop".



Then the viewpoint zoomed back in on the stick figures, and Blue, Yellow and Green started backing up, only to leap back in horror when they realized that The Second Coming had also vanished without a trace when their backs were turned.



The three remaining stick figures huddled together, before standing in a circle with their arms bent and their hands raised in a fighting gesture. (Or so I assume. Some people say they were actually chewing their fingers in anxiety! Such a childish thing to do. But only they can know the true answer). What was this, this mysterious "shthwop" sound, that could make people vanish without a trace?

As the stick figures stood in a tight huddle, not daring to move, a vertical shaft gradually appears in the viewpoint directly above the group. And inside that shaft was an enormous black spider, hanging upside–down right over their heads, gradually lowering itself towards the group!!



Just then, the three look up at once and see the spider. Then the spider pounced. Yellow shoved his companions out of harms way, before the spider grabbed Yellow around the waist and dragged him, kicking and squirming, back up the shaft.

Blue and Green each whip out a diamond sword and scramble up the tunnel after the spider. At the top, the shaft opened up to yet another horizontal stone tunnel, where Blue just missed grabbing hold of Yellow, whom the spider was dragging along by one ankle. Next to Yellow, Red and The Second Coming were lying motionless on the backs of two more spiders.

The spiders were scuttling rapidly away to the left, and Blue and Green charged after them, swords raised. Green tumbled over in his haste, and Blue tripped over him. But as they reached the end of the tunnel both stick figures jerked to a sudden halt as they saw what lay before them.

At the end of the tunnel was an old three-storey mine–one large cave, with three hallways on the side, one above the other, all supported by wooden pillars. The pillars had cobwebs stuck on them, and every hallway was crawling with enormous black spiders.

The three spiders carry Red, The Second Coming and Yellow were at the end of a line of spiders, each one carrying some sort of meat on its head–there were whole chickens, raw chickens, raw meat, and, oddly, a squid. A tall wooden scaffold formed a ramp up which the line of spiders were crawling.

At the top of the ramp sat a spider that looked the same as the other spiders, except for three things: 1: It was two or three times the size of the other spiders, 2: It's head was a dark blue colour, and 3: On that head was a large golden crown.

As the stick figures watched, the spider at the front of the line, with what looked like a whole raw chicken on its back, crawled before the spider with the crown, and the larger spider ate the chicken straight off its back. Then the smaller spider jumped off the side of the scaffold and the entire line of spiders moved one space forward.

The spiders carrying the three stick figures were getting nearer and nearer to the crowned spider. Green and Blue glance at each other, wondering what to do.

Then Green suddenly had an idea. He switched his sword for a fishing rod, then he ran forward, throwing the line upwards and hooking the hook onto one of the second–storey supporting pillars, then reeling himself up, he turned a complete smoersault in midair as he threw out the line once more and hooked it onto a third–storey pillers, where he swung in great arcs by the line, holding on with just one hand, kicking his legs and waving the free arm in a "I'm over here, come and get me!" sort of way.

All the spiders stopped scuttling about and turned to face Green. After a few seconds, with one accord, all the spiders except for the crowned one dropped whatever they were carrying and headed straight for Green, crawling up and down the wall opposite the viewpoint.

Meanwhile, Blue ran up to her unconscious friends and shook Yellow, who was nearest. Yellow didn't move, but as Blue shook him, Yellow's health bar flashed on, and out of the usual ten scarlet hearts, there were only six left, and those six hearts were a sickly vomit–green colour, their edges blinking white. Then the health bars of the other two unconscious stick figures flashed on as well, and their hearts were green, blinking and depleted too. Above all three health bars was the word "Poison". (Oddly, their inventories didn't turn on at the same time)

As soon as Blue saw this, she knew what to do: she took out a bucket of milk, kneeled down next to Yellow and poured some milk into his mouth(probably. These stick figures don't really have facial features). There was a rather loud slurping noise, Yellow gave a sudden kick with both legs, his health bar hearts turned back to scarlet(although he didn't regain any health), and he sat up. Blue was already giving milk to The Second Coming, who reacted much as Yellow had. Yellow grabbed The Second Coming's hand and they both ran away down the tunnel. By this time, Red was sitting up. Blue gave Red a shove after their fleeing companions, beckoned to Green with one arm, and ran after Red.

Green dropped down from the wall still holding the fishing rod, rolling over as he hit the ground. In an instant he was up and running as hard as he could down the tunnel away from a hoard of black spiders that came pouring into the tunnel after him.

Meanwhile, the other four stick figures were running down a horizontal stone tunnel with walls had cobwebs on them and a roof was supported by more wooden pillars. Suddenly Yellow pointed at something he'd spotted up ahead and the viewpoint slides to the end of the tunnel: where the tunnel sloped steeply downwards some railroad tracks began, and there was a minecart at the top of the tracks, illuminated by a single lighted torch stuck in the wall above it!

The four stick figures were already running very quickly towards the minecart. But(likely, much to everybody else's surprise), Green, running up from behind them with the speed of one desperate to survive, easily outpaced them and got to the minecart first. Green was in such a hurry that he leapt headfirst into the cart, and got stuck like that, head down, legs sticking up in the air, looking(and probably feeling, although it's hard to tell, what with the heat of the moment and the fact that the stick figures can't talk) quite ridiculous.

Then the others came piling in after him–Yellow, The Second Coming, Red, Blue–all a little more gracefully than Green, but still pretty clumsily. As Blue leapt into the cart, he shoved it so that it rolled forwards, over the edge of the horizontal tunnel, and went speeding down the diagonal tunnel at a terrific rate.

The new tunnel was illuminated by torches stuck into the walls at regular intervals and entirely cobweb–free. The five stick figures in the minecart rearranged themselves into more comfortable positions, Green clambering the right way up, and we once more glimpse the fantastic sight of the heads of Red and Yellow seen through The Second Coming's hollow head. But they didn't have time to relax, for suddenly, Blue saw something, and pointed back up the tunnel. She might as well have screamed: "SPIDERS! LOTS OF THEM, IN MINECARTS!", for that was just what was barreling down the rails after them!

The arachnids were piled together within and atop four minecrats–not very steadily, as it turned out, for when the tunnel suddenly leveled out, all the stick figures withstood the resulting bump, but two of the spiders were jolted off the carts, one landing on its feet, the other on its back.

Trivia

 * The episode cost Alan Becker several months of animation, due to abundance of layers and characters in a single shot.
 * Alan Becker, the creator of Animation vs. Minecraft in the description of the episode, claims the installment is just the Roller Coaster Episode, except with spiders. Some shots were reused and adapted for production convenience.

Comments Alternative
Comments Alternative is the second–best choice for users whose devices cannot access the proper Comments feature. In order to add comments, you have to edit under the heading " Comments Alternative". Add your username and the date of your edit over the comment(s), and make sure to add the number of your comments to the "Comments " after editing.

Comments (2)
● USERNAME: The Slimy Stump DATE: 7/19/2021

This is how you send a comment in Comments Alternative. Users may add this feature to the bottom of pages of this and other wikis if they wish to.

USERNAME: The Slimy Stump DATE: 7/19/2021 REPLY: The Slimy Stump

This is how you reply in Comments Alternative, or you might reply on their message wall or mention them in your comment(s) on the proper Comments if you can access it.