could dance. Ryan Reynolds 
— comedy bro and incredibly 
violent superhero — was ours 
first.
Speaking of fine fellas with 
roots in the genre, I’ve compiled 
a 
short 
(and 
surprisingly 
incomprehensive) list for you:
Mark 
Ruffalo? 
Ours. 
Keanu Reeves? Ours. Patrick 
Dempsey? Ours. Tom Cruise? 
Ours. 
Leonardo 
DiCaprio? 
Ours. Tom Hardy? Ours. Three 
of the four Chris-es? Ours. Brad 
Pitt? Ours. Orlando Bloom? 
Ours. Hugh Jackman? Ours. 
Greg Kinnear? Ours. Matthew 
McConaughey? Ours.
The Romcomaissance saw 
movies 
like 
2002’s 
“Sweet 
Home Alabama” and 2004’s 
“50 First Dates” — movies that 
never tried to be anything more 
than exactly what they were. 

That’s all romcoms are, really: 
At their barest bones, they’re 
movies that are made for their 
audiences. They’re algorithmic 
and predictable, and they’re not 
made for the people that won’t 
like them or won’t get them. 
These movies are good because 
of the feelings they monopolize, 
not because of their stellar plots 
or 
cinematography. 
They’re 
good because of The Look.
The Look doesn’t say, “I want 
to lunge at you,” and it doesn’t 
even say “I want to kiss you.” 
The Look says, “I think that 
if I were to never stop looking 
at you, I’d be OK.” It’s Heath 
Ledger staring at you as he asks 
if it’s quite alright that he loves 
you, baby. It’s Hugh Dancy in 
the firelight proving, once and 
for all, that consent is sexy. 
The Look is an exhale, when 
you finally get what you always 
knew you deserved.
Romcom ladies were always 
perfect to me — cutely clumsy, 
magnetically 
manic. 
And 
they’re still perfect to me, but as 
I’ve grown with them, they’ve 
shaped me in 
more ways than 
just 
making 
flared-jeans my 
forever 
go-to. 
When 
Hilary 
Duff tears into 
the locker room 
in “A Cinderella 
Story” 
to 
tell 
the 
most 
beautiful 
boy 
in school (see: 
the world) that 
waiting for him 
is “like waiting 
for rain in this drought,” she’s 
nervous 
and 
embarrassed. 
This is also the one moment in 
the movie that she holds her 
head the highest. She fills her 
life with all the love she’ll ever 
need, and she walks out of that 
locker room, one thumb hooked 
firmly in her belt loop, alone. 

She — like all the very best 
romcom gals — knew her worth.
In 2004’s “13 Going on 30” 
— possibly my favorite romcom 
ever — there’s this scene where 
Jennifer Garner’s character is 
telling a bunch of 13-year-old 
girls about love, and how it’s 
a battlefield. And then they 
danced. The movie is a romcom, 
yeah, but it’s about a girl 
breaking in her pink dream-
house, growing up, teaching 
her co-workers how to dance 
to “Thriller.” It’s one of the 
most 
profoundly 
romcom-y 
romantic comedies I’ve ever 
seen because, at its very core, 
the movie is hers. All of it. “13 
Going on 30” belongs to this girl 
who’s not quite sure who she is, 
giving her the space to hold the 
hands of other girls who aren’t 
quite sure who they are and 
talk about the night with the 
Razzles.
Romantic comedies are holy 
ground. I’m built from them, 
and I know they’ve built a lot 
of other people, too. I know I’m 
never going to dance to “Bennie 
and 
the 
Jets” 
on a bar table 
in the middle of 
nowhere 
after 
hydroplaning 
with 
James 
Marsden. 
But 
that doesn’t stop 
me from wanting 
to see Katherine 
Heigl do it. I’ve 
watched 
that 
scene at least 27 
times (sorry), and 
it gets me every 
damn one. There’s 
just this feeling of knowing 
that I’m always going to get 
the 
chest-clutching, 
knee-
curling, 
doubling-over-in-
glee kind of warmth that I’ve 
sustained myself on for a solid 
two decades now. These stories 
aren’t mine, but they are, and 
they always will be.

FILM NOTEBOOK

I’ve always been someone 
who tends to disregard whether 
or not a movie is considered 
high art or in particularly good 
taste. Last week, I watched 
“Penelope” again, even though 
it’s labeled as one of the “movies 
for ages 11 to 12” on Netflix. 
I love it regardless. I love 
the way Penelope (Christina 
Ricci, “Z: The Beginning of 
Everything”) weeds out her 
undeserving suitors and the 
way the final kiss makes me feel 
like I have sparklers sizzling 
through my chest. There’s a 
feeling so integral and inherent 
to movies like “Penelope” — 
movies that exist to make you 
feel something, anything, good. 

“Penelope” is a romcom.
Every time I start to think I’m 
a parody of myself, I remember 
two things:
One: I am.
Two: It doesn’t matter.
I don’t care that the line I’ve 
been holding in my heart for 
eight years now — “It makes me 
so sad that people like Kostas 
and Bridget who have lost 
everything can still be open 
to love, while I, who have lost 
nothing, am not” — came from 
a franchise founded upon a pair 
of blue jeans (“Sisterhood of the 
Traveling Pants”). I don’t care.
I love these movies with all 
that I am because they make me 
feel good. It feels good to watch 
two people want each other so 
much that they hate each other, 
even though they don’t hate 
each other — not even close, not 

even a little bit, not even at all.
And 
they’ve 
taught 
me 
things, you know? They’ve 
taught me how to stress-scrub 
my stove, and to speak up even 
when I feel like the smallest 
person in the room. They’ve 
taught me the power of a boot-
cut. They’ve taught me that I 
should never — not ever — settle 
for anyone or anything that 
doesn’t absolutely thrill me. 
We’ve all got glitter in our blood 
and love in our very bones.
There was a period in the 
mid ’90s-2000s (what I like 
to call The Romcomaissance) 
when romcoms did nothing 
short of thrive. 1999’s “She’s 
All That,” 2001’s “The Wedding 
Planner,” 2008’s “Definitely, 
Maybe” — they’re sweet in the 
easiest of ways. Laney Boggs 
deserved better and Mary Fiore 

WARNER BROS.
To all the romcoms I’ve loved before

ARYA NAIDU
Senior Arts Editor

VIDEO GAMES NOTEBOOK

ELECTRONIC ARTS

What do you get when you 
mix the board-game “Life,” 

“Cards Against Humanity” and 
an HGTV home improvement 
show? The EA (Electronic 
Arts) gaming masterpiece “The 
Sims 3.” Whether it’s becoming 
a home renovation guru and 
designing the kitchen of your 

dreams (granite countertops 
and all) or throwing morality 
out the window to live out 
your wildest fantasies (like 
doing-the-dirty with the grim 
reaper or — more morbidly — 
drowning your Sims in a pool), 
“The Sims 3” has a little bit 
of something for everyone.
The franchise’s motto, 
“Play with life,” perfectly 
encapsulates 
the 
very 
nature of the game: As you 
guide your character, or 
Sim, through their life, the 
opportunities 
(if 
grave-
robbing is an “opportunity”) 
are limitless, providing an 
individualized 
experience 
for each player. It’s up to 
you to make what you will 
of the game. But beyond 
the 
boundless 
creativity 
and anarchic freedom of 
the game, there lies a level 
of control afforded to the 
player that is not accessible 
in reality, making “The 
Sims 3” the perfect platform 
to channel high levels of 
stress and anxiety. After all, 
when life throws you into 
a metaphorical shredder, 
what’s a better way to 
regain a sense of control 
than by assuming the role of 
a virtual god in “The Sims 
3”?
For as long as I can 
remember, 
I’ve 
always 
struggled 
with 
high 
anxiety. 
Anything 
from 
being indecisive about what 

MADELEINE GANNON
Daily Arts Writer

Creative chaos: How ‘The 
Sims 3’ helps with anxiety

I want for dinner, to crossing 
the street as the light flashes 
red, to having to say “no” to 
people (I’m a people-pleaser) 
can trigger a bout of gut-
wrenching anxiety. Growing 
up in New York City certainly 
didn’t help either. I’m almost 
always in a constant state of 
apprehension, so most of the 
time it’s simple enough to gulp 
down the characteristic wave 
of nausea and bite my nails to 
nubs in lieu of panic attack. 
But sometimes the anxiety 
proves too intense to clamp 
down. Cue the crushing weight 
on my chest that feels like the 
breath has been knocked out of 
me, the bile that bubbles up my 
throat, the burning, blinding 
tears. As a young girl, home 
alone in the midst of a panic 
attack and no one to come calm 
and me down, I had to find a 
way to help myself. So, I got 
creative. My answer? “The 
Sims 3.”
I can still remember blowing 
(literal) dust off my neglected 
iMac 2007, waiting what felt 
like eons to boot up the game, 
listening to the rumble of the 
fans struggling to keep the 
system from overheating. My 
monstrous 
desktop 
always 
seemed like the dinosaur of the 
digital age, big and clunky even 
when it was still new. More 
often than not, I would have to 
coax the computer to play nice, 
restarting that useless hunk of 
junk and crossing my fingers 
that the oh-so-familiar green 
diamond would pop up on 
screen — usually accompanied 
by a full-volume blast of “The 
Sims 3”’s opening theme song.
Playing 
the 
game, 
I 
would 
— 
and 
occasionally 
still do — spend hours with 
the 
customization 
tools. 
Sometimes I would simply 
recreate familiar figures — 
friends, family, pop culture 
icons — and other times I 
would let my imagination run 
wild, like when I made my 
green, kleptomaniac vampire 
named Steve. The Create-A-
Sim, or the character design, 
function of the game allows 
the player to customize nearly 
every aspect of their Sim, from 
their voices to their clothing 
and even their personality 
traits. The level of character 
detail allowed me to lose 
myself in the game, helping me 
take my mind off my anxiety. 
The ability to build and design 
homes, or lots, in the game 
is also an activity I relished 

in. Not only could I express 
my own artistic ability, but 
wasting away the afternoon 
doing something as simple as 
designing the pattern of the 
drapes in my Sim’s home was 
downright relaxing. “The Sims 
3” has a unique mind-numbing 
effect; unlike other games, I 
don’t need to think in order 
to play, and most of the time 
overthinking is my big, fat 
problem.

Not only does “The Sims 
3” simulate a deep level of 
relaxation, but playing the 
game also allows me to feel 
like I’m in control. Panic 
attacks and regular bouts of 
anxiety are self-perpetuating 
problems: They are inspired 
by a perceived lack of control, 
followed by the subsequent 
emotional 
rollercoaster 
so 
debilitating that you then lose 
what little control you might 
have had — a vicious cycle.
However, in “The Sims 3,” 
 
the player has control over 
almost every aspect of the 
game — I have control over the 
entire in-game world. I can stop 
time or speed it up within the 
game, control every action of 
my Sim, influence the weather 
and the lives of other computer 
generated 
and 
controlled 
characters and even age or 
make immortal any character. 
I can use cheats or game-
mods to surpass what few 
in-game boundaries there are. 
Now, I can admit that this can 
come off as a little bit power-
hungry and controlling. But 
in all honesty, that’s because 
I am — that’s what my anxiety 
drives me to be. Sure, I would 
love to prop my feet up, grab 
a drink with a fancy umbrella 

in it and watch a YouTube 
video of a beach in Fiji while 
deadlines, responsibilities and 
my problems sail overhead. But 
my personal reality is that I’m 
doomed to suffer through life 
as a ball of perpetual stress. So 
I do what I can and indulge in 
what I’m able to afford in order 
to stay afloat.
“The Sims 3” not only acts as 
a safe, reliable medium for me 
to channel my anxiety, but the 
game also simulates the control 
and security I need and desire 
to contend with my anxiety. 
From my own experience, 
using something so simple — 
some would say childish — as 
a video game has prompted me 
to reevaluate how video games 
are marketed to audiences, 
and for what purpose they’re 
produced. A game like “The 
Sims 3” is meant to provide 
entertainment 
— 
I 
highly 
doubt any of the developers 
considered the game as a 
possible form of therapy for 
players 
with 
high 
anxiety 
when they initially created 
the game. But what if the 
experiences video games are 
intended to simulate didn’t 
simply imitate life or distract 
from it, but rather help the 
players process and contend 
with their own lives?
So often video games are 
written off as being unhealthy, 
addictive, pointless, childish 
— 
and 
some 
games 
are 
justly described as such. But 
that doesn’t have to be the 
reputation of the industry. 
Recently, 
arguments 
have 
been made for the role video 
games could play in education, 
bringing subjects like history 
to life with virtual reality or 
in-game educational lessons or 
activities. So why can’t video 
games be developed and used to 
help people of all ages (gamers 
or not) process and deal with 
mental and emotional issues? 
In an age when technology is 
being integrated into nearly 
every aspect of our lives, it’s 
only logical to think that 
mental and emotional health 
and digital innovation may one 
day intersect.
So, the next time you feel 
like the world is crashing down 
around you, try taking a page 
from my book: Take a breath, 
take a break and maybe boot-
up a decade-old 2007 iMac and 
go build some “Fixer Upper”-
worthy kitchens that HGTV’s 
Chip and Joanna Gaines would 
be proud of.

Not only does 
“The Sims 3” 
simulate a deep 
level of relaxation, 
but playing the 
game also allows 
me to feel like I’m 
in control

I love these 
movies with all 
that I am because 
they make me feel 
good

6B — Thursday, October 11, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

