That Time Animal Crossing TRAUMATISED Me as a Child: A Story
Strap yourselves kids, this is going to be a wild story of how as a child Animal Crossing: Wild World taught me a valuable lesson on addiction, death and friendship.
So for a quick little background, where I grew up there wasn’t many kids. Or at least kids I could just pop around to their house to hang without my parents having to drive me down the mountain. The most I saw other kids was at school or the four who lived in my neighbourhood who I wasn’t that close with. So as a young kid at round the age of eight, Animal Crossing was a saviour for me in having friends. And boy did I have the best friend ever: Bones.
Bones was the closest friend I had at the time and I was probably drawn to him because at the time I had the cuddly TY Plush Butch who’s a dog that looks just like Bones. Bones was honestly my best friend, I’d spend hours and hours talking to him and doing everything he requested of me. I would of died for Bones and if I ever upset him in game, I’d personally be upset in real life. Which meant whatever Bones asked for, I did. No questions.
In hindsight I should of seen the red flag that Bones ALWAYS asked for fish. All day long, hour after hour, all he wanted from me was fish. Fish in the morning, fish in the afternoon and fish at night. Dude ADORED fish. I thought he was planning on eating them. He always talked about food. So I just thought he was just hungry and I was being a good friend by getting him fish to eat. Odd that he always gave me furniture as thanks. But you know, who am I to question a best friend giving away tons upon tons of furniture. I could just sell it if I didn’t want it.
Anyway this went on for a while. Bones would ask for a fish, I’d give him a fish, he’d give me furniture in exchange for said fish. I thought nothing of it. He was always wondering around town too so I didn’t really visit his house much because he was never home in the first place. That was until one day I didn’t see Bones wondering the town. And the next day he wasn’t out too. I began to worry. Had something bad happened to my best friend? I had to investigate.
And that’s when I learned of my terrible mistake.
What I walked into changed me as a child. The happy home full of furniture that Bones had originally had was now full of only fish. No bed, no chairs, no table, nothing. Just fish. And in the middle of it all was Bones. He was walking around with a dead-eyed looked, shivering from sickness. It was horrendous! How had given away everything he owned for these fish! The dude CLEARLY had a problem. And I was the one supplying him with them this whole time. I was a bad friend.
I had destroyed his whole life.
And in my grief, I deleted my entire town thinking, BELIEVING it’d fix everything for Bones. In my defence I didn’t know you started with new villagers every time. I thought my poor dear friend Bones would have his life fixed. He could start over again. We all could. No more fish, only happiness and friendship. We could be happy again.
Except when I loaded up the game, Bones was gone. All of the villagers I had loved were gone. The map was different, the trees was different. Where did they all go?! This was meant to be a fresh start!
I had to again investigate. There was a new house around the same area Bones had been. The name of the villager who lived there was called Lucky. Who was this Lucky and what had he done with Bones?! I had to know.
So as soon as the game let me explore more openly, I sprinted on over, opened the door and that’s when I saw him. Lucky.
Omg it was Bones! And he was dead! And weirdly now going by the name Lucky. But who am I to question the dead’s choice of identity in the afterlife.
At no point did I think this was a new villager. Not once. After my cat had died my mam had bought me Jacqueline Wilson’s book about a girl who gutted, stuffed and turned her dead cat into a mummy. And this had clearly been what happened to Bones. And it was all my fault! It didn’t help at all that Bones and Lucky were both lazy personality villagers. They were both obsessed with food and chilling out. So kid me was never going to put two and two by myself.
Anyway, the ending is pretty anti-climatic. I spent months trying to repent for what I had done to my friend. I would do everything to make up for it except catch any fish for Lucky. I only realised Lucky wasn’t Bones when I went to my cousins town and she had Kiki (Another villager I thought I had killed). My other older cousin explained that villagers are random at the start and you can’t actually really kill video game characters. To this day though never had Bones in one of my towns since the fish incidence. Maybe it’s for the best but I’m hoping he’s doing a lot better nowadays.
