Nintendo’s recent “Let’s all chill on a cool island run by ruthless capitalist raccoons” simulator, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, arrived at essentially the perfect moment in the ongoing zeit-shit, offering a cheerful and relaxing respite from the outside world for the millions of people who’ve been playing it. It even offers the chance to connect with other folks playing the game, helping to overcome the isolation of social distancing, with players playing host to all sorts of people on their islands, hanging out, gathering fruit, and just generally sort of chilling: Family members. Close friends. Celebrity hobbit person Elijah Wood.
This is per MTV News, reporting that Elijah Wood is, happily, exactly as polite an Animal Crossing guest as one might hope, or expect, the star of North to be. At least, that’s the experience of Twitter user Jessa, who reported this week that she got a DM from Wood, asking if he could visit her island to take advantage of her turnip prices.
(In brief: Turnips in Animal Crossing are bought and sold at rates that can vary wildly between different islands and at different times. Exploiting these differences can make players a ton of money very quickly, allowing them to get out from under the thumbless hands of hated landlord Tom Nook. Fans call this whole process the Stalk Market, of course, because nothing that even tangentially touches this game can be free from its curse of overwhelming cute.)
Jessa consented, and was soon visited by Wood, who proved to be a perfect Happy Home houseguest: Complimenting her island, asking before taking some of her fruit, and just generally comporting himself like an absolute gentleman. There have since been more reports of Wood visiting islands since this story broke, like some sort of roving ambassador of nice, and while it’s hard to tell how many are actually real, he does seem to be enjoying the phenomena (at least, if his Twitter likes are anything to go off of). The actor isn’t currently filming anything—because no one is—but he continues to host his Shudder podcast Visitations with producing partner Daniel Noah, with whom he worked on last year’s Color Out Of Space—a story about an altogether ruder sort of unexpected guest.