To be honest, I found it very difficult to relate to what Roxane Gay talked about. It’s obvious to me that her time at high school was not very fun. Unlike Gay, my experience in high school was pretty much all positive. While I can’t relate to her school life, I completely understand what she means when she talks about the Sweet Valley High series and seeing the world through a lens of fantasy. I didn’t do that much stuff in high school, but I did play an absurd amount of video games. Pretty much all of the games I played back then are my Sweet Valley High. I was fully immersed into the world of whatever game I played, I built lasting “relationships” with the characters, and I felt like I could be anyone I wanted or do anything I pleased.
Sweet Valley High allowed Gay to get away from her miserable high school life and live the high school fantasy she always wanted. She thought of herself as a Jessica, when in reality she looked nothing like her and she was too shy to act like her too. But none of that matter because it was all just a fantasy. In that same way, I would always picture myself as the main character I was playing. I could be the strong, charismatic, heroic, manly man even though I didn’t really have any of those qualities, unless I was with my friends of course. When I played games like Call of Duty I knew in the back of my mind that I wasn’t a REAL soldier, but did that stop me from putting on a tough guy voice and screaming military lingo and callouts that I didn’t even understand? Absolutely not. Even though I wasn’t an adventurer, or a blue hedgehog, or some super strong space marine, I was able to see a bit of myself in those characters. Roxane Gay saw herself as Jessica in Sweet Valley High. Jessica was a white girl, with blonde hair, blue-green eyes, and a thin waist. Gay has none of those qualities, and yet she still identified with her. That’s the power a fantasy can have.