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The Project:

Amiibos for Black Lives is basically this: in exchange for a recent receipt of a donation to a #BlackLivesMatter related fund, memorial fund, bail fund, or other civil rights fund, I will ship to you an Amiibo of your choice, for free, anywhere in the USA.

What are Amiibos, you may ask? Amiibos allow you to invite the exact villager you want into your island. Without Amiibos, you would have to rely on finding them by chance via Nook Mile Ticket or via the campsite. An Amiibo is a GUARANTEED villager of your choice! If this interests you, then read on!

Please follow this link to fill out a Google form for requesting Amiibos. All of the information you could ever want is in the description - I urge you to read it thoroughly before submitting! Any questions can be sent to my email, which is provided through the Google form.

Thank you for your time and interest. I’m filled with excitement at the opportunity to give back to the Animal Crossing community as well as support the Black community during a time of need.

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You may have seen one or more of these popular memes floating around, or you may have been sent a few by friends who play Animal Crossing. Though they’re pretty funny, there is quite a bit of truth behind them. Declining mental health during times of social isolation, relishing the feeling of waking up happy, having emotional breakdowns, and depression are all normal reactions to a global pandemic and widespread racial violence.

Though Animal Crossing is a great distraction, it is certainly a time sink. This is true for any game: playing is an insufficient substitute for human closeness and connection. It is also not a substitute for mental health counselling. Counselling can be a great resource for learning coping mechanisms, exploring unhealthy thoughts, and building sustainable habits. The amount of Americans seeking mental health treatment is growing. Though there is certainly more struggle, it also shows that people are feeling more comfortable with the idea of therapy. A common myth is that people who seek therapy must have something terribly wrong with them for them to need professional help. Many who seek therapy actually do so for common experiences like anxiety, stress, work-life imbalance, lack of confidence, and self-esteem issues. Follow this link for common myths about counselling. A person’s brain needs upkeep, just like one would go for a regular checkup or a dental cleaning!

If the memes above are ones you feel you can relate to, or if you have been otherwise feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial violence, professional counselling may be of interest for you to explore. Many options exist for telemental health, especially when it feels unsafe to meet a stranger in person. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America provides a registry and a service for locating a provider in your area. Quite a few providers also work on a sliding scale for payment to better fit the client’s needs.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at: 1-800-273-8255 Their Lifeline Chat can be found here.

Thank you for reading!

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Communities matter.

With the onset of the global Coronavirus pandemic, engaging with a community is more difficult than ever. Having to stay at home and keeping safe distances can lead to feelings of isolation and longing for connection. 

Many people have found solace in the newly released Nintendo game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For those who are unfamiliar with the series, Animal Crossing is a 19-year old franchise that touts relaxing, open-ended gameplay in which the player lives among anthropomorphic animal villagers and creates a living space of their very own. The current Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s online capabilities have had the remarkable effect of closing great distances, creating a global community of players who are notorious for caring about each other, encouraging new players, and being generous above all. 

Be it a marketing ploy for Nintendo’s online subscription or not, many aspects of Animal Crossing: New Horizons are enhanced through community. Where some players are lacking, other players make up for it in various ways - finding extra fossils to complete the town museum, extra DIY recipes to learn, sharing fruits, flowers, furniture, and clothes. The game is about mutual aid. 

It is this concept of mutual aid that drives me to pursue the current project: Amiibos for Black Lives. The systems abetting the murder and slavery of Black people have recently caused the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, and a number of others. This is a problem of both the American community at large as well as the global community. Sanctioned violence has long been used to further the oppression of Black peoples. Police violence is not new, but a product of the last 400 years, starting with slavery.  This is a great example of what is called historical, or inter-generational, trauma. You can learn about historical trauma and implications on community mental health in this presentation by Brandon Jones, MA.

I am determined to connect the giving nature of the Animal Crossing community to this cause. Animal Crossing, which has been a source of community to many, is an incredible avenue to extend mutual aid to the global Black community. I would also like to encourage readers to seek aid where it is needed. Feelings of isolation during a pandemic are natural, and many sources of telemental health, or online counselling, are available. To those who are experiencing the impacts of the aforementioned historical trauma, I also encourage you to seek aid in the form of professional counseling. In this blog, I hope to both introduce my project, Amiibos for Black Lives, as well as provide resources and make a case for seeking professional counseling.