Crafting Fanny The Fairy: The Village Of Bellville
Bellville was created from the idea of a community trying to survive after the world outside has become almost impossible to live in. The setting is inspired from the world of The Last of Us. I wanted to explore a similar feeling: a small community surrounded by danger, where survival depends on cooperation and where the outside world has become something almost mythical to the younger generation.
Adam grew up knowing Bellville as the only world that truly existed. To him, the town was not a refuge from something. It was simply home.
"The scorching April sun beat down relentlessly upon Bellville, marking the ninth year since fourteen-year-old Adam and his parents had fled their hometown to seek refuge in the north."
The world that Adam's parents remember is very different from the one he knows. Lakes have disappeared, crops have failed and animals have vanished. Even something as simple as food has become difficult to obtain.
"Bellville, their current home, was a shadow of its former self."
I really liked the idea of Bellville being a place that is simultaneously safe and restrictive. It has a community, food, a hospital and people who look after one another. Yet it is also surrounded by a world that its inhabitants fear. Craig explains this perfectly when Adam questions why they live so far away from everyone else.
"There is nothing around because we made a conscious choice to live away from the rest of the world."
For Adam, however, Bellville gradually becomes too small. The town has given him safety, education, a family and a community. But it has not given him answers about the world beyond its borders. That curiosity becomes increasingly difficult for him to suppress.
Bellville therefore became more than just a setting. It became a representation of the places we create to protect ourselves. Sometimes those places are necessary. Sometimes they save us. But eventually, we have to decide whether the walls protecting us are also preventing us from growing.