spellbinding storytelling: the fantasy of a normal life

today's blog is a little bit different. instead of talking about a specific movie, tv show, or trope, i'm going to talk about a genre of video games. i love video games, but we very much have a complicated relationship. while i enjoy games like portal, or bioshock, they often stress me out, overstimulate me, or give me motion sickness. my favorite kinds of games are the kind that would generally get you labeled a 'casual' in most online gaming communities. i love simulation games. the sims, pokemon, stardew valley, dating sims, slice of life visual novels. they're soothing, and most importantly, they're an escape

looking through my steam library, you could easily see that i favor games like this. in particular, you would see that i favor stardew valley. a little indie pixel based farming sim, i've played nearly 500 hours of stardew valley, which is leaps and bounds more time than anything else in my library. it's a simple enough premise. you're a farmer in the small village of 'pelican town', living on your deceased grandfather's old farm. you get to know the residents of the town, befriend them, romance them. you grow and sell crops, you build out your house and your land. there's mysteries, from time to time, and a little bit of magic. but for me, it's a different kind of fantasy fulfillment.

i love the idealized image of farm life stardew valley gives me. i would love to live on a cute little farm in the woods, raising goats and keeping bees to get honey to make mead, running around and befriending the locals. but i can't do that. physically speaking, as a disabled and chronically ill person, this is not achievable in the real world. i do not have the physical stamina for farmwork. i cannot spend my days doing hard physical labor. i can barely depend on my body for my income as it is. but in pelican town, that doesn't matter,

this is what simulation games, like stardew valley, like the sims, do for me, and i'm sure other people in similar situations. they give me a world where my physical restrictions do not exist, do not matter. even if i mod the games to allow me to use the tools i do as a disabled person, to make myself feel represented, it will not affect my success. putting my sims characters in braces and compression socks will not stop them from being rocket scientists, or famous actors. the same principle applies to any simulation game, or even immersive rpgs, be they online or tabletop. even if i give my dnd character my disability, the fantasy setting allows me to work with and around it a way i can't in the real world. my undyne druid can have a disability without it being a hindrance; it's simply another unique aspect of her character.

it's amazing, when i've had a long day or a long week at work, when i'm finally home and my body aches and burns with pain, when my ribs feel out of place and i can barely bend my knees to stand, to turn on a game like stardew valley and spend a few hours lost in a world where my physical limitations do not exist. it's not a fantasy because i can talk to bears, or make friends with a man who brews potions in his brick and stone tower, but because it's a world where i can live a normal life, unimpeded by my physical form.