that's my emotional support NPC
surprise! an essay about video games...again
hi readers! i miss writing but have been occupied with life and healing and all the other things that inspire me to write fun things like this :) hope you’re well.
this is an essay i read in front of an audience last fall, and the theme was immortality and video games. enjoy xx
growing up as the youngest child with siblings that were long removed from my household, i spent a lot of time sitting in front of a screen. minutes turned into hours scrolling tumblr or wattpad, sitting in front of my wii, and obsessively reading the vampire diaries wikihow. fundamentally, all of this exposure to technology is the basis of who i am, and it started underneath my bed sheets, where it was just me and these characters, illuminated by the light of my ds.
since i never shared a household with any of my older siblings, my childhood was primarily spent with a console and an imagination. daydreaming led me to building entire universes based on the characters from my screen.
in comparison to other digital pets like tamagotchis—nintendogs didn’t die. they didn’t get sick, and they didn’t accidentally run away. there was no heartbreak with nintendogs unless they continued to ignore your attempts at shouting their name into the ds microphone. and after experiencing the grief of losing a pet, i couldn't stomach losing my virtual companion at a young age, so i understand why the game developers left mortality out.
i'll never forget the subtle knock as i entered the kennel and chose my playful, yet cautious dalmatian. i also recall the frustration i felt while repeating this dog’s name as the static-laced voice recording looped over and over. since my parents couldn’t afford to give me a puppy—unlike my other low-maintenance pets like birds and a short-lived hamster—my nintendog fulfilled my fomo.
hours that were spent training my nintendog pivoted into days spent away from my ds, and this brief absence revealed that i was an active part of this pup’s seemingly infinite life. if you happened to neglect your pet, they’d be filthy, parched, or starving, and you’d receive a hurtful, distrusting look if your stylus crossed paths with the pup.
brick by brick, hours hunched over my ds, i earned a mutual trust with these dogs, and it was trial and error. however, it taught me how to build a relationship as we surveyed the game’s obedience trials, agility races, and something as simple as play time. in return, i acquired more money to spend on my nintendog, in addition to a rewarding experience that left me with a friend.
the pleasure of having a companion animal in your life is a treasure that i inevitably learned after my beloved black cat passed two years ago. i named him after jiji, the black cat that stands by kiki’s side in the whimsical studio ghibli movie, kiki’s delivery service. he was my best friend that sometimes pissed me off, as cats do, but i quickly dealt with the mortality of a partner pet when he got sick.
i often compared his presence to having a partner pokémon, since the experience of choosing him at the animal rescue felt equivalent to starting a new adventure with your pokémon and following the game’s professor to make your big decision. in my virtual world, my choice was a piplup or chikorita, but irl, i had jiji. although he’s gone, i still feel his presence in the occasional neighborhood stray, the stuffed animals in my bed, and my partner pokémon.
when I talk about my favorite pokémon games, i always mention games with less battling, strategizing, and conquering, which eventually got old and less challenging to me.
for example, pokémon ranger and pokémon mystery dungeon left me with a different level of appreciation for my companion pokémon, since it was more than likely learning a similar level of respect and appreciation for me. similar to other games, i learned patience from pokémon. sometimes they’re stubborn, they aren’t victorious, and often evolve at the “wrong” time, but it was out of my control.
when i return to my ds and revisit my favorites—pokémon platinum and pokémon ranger: shadows of almia—i’m aware of the difference in my attention to the gameplay. i lean more into the games when partnership is prioritized over combat, since these pokémon felt like my friends.
i’m sure that my view of friendship and non-player characters is rooted in animal crossing. throughout the five games in the franchise, it’s easy to get attached to different villagers and islanders, which leads to buying things like amiibos and handcrafted jewelry of your favorite villager. four years ago, i purchased earrings in the shape of zucker, a beloved animal crossing octopus. sometimes, you’ll end up on etsy like me, or you’ll end up scouring the depths of reddit to find specific character lore. i’ve unabashedly done both…and since we’re sharing things, i may or may not have downloaded an app to learn more about the zodiac signs and favorite items of my villagers. i’m dedicated to my virtual besties!
but what fascinates me the most about these characters is their sense of agency. i’m a fan of all five of the animal crossing games, but my favorites are the original game for the gamecube and wild world for the ds. if you’re an ambitious animal crossing mayor/villager/islander, you’ll understand that each game slowly removed each character’s teeming personality from the game. eventually, the games prioritized aesthetics over character development—in my humble opinion, one of its most redeeming features—so i find myself yearning for the older games.
in this 2001 origin of the animal crossing world, you’re dropped off in the middle of nowhere with no public transit and zero clubs. just fruit-filled trees, a shop for nooks and crannies, an empty museum, and the occasional waterfall. throughout this area, you’ll meet your neighbors. some are obsessed with fossils, fruits, fish, have quirky fits, interesting taste in interior design, insist on giving you a nickname, and they’re not monolithic.
prior to the new leaf and new horizons, these villagers were barely your friends. speaking to a villager led to an antagonizing, somewhat mean-spirited string of indirect demands and backhanded compliments. eventually, they softened up on you, or at the very least, they gave you quests.
most of my personality and interests derive from video games, so it’s fair to say that I learned a lot from animal crossing characters. they were my besties, my neighbors, and my penpals. i bartered local goods for bells, yapped with them, and felt like they were my friends. except for rosetti, who only left me with fear for my forgetful memory, and tom nook, who kept me around to scam!
even though they are npcs, their agency, hobbies, and interior decorations expressed so much about them. they are here, in my game cartridges forever, in their own world. as my switch collects dust, i think about the islanders that i neglected in new horizons, and then i think about my nintendogs from years ago, and my team of six pokémon waiting by my side. all of them are patiently waiting for me, at any point in my life, at all ages in memory cards, save files, and microsd cards.