well, my name's Jade (they/them), first of all. hi!
i was born in the futuristic year 2006. in 2015, when i was nine years old, my parents got me Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and to say it changed my life forever is.. honestly a bit of an understatement!
i was a really lonely, autistic little kid. i had a lot of trouble relating to other people. but i could relate to my villagers just fine! Animal Crossing became my lifeline. it gave me a space to escape to when my real life got hard, a safe space to explore gender, and even to explore my budding sexuality.
around late 2016-early 2017, i decided to try exploring the online Animal Crossing community. i used The Bell Tree forums and the Animal Crossing Amino, primarily. i was mostly a lurker, though i did post some on both (particularly Amino). i also became an active participant in the Twitch chats of a couple different Animal Crossing streamers.
it's embarrassing to look back on, honestly, because a ten year old must have been so annoying to have in these primarily adult spaces.. but i think annoying people a bit was probably worth it for me! with these communities, Animal Crossing gave me yet more safe spaces to explore new names, pronouns, and ways of expressing myself! i learned a lot about myself, and even though i don't talk to any of these people anymore, i'm very thankful for the bit of time i got to spend with them. if you were one of these people and somehow you recognize me, three or four names and nine years later, thank you for everything!
over time, my interest in Animal Crossing waned a bit, as things like this tend to. i retracted from online communities, but i was still quite interested in the games. i was quietly excited for the inevitable Switch game. when New Horizons was revealed, i was over the moon! it seemed like it had everything i wanted!
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is practically the only thing i remember about 2020. for my fourteenth birthday, just under a week before the release of New Horizons, my present was.. a Switch Lite for my younger sibling, so they could play the game with me. us and our older sibling played so much Animal Crossing that year. i played with lots of other people too. it was genuinely a beautiful experience for me; for the first time, i got to share my special interest with everyone i knew! it felt like Animal Crossing had become real, in a way.
like many people, my feelings on New Horizons have become a bit more complicated over time, but.. i'd rather talk about that another time.
fast-forward to december 2025; i'm nineteen and Animal Crossing's presence in my life has shrunk significantly, but then, suddenly, a switch flips in my brain and my Animal Crossing special interest is back in full force, and i can't help telling everyone about it! so i make this website as an outlet for that reignited passion.
when the original doubutsu no mori was announced, it was initially described only as a "communication game". in many ways, this description holds true for me. whether it's being annoying on forums and in Twitch chats, sending letters with dumb copypastas in them to my siblings, or writing this, Animal Crossing's presence in my life has empowered me to communicate with others.