#i downloaded the game and the house two months ago

[mercury101]

It's the era of ts1 now

[liquideggs]

currently in a laundromat one state over. still out of power after six days. we barely have service so i haven’t been online really, only seen glimpses of the destruction. thankfully our house didn’t sustain any damage.

[hello-eden]

Never Hidden

Stephanie was bored. 

Bored

Bored

Bored

bored 

bored 

It had been a slow week. 

There was an Arkham breakout three weeks ago and they finally rounded up the last of them. there's always a few stragglers but everyone seemed to be checked off the list.

She wasn't assigned to any new cases and she's grounded from Missions outside of Gotham for bedazzling the Batmobile last month. It's only like another week but it still feels so long. 

She just finished her homework so now honestly she's just looking for something to do. She's honestly just messing with the bat computer until Jason walks in.

"What are you doing here” Jason says pausing after taking his helmet off, looking confused. "I thought you'd be off with Cass” 

“Grounded from outside missions” Stephanie replies turning the computer chair around “When do you get back in town”

“ Not even an hour ago” Jason says as he moves to her "What are you doing there, a case?”

 “Nah” Stephanie says that she turns back to face the back computer “ I don't got any Active cases, I looked at a couple of in Active cases but ehh”

 “So what are you doing” Jason finally reaches her and stops to look 

 “Honestly just playing around with the controls and snooping” Stephanie pulls up a file on the bat computer “Did you know Damien downloaded his Cheese Viking game onto the bat computer”

“Really” Jason laughs out

“Really, see” Stephanie says that she shows Jason the file “OMG this has been on here for 10 months

 “Bruce didn't even let me download stuff he uninstalled Zelda when I tried.”

 Stephanie and Jason continue to chat and work through the files on the back computer or at least the ones they have clearance to access. Eventually they get bored and start Looking through the Security camera

The only person in the house was Tim. He wasn't really doing anything exciting but he was on the phone. They watched him for a minute just checking to see what he would do.

They were about to switch off when he started yelling at whoever was on the phone. Both Stephanie and Jason were startled. They zoomed in and turned on the audio.

“I don't have time for your shit Ras.” Tim basically screamed into his phone. 

Stephanie's a little surprised that Alfred didn't come walking in to check what's going on.

 “you're the one who messed up, so clean up your own messes.” Tim then listens to Ras on the other line speak. "if you learned you know boundaries and actually tried for once then maybe Dan wouldn't be trying to Stage a coup.”

“ Why is Ras talking to Tim about a coup?” Jason asked as he looked over to Stephanie with a raised eyebrow.

 Jason thought he'd been away for a while but not long enough for this to happen.  

“I have no idea.  Every time he talks to me about Ras it sounds like he'd Rejoice if he dropped dead. I didn't even know Tim had his number let alone that they talked.” Stephanie started trying to think of any missions or crises that could have happened for the two of them to talk. 

“ he does not get that from me, the entire want for power thing is entirely your fault.“ Tim pulled out a second phone from the bag beside him and looked to be texting someone else as he was listening to the person on the phone. 

”I'm texting Dan as we speak I'll figure out what's going on that would make your controlling ass happy.” Tim pauses to listen to the other end of the phone.

 “Good.” Tim rolls his eyes and then hangs up the phone. 

“That man does not do anything useful.” Tim seems to say to an empty room probably not expecting to be spied on by two bored vigilanties.

 What the hell was that both Stephanie and Jason thought to themselves.

[buckets-and-trees]

This look is so intense, so don't-give-a-fuck. It does darker things to me... And the hair is a bit messy. It got my muse spiraling down a bit of a dirty course of thought.

Title: Parking Lot Chem Characters/Pairings: raunchy!Bucky x curvy!female reader Word Count: 6.7k Summary: In a bit of a loser era, divorced, dirty, not giving much of a damn about anything, Bucky works a bit of an unconventional night shift that leaves him with a lot of time to kill.

Content Warnings: modern AU, hook up culture, explicit and rough smut, oral (male receiving)/deep throating, vaginal fingering, squirting, multiple orgasms, vaginal penetration, unprotected sex, objectification, naked vs. clothed imbalance, coercion, use of "baby" as a term of endearment, dacryphilia, praise, mild degradation (teasing/mean but not vicious), general dirty talk, slight innocence/ruining kink, implied cockwarming, cum play/marking, sex in a semi-public place

Author Notes: I moved to a new apartment in the spring, and I noticed kind of an interesting thing that happens on weeknights across the street from my place. It got my mind spinning, and months later, I'm finally playing with the concept.

Logistical Notes: My July entry for @buckybarnesevents Build-a-Bucky-Bingo using the DEEP THROATING prompt and week 9 of Hot Bucky Summer using the WET AND MESSY prompt.

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

“Fuck,” he whispers in the dark. Desire and adrenaline rev in his veins at the sight of your headlights parking just where he’d told you to, across the street from the business park complex, in front of the residential apartments.

Bucky’s been working this job for six weeks, and it’s a joke, but it’s a decent-paying joke of a job. From 10pm until 6am, all he has to do is periodically drive a pick up truck around around the large parking lot that services the two business buildings to the north and south of the lot, make sure no one from the apartments across the street to the east or west side park in the lot overnight, and ticket and boot any cars if a resident or visitor is stupid enough to roll the dice and try. Yellow-amber flashing lights affixed to the roof of the truck’s cab, it’s Bucky’s responsibility to deter and keep things clear so that the employees for the companies housed at this business complex can show up and park free of cars, at least one potential hassle eliminated from their corporate working routine.

Eight hours of paid nearly-free time, unbothered by anyone or anything, in the quiet of the night.

He won’t work this job forever, but it sure as shit beats some of the other unappealing options after getting fired from his last job.

He’s read a lot of books sitting in this truck’s cab. He’s played a lot of games on his phone. He’s started putting in a lot of applications for other jobs and even a couple of masters programs. He’s too caught up on news, memes, and social media.

A couple of weeks ago he decided to download a couple of dating apps again, fish and see what’s out there. He’s been divorced for two years now, and Steve and Sam have been dropping hints that he should try and put himself out there again.

Last week he downloaded an app he saw mentioned by a couple of people in chats on the other dating apps - this one known for being a thinly veiled “dating” app full of people who might not be looking for a date so much as a bit of unattached fun.

He started talking to you two nights ago.

There really were plenty of people who were trying to use this particular app for legitimate dating.

But there were subtle signs, particular turns of phrase, avenues of conversation that you could test the waters with to uncover someone else who just wanted to quench some thirst.

And here you were.

Bucky shifts the truck from idle, and drives down the row of parking spaces, turns left to slowly drive down the north side, looking like he’s making one of his routine twice-an-hour laps around the lot, and then takes another left when he gets to the end. He flashes his headlights, and then he smiles as he sees you push open your door and slip out of the car.

“Fuck,” he moans, taking in the first sight of you.

You hastily look both ways - confirming that no one is coming down the road at this godforsaken time of night - then cross the street and step up to the curb just as Bucky pulls up next to you.

He reaches across to push the door open for you - a friendly gesture, certainly not a gentlemanly one, as there is nothing gentlemanly about his intentions toward you tonight.

“Hi,” you say, almost a little breathless. He assumes you must be a little nervous.

That’s cute.

He’s going to ruin you.

If you took any notice of the way he leers at you as you climb up into the cab with him, you would know, and you might hesitate or rethink this poor decision.

But you don’t.

And now the wolf has his prey.

He won’t harm you, but he’s certainly going to have his way with you.

"Hey there," Bucky replies, his voice a low rumble. "Glad you could make it."

You settle into the passenger seat, your eyes darting around the cab nervously. The air feels thick with anticipation. Bucky drinks in the sight of you - flushed cheeks, slightly disheveled hair, the rapid rise and fall of your chest betraying your excitement.

He puts the truck in drive and cruises slowly through the lot, amber lights still flashing above. "So," he drawls, "first time doing something like this?"

You nod, biting your lip. "Yeah, I've never... I mean, I don't usually..."

Bucky chuckles. You might be lying, but he thinks it’s probably true that you haven’t hooked up on this app before. If you made a habit of it, this probably would’ve happened the first night you started chatting.

"Don't worry, sweetheart. You’re safe with me." His hand leaves the steering wheel, landing on your thigh. You inhale sharply at the contact, but don't pull away. And he’s not lying. You’re safe, but he plans to thoroughly ruin you before sunrise.

He feels your muscles tense under his palm, but you don't push him away. Instead, you ease into his touch ever so slightly. Bucky smirks, knowing he's got you right where he wants you. But he will play this out slowly.

"So," he says, his voice low and husky, "what you're hoping to get out of tonight."

You swallow hard, your eyes fixed on his hand on your thigh. "I… I'm not sure.” Then your eyes flicked back up to his. “I just knew I wanted to meet you."

Bucky's thumb begins to trace small circles on your leg, inching higher with each rotation. "That so? Well, I've got a few ideas of my own, if you're interested."

He feels the tiny shiver roll through your body, and he bites back a groan.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, but tell me more about you. What’s a sweet thing like you needing a dating app for?” he asks, steering you into conversational waters. He wants you to get more comfortable with him, relaxed, so he can ultimately have you completely pliant for him.

You laugh nervously, a hint of self-deprecation in your voice. "Oh, you know. Work keeps me busy. I don't really get out much."

Bucky nods, his eyes still on the road as he steers the truck around another corner of the lot. "What kind of work do you do?"

"I'm in marketing," you reply, relaxing a bit as the conversation turns to safer ground. "It's interesting, but the hours can be long. What about you? Do you... always work nights like this?"

Bucky chuckles. "Nah, this is just temporary. Needed something to pay the bills while I figure out my next move."

His hand is still on your thigh, warm and heavy. He can tell you're acutely aware of it, of how his thumb continues its lazy circles, inching higher with each pass. Your breath catches as he reaches a particularly sensitive spot, and he stops with the circles, but leaves his hand there. He loves that you wore leggings. He can feel every movement of your muscles. You’re stupid for not knowing how intimate that is - or for underestimating how it would drive him wild. He continues to drive. He only needs to circle the lot every thirty to forty-five minutes, but he knows this driving is part of easing you further into this.

"So, marketing," Bucky muses, his voice a low rumble. "That must keep you on your toes. Always chasing the next trend, right?"

You give a small nod, your gaze flickering between his hand still resting on your thigh the unchanging view - familiar to him, but unfamiliar to you - as he continues to drive. "Yeah, it can be pretty intense. But I like the challenge."

Bucky hums in agreement, his eyes alternating between you and the road. "I bet you're good at it too. Reading people, figuring out what they want."

You laugh nervously. "I try. But clearly I'm not that good at reading situations, or I wouldn't be here."

Bucky's hand tightens slightly on your thigh. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. I think you read this situation perfectly."

His words hang in the air between you, charged with promise. You swallow hard, your pulse quickening.

"Just two people wanting to spend time together - nothing more complicated than that,” he reassures you. It’s not a lie. And then he leads you down a slew of safe paths of conversation. Your family, your roommates, where you went for college, places you’d like to travel, a bit about your social life. The more he asks, the more you open up. He clocks some of your responses, but he’s far more interested in how you’re feeling with him, the verbal and non-verbal cues he reads as the minutes turn into an hour. Twenty minutes into that hour, he’d been able to park in the middle of the lot, and you hadn’t batted an eye, completely at ease.

Occasionally your fingers fidget in your lap. Both of you have turned to angle your bodies toward the other. There’s no barrier between you - it’s a full bench seat across from driver to passenger side.

He decides to push things a little further.

"So, back to your marketing expertise?" he says, his voice low and smooth.

You playfully roll your eyes. “I’m not an expert. If I were an expert, I’d be driving a much better car already,” you laugh.

"No, no,” Bucky laughs along with you. “But you said you do have a pretty good job in your firm. Must mean you're… let’s say proficient at selling things? At... persuasion?"

You giggle nervously, maybe a little surprised at the turn of tactic. "I guess you could say that. Why do you ask?"

Bucky's hand slides up your thigh, just a fraction higher. "Just wondering what it might take to persuade you to do something a little... risky tonight."

Your breath hitches audibly. "What... what did you have in mind?"

He smirks, loving how eagerly you've taken his bait. "Well, we've got this whole parking lot to ourselves. No one around for hours. Seems a shame to waste such privacy.”

Another soft nervous laugh falls from your lips, and your eyes dart around. “I don’t know how private this is. We’re in the middle of an open parking lot.”

“Trust me, I’m the expert in this area, and no one is going to even come close to the cab of this truck.”

Your eyes widen slightly at his words, a mix of excitement and apprehension flickering across your face. "I... I'm not sure," you stammer, but your body language tells a different story. You've leaned in closer, your breath quickening.

Bucky's hand slides higher up your thigh, his fingers tracing patterns on the inside of your leg. "Come on, sweet girl," he murmurs, his voice low and persuasive. "Where's your sense of adventure?"

You bite your lip, clearly torn between desire and caution.

His other hand moves to cup your face, thumb brushing across your cheek. You lean into his touch, eyes fluttering closed for a moment.

Bucky’s easy smile grows to a smirk. A few more cautious moments, and he knows you’ll be his. His hand slides even higher up your leg, fingertips just barely brushing the junction of your thighs. "How about we start with a kiss and see where things go from there?"

Your breath catches audibly, and for a moment, Bucky thinks you might refuse.

"I don't usually do this kind of thing," you murmur, even as you lean slightly into his touch.

"I know," Bucky says softly, his voice a low rumble. The wolf inside him is clawing at his chest to claim you, to ruin you, but he knows he can’t pounce yet. He needs you to ease completely into his trap.

Then you nod, almost imperceptibly. "Okay," you whisper.

Bucky's eyes darken with desire as he leans in, closing the distance between you. His lips brush against yours softly at first, giving you a final chance to pull away if you change your mind. But you don't. Instead, you press forward, deepening the kiss.

He groans low in his throat, his hand tightening on your thigh as the other slides to the back of your neck, gripping gently. The kiss quickly turns heated, all pretense of hesitation melting away as your lips move against each other hungrily.

Bucky's tongue traces the seam of your lips, seeking entrance, and you eagerly grant it. As your tongues tangle, he shifts closer, using his grip at the nape of your neck to tilt your head, allowing him better access.

You whimper softly into his mouth, your hands coming up to clutch at his shoulders. He can feel the heat radiating between you. His hand on your thigh tightens, pulling you closer as he deepens the kiss. A soft whimper escapes you as his tongue slides against yours, and he can feel the last of your reservations melting away. Your hands, which had been fidgeting in your lap, now reach up to grip his shoulders.

As the kiss intensifies, Bucky's hand on your thigh inches higher, his fingers ghosting over your center through your leggings. You gasp into his mouth, your hips instinctively pushing forward to chase his touch.

He breaks the kiss, chuckling darkly. "Eager little thing, aren't you?" he teases.

"I... I'm sorry, I just..."

"Shh," Bucky soothes, his thumb brushing your bottom lip. "Don't apologize. I like it."

Like is an understatement. He’s feral for it. For you.

He leans in again, this time pressing his lips to your neck. You tilt your head, giving him better access as he trails hot kisses down to your collarbone.

"God, you smell good," he murmurs against your skin, his stubble scratching deliciously as he nips at your pulse point.

You moan softly, your hands sliding into his hair. The sinful sound sends a jolt of desire straight through him. His other hand, still resting high on your thigh, begins to move with more purpose. He traces the seam of your leggings, feeling the heat radiating from your core.

"Bucky," you breathe, shuddering under his bold touch.

"Tell me what you want, sweetheart," Bucky murmurs against your neck, his hot breath sending shivers down your spine. His fingers continue their teasing exploration, tracing light patterns over the thin fabric of your leggings.

You whimper, your hips shifting restlessly. "I... I don't know," you breathe, your voice trembling with need.

Bucky chuckles darkly, nipping at your earlobe. "I think you do know. I think you knew exactly what you wanted when you agreed to meet me here. You just need a little... encouragement."

His hand slides higher, cupping you through your leggings. You gasp, your back arching as he applies pressure. "Is this what you want?" he asks, his voice low and husky.

"Yes," you moan, apparently unable to cling to the rest of your hesitation. "Please, Bucky."

He growls low in his throat, loving that he’s got you right where he wants you.

You dart forward, desperate to kiss him again, and he’s happy to provide you that distraction. One hand petting your pussy while you pant eagerly into the eager, open-mouthed kisses, he uses his other hand to unbuckle his jeans, undo the button, and lower the zipper. You’re so drawn in by his mouth and his ministrations on your clothed pussy, that you don’t even notice as he finally frees his raging hard cock.

With your attention fully captured by his skilled fingers and demanding mouth, Bucky takes the opportunity to guide your hand to his now exposed length. You gasp against his lips, pulling back slightly in surprise.

"What's wrong, sweet girl?" he murmurs, his voice a low rumble. "Isn't this what you came here for?"

Your eyes are wide, darting between his face and where your hand now rests on his cock. "I... I didn't..."

"Shh," Bucky soothes, his free hand cupping your face. "It's okay. We don't have to do anything you don't want to do." But even as he says this, his hips shift slightly, pressing his hardness more firmly into your palm.

You swallow hard, your breath coming in quick pants. For a moment, you hesitate, but then your hand wraps around him, stroking experimentally.

Bucky groans, his hips bucking slightly into your touch. "Right there. Just like that."

He draws your face back to his, and swallows you up in a wet kiss, his tongue fucking in and out of your mouth, stroking his tongue insistently against yours. He’s coaxing, reeling you back in, and he feels the fruits of his efforts as your hand strokes him with more fervor the longer he kisses you.

You’re lonely. He picked up on that, and he’s using it to his advantage. He’ll give you some of you want to get what he wants, as well.

Bucky breaks the kiss, his breath hot against your ear. "I want to see you," he growls, his hand sliding up under your shirt. "Take this off for me."

You hesitate for just a moment before nodding, your fingers fumbling with the hem of your shirt. Bucky helps you pull it over your head, tossing it aside. His eyes darken as they roam over your newly exposed skin.

“No bra?” he chuckles.

You bite your lip and your eyes dart down, away from his face.

"Beautiful," he murmurs, leaning in to press hot, open-mouthed kisses along your collarbone. His hand cups your breast, thumb brushing over the nipple. You arch into his touch, a soft moan escaping your lips.

Bucky's other hand continues its teasing exploration between your legs, the friction of your leggings adding to the delicious sensation. You're panting now, hips rocking against his.

"I want you to touch me," he says, his voice low and commanding.

You nod, your hand reaching for his cock again, but he catches your wrist, stopping you.

"Not like that," he growls. "I want your mouth on me."

Your eyes widen, darting between his face and his exposed cock.

“Oh, sweet girl,” he says, but the endearment drips off his tongue with cloying condescension, and he knows it, “You came out here at two am to meet up with a strange guy you only started talking to the night before last. You want to be used. Stop pretending like you’re going to resist. You’re going to let me do whatever the fuck I want with this body.”

You suck in a sharp breath, a wounded look in your eyes.

He chuckles and caresses your cheek. “Aw, you want it, too,” he coos. “You didn’t wear a bra, and I know you didn’t wear any panties either. When I peel these leggings off, your pussy is going to be bared and dripping and so eager for me.”

Your eyes flutter closed, but you don’t argue with him, and he guides you, hand on the back of your neck, to lean down into his lap. "Go on, sweet girl," he encourages. "Show me what a slut you want to be for me.”

Your breath catches. Bucky's words have struck a chord, and he can feel the mix of anticipation and nervousness in the air. It’s a heady thing, and he takes a deep breath as if he could inhale it. It makes his blood run hotter through his limbs.

With trembling hands, you lean the rest of the way in, your face hovering over his exposed cock.

"That's it," Bucky murmurs, his hand still firm on the back of your neck. "Open up for me."

You part your lips, and he feels your hot breath hovering at the head of his cock just a moment before you finally take him into your mouth. Bucky groans, his hips bucking slightly as your warm, wet mouth envelops him.

"Fuck," he hisses, his fingers tangling in your hair. "Good girl. Just like that."

You move slowly at first, getting used to the feel of him, mouthing at the head of his cock. But Bucky is impatient, using his hand, he guides you down more, urging you to take him deeper.

Bucky groans, his head falling back against the headrest as you start to work your tongue along his shaft.

"Fuck, that's good," he breathes, his fingers tangling in your hair. "Take more of me."

You comply, and Bucky's hips buck slightly, pushing himself further into your mouth. You gag a little, but quickly adjust, hollowing your cheeks, and he loves the feel of your soft, velvety mouth around his raging erection.

Bucky watches intently as you work your mouth over his cock, your lips stretched wide around his girth. The sight of you, eyes closed in concentration, cheeks hollowed as you suck, sends a jolt of pleasure through him. He can feel the wet heat of your tongue as it slides along the underside of his shaft, tracing the prominent vein there.

The wet heat of your mouth envelops Bucky, drawing a deep groan from his chest. Your tongue swirls around the head of his cock, teasing the sensitive underside before you take him deeper. The tight suction of your lips as you bob your head sends jolts of pleasure through his body.

Bucky's fingers tangle in your hair, guiding your movements. "Yes, baby," he growls. "Take me deeper."

You comply, relaxing your throat to take more of his length. Bucky feels the head of his cock hit the back of your throat and he hisses in pleasure. Your gag reflex kicks in, causing you to sputter and drool. Saliva drips down his shaft, making obscene wet sounds as you continue to work him with your mouth.

"Fuck, you're making such a mess," Bucky groans, watching as your head bobs up and down in his lap. "Such a perfect little cocksucker."

He’s watched a lot of porn since his divorce, and even more these past weeks in the middle of the night in this truck, and this is so much better, but surpassing even his own expectations. Too long since he’d been with a woman.

“Take me deeper." Bucky's grip tightens as he guides you further down his shaft. Your throat constricts around him, sending waves of pleasure coursing through his body. He can feel every swallow, every twitch of your tongue as you struggle to accommodate his girth.

"That's it, baby," he groans, his hips bucking slightly. "Swallow all of me."

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes as you gag around him, but you don't pull away. Instead, you double your efforts, hollowing your cheeks and sucking harder. Saliva continues to pool at the corners of your mouth, trickling down his length in glistening rivulets.

The sight of you, lips stretched wide and chin slick with spit, is almost too much for Bucky to bear. He watches, transfixed, as your head bobs up and down, your tongue swirling around his tip before diving back in. Your lips stretch wide around his girth, glistening with spit and precum.

Your nose brushes against his pelvis as you swallow around him, throat constricting deliciously. He feels the vibrations of your muffled moan around his shaft and it sends sparks of pleasure up his spine.

"Fuck," he growls. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. That, baby."

The pleasure builds, coiling tighter in Bucky's core with each bob of your head. He's close, so close, but he doesn't want to finish like this. Not when there's so much more he wants to do to you.

With a growl, he tugs your hair, pulling you off his cock. You gasp for air, lips swollen and glistening, a thin strand of saliva still connecting you to him. The sight nearly undoes him.

"Stand up," he commands, his voice rough with desire.

You comply, awkward and shaky on your feet in the confined space of the truck cab. Bucky's hands go to your hips, fingers hooking into the waistband of your leggings.

"These need to come off. Now."

You hesitate for just a moment, but the fire in Bucky's eyes brooks no argument. You shimmy them down with Bucky’s rough help, and true to what he said, you’re now fully naked and exposed to him. His smile is pleased, possessive, predatory as you sit back down on the seat of the cab.

Bucky's eyes rake over your newly exposed form, drinking in every curve and contour. He loves the sight of your pussy, bare, a thatch of curls, waiting and glistening with arousal. He licks his lips, a low growl rumbling in his chest.

"Look at you," he murmurs, voice thick with lust. "So wet and ready for me already."

His hand slides up your thigh, fingers ghosting over your slick folds. You shiver at his touch, a soft whimper escaping your lips.

"Please," you whisper, voice trembling with need.

Bucky chuckles darkly. "Please what, baby?"

You squirm under his intense gaze, cheeks flushed with a mix of arousal and embarrassment. "I... I want you to touch me."

"Oh, I'm going to do more than touch you," Bucky growls, suddenly pulling you into his lap. You gasp as you feel his hard cock pressing against your ass. "I'm going to ruin you."

His fingers find your clit, circling it with firm, deliberate strokes. You arch into his touch, a breathy moan escaping your lips. Bucky's other hand comes up to cup your breast, rolling the nipple between his fingers.

"That's it," he growls in your ear. "Let me hear how much you want this."

You whimper, grinding down against his fingers. Your head falls back against his shoulder, exposing the long line of your neck. Bucky takes advantage, nipping and sucking at the sensitive skin there.

His fingers move lower, teasing your entrance. You're so wet, his digits slide in easily, and you cry out at the sudden intrusion.

"Fuck, you're tight," Bucky groans, pumping his fingers in and out of you. "Can't wait to feel you around my cock."

You're panting now, rocking your hips to meet each thrust of his fingers. The cab of the truck is filled with the obscene sounds of your wet pussy and your desperate moans.

Bucky's fingers work you relentlessly, curling and stroking inside you as his thumb circles your clit. You're writhing in his lap, gasping and moaning as pleasure builds.

"Ride my fingers, baby. Show me how bad you want it."

"Bucky," you gasp, "I'm so close..."

He increases the pressure on your clit, rubbing tight circles as his fingers curl inside you.

"Please," you whimper, your head falling back against his shoulder again. "I need more."

Bucky chuckles darkly. "Greedy little thing, aren't you?" Roughly, he pinches your nipple, making you jerk and cry out.

Bucky's skilled fingers continue their relentless assault, pumping in and out of your dripping pussy while his thumb works your clit. Your body trembles, teetering on the edge of release.

"You want more?" he taunts, his hot breath tickling your ear. "I'll give you more."

Suddenly, he adds a third finger, stretching you further. The additional fullness makes you gasp, your back arching as he drives his fingers deeper. His other hand leaves your breast, sliding down to spread your legs wider.

"Look at how wet you are," Bucky murmurs, his voice low and husky. "Your pussy's practically weeping for me."

His fingers curl inside you, finding that perfect spot that makes you see stars. You cry out, your hips bucking wildly against his hand.

"I can feel how close you are,” he growls in your ear. “Your little cunt is clenching around my fingers."

His other hand returns to roughly knead your breast, pinching and rolling your nipple. The dual sensations send sparks of pleasure coursing through your body. You're trembling in his lap, right on the edge of release.

"Bucky, please," you whimper, your hips rocking desperately against his hand.

"Please what?" he asks, his voice low and dangerous. "Tell me what you need."

"I need to come," you gasp. "Please, make me come."

Bucky chuckles darkly. "Oh, I'll make you come alright. I'll make you fucking gush for me."

He increases the pressure on your clit, rubbing tight, fast circles as his fingers curl inside you, seeking that special spot. When he finds it, you cry out, your back arching. Bucky's fingers continue to work you relentlessly, curling and stroking that spongy spot inside you as his thumb applies insistent pressure to your throbbing clit. He builds and builds his ministrations until you're a trembling, whimpering and writhing mess in his lap.

"Fucking perfect," he praises in your ear, his voice low and gravelly. Your desperate grinding is torturous to his cock, and he could explode just from rutting against you like this.

But Bucky doesn't let up. If anything, he increases the pressure, his fingers pumping in and out of you at a frantic pace.

"Don't stop," he commands, his voice rough with desire. "Keep going. I know you've got more in you."

You're gasping, your hips jerking erratically, and then suddenly the orgasm rolls over you like a tidal wave, and there’s a surge of hunger that spurs him on. Your back arches sharply, pressing your breasts into his rough palms as you cry out, your voice echoing in the confined space of the truck cab.

Bucky only intensifies his efforts, his fingers pumping faster, harder, curling to hit that spot inside you with unerring accuracy. He’s seeking even more, pushing you impossibly higher, your body trembling uncontrollably in his lap.

"Oh god, oh god," you whimper and strain.

And still he works your body.

You try and squirm away, but he’s so much stronger than you, he easily keeps you in his lap. He moves his other hand down to your pussy so his right can focus fully on fucking in and out of your hole to molest your g-spot while his left zeroes in and demands more of your clit.

And then you cry for him from both ends, a sob escaping your mouth as your pussy gushes, spilling wetness over him, soaking his jeans and the seat beneath.

You slump, slack in his arms, but try to lean and move away and off his lap.

Bucky laughs, triumphant, and wraps his arm around your waist to keep you pressed to him. He presses a hot kiss to your neck. His other hand wipes the wetness over your thigh, making more of a mess.

“You’ve never squirted before, have you, baby?” he speaks low, directly into your ear.

“No,” you sniffle.

He nips the lobe of your ear and turns your head to face him. “Aw, did I make you cry?”

You close your eyes, and more tears trickle down your cheeks.

He slowly licks a stripe up your cheek, relishing the salty taste of your tears. It makes his cock twitch.

“I wonder what other firsts we can tick off for you.”

You shiver, and he squeezes around your middle. “It was overwhelming, wasn’t it?” he asks, and you nod, eyes still closed.

He kisses your cheek, and you let out a shuddery breath.

“But it felt good, didn’t it, baby?”

You open your eyes and bite your lip, then a small nod.

“Such a pretty slut for me,” he praises, and then he’s plundering your mouth again, and you turn your torso more to him. He plays more with the wet mess of gush and slick over your thighs.

Bucky sears your lips with his mouth, his tongue delving deep as he tastes you. You whimper into the kiss, your body still trembling from the intensity of your orgasms. His hands roam your body, kneading your breasts, trailing down your sides, gripping your hips.

He breaks the kiss to trail his lips along your jaw, down your neck. You tilt your head, giving him better access as he sucks and nips at your pulse point. His stubble scratches deliciously against your sensitive skin, sending shivers down your spine.

"You taste so sweet," he murmurs against your skin. "I could devour you all night."

His words make you shudder, and his chest rumbles in approval. Bucky's hands continue their exploration, one sliding up to cup your breast, the other dipping between your thighs to tease your still-sensitive folds.

You gasp as his fingers brush your clit, oversensitive and swollen. He chuckles darkly, circling the bundle of nerves with feather-light touches that have you squirming again in his lap.

Bucky's hands grip your hips, fingers digging into your flesh as he maneuvers you in the cramped space of the truck cab. "On your knees," he growls, his voice thick with lust. "I want you on your knees for me."

You comply, your body still trembling from your intense orgasms. The leather seat is cool against your flushed skin as you position yourself on all fours, facing the passenger side door. Bucky's large hands run down your spine, making you shiver. He runs his hands over the curve of your hips, down to your thighs, spreading them wider.

"Look at you," he murmurs, his voice thick with lust. "So eager for my cock."

You whimper in response, pushing your hips back towards him. Bucky chuckles darkly, one hand coming down in a sharp smack on your ass. The sound echoes in the cab, and you gasp.

"Patience, baby," he teases, soothing the flesh he just spanked.

Bucky's hands knead your ass cheeks, spreading them apart to get a better view of your glistening folds.

"Such a pretty little thing," he murmurs, his voice low and husky. "And all mine for the night."

He positions himself behind you. His cock, hard and thick, brushes against your inner thigh. You shudder in anticipation. He groans behind you, and then he pushes the blunt head, angry head of his cock against your entrance.

"You ready?" he asks, teasing you with just the tip.

You whimper, pressing back against him. "Please," you beg, your voice barely above a whisper.

Bucky grips your hips, pulling you back slightly. The head of his cock teases your entrance, sliding through your slick folds. You moan, pressing back against him, silently begging for more.

"Eager little slut," he chuckles darkly. "Don't worry, baby. I'm going to give you exactly what you need."

Without further warning, he snaps his hips forward, burying himself to the hilt inside you. You cry out at the sudden fullness, your walls stretching to accommodate his size.

"Fuck," Bucky groans, his fingers digging into your flesh. "So tight.”

Bucky's hands control your hips, squeezing tightly as he begins to move, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in. The force of his thrusts rocks you forward, and you have to brace yourself against the passenger door to keep from hitting your head.

"Take my cock like the good little slut you are," he snarls.

Bucky leans over you, his chest pressing against your back as he continues to pound into you. One hand snakes around to grope your breast, pinching and rolling your nipple between his fingers. The other slides down to rub circles on your clit.

"You like that, don't you?" he pants in your ear, his fingers digging into your hips hard enough to bruise. "Like being used like a cheap whore in the back of a truck?"

You whimper in response, pushing back to meet his thrusts. The angle allows him to hit spots deeper inside you, drawing a groan from his chest. Has he ever been this deep in such a perfect pussy?

"Bucky," you gasp, "oh god, Bucky..."

"That's right, baby," Bucky growls, his hips snapping against yours relentlessly. "Say my name. Let me hear how much you love my cock."

He reaches around to the front of your pussy, fingers work your clit faster, matching the punishing pace of his thrusts. You're trembling beneath him, overwhelmed by the onslaught of sensations. The truck rocks with the force of his movements, the amber lights still flashing outside, casting an eerie glow over your writhing bodies.

"Fuck, you feel so good," Bucky groans, his breath hot against your ear. "So tight and wet for me. Such a perfect little fuck toy."

His words send a shiver down your spine, and he loves the way his words affect you as much as his actions do.

Bucky's other hand leaves your hip, sliding up to wrap around your throat. He doesn't squeeze, just holds you there, a silent threat that sends your heart racing, and he loves feeling how your pulse jumped at that.

"You gonna come for me again?" he asks, his voice low and dangerous. "Gonna cream on my cock?”

You nod frantically, evidently unable to form words as he keeps pouring and overwhelming you with pleasure.

"Answer me," he demands, tightening his grip ever so slightly on your throat.

"Yes!" you gasp out. "Yes, I'm gonna come for you!"

"That's it," he growls, tightening his grip on your throat just slightly. "Let go. Come apart on my fat cock."

His words push you over the edge. Your orgasm crashes over you, your inner walls clenching around him as you cry out his name. Bucky groans, his hips stuttering as your pussy milks his cock.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he chants, his thrusts becoming erratic. With a final, deep thrust, he buries himself inside you, his cock pulsing as he spills his seed.

You both stay there for a moment, panting heavily, your bodies slick with sweat. Bucky's hand releases your throat, sliding down to rest on your heaving chest. He presses a kiss to your shoulder blade, then slowly pulls out, eliciting a whimper from you at the loss.

He brings his hand down to your wet, messy folds, and you twitch at the feel of his fingers, clearly oversensitive. He hums, collecting some of the mixed spend slipping out of you, and he rubs it over your lower back. He doesn’t want you to forget what a dirty girl you’ve been for him.

Bucky helps you sit back up, pulling you onto his lap once more. You're both sticky with sweat and other fluids, the air in the truck cab heavy with the scent of sex. He brushes your hair back from your face, his touch gentle after the roughness of your encounter.

"You did so well, baby," he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to your temple. "Such a good girl for me."

You shiver at his praise, nestling closer to his broad chest, your naked form cocooning against him, still fully clothed, only his cock ever coming unsheathed during all of that. He’s edging on a little too warm, but the coolness of the middle of the night helps. His arms wrap around you, holding you tight against him. For a moment, there's just the sound of your breathing slowly returning to normal and the faint hum of the truck's engine.

"We should probably get cleaned up," you say after a while, your voice slightly hoarse.

Bucky chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest. "Probably," he agrees, but makes no move to let you go. Instead, his hand trails down your spine, making you arch into him. "But I'm not done with you yet, baby. The night's still young, and I've got plans for you."

You blink up at him, and he ducks in to peck at your lips.

“Let me just take another round of the lot, and then I’ll kiss you stupid, eat you out, and fuck you again.”

You open your mouth to protest, but he stops you with a quick kiss. He smiles when he pulls away and sees your eyes are falling hazy again. He strokes his hand up and down your spine, ��Don’t worry, baby, you can stay right here in my lap while we drive.”

He leaves no room for protest, pulls the truck into gear, and goes for another round, looking forward to the rest of his shift.

Follow Up Piece: CAMARADERIE

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

I do not do tag lists, but FOLLOW @buckets-and-stories and TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS to be updated any time I publish a new work!

Read more stories from the Deliciously Debauched Labor Day Weekend!

Hi. Still with me? We made it!

I doubt the person who does this across the street from my window five nights a week is anything close to Bucky, but true story, someone's in this truck with the yellow flashing lights, and my mind wants it to be a dirty Bucky that I'd make the unwise decision to jump into a cab with.

[simsontherope]

Refuge de l'Aube

Sorry for the absence, I have to admit that given the state of the game at the end of the previous year and the beginning of this year, with updates taking a long time to come, I was not very motivated to continue building. Also, I can't promise that I'm really back, I just felt like continuing with my renovations a little these past few days!

As I recently (well, at least three months ago!) posted two new constructions for Mt Komorebi town center, I decided to continue renovating my old lots in this area. But when I started working on this house, I realized it would be better to start over from scratch (...it was a very old lot that I had barely modified to integrate it into the new world upon the release of Snowy Escape). The decoration is less colorful than in the original, but it's intentional. It fits much better with the tastes of the family who lives here (the Vaillet family, whom you can download here).

By the way, I also renovated another house recently, Murs d'Albâtre, but nothing as drastic as with this construction, that's why I didn't make a new post to talk about it!

Location: Mt. Komorebi (Senbamachi), Izakaya Ippai.  

Info: Residential, 20x30, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms.

Download the tray files: SimFileShare

Or use my EA ID simsontherope to find it in the gallery.

And feel free to browse through my other creations!

[selfaware-bungou-stray-dogs]

I got a good idea, what if the reader became aware that the bsd characters are self aware. So they stop reading and watching it, and playing the game because they think their hurting the characters.(this would happen before the bsd characters got into our world)

I am aware that you are aware

Self-Aware! BSD Characters x GN! Reader

Description: You liked BSD Mayoi Inu Kaikitan game. So many features, so many cards and story up to fourth season. You still baffled, that the game not that popular.

Why others think that your new cards is a fanart? Why people tell, that you can't get multiple SSR tickets from Marble Shining? Why The Internet tell, that game only describes two seasons and part of Dead Apple? And why people can have different nicknames in game, isn't it supposed to be your real name?

Warning: OOC. English is my second language.

🐾 You just wanted to show, how lucky your pulls were in current scouts "Casino - Rats in the house of the Dead" and "Casino - Decay of Angels"

🐾 You made a screenshot of 2821 Fyodor D. "Casino", 3711 Pushkin "Casino", 5243 N. Gogol "Casino" and 1638 Sigma "Casino"¹ and post it on BSD Mayoi Subreddit.

🐾 You got comments. Lots of comments, praising the fanart... Or asking, why did you post an April Fools' joke now, not on First of April?

🐾 Fanart? Joke? What do they mean? It wasn't a fanart, it's an official card! You clearly remember doing a daily free 11-scout! And getting them!

🐾 But, a tiny seed of doubt appears in your soul. Was it possible, that so many people didn't get the cards? Or... Didn't see the scout?

______

🐾 Next strange thing happened, when you Shine the Marble for Ranpo. For this week it was a Campaign "10 shines for one click". The Marble Turned prismatic, and you exchange it for SSR Scout Ticket. Well, for a few SSR Tickets. You got lucky again and win "Detective Chance". A familiar phrase appeared in a text box near Ranpo's chibi:

"Great Job, [Y/N]! You deserve a little bonus! Let's collect more cool marbles later!"

🐾 You smiled. It was cute.

🐾 Unfortunately, one of your fellow students saw everything you were doing.

🐾 And they blamed you for playing a hacked game.

🐾 You snarled at them. If they are playing BSD Mayoi and were unlucky with Marble Shining today, it's not your fault. You aren't cheating. Besides, they were looking on your phone screen without your permission. And what if you were texting some private information during that?

🐾 They spat at you, mumbling something about 'there is no marble campaign right now' and 'never they gave you five tickets for a marble'.

🐾 They were rude, yes. They were in the wrong by looking at your phone screen. But... They won't gain too anything by lying. Especially, to you. You also play BSD Mayoi, you could check.

🐾 Could you?

🐾 You didn't notice, that chibi Ranpo opened his eyes. And his look wasn't the friendliest.

🐾 The next day you learned, that yesterday's student got some serious private information leaked. Something about blackmail and stealing other students projects. They will face some trouble.

🐾 ... Quite an interesting coincidence...

_______

🐾 You don't know, what made you do it, but, when your grandma asked you to download an app, that will remind her taking her medication, you decide to look up BSD Mayoi Inu Kaikitan game in app store.

🐾 Different icon. Not yours. Different screens. And comments...

🐾 Asking, when third season will be added... For more Fyodor cards... For adding Gogol cards... Asking for a Dead Apple Scout rerun... That was up last time almost five years ago.

🐾 This comment was from two days ago. But, Dead Apple Scout was just one month ago! You got Dazai's, Fyodor's and Shibusawa's cards!

🐾 They were wrong! Or... You were wrong...? Or no one was wrong.

🐾 You download necessary apps for your grandma.

🐾 And start thinking.

_______

🐾 You spend two hours in the library, using the university's computer.

🐾 Search information about BSD Mayoi in any language you could think of.

🐾 Online translators might not be the most accurate, but they let you understand the main idea.

🐾 There was no more story in game outside The Dragon Head Conflict. And the situation didn't change for years.

🐾 Aya, Rimbaud, Flags, Adam, Verlaine, Karma, Katai, Oda's orphans, Pushkin, Goncharov, Oguri, Gogol, Sigma, Tetchou, Teruko, Fukuchi, Jounou and Bram didn't have any cards on any server. And Tachihara didn't have a Hunting Dogs version of his card.

🐾 Some Scouts didn't have a rerun for ages.

🐾 Marble Exchange can give you one SSR Ticket for Max Level Marble.

🐾 There were never Junchirou's menu with daily recipes. Or Katai's menu with tips for keeping your phone safe. Or Mori's with fashion tips.

🐾 Devs never gave away SSR Cards as present for Maintenance end.

🐾 Characters never send notes with gifts to Players, thanking them.

🐾 Players could choose any nicknames, not their real names.

🐾 Either you get a special version of an app... Or... Characters were... But, it's impossible, right?

🐾 Were there any way for you to prove it?

______

"I love BSD for using small Easter eggs for people, who liked literature. But, I wish, they would do it more often. For example, real-life Junchirou Tanizaki and Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald were friends! They even play shogi together. And in BSD Tanizaki and Francis are barely interacting with each other."

After you finish talking with your friend, Ango immediately rushed to get the camera, and Junchirou and Francis start to set a scene. Tomorrow you will get a card you want! Card, that reflects their other world counterparts.

[Next Day]

"Oh! SSR card with Fitzgerald and Junchirou playing shogi? And it's called "Old friends"? Good... So Devs knew about that... story..."

Your voice sounded... Off. And Little Light trembled for some reason.

"Story, that I made up two days ago to test my theory. You... All of you can hear me, right?"

BSD Cast feel, like they were struck by lightning. They wanted to make a surprise to you and reveal, that they are self-aware, only when they got into your world.... Well, doesn't matter, they could try to speak to you, now...

Why are you crying? Who have hurt you?

Your voice were pleading. You sobbed.

"I am sorry! I am sorry for not realizing it sooner! I am sorry for every hit you got, when marble hit spikes or poison, or when enemies hit you! I am sorry, for reading about your lives, for learning your secrets without permission! For... Making you relive your lives... And for... Hurting you... Killing you..."

At the end, you were hysterical. You were the reason for Rimbaud's, Flags', Oda's, his kids', Gide's and Shibusawa's death. You were the reason, they got hurt. You howl, remembering that time, Kunikida lost his arms.

"I am sorry! I am sorry! I am so sorry!"

BSD Cast were in distress. You misunderstood the situation! They weren't angry! They liked you and will never hate you!

But with next words their world shatter.

"I... I won't read about your lives anymore. Or watch about it... I... won't play the game anymore... I won't delete it, because I am not sure, if this won't hurt you... I am sorry!"

You close the app.

Little Light fall on a floor, sobbing.

_____

Few days later you got an email from yourself. And from them.

"Dear [Y/N],

Please, listen to us. You didn't hurt us in any way! We aren't angry, we promise! You... Your love and understanding let us through our darkest times. We were lost, confused, we didn't know who we are. But you, you were here. You treat us and our emotions like we were real for you.

Please, open the app... We add chat, we want to talk to you.

BSD cast"

You re-read the letter a few more times. Then again. And again.

After some thinking, you opened the app.

______

You were chatting for a long time. You asked about how they became self-aware, what were happening, when you read new chapters. You asked about deceased ones, whose cards you got (you have never been happier in your life, after learning, that they were alive. Because of you). You asked if they felt pain, when they loose HP in game.

And BSD Gang asked you about your life, your interest, if they can add something else in the app that you need.

And about wanting to get into your world. About wanting to live in reality. And be your friends.

You have a feeling, that it was a beginning of something unique.

______

🐾 You keep your decision about not watching and reading BSD. They weren't characters anymore. They were real people.

🐾 You also stopped cleaning Battle Stages in Mayoi. Instead, you were chatting with the gang.

🐾 Slowly but surely you learned more about each other.

🐾 So, when they finally appeared in your world, you greet them like old friends.

______

¹ Something interesting about numbers:

2821 - "The Gambler" by Dostoevsky was the author's 28th work. And it was written in 21 days, because Dostoevsky lost all money he had by gambling and need money as soon as possible.

3711 - In "The Queen of Spades" by Pushkin the winning combination in the card game were three, seven and ace (considered 11 in some games and in the novel)

5243 - "The Gamblers" play by Gogol was played on stage for the first time in 1843, on 5 of February.

1638 - Year, when the first Casino in Europe was open.

[moyokeansimblr]

4 Houses from my Unfinished Hood

So a while ago I got the big idea to create my own custom hood. I've not worked on it for about 7 months now so let's be real I probably won't again so I thought I would just share the houses I built. They were all built from real floorplans and I tried to scale appropriately to sims but you may still wind up with some larger-than-necessary rooms 😂

The versions I had saved in the bin were empty, unfurnished except for room placeholders, never lived in but I'd still just be careful and have the essential mods and the such because I have been hug-bugged before soooo 🤷‍♀️

More pics of each house and download below the cut 🏡

✨ House #1 "BB" 4BR 4BA

This house was made for 4 roommates who were in a band, so there's 4 bedrooms and a big space for their instruments on the second floor. But of course you can use it however you want!

✨ House #2 "PF" 3BR 3BA

This was meant to be the "perfect family" home so it's designed for the traditional mom, dad and two kids kinda setup.

✨ House #3 "UNC" 5BR 4BA

Even though this house has 5 bedrooms I actually only intended for one sim to live here. "UNC" stood for Uncle and it was for the hot uncle of an orphaned teen (who lives in House #4) but considering that it does have 5 bedrooms you certainly can do a lot more with it!

✨ House #4 "ORGD" 8BR 6BA

This might be the most impressive thing I've ever built and the reason why I decided to still share these. It's a mansion, of course!

🏡🏡🏡🏡🏡

The only thing to be aware of is because I packaged these in my main game the BB and ORGD houses have stairs packaged with them? I think? I took out all of my CC but must've forgot those. I think if you untick it you should be fine.

Anyways, download them on Patreon (FREE)

But please consider donating if you like what I do so I know! 🙏

I hope you enjoy them, I'd love to see who you have live in them! Please let me know if anything is wrong!

[radellama]

Games I played in 2023 - Part 2

Well. These certainly took longer to write than I expected them to. Who knew that I’d have a lot to say AND be incredibly picky about how I said everything?

Me. I knew.

Anyway…

Read part one if you haven’t already, and my resi part will be coming out… soon……… And once again, spoilers of varying degrees and strong opinions moving forwards.

~~~

Tomodachi Life, 3DS

I never had this game growing up, but my friend did, and they gave me a demo via DS download play. I really wanted to have it myself, but it was always so expensive that I could never justify buying it, and I prioritised getting other games that were higher on the list instead. Now that I have my cool 3DS where I can play whatever I want, I finally gave it a try!

It didn’t last long though, as there isn’t really that much to do here.

Similarly to Miitopia, this kind of game is only any fun if you have ideas for funny miis to play with, or are amused enough by using miis of you and your friends. I played for about 8 days, checking in with everyone and trying to put all the Chrono characters in. There wasn’t much to actually do, it felt like pointless unlocks and shopping just for the sake of it, instead of any intrinsic reason compelling me to do so.

Maybe I’m just too old now, and have outgrown the age where I would’ve potentially enjoyed this more, but I doubt that. It’s just boring, and once you’ve played for a day or two, you have pretty much played it all. I know that there’s more to do if you spend the time playing for a few minutes every day, like miis dating or having a baby, but I couldn’t get my otp Magland to like each other and Harland spent more time with Schala than Magus. Also I had to make Magus a girl, cause gay people don’t exist and Nintendo doesn’t allow mpreg.

This is disappointing, especially as I enjoyed Miitopia more than I thought I would. I thought there would be more to this dollhouse style game, but there isnt. There’s some funny charm in the flavour text and such, but ehhhhhh… Just play Miitopia. That vibe is there and there’s more to do in that game.

I’m not going to link any songs, as I didn’t find anything particularly stand out, and as I listen while writing this, I’ve barely made a dent in the track list, so I can’t be bothered. It all just sounds like the classic Wii-DS era Mii music. Whatever.

~~~

Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns, 3DS

I know I did a mock review a few years ago for this one, but. Y’know. This game is pretty good and I like farm sims. All the good stuff I’ve said in previous years about farm sims applies here; I get addicted to them easy and it’s dangerous for me to play them, cause it makes my autism go wheeeeeeeeeeeee

This game is one that’s close to my heart- I played it a lot as a tween and just enjoyed how much I felt like it captured the reasons why I liked the SNES Harvest Moon, while also expanding and adding more fun stuff. The gist of this game is that you are on your way to your farm, when you have an accident and forget which town you were going to live in. Both mayors want you to live in their town, and as you’ll come to find out, they’re fairly competitive against one another. Once you’ve picked your town, and start getting settled in, you’ll have an encounter with the Harvest Goddess, who explains that she collapsed the tunnel between the two towns because she was sick of the arguing- but wants YOUR help repairing relations. You do this primarily by entering the cooking festivals, held four times every month- the more you win, and the closer you get with the townspeople on both sides, the more you’ll be able to access upgrades for your house and tools, along with opening up the tunnel for easy access to both towns.

In the early days, you’ll be spending most your time working on your farm, and foraging on the mountain. There’s three screens on each side of the mountain with various foragable goods, fishing spots and wild animals to befriend – which is plenty to build up your inventory and earn some cash while you wait for your crops to grow. I really appreciate the early days in this game, as it’s not only nostalgic for me, but also a really solid tutorial. The first month is like an overall guide on how to play the game, with each town giving you a gift to start you off (Konohana giving you seeds and tools to grow crops, and Bluebell giving you a cow, which is just a much better deal lmao), showing you how the cooking competition works, and showing how to use the notice board and demonstrating the goal of opening the tunnel. You get a fairly well rounded understanding of most the mechanics you’ll be using, while also getting familiar with what you as a player will personally gravitate towards as you farm, forage, and befriend the locals on either side.

It’s not a lot of story, and it’s a very simple one at that- but it’s all this game needs. I remember as a tween, thinking that if there were ever to be a Harvest Moon movie made, that they should base it on this game; as it wasn’t overly complex, but still had fun characters and an easy to follow plot that would leave a lot of room for an adaptation to do what it needed to in order to make it work. I still stand by that, and will happily write the screenplay. Hit me up.

One cute thing that I love about this game, is that you can get closer with everyone, not just the bachelors and bachelorettes. In some instances, its required, which is a good incentive to give gifts and catch up with everyone when you can. Some date-ables need you to have high friendship points with not just themselves, but friends and/or family members that are important to them, otherwise you’ll be unable to marry them. That’s not the only reason to befriend people, however, as I learnt through this replay that you can unlock special requests once you’re close with certain people. This was an awesome revelation, as it varied the request board in a much needed way- when I was a kid playing, I’d only get super close with the bachelor I wanted and his required people so I could marry him. I didn’t ignore everyone, but I didn’t put much effort into raising their points either. I did this time though, which was great.

The request board is pretty simple, when you check it, there will usually be simple fetch quests from the villagers asking for something or to deliver something to someone else. This ranges from various crops, to foragables and other rarer items you need to collect or create. At the start of each month, there will also be special quests that are much higher in their difficulty, but also reap much greater rewards. In the early game, they’re usually requests for materials to open the tunnel between the two towns, or to upgrade your tools. Once you get closer with others, you can get special timed requests, which usually entail helping out with someone’s crops or livestock before the end of the day. This is a nice, simple mechanic to incentivise collecting items and growing your farm, and isn’t inherently bad.

What does hurt this, however, is how bloated and drawn out so much of this game feels. The special requests to upgrade your farm that I mentioned? ONLY at the start of the month. And, when you’re a year or two in, you can complete these big quests by day three or four usually- definitely before the first week is over. It kinda sucks to be forced to wait around all month just for an upgrading blitz as soon as the season turns over. I just wanted to unlock the mines, but according to the online guides, you need to have your house and property FULLY upgraded... I thought I was. I have the biggest house, both the chicken and livestock paddocks are fully expanded, I got a little more fields and a maker shed to process animal products into things like yarn and cheese and shit... BUT I HAVE TO DO THE BEEHIVES INDIVIDUALLY AT THE START OF EACH MONTH. THERE'S 6 OF THEM. I'M AT YEAR 4 OR 5 I'VE BEEN PLAYING FOR SO LONG... THERE'S NOT EVEN ANY NOTES OR INDICATION IN GAME THAT THERE WILL BE A MINE I JUST HAVE TO MAX OUT MY FARM AND FIND OUT. NOT TO MENTION THAT THERE'S UPGRADES FOR BOTH FARMS TO DO, SO IT TAKES FOR FUCKING EVER… It’s really shit to have the main way to feel progression being spaced too far apart to even mean anything. A simple change, like making the big upgrades available twice a season instead of once would help IMMENSELY. Even to expand upon the request system, and be able to make requests yourself to various villagers once you’re closer to them in order to upgrade your farm. That way, there’s still that focus on the community, and incentivises you to get close to people on both sides, as there will be materials that only one town has. I’m just spit-balling, but the progression needs to be more frequent!

This elongated feeling isn’t just limited to the requests and upgrades. It’s unfortunately present across the whole game. Which is such a shame, as it’s the reason why I never played past the second or third year as a kid. Befriending villagers and getting closer to them takes ages. Progress takes ages. And the food competition takes aaaages. There’s no auto play for it, and there is no reason to drag out an ‘ooohh who’s gonna win!?’ back and forth every. Damn. Competition. You compete 4 times a month, it gets old by like, the third one lol. There’s also a lot about this game that is just vague for no real reason- my biggest gripe being that you can upgrade your livestock’s production output by feeding it treats. In game, you just have someone say that feeding your livestock their favourite treats will increase productivity. The reality? There is a set number of treats for each type of animal, and you have to feed it that set amount for every level up you want to do, for a max of 5 items from that animal. So, where I though it was something like ‘feed the animals various treats to see which is their favourite,’ or ‘feed the cow 10 grain treats,’ - it’s actually ridiculous numbers like the cow needing 7 treats, 15 grain treats, 8 vegetable treats and 1 nutra treat PER LEVEL. PER COW. AND YOU CAN ONLY FEED AN ANIMAL ONE TREAT PER DAY. And there’s no way to keep track of it in game, you have to keep track of it yourself, which, in my opinion, is fucking horrific. I don’t mind the concept of having to feed your livestock various treats to level it up, but at least give some way to know how many to feed it! Have one of the villagers who likes animals tell you this as a reward for getting close to them, and maybe they can tell you how many of each treat you have to go. Or, have it be something you can get the stats of when you examine your livestock with a stethoscope! OR JUST HAVE IT IN THE LIVESTOCK BOOK IN EACH SHED. There’s so many ways that this could be a perfectly fine mechanic, but with it being that bloated and time consuming, it’s just ass!

And while I’m getting into the nitty-gritty of nitpicking- when you do timed requests for other villagers, like picking crops or milking cows, the items automatically go into their storage through an auto animation of the player putting their crops into their pocket. I wish that was an option for me on my farm, as it got annoying having to manually place every individual thing into my pockets when collecting crops and such. It’s things like this that make me want to get back into Stardew Valley again, as simple things like the auto grabber in the livestock sheds was a GODSEND that helped minimise the mind numbing grind, so that I can focus on enjoying the much better grinds that are more enjoyable.

One thing that this game has, that I really enjoyed when I was playing as a kid, is that the date-ables not only have heart events for when you’ve levelled up in your relationship, but also, YOU CAN TAKE PEOPLE ON DATES! If you catch your particular person when they’ve got some free time, they’ll ask if you want to go somewhere with them, and you can choose the location. Picking the right locations will reward you with a little date that goes well, and an increased amount of heart points – and if you pick a place that person doesn’t like, they’ll cut the date short due to feeling uncomfortable. This is really cute and fun, and though I wish you got more than a small handful of rotating sentences to see from your date- it is a nice way to be sure that you ARE close with that person, and can enjoy some time together. What I do wish, is that this was expanded a bit more, and even being able to go on friend dates with people you can’t date. I’d love to go for a walk in the mountains with the cool carpenter lady, or have tea with the grandma who runs the tea house – they’re my friends too, and it would be nice to have them do more than act as essentially set dressing and people to put up requests for you. Due to how simple these dates are, after a few of them, they don’t really feel like dates. The charm wears off when you notice that you’re just watching the two of you stand next to each other, while your date proclaims a random fact that’s not necessarily revealing anything of note towards your relationship with them, or their character. Having these be a bit more interactable would help solve this, as it’d be fun to answer questions the date has for you, or to do something together as a little minigame might be fun. Even something as simple as finding out info from other villagers as you get closer with everyone, and asking your date about the things you hear would be really nice! And, if you’re not dating, and able to go on friend dates, this would be a cool way to get closer with other villagers and learn a bit more about them and the history of the two towns.

One funny thing I noticed with these, however, is that ALL available bachelors or bachelorettes will ask to go on dates if you’re close enough- regardless of who you’re dating or even if you’re married. There is a jealousy system in place, where you’ll get the cold shoulder if you rack up too many jealousy points, and you have the choice to apologise or make it worse when they confront you with it. It’s a bit weird that people would still ask me on dates and get jealous after I was married. Like… Dude, you were at my wedding. There’s the occasional dialogue from other villagers that comments on married life, so it’s definitely not a secret. you KNOW I’m married, but still get pissy when I go on a date with my husband? It’s so silly, and that’s another point where I feel like a friend date system (that’s implemented with care) could resolve that strange point.

Of all the mechanics in this game, one that I simultaneously love and loathe is the filth on big livestock. First of all, I love that it’s such a clear indicator of when my animal is getting dirty, and if I leave it for too long they start to get filth clouds and flies following them. On the other, goddamn they get dirty so quickly. I don’t want to keep washing them every day, its a massive time sink and can be quite frustrating- especially when you’ve got a full barn with half a dozen cows, some sheep and alpacas. If it wasn’t as frequent, that’d be better, cause I don’t really care for the upkeep if I’m being honest. I just appreciate that it’s one of the only things that is communicated very clearly in the game. And, while we’re on the topic of bothersome things regarding the animals, the frame rate goes to hell when all the livestock are outside. It shouldn’t cause the game to nearly crash just by having all the animals outside, and it’s really annoying trying to milk your cow when you’re going at 1fps with massive slowdown. It’d be helped if the dogs and cats you train to herd them don’t cling to you and follow you wherever you go. I don’t really care if it’s cute or how pets act in real life (cause I know, my cats routinely come bother me for head scratches and cuddles while I’m writing these), but it’s really frustrating when you’re trying to pet your livestock and keep picking up 3 dogs in the process. Oh, oh, and one more thing, I grew up with the original DS version of this game, but played the 3DS remake for this; and while there’s not really any changes, the one change is this petting minigame for your livestock. While the livestock is out in the fields, you can sometimes see a little petting symbol above them, and interacting with them while that symbol is playing will launch the minigame. IT SUCKS. Like, yes, you can get extra hearts quickly through this minigame, but it goes on just a little too long, and would routinely crash my game when my black sheep wanted a pet. If the game automatically ended when you reached full hearts, instead of waiting for the timer to run out, that’d improve it- but this is ultimately an unnecessary addition and there’s no way to turn it off. Blehhhhh. You get so much more bang for your buck when farming livestock, but all this faff makes the crop growing seem so much simpler in comparison. I love that you can dig a trench for your crops, which allows you to place fertiliser at one end and it will fertilise the whole row, same with watering! There’s still a massive slowdown if you try to water a particularly large trench, but it goes back to normal when the animation is finished, unlike the animals, who still exist on the screen regardless.

Onto something I genuinely love about this game – the graphics. The style of the game is very cute, with a lot of the pre-rendered backgrounds having a painterly quality to them. The sprite art on the characters is also nice, even if it’s a bit of a generic anime style. I enjoyed seeing how the landscapes changed in each season, and seeing the little decorations put up during festivals is a fun touch. Pair this with the pleasant soundtrack, and it is such a nice, calming atmosphere to lose yourself in as you forage and farm.

Looking at this game more in-depth, it seems there’s a lot about it that becomes frustrating. However, I truly love this game. Within these weird flaws is a really cute game that I enjoy immensely, I just wish it was a little better so I could get more out of it. I deliberately pushed further than I ever played as a kid; I got so far that my animals started dying of old age LMAO. I would recommend playing with the fogu guide, as that was a lifesaver and clearly spelled out some of the vague things the game doesn’t elaborate upon. If you’re someone who likes farm sims, and hasn’t played this, I think that if you take into consideration how bloated it gets, you’ll probably enjoy this one! For at least the first two to three years. Lol.

Bluebell Town

Konohoana Town

Winter Theme

~~~

Story of Seasons, 3DS

Oh boy. I got addicted.

I really should stay away from farm sims, huh?

This game is the spiritual successor to the Harvest Moon series- or, more accurately, what Harvest Moon rebranded to after the split from Natsume. Look into it if you’re interested, I don’t particularly feel like rehashing the history for this write up… These take long enough to write as it is, and I’m just sharing my opinions!

Anyway, this is such a fun and pleasant game!

I’ve been struggling with general life and health issues this year, and I can say that playing this was a great distraction for a few months. It was genuinely refreshing to play a farm sim that was new to me while still feeling like I knew what in store for me. What I found funny about this, was that the sound design is the same as Tale of Two Towns. That was very strange to hear after just giving up on ToTT for being too much of a slog – at least the sound design is pretty good lmao.

The intro to this game is straight to the point, which I appreciated. You’ve been chosen to move to this small farming town and start working on your own lot to help boost the local economy. For your first week, you stay with your neighbour- an elderly woman who knows everything there is to know about farming -and she teaches you the basics. It’s a great safety net to slowly get introduced to the mechanics you’ll need to know, and allow you the time to get acquainted with everyone in town.

The big change for this game is that you will exclusively be selling your goods in the market, which will grow to have a rotating list of vendors to buy and sell from. This is an interesting idea, and is certainly one way to get a basic understanding of a supply and demand economy; but I’m not sure how I feel about it. Because of the focus placed on this market, there’s no shipping bin for you to just sell items at a base price. A few years into the game, you can unlock a personal stall at the market, which I suppose is the replacement for the shipping bin; but you don’t get that until you’ve been well and truly playing for a while. In the beginning, it’s a little rough when you only have one or two vendors- if you miss them and then hit a dry spell, you’ll just have to deal with a bulging inventory until you can sell everything! It gets better once you unlock more vendors, and I assumed as such when playing, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling a bit off-putting initially. Once you start unlocking more vendors, though, it becomes surprisingly in-depth. There’s a strategy to the market, especially when a particular vendor is paying extra for select items or when completing requests. If you sell an abundance of one type of thing, the price for it will drop- which I thought was an interesting application of supply and demand. I’m unsure how easily understandable this all is to a younger audience, as despite my math and business skills being subpar, I am still an adult with a lived understanding of the concepts at play here, and not the intended younger demographic.

I can say that once you get a grasp on all the mechanics at play, this game was a blast! I think my hyperfixation on this game lasted until about halfway through winter of the first year – which is pretty good mileage! The addiction lasted much longer than that, as I genuinely enjoyed playing this game over a couple of real life months. In the first two years, I didn’t really feel bored or at a loss for things to do. There’s a decent pace to the events held within each season- and with limited stamina and particular days to meet with vendors and actually earn money, there’s loads to cram into each day! Will I spend the day working on my farm, will I head to town to talk with my friends, forage for much needed materials and supplies, go bug catching or fishing, even swim in the river to dive for fish or rarer items like gemstones? There’s a lot to do, and it often reminded me of Animal Crossing. The diving when you swim in the river functions the same way, and with the ability to decorate and rearrange furniture in your house and certain areas of town; I couldn’t help but feel it was an interesting mish-mash of Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon.

To help demonstrate progress, there are tourist NPCs that wander the village square and comment on the town and it’s reputation. Once you start to attract more vendors and build on it’s popularity, there will be more of these tourists wandering around, which makes the town noticeably more lively. In the beginning when the town is pretty sparse, they just complain about it being a small country town- but with just one or two more stalls, you not only see a handful more tourists wandering about, but a shift to a more optimistic mindset towards the town too. Dialogue for local villagers will change depending on the reputation of town also, commenting on the popularity of the place and the kinds of wares available in new vendor’s stalls. This is a subtle thing, but I really appreciated it, as it did make it feel like there was a tangible difference happening to the town as I put effort into it. Villagers will comment if you haven’t said hello in a while, and sometimes I came across little events with certain characters, which adds to that local community feeling. I also found it quite amusing that the villagers will tell you in varying ways to leave them alone if you try to talk to them while they are eating. I was also surprised that once the town became more popular, more villager NPCs moved to town- ones you could date! AND, TWO OF THEM HAPPENED TO BE FROM TOTT!? You have no idea how surprising it was to see my husband Cam rock up to town, but his name was Kamil now. And Reina moved to town as well, though her name is… Licorice. I’m so sorry they did you dirty like that Reina... That is a fucking dogs name, not a name for a cute girl...

The visuals of the game are pretty nice, too. I think the watercolour inspired look to the character portraits is nice, though I think the in game 3D models creep me out a bit… There are plenty of QOL additions to this game that I really appreciated; my favourite being the crop fields having a little text bubble pop up labelling what crop it is, and crops automatically went into my pockets when I harvested them!! However, I’m not keen on the UI of the inventory, if I’m being honest. I understand that a scrolling list menu is pretty utilitarian, and keeps the UI clean and simple, but I think I’d prefer to have a more visual inventory so that it’s super clear what I am selecting. There are pictures and more details on the top screen when you select something from the list menu on the bottom screen, but ehhh… It didn’t hit for me, and I often felt a little lost when scrolling through the monotonous design. Nitpicky, I know, but I feel this is a slight downgrade.

There were other little things that became apparent the more I played, and unfortunately culminated into a mindless and sometimes frustrating grind. In the animal sheds, there is a feed dispenser and a treat dispenser, but they are so close together that often when I was trying to grab a treat, I’d end up with a handful of feed, and vice versa. Treats also had to be pulled out one by one, which is just silly when you have a lot of animals to give treats to. My solution to that was to just keep treats in my pocket at all times and map them to a quick select menu; but I would’ve preferred the treats be held somewhere else in the shed so that they’re not accidentally picked instead of feed, and that the treats automatically pulled out the amount corresponding to the number of animals in the shed (ie, if you have 6 cows, you go to the treat dispenser and it will pull 6 out for you in one go- instead of you having to pull out six individual treats).

When feeding animals outside, small animals like chickens and rabbits need to have food placed on a crafted feeder plate, but big animals like cows, sheep, llamas, alpacas and camels can eat directly from grass you’ve planted within their paddocks. This is great in theory, as you can fence off a paddock of your own choosing, and place grass and feeders within so that the animals can eat outside. What sucks about this is that I found the big animals would all crowd around one tile of grass, despite me growing 2-4 for them at any given time. Animals would get stuck on each other, and when I’ve got 16 big animals in the paddock all trying to eat from one tile of grass (which I believe is only 9 servings) it’s just a huge mess. Especially when I’m trying to go around and milk all my cows or shear the sheep and such. In the early days of the game, you’ll need to manually put each animal outside, and bring them inside at night, otherwise you risk stressing out the animal, making them sick, or skipping their produce the next day. When you’ve got a lot of animals, this takes up a lot of time, so its handy to buy dogs when they become available and let them herd the animals! This was present in ToTT, which I loved, but I often found that my dogs would glitch and get stuck in a default pose, or sometimes they’d seem fine and just never herd the animals back inside for bedtime. I had no problems when I only had a few animals in the sheds to herd, but when each shed can hold up to 8 animals, and you can have two small and two big animal sheds on each screen for a total of 32 in each half of your farm (not counting the dogs and cats!) there’s a lot of animals to take care of, and that’s when I noticed the most glitching out. Training the dogs isn’t so bad though, as you can use your whistle to train them for the actual herding, and playing with them by throwing a bone will increase friendship points with them quicker, which will allow them to herd more animals. What sucks a bit about this, is that you cannot play with the pets inside their kennel. Their huge kennels that are perfect for playing fetch. Especially on a rainy day when you have the extra time to play with them cause you’re not watering crops. C’mon. I want to play with the dogs. Another thing that was a bit upsetting was that the cats are next to useless here. You can’t train them to do anything, they’ll just laze around your farm (which is fair enough), but unlike in ToTT, they don’t herd small animals. No, they just randomly collect items here and there. Maybe they’ll give you a stick. Or some stones. If you build up your relationship with them, they may get gems and other valuables, but I found this to be quite basic and unnecessary when getting more dogs to help herd my animals was more immediately useful.

I wish the livestock animals had the same visibly dirty system that ToTT had, it’s one of the only things that was a genuine downgrade compared to that game for me. The animals don’t look dirty, the only visual indicators you get are for when shearable animals are ready to be shorn, as you can see the fluff. If the animal is filthy, you just get a little cranky symbol from them every now and then, or you’ll find out that they’re stinky when you pet them. This isn’t great, as you can miss that when you’ve got a lot of animals to keep track of, but letting them be too dirty for too long will increase their stress and risk them running away or getting sick. When you’ve got 30+ animals to take care of, you don’t want to waste your whole day, every day, brushing them all when there’s other important things to get done. Another thing I miss is the trench digging you could do for your crops. In this game, each tile you till will result in 9 of that crop (ie, plant one potato, you’ll reap 9) – which is awesome! I just think it would’ve been nice to have some trenches or sprinklers to assist with watering, as despite the process not being too bad, especially when you’ve upgraded your watering can, I was pretty tired of it by the end of the third year.

The worst part of this game is the bloated requirements to unlock stuff. This issue is still here, and I’d argue that it’s worse than ToTT! Not only are the requirements vague and hidden, they’re also outrageously stupid. To unlock more vendors, you need to ship a certain amount of particular items- which on it’s own makes sense. I appreciated that some of the villagers encouraged this idea too, but they don’t give any indication for how much of each thing you’ll need to ship. Looking at online guides to help, I was outraged with the numbers. I just think that if the NPCs are already hinting at it to me, there could also be a note book or quest log tab where the player has something like "maybe shipping X amount of Y will work?" so that it's clearer. If I, as an adult, looking up guides to assist, found this confusing and convoluted- I don't think there's much hope for the intended younger audience to see the whole game... Like, saying I should try selling various items is one thing- but trying to figure out with no further clues that what it actually wants is 500 seeds, 10,000 processed goods and 15,000 cooked recipes as just SOME of the criteria for ONE of the two remaining vendors to unlock.... Jesus. I was already very lost at why I unlocked cats but no dogs yet- turns out I needed to fulfill certain requirements, one of which is 30 seperate offerings to the goddess… Just to unlock dogs.

I don't have a problem with the game wanting and encouraging you to use it's systems to unlock more things, it's the fact that it's so vague and bloated I have an issue with. This year’s replay of ToTT was the furthest I’ve ever gotten, and I still ended up giving up before I could unlock everything because it became a slog to get through. Even in this game, where it’s paced much better, it’s still awful! At the beginning, you have the option to play on easy or normal mode, and I chose normal thinking that the differences would be things like managing the animals and crops being made easier, so I didn’t need that. Nope, as I understand it, the only real difference is the number of things to export. And even then, the numbers are still ridiculously high! This is the main gripe I have with this game, its a real dampener on the experience and it makes the time sunk into it with the cost vs reward pitiful. I made it to partway through year 5 or 6 before I gave up, because I was no longer having fun and the grind felt awful. That far into it, I should have unlocked all the basics, like EVERY VENDOR. There will be more cosmetics and recipes and blueprints to buy with new vendors, and when you get close with each vendor, they’ll give you an animal that will either live in the wild areas outside of town, or on the safari once you’ve unlocked it. This is nice! But why do I need to export arbitrarily large amounts of things without any clear indication of how I’m doing!? When a new vendor comes to town, they have a little cutscene introducing themselves with the mayor- why not have them come to town to investigate, or send a letter, or just the mayor suggesting it clearly to you; and say that they’re only interested if certain requirements are fulfilled. That way, it gives a clearer goal, something tangible to refer back to (either have the goal in the same tabs as the requests, or go ask the mayor at town hall) and a much easier time achieving it. There’s potential here, just executed poorly.

I don’t really know how to link this, but there were some other strange things I noticed about this game. The start button does nothing… you have to tap a button on the touch screen to pause the game. I don’t understand why the start button wasn’t good enough, especially when it’s not used for anything else? Also, I don’t know if it’s a quirk of the game, or just my copy, but when planting tress, the softwood and hardwood seeds are swapped. I plant softwood, and I’ll get hardwood, vice versa. Was very weird, so I just planted both to make sure I got some of the tree I wanted, as I’d inevitably forget and confuse myself lmao. There was also never enough fertiliser sold at the shop, and never enough weeds and twigs to find while foraging to turn into fertiliser. I wish it was easier to get a hold of more, as I seemed to have an excess of literally everything else at that point.

But, enough bitching- there’s an auto text mode during festivals and you can skip certain cutscenes! YIPPEE!! A lot of the gripes that I had with ToTT feel like they’ve been directly addressed and renovated in a nice way for this game. There are more things to do throughout the month- there are festivals and competitions regularly enough that it gives you a chance to work on your animals, crops, and fashion sense. The characters feel generally nice to get to know, and cutscenes aren’t just limited to the date-ables you’re romancing- there are farm rivals that will trigger cutscenes as well, and I played a little with one of the kids and she had a little social special event too. The town really felt so much like a small community when you know that getting closer with people can trigger cutscenes and events that show you more about them or your relationships with each other!

The maker sheds are not only easier to unlock, but more varied- there’s plenty of things you can do to the items you grow and gather, like creating more things for your farm, decorations for your house and the town, or even cool outfits and accessories. Did you know that if you equip certain combinations of accessories, you’ll get stat boosts? I didn’t until I read through the guides, and I equiped a combination that regenerated stamina periodically – it was SUPER helpful! Decorating your house, farm and town is fun too. I put it off for a bit because I was focused on the grind to try unlock all the vendors, but when that was seeming pointless, I built a bunch of cool furniture and made some lovely little settings with cute plants and nice decorations. Tourists will sometimes stand close to the decorations and comment on them too, which was a pleasant surprise. And, earlier I mentioned the safari- you can travel to it to forage for rarer items, or whack the mining point to get gems and minerals for upgrading tools and crafting cool furniture and accessories. I really meant it when I said that it didn’t feel like I was running out of things to do!

The music is generally nice too! I really loved that each season has both a day and night theme, I appreciated that after playing so many farming games that just have nighttime ambience when it gets dark. The summer theme for this game is also my favourite, its so pretty and I’d play it on my phone over other themes I didn’t like as much lmao. I was sad to hear the autumn theme was a bit strange and I didn’t like it as much, cause usually the autumn themes are some of my favourites from farming games- and although the winter theme was better, it got repetitive in a negative way real fast. Thats not so bad though, considering there are so many cute songs in this game (I think it’s gotta be double what ToTT had soundtrack wise!) I know for certain that when I hear the spring and summer themes from this game, I’ll have that fun nostalgic feeling when I listen. There is also a music festival held once a year, and in it they’ll play little medleys of songs from older Harvest Moon games – which was such a cute easter egg for older players!

In closing, I’m not sure what else to say, really. I love farming games, and this was a nice reminder as to why. I’m very glad to have played it, and although I still have a lot of gripes with it, I had a lot of fun. Which, that’s the point of a farming game, right?

Summer Theme

Flower Event 1

Competitive Festival

~~~

Nintendogs, DS

I wasn’t originally going to write this the following entry, as these were short playthroughs compared to what I normally self impose for these lists. But, well, here we are. This and the next entry are kind of a call and response to each other too, btw, as I played them both at the same time to compare for the sake of my own curiosity.

Nintendogs was the very first game that I had for my little ice blue DS lite back in the day. I had just turned nine, and this was the very first console that was mine. I had a childlike obsessions with dogs, and this was before I found out how cool cats were! I would ask all the time if my parents could get a big dalmatian with a red leather collar so I could name him spotty. It was a dream I’d held onto since I was two, and my parents were definitely sick of me asking, so it was VERY exciting that I got a dog game, and not only that, but the dalmatian version!

Initially, I just started playing this as a half hearted nostalgia trip- it’s hard when you’re inbetween fixations and NOTHING is fulfilling any entertainment or stimulation needs. It was cute to revisit this game, and I got pretty far, considering I fudged stuff a bit to make it a little more interesting. After all, I’m not 9 with endless time after school and homework was finished!

There’s plenty of things to do with your virtual dogs, you can feed and bathe them, dress them up and play, take them on walks or train them to win competitions! The only ways to make money in this game are to win competitions, or sell items. Good thing you can both find items and train your dogs for 2/3 of the competitions while out walking! While on a walk, if you head to an empty park and have a frisbee, you can practice throwing with your dog until they get better at catching and returning to you. You can also head to the gym where you can train your dog to go through various agility equipment, unlocking more as you progress through the agility trials. Both of these are free to visit, only relying on your dog having enough stamina to make it to these locations and back home again- and like the training at these locations, your dogs stamina will build over time the more you spend time with them.

The other competition is the obedience trials, which is best practiced at home. Training your dog to do tricks utilises the built in microphone, requiring you to direct your dog to the trick you want it to do and then calling out the command. I quite liked these when I was a kid, and while I didn’t get as far this time around, I really appreciate that this game will teach you how to train your dog for everything required to win the trails, but also lets you create new and unique tricks for your dogs. I so vividly remember sneaking onto the computer (I wasn’t allowed to use it without permission, and especially not to use the internet unattended lol) and looking up forums on how to teach my dog particular tricks. If you manage to find and buy a keyboard, you can teach your dog to bark short melodies on command, or even teach it to stand or do flips if you and your dog are particularly close! Some tricks are much harder to teach, obviously, but I enjoy that the game literally gives you an easy guide on how to take care of and train your dog in all aspects, while also giving you the freedom to play around and see what else you can get up to while you play.

As the competitions are so integral to the game, you’ll quickly meet the commentators Ted Rumsworth and Archie Hubbs, who were gay married in my head before I knew what gay marriage really meant. While the commentators can drag on, they’re actually pretty funny and certainly have a charisma about them, working perfectly as a silly jokester who feels more down to earth, and a more straight laced professional who takes those jokes seriously. You can even run into Archie on walks, with his friendly Shiba Inu. He often has nice or silly things to say to you, and sometimes other neighbours will gossip about him, talking about that time he apparently ate a dog biscuit.

There’s also a plethora of items and accessories to find while you play, including but not limited to weird and interesting toys, a Mario Kart RC toy collection, musical records, lost shoes to chew on and funny hats. The musical records were particularly fun for me, and though I didn’t play enough this time around to collect them all, I have great memories with these. You start off with just one white record, and this is one that you can record your own sounds on and replay, with half and double speeds available. I remember mucking around with it as a kid and finding out you can layer recordings on top of each other, and if you record at half speed, it’ll sound like a chipmunk when played at normal speed- so of course I had to make an elaborate record about an alien landing on Earth and telling everyone to go away. Some records, like the nap time and marching band one will have effects on your dogs, such as getting them all sleepy or marching around the room together. There are also four ‘secret’ records you can find that are produced by our very own Archie Hubbs, and these would incorporate snippets of your own record as a kind of remix. You would not believe how funny it was when I showed my sister my version of Giant Socks ft. Fart Noises, you just had to be there…

The visuals are about as sharp and crunchy as you’d expect from a DS game, but I love them. This low poly look with pixelated edges is quite charming to me, and although it’s not the most spectacular graphics ever made, there is a lot of care and detail put into the dog models and all the items and environments you come across. When you save up enough to buy new looks for your house, there are so many gorgeous interiors to choose from once you unlock them all! The soundtrack is similarly iconic, I pretty sure everyone likes the bath time track! There’s also plenty of Mario references throughout the toys and accessories, so it can be quite fun to see what you can collect when you get closer with your dogs.

Unfortunately, as I played on my own for a few weeks, I couldn’t partake in street pass, but you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was pretty good back in the day. You can choose a pup, maybe choose something from your inventory to give as a gift, and close your DS as you went out. I’d often exchange gifts with my sister as we compared trainer level scores, and it was fun meeting with other kids at church on the weekend and showing off all the cool tricks and items we had.

The only real downside to this game is that it takes place in real time, but I don’t find that too detrimental. This is definitely a game meant to be played in short bursts, and as a pet sim, if you’re not all that interested in just hanging out with your dogs after you’ve maxed out the amount of competitions and tricks to teach in a day, I don’t think you’ll get much more out of it. What you see is pretty much what you get, there aren’t really any hidden mechanics that’ll drastically shake up the game, you just buy dogs and hang out with them.

I highly recommend this if you’re looking for a quintessential DS game to play, or just like dogs. It’s cute, has it’s own charm, and is quite frankly iconic. And it has middle-aged man yaoi

Bath Time

Walking the Dog

Friendly Whiff Record

~~~

Nintendogs + Cats, 3DS

I never owned this game growing up, but my sister did. She never played it, so sometimes I’d borrow it and try to play, forgetting each time why I’d put it down previously. This game is a pitiful attempt at recapturing the magic of the first Nintendogs, adding features that no one asked for, and changing or even removing the elements that made the first game work so well.

Lets start with the biggest and worst change, in my opinion. You can’t physically pet your pets. Now, I know what you’re thinking, it’s a pet sim, surely you can pet it? And while, yes, technically, you can, all physical interactions with your pet are via a silhouetted shadow of your pet on the touch screen, while your actual pet is on the top screen. WHY!?

Well, I know why. They wanted to utilise the oh so epic 3D visuals and to do that, they have to keep the pets on the top screen. BOOOOOOOOOO

This design philosophy that prioritises the tech over the actual gameplay is the poison that killed this game, in my opinion. I do not even play with the 3DS slider on because it strains my eyes real quick lol, yet everything important is placed on the top screen to utilise this feature. The bottom screen is delegated to being a permanent menu screen or just a silhouette of your pet. By segregating this tactile element, it’s not only making it difficult to interact intuitively with your pets, but it just plain ol’ feels crap. In real life, when I want to pet my cats, I read out and pet them. In the first Nintendogs, when I want to pet my dogs, it’s really easy to figure out that petting them with your stylus while they’re on the touch screen is how you do it. I just don’t think there’s any reason in defence of making this a hand-eye coordination thing with the silhouette dogs, like. It’s yucky.

Because of these changes, the trails have changed a lot too. The agility trial is now a lure course, where you turn a crank wheel and lead your dog down a race track with lure lines. This is… painfully simple; despite there being elevations to the trails as you progress- like cross-crossing lines and hurdles to jump -it lacks any sort of direction or skill between you and your dog. You just… turn a crank, and honk the horn if you need to recapture your dog’s attention. Turn it just fast enough that they run at their fastest, but not so fast that your dog will lose interest and not so slow enough that your dog will pounce and play with the lure. It’s not complex or even interesting, if I’m being honest, and you just make sure to take your dog to the gym a few times and buy good lures that can go fast and it’s almost a guaranteed win. The disc trials, by comparison, are much more complex. In the previous Nintendogs, the only thing that really changed was the minimum required points needed to qualify for rankings. Here, the further you get, the more things get introduced. There will be sand patches that slow down your dog, and highlighted point zones that give an additional boost to your score. In theory, I get how this is upping the stakes and making it more challenging to win, but it all feels like a moot point as the disc feels so floaty and garbage to throw. It needs a certain weight and spin to it so that you can guess how hard and far to throw for certain points, but nothing I did seemed to work. Why did they change the physics here? The disc was perfectly fine previously, and these new challenges might even be interesting if you could actually direct and throw the disc. The other big gripe with these competitions is that your competitors are on the same screen as you. Previously, you competed by yourself, meaning that if you fucked up, it was on you and your dog, no one else. Now? Other dogs can get in the way on the agility course or disc range. I get that it feels more like a competition, but aren’t we here for the skill demonstration? The most egregious is the obedience trial, as you can’t even compete if you don’t have the AR Cards that came with the 3DS. Like… HELLO!? It’s lucky that it worked by just opening a PDF scan of them on my phone, but a core part of the game like this shouldn’t be tied to something external like that, just for a gimmick. They don’t actually do anything to enhance the competition, they aren’t a core mechanic in how you train your dog, it’s just an awkward thing you have to sit in front of your 3DS while you play! They don’t even do much when you play with your pets at home, the only thing you can do with them is scan them in and then your pet will wear an accessory based on whatever card you scan… but only while you’re in the scanning mode. IF you are going to implement something like this, I think it’s only fair if you get a rare collectable in game thats a fun reward for scanning it in, something more tangible for the effort, yknow? Not this dumb gimmicky shit that’s forced in cause they have to. (I don’t even think there should be stuff like what I just suggested if I’m being honest, the LoZ:SSHD Zelda amiibo is the perfect example of.. wtf why?)

Also, the prize money is not that much, especially for coming first in the championship. I have a feeling that this is due to the fact that you can enter each competition three times a day, per dog, for a total of nine potential competitions - unlike the previous which was three entries total per dog, regardless of competition. While Ted is back to narrate the competitions, it’s clear that they got the feedback of there being too much text to get through, so he’s barely a presence at the start and end, doing nothing more than the formalities of it. I definitely get that it could get tiresome to tap through all the text, but the text was flavourful at least, and if they had more banter between Ted and Archie here, it could’ve helped. Even just having something like… press and hold A to skip. That would literally fix it. And… ARCHIE ISN’T HERE. ITS JUST TED ALONE ITS SO SAD. AND I DON’T LIKE THAT EVERYONE IS MIIS NOW, IT WAS FUN THAT THE ONLY FACES YOU SEE IN THE FIRST NINTENDOGS WERE THE PIXELATED FACES OF TED AND ARCHIE, AND NOW ITS JUST MIIS EVERYWHERE. YOU DIDN’T NEED TO SEE THE PHYSICAL NPC PERSON AS YOU WALKED THE DOG IN THE FIRST GAME, IT KINDA IMPLIED THAT THEY ARE ALSO PLAYING ON THEIR DS JUST LIKE YOU CAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE AN IN-GAME MODEL EITHER. WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKK.

MIIS ARE COOL AND ALL, BUT THIS FELT LIKE IT WAS TRYING WAY TOO HARD! The Wii/3DS era is rightfully iconic, but this just missed the mark. I dunno how else to describe it, but there isn’t that much charm in walking through town and coming across miis- it was fine the way it was in the first nintendogs! The music as well… it just feels like it’s trying too hard to have baked in nostalgia by using the classic wii/mii sounds we all like without bringing anything to the table. Archie technically appears as one of the cashiers of a store you can enter on walks, but I didn’t recognise him cause he’s a mii and he got a bit whitewashed :/

The walks as well… UGH. There was something very nice and deliberate about planning out the walk beforehand and then going out. You can pick where you wanna go, if you wanna try to get the ? Icons that will either be a present or a neighbourhood dog, it was nice. I also liked that it was 2D sidescroller style walking in that game, here it is point of view behind the dog as it runs forward for the EPIQUE 3D GRAFICKS. You don’t get to plan the route, and I disliked how certain spaces were only in certain areas. The more you walk your dog, the more you’ll unlock places like the town streets, mountain streets, beach streets, ect. In town, there is a gym, in the mountain and beach there are public parks, but to get to them you have to catch a sign asking if you wanna go to that section while you’re on the walk. It’s more spontaneous, and I found myself frustrated. If I wanted to go to the gym, I had to make sure I went straight to town and after that, it’s straight home. If I want to go to the park, I have to make sure to get through at least two areas every time and not accidentally run past the park sign- and even then, you don’t know until you get there if there’s going to be another dog there who will muck up your training session. I don’t care, and its annoying for no reason, what was wrong with picking your path beforehand? If they insist on having these segregated areas, why not at least let me pick where I want to start? The only thing that is kinda ok, I guess, is that when you talk to neighbours and your dogs get along, they might invite you to come to the cafe or park with them to let the dogs play for longer. That’s cute, but most the time I don’t wanna do that cause the gym is right behind you and I won’t be able to access it if I go out with you now. UGH. At least there are little cones lines up that if you manage to get your dog to zig zag through them without touching any, you’ll get a gift- but the gifts are always recyclable materials to craft items later and it feels like salt in the wound for getting rid of the agility trails while reminding us that the dogs don’t control very well so its annoying doing the cones anyway!

The interiors you can buy are weird too- theres some nice looking ones to unlock but they all cost a certain amount. That on it’s own is fine, but theres the basic one you start off with that’s free, and then every time you change to one you have to pay. So if I bought the Japanese style interior for $1,000, then bought a different one but wanted to go back to the Japanese one, I’d have to pay $1,000 again. The build is instant, but like? Bruh? This is a bruh moment because in Nintendogs, once you bought a design, it was free to change back to it at any time- it just took a day or two irl to install. WHY WAS THIS CHANGED?

Even something as iconic as bath time isn’t that fun here. I dunno. This game just sucks. If washing the dog isn’t fun, what’s the point. There’s so many stupid changes that just says to me that they didn’t understand why the first one worked, and forced too many new gimmicks without testing to make sure that they were integrated well. Oh and the cats? Literally useless. You can’t take them on walks, and you can’t enter them in competitions. But Rads, I hear you say, real life cats are like that too! And to that I say: THERE ARE ALSO CAT COMPETITIONS IN REAL LIFE! The lure coursing feels much more like a cat thing than a dog one to me, and cats could be trained to go through obstacle courses or do a little dance like obedience trials. The competitions are an integral way to interact with your pet, they help to set goals for how you want to train them and measure your progress, and it is rewarding to win something with them after you put all the effort in. If you have a cat here, I want to play with it, not just throw a toy at it and have it look at me. I have cats in real life that will just stare at me blankly when I try to play and throw toys at them, cmon.

I can’t even be bothered to talk about the other stuff in depth, you get the idea.

This shit sucks.

Lets Go For A Walk [Daytime]

BARC

Cafe Petrov

~~~

Katana Zero, PC

Katana Zero is a relatively unique game; it’s a 2D sidescroller, but not quite a platformer- it has stealth elements, but is more focused on the mowing down of enemies to be a true stealth game. Either way, what you’ve got here is fun, especially once you start to understand the game and how it works.

One massive thing I appreciate is how the narrative elements are so entangled with the gameplay elements. The story revolves around Zero, a bathrobe-wearing, katana-weilding, samurai-film-loving swordsman who is tasked with killing certain individuals, leaving no survivors behind. To assist with these missions, he’s given a dose of chronos- a drug that alters the user’s perception of time, allowing them to slow down and rewind time through precognition. The more missions you go on, the more you slowly find out about the drug and circumstances surrounding it, along with revealing more hints towards Zero and his past.

As he is an amnesica, the only things we know about him is that he fought in the war, as evidenced by his service medal- and that he is a highly skilled, if socially withdrawn, killer. In between missions, he must attend therapy sessions, where he will be briefed on his next target and given a new dose of chronos. There are also little sequences where he befriends a young neighbour girl, and various other one-off sections with colourful characters around town. These all function like interactive cutscenes, meaning that there isn’t much time spent idly holding the controller and waiting for things to happen. You will be playing and making choices, even in quieter moments.

A real stand out factor of what makes this short game so memorable is the delivery. Not only in the gameplay and other details, which I will get to in a moment, but in the text itself! The text boxes have a timed delivery- with colours, animations and some sound effects for emphasis. This is AWESOME and really helps to demonstrate the tone of each conversation, accentuating the flavourful writing. Each character feels distinct in their presentation due to the way their text is literally presented, and when prompted, you get timed responses to choose from when in conversation. You’re given options for how you want to interact with others, from serious to humorous- even given the chance to interrupt people and really piss them off. The writing itself is quite enjoyable, as it knows when to be serious, and when to not take itself so seriously. In certain sections, you can even watch the conversations of certain enemies before they’re aware of your presence, which are quite entertaining to snoop on.

Into the gameplay itself, there is certainly a rhythm to it that takes a moment to fully understand- but once you do, it’s really satisfying. The big gimmick that ties into the narrative is the slo-mo - of which you have a limited amount of time to work in slow motion, which can be incredibly helpful when bum-rushing particularly tricky groups of enemies. The main skills you can utilise are a quick roll, which is practical and fun; melee items, which can be found and thrown across the levels; and your katana, which is a one hit kill for enemies, and can also help with extending jumps and dashes across the levels while you slash away. There’s also a crouch you can use to sneak around levels, but I did not use this often enough to really comment on. For the things I did use, however, I am quite pleased with the deceptive depth built into them. Melee objects seem simple, just pick up and throw; but depending on which item you’ve picked up, you can obscure yourself in a cloud of smoke, throw molotov cocktails or grenades at enemies- or at oil barrels, which was a personal favourite of mine -or simply rely on the tried and true reliability of throwing knives or other blunt impact objects to kill enemies or otherwise interact with the level. Sometimes, you’ll even come across melee that’s more special, like a flame thrower or remote detonation mine that can be used with more tactic.

The main method of killing will be via your katana, it is the name of the game, after all. Most enemies are one-hit kills, only requiring you be in range and slash at the right time to take them down. Some enemies will parry attacks with shields or melee weapons of their own, requiring two or more hits OR for a tactical roll to slash from behind. You can also parry the bullets shot at you if you time it right, flinging them back in the shooter’s direction for a nasty surprise. It’s simple, yet there are options for how you want to approach your enemies- meaning that you can’t blitz through with button mashing alone. You’ll want to pay attention while you learn through trial and error- as once you gain a bit of confidence in your understanding, you may want to experiment with baiting groups of enemies to your advantage- I sure liked playing with this! If an enemy shoots their gun upon seeing you, it’ll alert all the enemies in the immediately surrounding areas to flock to where they heard the gunshot. This can be a pain in the ass if you’re caught off guard, BUT, if you can adapt, or even plan to have this happen, you can wait for enemies right by the door they’ll appear from and slice them straight away. This is the kind of thing I think will seperate a lot of players’ experiences with this game, as the game gives this incentive to get good while being quick and nimble- so if you’re up to the challenge of bettering yourself through the way you behave and interact with the levels, it’ll definitely change the way you feel about the combat! I can tell you personally, just from playing through roughly 3-4 times, my first play that was largely brute force based vs my most recent where I prioritised efficiency and dexterity felt so different- AND BOTH FUN!

While this may sound a little overwhelming, especially when I tell you that you WILL be dying often, the game isn’t discouraging as it allows a quick respawn at the start of the room you’re in- meaning you can try again almost instantly without ruining the flow of gameplay. One of my biggest critiques of the game is, due to how fast paced everything is, I often found myself losing Zero amongst the flurry of guns and katanas, which mucks me up a lot. The only detriment to it being so fast, especially upon respawning, is this. Sometimes I’d get stuck for a second and keep dying on loop at the beginning of a level because my human brain and eyes were lagging behind and unable to physically process the rush of everything going on. This user error was the only thing stopping the experience from otherwise being seamless, so make of that what you will. I can say that I DID get better the longer I played, but I seemingly reset after putting down the game each time. It’s a great indicator for when I was getting too tired to play properly, as it was incredibly quick at pointing out through the rapid fire of stupid deaths when I’d just lost the knack for the session. One thing to counteract this is that there is a plethora of customisable setting within the menu. I had my friend Nika help me adjust everything so that I could play with minimal strain to my eyes, and it was greatly appreciated! I even joked that the tell of a great game is when the settings menus were as robust as the game itself- I’m not kidding when I say there’s a lot to customise! That is definitely the kind of accessibility within gaming I’m after; and I feel so perplexed that an indie game such as this can provide these options, while a large majority of AAA games barely let you remap buttons where you want.

Anyway, aside from the gameplay, the visuals and soundtrack are fantastic. There’s a distinct retro-dystopian-cyberpunk feel here, taking advantage of that tactile analogue feel of late 90s tech. There’s a branded focus on the cyan and magenta colours, which is super fun- but all the environments feel vibrant and detailed, even when they’re not pushing the saturation limits of your screen. You’re really able to see and appreciate the beauty of modern pixel art graphics here; the fluid animations make sprites feel so lively and full of character, there’s so many details in each level to appreciate, the dynamic lighting within levels is fucking gorgeous, and the level design was visually clear without being so in-your-face that it detracts from itself. Like, I noticed that during the levels as you walk through, theres a subtle glow around interactable elements, like floors and doors you can burst through. It’s not calling attention to itself in an obnoxious way, and honestly I find it hard to notice when you’re focusing on the action- but, if you’re ever feeling a little lost, the tiny glow as you get closer can really help steer players in the right direction- in a way that may even be subconscious when you’re not looking directly for it. In fact, I could say something similar for the early levels that teach you the foundations of this game as well. The tutorial sections do a great job of demonstrating the way it wants you to play; once you’re on your own- playing the real deal -I often felt as though there was an open dialogue between myself and the developers, the common tongue being this game. I love when games feel like a conversation in this manner, a back a forth between player and creator in a way that’s memorable- no matter how short the game is.

Pair this with an amazing soundtrack and some brilliant sound design, and you have yourself a winner! Seriously, you don’t know how conflicted I’ve been trying to pick my top 3 tracks here. Everything has a nice cohesion to it, while also being quite broad in sound. There’s a nice, almost vapourwave-esque style to most of the main level’s tracks- something fun and upbeat that showcases the beauty in synth music, and all without being too distracting from gameplay. There’s subtle changes in vibe depending on where you are in the game as well, so it’s not like you’ll ever get bored! And the light jazz sound in the quieter tracks brings a more subdued feeling without taking away any of that charm. I’m glad that the composers had the skill and confidence to pull these various moods together in the game through the music, as it allows for various emotional beats to play without feeling cheesy or abrupt. I already mentioned the sound effects that play during speech text; but the rest of the sound design is greatly appreciated in creating that atmosphere, along with auditory cues to help with gameplay. Even something as simple as the end of every level- where your objective has been completed and you have to walk back through the rooms with the carnage you left behind with nothing but the sound of your feet as you make your leave -is incredibly impactful.

For a game that is so fast paced, I was pleasantly surprised that it let moments just breathe. Walking back through levels, the sessions with the therapist, the nightly routines of watching the news and drinking tea before bed… Moments of reflection, forcing you to just sit and BE with the characters. You can’t avoid it, at least, not in the main story mode. It’s great. For those that don’t care as much about seeing the story in replays, or just want to challenge themselves, there’s a dedicated speedrun mode; and for those that bought the game on steam, theres an April Fool’s patch called Katana HERO, which is a frankly hilarious story of a spirit hunter who is trying to slay all the evil spirits. For something that’s notthedlcbro, there was a lot of effort put into the reskins and new dialogue that was very fun. I found Katana ZERO quite funny in certain moments already, HERO was just an enjoyable step further in that aspect.

I’ve been putting it off until now, but my other major critique is, in fact, with the story of this game. And it’s more of a half-hearted critique, as we are left with a vague twist and a lot of dangling threads that are setting itself up for a continuation. We know from the dev team that they are steadily working on a free DLC update, which is great to hear. However, I can’t help but feel that there could have been a way to keep this short story more self contained instead of relying on this update to tell all. There’s a billion and one examples of games that set themselves up to have a grand conclusion in the DLC or sequel, and end up falling short due to any number of factors- often the worst of which being the time between releases and the stagnating interest from fans as they wait. What we have here story-wise is special, don’t get me wrong, but I find myself being very cautious towards a DLC being able to truly clear up any questions and satisfactorily wrap up the narrative. I want to trust them, as they’ve delivered a great base game and April Fool’s patch, but I’ve experienced all too many games that fall short from things like this, and it’d be a massive shame if the overall experience is soured by leaving players on a puzzling ‘huh???’ for years before getting a conclusion that doesn’t quite live up to expectations. I think it is important to note that their progress on the DLC was likely interrupted due to the pandemic, and for an indie team I’m more than willing to wait as long as they need to get it out- these are just concerns I have, ones that more often than not can hit indie studios harder. I will say, that up until the very last chunk, the game had a fantastic pacing that I vibed with, great escalation and tangible stakes to drive the story, and very charismatic writing that I appreciated. The reveals and rapid fire of new perspectives upon the credits ARE interesting, and I’ve been thinking and talking about them for a while after playing- and that is something I’d like to give credit to. Despite the minor gripes I have, I was left with a great experience, one I’ll gladly replay through the years as I patiently await the continuation. The impact it’s imparted is already enough, as that’s what I’m usually looking for to validate the time sunk into any game that I play.

Lastly, I have no idea how to transition into this, but this game often reminded me of Donkey Kong Country 2 & 3. This game is not at all like DKC 2&3, and if you play either game expecting elements of the other, you will not find them- yet I consistently felt a distinctly DKC sense of familiarity. The way Zero yells when he dies sounds similar to the kremlings when you jump on them, the 2D level progression that’s not quite focused on platforming in a traditional sense yet still has undeniable platforming elements, the minecart section, the reticle aimed at you in the meat packing facility, the banging music and attention to detail… I DUNNO. IT JUST KEPT REMINDING ME OF DKC!? I want to stress that this is a good comparison, as I thoroughly enjoy both games- a lot of effort clearly went into both. ALSO I would enjoy more time with the minecart, it was really fun and way too short. I am a minecart level apologist for both DKC and KZ idc.

To wrap up, I absolutely see why Nika fell in love so hard with this game, and I’m glad I finally got the opportunity to try for myself. It was great to run my first playthrough with her watching, and I have enjoyed poking around and experimenting with the game myself. I feel like there’s plenty more I could say, but you get the picture, so I wont. I’ll just leave you with the only thing left to say-

R.I.P. Strong Terry, you’re lifting with Baby Jesus now...

Sneaky Driver

Breath of a Serpent

Delusive Bunker

Come and See

~~~

Marvel’s Spider-Man, PS4

This is a game that I’ve had on my shelf for a few years now, and I finally decided to give it a go. I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t really have an interest in playing, as I am so completely burnt out on the Marvel-ification of superheroes and also don’t really play these kinds of games much. I bought it because it was $18 on sale and it is one of my best friend’s favourite games. (The same friend who likes Odyssey… He should play better games, I am for reeeeeeeaaaaaaaal)

While the game isn’t that bad, I found myself incredibly bored and under stimulated with the repetitive nature of the gameplay. It does have it’s perks, (which is a massive one-up on Odyssey), and the saving grace of this game is it’s story. It took me a while to get into it, but once you’ve started to get a feel for everything and play past the tutorial sections, you start to see why people enjoy it. There’s a richness to it that has definitely been absent from the most recent entries in the MCU, and it was great to see a Spidey story that wasn’t the same ol’ Uncle Ben With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility spiel. We all know it, regardless of how much you know about Spider Man, and instead I would say it’s a genuine treat to see a Spidey (and Peter!) who have been at this for a while. There’s a lot of flavour text to help support this, through things like the in-game twitter parody, and collectables you find across the map, of which Peter will nostalgically comment on as you inspect them- I found that this did help to make the city feel like something that’s already been lived in, and not just starting up for the events of this game. The best demonstration of this, however, is the relationship between Peter and MJ. They’re exes who are just starting to rekindle their friendship as they cross paths and decide to team up and try to work together as events unfold.

You start the game by putting away Kingpin, and starting a domino effect that starts to put the city at risk. Without his mafia-style grip on the underbelly of New York, smaller criminal gangs are attempting to take over in the absence, which leads to trouble for our hero. There are three main stages to the story campaign, of which I felt the best was the first. While you swing around fighting crime and helping people, you’ll be able to tune into the JJJ livestreams which give an interesting, if vindictive, view of how the people view Spidey and related events- even if he seems a bit too fixated on him and comes up with some wild conspiracies.

I think most fans would say that swinging around as Spidey is the biggest draw to the game- though I’d argue that I found more fulfilment doing friendly neighbourhood activities. There are also various battles and boss battles along with select missions to be had around the map, so there is a lot to do. During the main story campaign, you will take part in scripted events AND play sections where you play as other characters- MJ and Miles. Playing these short sections, which are usually stealth oriented, was overall a nice change in perspective. It helped make the world feel just that little bit bigger and connect various main NPCs to Spidey and what you get up to. In between the three main phases of the campaign missions, there are various side missions and objectives to fulfil- such as various crime related missions where you infiltrate and take down baddies with the help of a local police chief, more environmentally focused missions provided by your friend Harry (who is absent for this game), and little quests given by NPCs in the world who need help from their friendly neighbourhood Spider Man.

There’s a lot going on here, and that is both to it’s benefit AND detriment. I enjoyed doing most of Harry’s eco missions; it not only varied things up with little, but provided a further reminder that Peter IS a scientist, and quite a clever one at that. Plus, you can’t be kicking butt allllllll day! It was also nice to help NPCs out when you could- but there were a lot of missions and quests that felt like copy paste jobs and I got tired of them real fast. In the overworld, while you swing around, you can come across crimes to stop, enemy bases to expose, and later on various little puzzles or skill challenges as you progress. These encounters were grindy and repetitive, and I found that once you’d gained an understanding of both how to enemies behaved and how the combat worked, it’s not actually that in depth! It kinda sucks, actually, because even if you only did encounters that were radioed in, there’s so many that even if you’re not aiming for 100%, you’d still spend a lot of time idly swinging around and doing the same old fights over and over. Encounters don’t feel challenging, they’re just hard because there’s six waves to fight through. Anyone who isn’t a boss is a copy paste from one of four variants of the same enemy. Guy. Guy with weapon. Guy with shield. Big guy. Sometimes you’d get a guy with a rocket launcher or a jetpack, but it’s nothing more than a garnish. I’d have hoped that it at least felt different to fight the different syndicates- the first third has you fighting a Chinese Mafia group, very organised crime based enemies. The second third is mainly escaped convicts after a break out, which is much messier with in-fighting and lack of organisation. And the final third has you fighting Sable Agents, a form of private military/mercenaries for hire who’ve run amuck, and have brute force and numbers on their side. If there were more variation in the feel of these different stages in the story shown through the way you needed to fight and take down these groups, I feel it would’ve helped immensely! But no, all three stages of the story have battles and enemies that are quite literally the same, but just reskins depending on which syndicate, with the Sable agents just ever so slightly different because they have jetpacks and armour. OoooOOoOOoooooh. So gaming. I think that if they were aiming for more of an organic feel with enemy encounters and the like, they should aim higher than for them to be set dressing to eventually ignore, and instead put effort into making battles not only varied and challenging, but enjoyable, too.

Even the most fundamental part of the game- the web slinging -felt fatiguing and tiresome early on. I guess it’s nice, but it didn’t feel too impressive to me. I found the controls rather sticky- pun intended -and felt like I had barely any control over the movement and direction. When I’d run up a building, Spidey felt like he was going all over the place instead of where I’m trying to get him to go. And don’t get me started on trying to get off a building once you start crawling or running across it- he’s stuck and I couldn’t find any way to get him off in a timely manner without resorting to button mashing! It sucked the most when I was in the middle of a car chase or other time sensitive manoeuvring and I’d get stuck on the corner of some dumb building – goodbye momentum! Fighting was also ass, as I’d often get stuck in corners when wall crawling or attempting some of the fancier move sets you unlock later on. I don’t really think it’s that great when so much of a AAA game made me feel like I had to resort to button mashing just to get out of the way…

If that wasn’t bad enough, during the more stealth oriented sections where you play as MJ or Miles, you don’t have access to much, if any, move sets; and have to get by with something much more limited. The stealth sections are ass, and I think people who genuinely praise these sections haven’t played other stealth games. I’m a relatively new appreciator of the stealth genre myself, but cmon, the stealth here is bare bones at best, and is infinitely better when you’re playing as Spidey compared to the mandatory sections with MJ or Miles! Crawling around, finding info and trying to escape unnoticed is so much more fun with Spidey, and although I understand the point of these sections is to demonstrate not only how powerful and skilled Spider Man is, but also how dangerous the enemies are- I just plain ol’ didn’t enjoy them! Some stealth scenes were more interesting than others- I mostly enjoyed creeping around Mayor Osbourne’s apartment – but as a whole, it is just so bare bones and not good enough to have made it to the final cut in my opinion. I don’t know what else they could do to make these more interesting, making more stealth based objectives for MJ and Miles to do during these sequences might be a start. Another thing might be to have more time playing as these characters in a non stealth context, but I don’t feel too solidly on either suggestion.

I’m clearly quite frustrated over these sections, but that’s because, to me, they concisely describe an issue that I have with this game. It’s trying too hard to be a jack of all trades, while being a master of none. So much of this game felt like obligatory game design choices, the safe ones you make because they’re popular and work and can be easily replicated in most AAA games. The very first note that I wrote down for this game was that the map reminded me of the botw map- bad. I don’t enjoy these pseudo open world games that try to put so much busy work in the overworld that doesn't actually amount to much, and it’s boasting points are mainly on the technical specs and not the experience of the game imparted on players. For a hero that’s defining characteristic that sets him apart from other heroes is the fact that he is a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, so much of this game felt about the big picture instead of the little guy. By having so much crap in the world over saturating Spidey’s downtime, it detracted from the feeling of helping the people of New York, and just felt like he was helping the city as a vague concept. Yes, fighting crimes and keeping the city in check is important, but let us spend more time at the FEAST Shelter so we can help out when we want, instead of limiting it to scripted story moments. Even if Peter can’t always get to the shelter, show us more of how Miles is doing once he starts volunteering his time there. And show us more of MJ please, she’s a very clever and interesting character, and to have most of her screen time being limited to shitty stealth sections or cutscenes was a bummer, especially because, although what we get of her is decent, it would’ve been a bit nicer to see more about how the actions of Spider-Man were affecting her work and personal life as well. I feel there plainly wasn’t enough time to get to know these characters, and that they were all severely lacking in those ‘filler’ moments – y’know, the ones that let us know more about these characters and their world when they’re not faced with life or death. Some comments here and there from Peter and MJ wasn’t enough, and in this department, even though I do think the story is solid and the best part about this game, it is too refined when it could’ve afforded to go a lot more in depth. Even things such as important moments regarding Aunt May or Doc Oc didn’t hit very hard for me because we barely spend any time with them- and what little time we DO spend with them is through whatever Peter is directly involved in. Having some time to cut away and SEE how the work Peter and Doc Oc are doing is DIRECTLY impacting the people they’re trying to help, and not just having some random guy show up when the product is nearly finished and the funding is cut. Let us KNOW how hard Aunt May is working in the FEAST Shelter without the director there, and what kind of a toll it’s taking, not only on herself but on the people she’s trying to help. I feel that it was in desperate need of more humanising moments for everyone, and not just Peter. It’s a video game, not a movie! Lean into the fact that there are so many more ways to demonstrate characters and settings through this interactive medium, a comic book character should be one of the easier things to adapt!

The visuals were fine, it’s a pretty standard PS4 game- but I noticed a lot of issues when playing, and some that would’ve been game breaking if not for auto saves. There were instances where enemies got stuck in walls or behind fences and were literally inaccessible to me, meaning that I couldn’t complete battle objectives because the battle was never won. There were also a few times where the camera puzzles set up by Black Cat just didn’t load correctly. The location had everything there to start the puzzle, except for the camera, so I couldn’t start anything until I swung around for a bit and came back, hoping it spawned in correctly this time. The worst example of this though, was that during one of the eco missions, I was supposed to redirect satellite dishes to relink them during a storm. Very simple mission, however, I was swinging around for over 40 minutes trying to figure out what the hell I was missing, because even though I’d linked up everything, the final part of the mission didn’t load in or whatever and I couldn’t complete the mission. It was so frustrating that it marked the end of that play session for me, and when I eventually went to restart the mission, it worked fine and was solved in under 5 minutes. For a game native to the PS4, it wasn’t optimised that well, which is a shame.

The audio was generally pretty nice as well, there’s a few nice tracks, but I don’t really feel that anything was stand out to me; other than the fact that there is a dynamic soundtrack thing going on. This means that when you’re just walking around, you’ll hear the city ambience in all it’s glory (including this cool easter egg). However, as soon as you start swinging, the bombastic track for epic cool spider guy starts playing, and can feel quite awkward when you abruptly jump into a song, especially when you didn’t intend to. The soundtrack has an overall orchestral feel, one that feels on a similar caliber to blockbuster movies, so while I didn’t personally connect with many of the songs, there’s not really anything bad to say about this soundtrack either.

In my final nitpicking, I’m going to get a bit more spoilery than I aim for these write ups. The final third and ending of this game sucked balls. Sable as the main antagonist for the endgame felt bland, and she had a rather abrupt change of heart at the end. I feel she would’ve been a stronger threat if she, and her men, were better not only narratively, but morally too. Having a private military for hire should’ve felt like a threat, and I can’t help but feel if they proved that they ARE better at Spidey’s job and really shaped public perception of him into being an amatuer and a menace, that would’ve been a morbillion times more interesting. By having them just be an oppressive, fascist-lite, military brute force that is just as corrupt and uncontrollable as you’d think it would be, it devalued all level of threat for me. Shouldn’t the main issue here be that Mayor Osborne hiring these guys is not only a smear campaign against Spidey, but something so effective after the main fuck ups at the start of the game that the people of New York are WELCOMING of this protection? I just found it cartoonishly over the top and too simple that the big military guys were arresting and locking up civilians for no real reason, looting them and kicking them out of their building, and otherwise wasting all their resources by focusing on Spidey and not, yknow, resolving crimes and other disputes. Fuck cops, but the very least they could’ve done is make it more obvious that the police can’t do anything anymore, as these guys are stepping in and taking over ALL aspects of life in the city. Having them stated to be crazy oppressive and whatever felt pretty watered down when they functioned exactly the same as the amateur but organised crime of the Masks in the first third, and exactly the same as the chaotic and brutish crimes of escaped convicts. The only tangible difference is that theres more physical layers to peel off Sable Agents when in combat: there’s more towers to pull down and armour to smack off – THATS IT. Part of what should’ve made Sable so much more of a commanding force is that they’re acting in direct response to a viral epidemic started by Doc Oc. Not only do I find it unrealistic that everyone was actually wearing masks during the pandemic, but this whole section just felt like a complete mess, gameplay wise. I found myself most annoyed by the crime system in the overworld, as there will be both escaped cons AND Sable agents shooting you down as you swing through the map. While this is an effective display of how fucked the city has become, I was quite disappointed to find that of all the enemies you can fight in the overworld at this stage, the ONLY ones that count towards map completions are the ones that are radioed in. There’s no other incentive to make it worth my time to fight all these people, no extra things to trade for to gadget upgrades or new suits. Nothing. On top of all this, the actual end of the narrative was rather abrupt and crap tbh. I know with the foresight of having played this years after release that it got it’s own sequels and spin offs, but I’m a firm believer in narratives being able to hold on their own internally without relying on the MCU-ification to make them retroactively better.

In closing, it’s clear that this game was not for me. It’s fine if you like superheros, and don’t care about how thin the genre cocktail of gameplay styles are in actuality - but I think my standards are too high and I wasn’t impressed, especially due to this being a fucking Sony game. I know they have the budget to do better, c’mon. And although I didn’t care for it, there were a lot of options for customising your play experience, like choosing suits, power-ups and gadgets to aid in battle, and the freedom to leisurely explore the map if you’re so inclined. I did 100% the story and all collectables and challenges on the map, but not to a gold-star degree or with the aims of platinum trophy. Fuck that.

At the end of the day, I want to praise the parts of this game that should be standard within games of this budget, but weren’t, and sometimes still aren’t. This is a completely single player game with a large campaign filled with variety and interesting things to do. There is still a demand for games like this, and I’m glad that this aspect was something that not only helped it to sell well, but also show to developers and stake holders that there IS a demand for enriching single player games. There were also a great amount of accessibility features that were fairly easy to access and understand, so those that may need a bit of extra help and adjustments to get through the game are able to enjoy the same experience. These are things that should be encouraged, and for that, I commend it.

But, play a different game if you care about the fighting or the stealth. Neither are done well here lol.

The Golden Age

Anything For A Story

Renewed Rivalries

[expressionless-fr]

foofaraw & serendipity ? 🤗

serendipity - how did you first discover your f/o, or your f/os source material? how did you feel when you first saw your f/o in your source material? 

foofaraw - do your chosen aesthetics line up well with your f/os? meaning, if the two of you were to say, decorate a home, would your chosen styles clash or compliment each other?

≛ serendipity:

Oh! it was 100% universe perfectly aligning. before googleplay got banned in my country I used to just download random apps and games. I think it happend five or four years ago but I accidentally stumbled upon Obey me! shall we date.

and I was like hey, it has demons. prob means its edgy n cool.

turns out it wasn't😂 and I deleted it after like chapter two because i though it was cringe lol. a few months later I redownloaded it like a thirsty bastard and started to simp for Barb hardcore.

light mentioning Barb's first appreance in the game was at chp.2 so. yeah first time i saw him i was making the ultimate cringed face. sorry Barb. I love you.

≛ Foofaraw

his room is literally my ideal room.

well, I like darkness, and warm lights and by warm lights I am not talking about fake/manmade ones, but things like candles and fire. lamps are a huge pain for me and my head :/

I'm also inlove with clocks and mirrors (for reasons unrelated to Barb! trust me on this.) and skeletons. I also have s thing for random bottles of beer lol. i find them aesthetically pleasing.

I think they would fit really well with his way of decoration based on his room. skeleton candle holders, skeleton jars, doors, clocks and mirrors everywhere. oh that way I can look at myself in the mirrors too while he's busy and I'm bored.

not to mention plants! love 'em.. although, I verh much prefer my house to not have that many stairs. I can't use one to save my life.

[simm-mouse]

Thank you for @juliabachelor tagging me^^

1. What's your favorite sims death?- I like the death by ranting in The Sims 3. I find it funny that Grim is pissed off about sims talking shit about em, and makes them die and come back to life as a warning. If you do it again within 12 hours or a day he will take the sim's soul. My guy can't handle criticism. Imagine dying because you talked shit about the reaper

2. Alpha CC or Maxis Match?- I like both. At first I started with Alpha CC, but then I've been leaning more into Maxis match side of CC

3. Do you cheat when your sims gain weight?- Nope, I believe in putting in the work to getting the body you want

4. Do you use move objects?- Yep, never not used it

5. Favorite Mod?- I like any mods that give the game more realistic feeling. I like pregnancy mods so there's more to the pregnancy like ultrasound. I also like mods where they have story progression with Sims that you are not playing so there's stuff for them to do

6. First game/expansion/stuff pack you own?- So I'm going to be a little extra rn, and talk about which pack I got for each game in the first ever game I got in the series. I was renting the console versions before I got my hands on one of the pc versions (Back then my family was more into consoles). The first ever game i got in the series was the Sims 2 for PS2. As for the main series on pc, I got the Sims 3. For 3, I actually got two packs at the same time. I got the Sims 3 supernatural and pets for christmas. A couple years later my grandma got me the Sims, and all it's packs from either a yard sale or thrift store. I think the first one I downloaded onto my computer was livin large. A year or two later I got the Sims 4 and for that one, I got one of those bundles for discs. It was the spa day and perfect patio bundle. Lastly, when I got the Sims 2, I think for that one I got freetime first

7. Do you pronounce live mode aLIVE or LIVing?- Just aLIVE

8. Who's your favorite sim that you've made?- I think One of them was named Miyah Bloodbore. She's a half human half vampire sim that tries to control her urges to bite sims. I'll draw her sometime in the future

9. Have you made a simself before?- I used to back when I was a fetus, but now I cringe at the idea of making myself in anything

10. What sim traits do you give yourself?- The ones I'd have now would be Socially awkward, Neurotic, Artistic, Brooding, and Clumsy

11. Which one is your favorite EA hair color?- I don't have a favorite

12. Favorite EA hair?- I don't have a favorite for this one either

13. Favorite life stage?- Adult

14. Are you a builder, or are you into the gameplay?- I'm both. When I started playing the game, I was more into gameplay. Over the years I have gone into building. But sometimes it does depend on the mood I'm in, Sometimes I'd rather build a house then play the game lol

15. Are you a CC creator?- Nope, but it would be cool to try through

16. Do you have any sim friends or a sim squad? I think everyone here in the Sims community is lovely and I would love to be pals with y'all. I do have real life friends that also enjoy the series

17. What's your favorite game out of the series?- this might be a little surprising considering I never really talk about this one, but my favorite one out of the main four is Sims 3. Sims 2 is fun to play, but Sims 3 gives me so much nostalgia. I played that one the most out of all four, yeah it's not perfect but I still enjoy playing the game. Also the color wheel, and open world, how I miss it

18. Do you have any sims merch?- Nope, but I would like to make some since I made a Tycho charm several months ago

19. Do you have a youtube channel for sims?- Nope, but I used to watch a lot of Sims gameplay

20. Who's your favorite CC creator?- I have so many favorites I can't pick just one! One of the creators I get CC from the most is RavenSim

21. How has your sim style changed throughout the years?- It has changed a lot. I used to be those summers that would make the perfect life for sims. But now whatever happens, happens and I just roll with it

22. What's your Origin/EA ID?- Hilmouse08

23. How long have you had a simblr?- I've had this account for several years. Since becoming a simblr, it's been several months

24. How do you edit your photos?- I use photoshop, for lately I've been wanting to try reshades

25. What expansion do you want next?- I want that damn horse pack, or maybe something with fairies. Also maybe not a new pack, but fix or add more to packs that already exist like they did for spa day

Again, I'm very bad with tagging people. I really don't know who to tag. So if you're reading this and have not done this yet, you have been tagged 🫵

[barrelcat]

Holiday Pickups 2022

Happy New Year!

A little late, but thought I’d share some pickups from right before Christmas to now. 

I’m very lucky to be a mod of a great writing community on discord and this is the second year that we’ve engaged in Secret Santa across the server. @grimbims, who was my Secret Santa, sent me Hades on the Switch! I was also delighted to discover that the physical copy of the game comes with a code for the soundtrack, as well as a small artbook featuring all of the game’s characters. It’s also my first roguelike (again, recalling that whole “broadening your gaming horizon” thing), and while Hades is difficult for my novice skills, it’s a terrible amount of fun. I’m not too bad at it, either. I favor the spear coupled with blessings from Artemis and have made it just past Asterius on Elysium, but that battle of attrition always leaves me struggling to survive afterward. 

Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition is the other game I’m shuffling between right now. I had asked for XC3, but there was a mixup during my gifter’s order and I ended up with this one instead, which may secretly have been what I actually wanted. I know that XC3 is supposed to be amazing, but I like to get the whole story, even if the internet tells me that I don’t need to play 1 and 2 before diving in. I’m about twenty hours deep so far and can confidently say that I’m going to play it to the end. The world and premise are interesting, the characters and story are compelling, even if the dialogue is a bit painful at times (my writer's brain can be overly critical even at the best of times), and the gameplay loop is satisfying. It feels very MMO to me. As an avid FFXIV player, that’s only a good thing. 

I was excited for Harvestella the moment it debuted on the Nintendo Direct back in June of ‘22 (oh my gosh, is that really “back in” already???). Even though I’ve only dabbled in a handful of farming/life simulators, I’ve obsessed over the ones that I have played (minus Stardew Valley - I know, I’m awful, but it just never grabbed me like it did others. Conan Exiles, though? I lost days to that game.) The anime aesthetic coupled with farming and crafting in Harvestella spoke to me like a game hasn’t in a long, long time, and I knew I needed it as soon as it launched. This was later confirmed when I blasted through the Switch demo shortly after. As excited as I was, though, I’ve decided to set this one aside until I finish the first Xenoblade. Then I’ll discover what was really going on with those Seaslights. 

I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses for the first time just a couple months ago. The two weeks I poured into it were gone all too quickly, and while I told myself and friends that I wanted to do a replay for the other endings and storylines, I just couldn’t bring myself to betray Edelgard. After 70+ hours together, her character meant too much to me. Color me excited when I realized that Fire Emblem: Three Hopes was another story featuring those characters, but in the style of the Dynasty Warriors games. (Note: to be honest, I’m not sure what the deal is with the story, but I’m excited to find out!) So once I get to this one, I’m sure it’s going to be another non-stop ride. 

Not gifts per se, but I did pick up a Byleth amiibo with some Christmas Cash, as well as a copy of Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright for the 3DS from the local used game shop. I wanted to get a copy of an FE Fates game so I could download the third not-so-secret storyline to that series, Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations. If you didn’t know, the online shop for the 3DS (and the Wii U, I believe) are being shut down in March of 2023. Apart from purchases made before that date, nothing will be available on those marketplaces to buy or download. Part of a string of odd choices made by Nintendo, recently. 

I’ve been eyeing these books since the newest printing was announced sometime last year. Both volumes of the Encyclopaedia Eorzea are gazetteers of the world of FFXIV, and feature stunning art taken from the game. They’re filled to the brim with world lore, and remind me more of a D&D campaign guide than anything else. I have half a mind to use them to run a game set in Eorzea using these books as source material. Maybe then I can get my group to join me in the MMO. 

This mug is from Etsy and brings me immeasurable joy. It features a memed version of Gaius van Baelsar’s famous line from the end of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn and makes me cackle every time I read it. I actually received two of these in duplicate, a 16oz and a 12 oz. The larger has worked its way into my mug rotation (because we all have a thousand mugs at this point, right?), and the smaller has earned its place among my small-yet-growing FFXIV collection next to my handcrafted moogle (a birthday present from my sister). From his perch, Gaius will always be there to remind me to drink more coffee. 

Probably the coolest gift I received this year was an ocarina from the Nintendo 64 classic, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time. I’m not sure if the picture does it justice, but the craftsmanship is stunning. The blue gloss is deep and shines wonderfully under light. It fits perfectly on the shelf with my other Zelda mementos. The box came with sheet music for several melodies from the game, so I’m definitely going to try and learn a couple tunes. Physical items from games like this are the best. I’ll admit, I have a soft spot for action figures, but having something tangible from a game world you’ve invested hours into is so, so cool. 

The final, and arguably largest, pickup for this update is a Nintendo Wii that I was able to find locally on CraigsList for a fantastic price! I didn’t have a Wii when I was younger (well, I did briefly… but that story might be for another time) and I’ve had one on my list for a while. Everything works, minus some battery acid damage on one of the Wii remotes, but I’m going to invest some time into repairing that soon. 

The seller lived about an hour away, so we met halfway at another used game shop that I hadn’t been to before. After the transaction, I popped inside to grab a couple games as well, including Nights: Journey of Dreams and SSX Blur. I read the Nights comics when I was kid, which were Sega and Archie Comics attempting to see if the series could survive the market. They didn’t, unfortunately, but they were a major influencer in my perhaps misguided desire to become a writer, so I’ve always wanted to try the games. As for SSX, Blur is the only one I haven’t played in the series. SSX Tricky on the GameCube was a gaming staple when I was a kid, so I couldn’t pass this one up when I found it. 

All in all, exciting additions to the collection with a lot of games to enjoy. 

[always-thirsty-pocket]

I had a pretty crappy Halloween but an overall pretty good-ish october... i'm not ready for it to end.

Ever since I reached my twenties and my friends and I decided we were all too old to trick or treat, October was such a sad time of the year for me because I use to love it so much. It started feeling like it was just any other day, except my brother put out dumb cheap ass decorations, despite us never getting trick-or-treaters, living in poor neighborhoods all our lives. The season just felt like having a birthday that nobody remembered ( a feeling I know well enough ), I would still get into costume, but that essentially equaled me sitting in a room alone playing video games in cosplay and nothing else.

Three years ago I decided I was going to reclaim the season for myself. I originally planned to watch classic horror movies every day of the month. I got a late start, because I didn't decide this until I made an impulse buy of some Universal Classic Monsters DVDs mid way through the month. So I ended up watching well into December.

Two years ago I changed it up to include 80's slasher movies, while still trying to get to all the Universal Monster films And that year I was still watching those movies well into November at least.

Last year was a very hard time for me, the threat of eviction was looming over my head. I was actually hoping to buy a bunch of Halloween decorations for my bedroom, which was pretty huge at the time. I got my decor, but didn't get the chance to use it... I did get to watch movies though. And my tradition kept mostly the same, but I decided not to do every single Universal Monster movie, and added a few movies from Hammer films and other sources, and even some more contemporary movies, and a few TV shows like Tales from the Crypt and the Munsters. A friend of mine even sent a fairly large box full of candy, and extra decorations. It made that horrible time easier to cope through. But not long after Halloween, we were suddenly rushed out the door. And in the new house, I was still in the mood for spooks, I felt a bit robbed, and continued watching into Nobember.

This year, I am in a much better place, and so I got to start my tradition on time, and decorate up my room, I got special lighting. Instead of strictly watching movies, I downloaded a shit ton of TV shows and cherrypicked the Halloween specials, and added even more to my backlog of movies to watch. My friend sent me another Halloween candy box. I've been playing spooky themed games ( with interruptions from Mario and Sonic, how dare they release new games in October ), It's generally been a very good time, despite today actually not being a very good Halloween... I am once again, not ready for it to end. I hate saying goodbye to the October month, even though it has historically been very sad for me in my adult life. I reclaimed the shit out of this Holiday. I love it now.

I guess that's the point of this post, if anyone out there is still reading.

If you have a time of the year that isn't the greatest for you, especially if it was something you loved in the past, I think it would be a good use of your time to reclaim it, make it self indulgent and special, even if the only one to enjoy it is you.

I'm doing the same thing for christmas. My extended family doesn't care about us and my immediate family is kind of a mess so it's not a great time for me either, but the decorations, the TV and movies, the seasonal foods, and yes even the music, they make me happy. So I'm going to indulge in those too. If my room were large enough, I'd have my own pint sized tree to decorate with whatever I want.

[talenlee]

May 2024 Wrapup!

Pride month sits on the horizon, full of rainbows and queer media and no doubt, absolutely, just the funnest time. Why would I, of all people, use June as an excuse to write about some absolute bummers or some really funny punchlines? What, me, taking corporate designated Pride month as an opportunity to make fun of things? Naaaah. But May! May happened and it uh kinda was a big deal? For me? Personally?

I feel like I use the icon of a fly for May more than I should but it’s not like it’s a month with powerful symbolism at work for me.

The Game Pile for May included:

Eureka, the Urban Investigative Fantasy Kickstarter

Murdle, the really good website and newspaper-style puzzle game

A video about Beneath a Steel Sky!

A print and play for my own game Lysen Co!

The Hugo’s House of Horrors series

I was approached about promoting Eureka, by the makers, and it was a good experience. Specifically, they sent me the thing, I showed them my notes, told them the kind of thing I would only tell them (like formatting stuff), and then … that was it. They trusted me to say what I wanted to say about the game, they shared it with their own opinions on what I had to say, and they checked if I was okay afterwards. It was really positive.

It was also one of the first times I’ve been told someone checked out, and played, and enjoyed the game based on the video I made about it. Beneath a Steel Sky got one more player this month thanks to me, which was also really cool.

I then went and released a print-and-play demo of my own game! I haven’t got my own printer’s proof copy of the game, but it’s out there and I don’t know if it’s been downloaded or not. I wanted to share it with the Print-n-Play subreddit for playtesting, and I’ve been too shy to.

Then finally, the Hero’s games is a thing I’ve kind of wanted to do for ages because there’s no way to explain the nonsense of the Whodunnit puzzle without just showing you gameplay footage of it, showing you the puzzle ‘being solved.’ It’s an area where video is genuinely the best way to do what I did. I don’t get to feel like I do that often!

Story Pile, we talked about:

Ronin, a movie about the fantasy of good spies

Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest On Tsundere Villainess Liesolotte, one of the worst anime of its type for just being completely lacking in anything good or remarkable about it,

A winter anime wrapup with Fox!

Pluto! A really good anime I liked a lot!

What else went up, oh, my two parter on drugs in Cobrin’Seil (part 1, part 2). An article explaining the Mormon Shelf and how it’s a useful term for use. I wrote about World building and number systems because hey you probably don’t know it but your number system is social! While we’re talking about social systems, I talked about privilege and how to contemplate it as a person who benefits from it that isn’t just like, you drip with it, and about the way that people can try and make other people make their arguments for them and also also I wrote about how we exist in a situation where ‘the right thing’ that ‘should’ work won’t.

Also? I had my 20th wedding anniversary a few hours ago. Weird day to write about!

I made this shirt design a while back, referencing a podcast I like and an activity I support (the cool and rad buying of machetes and bolt cutters which are probably useful tools for breaking locks on things like billionaires’ mansions). I still like it, you can check it out on black shirts and white shirts.

Alright, month of May, the diary, the over of it all, what about what happened in May. What happened in May? Hmm. Well, there was a birthday celebration for me, which meant I got given some homemade chilli. I got some lovely sambal, made some great curries with it. The semester wended to a close (like, tomorrow is the last day I’m going to class and that’s going to be just to play and prototype and help students out).

Comic-gong happened! Local convention! I got to see some of my former students who were really excited and we got to chat about stuff they hadn’t seen for a while. I got stickers that I then put in my bullet journal how cool is that. Hey why don’t – why do I call it that? LIke it’s my diary. I use the bullet journal method but it’s a diary, you know, I might as well put a unicorn on the cover.

Is my mind wandering inappropriately? Weird I wonder why.

I had to watch Ready Player One this month? It’s a movie I have a lot of animus towards but it’s certainly great at its task in the context, which is it’s a really well made conversation piece about what people mean and express and interpret about the things in the work they’re looking at. Even if I don’t like a thing I can still meaningfully engage with it and I love that, and I love what it gets students talking about.

Oh oh oh, we had the Suletta/Miorine vs Destiel tumblr vote this month! That was fun! I liked partaking in that and watching people get really mad about their favourite thing not being other people’s favourite things!

Basically, I had a pretty cool May. And a lot of people I know and love had awful months. Like breathtakingly bad months. Things that are hard to recover from, things that are hard to structure your life around, things that just fucking suck. It makes it hard to really think about the fact I had this month, where I got this work done and I did okay and I got to do something cool with my wife who I love.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[floweringash]

Cottonland Castle for TS3

Around six months ago, I happened to watch the last episode of "Fixer Upper: The Castle"; predictably, I fell in love with the castle and decided to build it in The Sims 3, aided by the rough blueprint featured in the program.

Given that this would be my most ambitious project in The Sims 3 and that I'm far from an expert builder (I suck rather than shine), I made a plan as thorough as possible, copying the blueprint on a squared sheet, calculating the dimensions of the rooms to maintain proportions, and basically screenshotting the whole episode to replicate Waco's Cottonland Castle as best as possible.

As much as I wanted my creation to resemble the original, I also wanted it to be accessible to all players, so I made it base game with a few exceptions:

External wallpaper (from TS3 Ambitions)

Storied Tale Stairs in the entrance hall (from the Store; you should be able to replace them with a regular spiral staircase)

Planted Palm in the greenhouse (from Roaring Heights)

Very Symmetrical Table in the dining room (from TS3 Seasons; can be replaced by a regular long table)

Kitchen Cage Hutch in the kitchen and the pantry (from the Store)

After the renovation, the real-life castle has two floors plus an independent apartment in the basement, but I decided to remove the latter since the house would have become too big (in my opinion). It still features an entrance hall, a living room, a dining room, two kitchens, two and a half bathrooms and three bedrooms, enough to host a family of five. It was built in Sunset Valley, while the photos were (horribly, as usual) taken both in Sunset Valley and in Dragon Valley – the latter is also the reason why the ground looks funnily coloured. I swear it was better in Sunset Valley…

GROUND FLOOR

Entrance hall:

Living room:

Dining room:

Kitchen:

Pantry:

Greenhouse:

No photos were taken for the half bathroom since it's too small to look good in them.

FIRST FLOOR

Corridor with the library:

Master bedroom:

Master bathroom:

Boy's room:

Girls' room:

The girls' room also has a little wardrobe, too small to take good photos.

Bathroom:

OUTSIDE

In the garden there are toys for children and one parking space, which is probably the only downside if the family has more cars. But alas, perfection doesn't exist.

Download at the Exchange

[iwantadoughnut]

so a few months ago i sold the ps4 because i had no money. nobody used it for ages and it was always sitting there. i was the only one who played it. and everyone else in the house had their own games and consoles and computers now to have, so they didn’t even remember it was there. i sold it for $80 since it was used and we had it since like 2013. my brothers account was on it, with games he downloaded, but i made sure to take it off and restart the ps4 so there’s nobody on there. he did not touch the ps4 for like two years? i didn’t delete his account or any of his data, and just made sure he would not be found when someone bought it.

and i didn’t tell anyone because my family has a weird complex about me doing things. i go out and do my own things, and it’s like i’m immediately irresponsible and they want to hurt me because of it. even if it has nothing to do with them. it’s like a family where i’m the one who needs to be got even though everyone else in the family has all their needs met.

and fyi my brother is nearly 30, still lives at home, and hasn’t had a job or wanted a job to make a living since he was 18. he has his own room, even though i share with my sister since i was a child, and he refuses to move out. his room has so much expensive technology in there, like two monitors, a flat screen tv, a treadmill, a bunch of lego, yugioh, and pokémon memorabilia, lights, a king sized bed and so much more. and it’s like he got so upset when he found i out sold the ps4 when his account was on there, even thought i got it off beforehand, and he just can’t access it anymore because we don’t have it. he would have to buy a new ps4 in order to see his account again and access all of his things.

yeah. scared of my brother.

[saxxxology]

In the Barman’s Bed | Oneshot

PAIRING: Cordell Walker x Reader

WORD COUNT: 2,100

WARNINGS: implied future family planning, committed relationship, smut, face riding, fingering, Cordell has a dirty mouth, rough sex, creampie

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I do not consent to minors (17-) reading my work. This story is 18+ only. Do not save, download, or repost my work on any other sites.

Cordell loves good. He’s smart and sweet, a little awkward getting back into the dating game but he’s gotten better, bringing you flowers and taking you to all the local farmers markets and craft festivals. He’s still getting used to loving another woman after Emily, learning all the things you do differently just as much as what the two of you have in common.

Cordell loves steady. It’s hard at first with his kids and working on the family ranch full time, but he’s gotten better at keeping a schedule: dinners with the family on Friday nights, date nights on Saturdays, and sporadic after-school ice creams with his kids. It’s a sweet little rinse-and-repeat that’s made the last six months heaven.

Cordell loves hard, whether it be casual brushes of the back of his work-calloused hand against yours in public or the surge of his body against yours when he’s got you naked and open, on your back with your legs spread for him. He’s sweet and tender when you want him to be, kissing all your sensitive spots until you’re blissed out, and rough when you need him to be, bruising your flesh with his fingers and saying all kinds of filthy things as he fucks you into orgasm after orgasm.

Needless to say, you’re happy with him. And he’s happy with you. Thinking of the post-breakup night you’d decided to head to a bar you’d never heard of before and found yourself in the ex-Ranger-turned-barman’s bed the next morning feels like a fever dream. You’d expected a one night stand, but here you are, six months in, and you haven’t left.

Your six-month anniversary lines up perfectly. You’d planned to go on a road trip to Yosemite anyway, and with the kids being out of school for the summer, it’ll be a good opportunity to get a little more involved with them.

You have to get involved with them — you and Cordell had decided a long time ago that your relationship, albeit relatively fresh, is headed in a strong direction. No summer fling, no on-and-off-again bullshit, no jokes. You’re serious, enough for you to consider the fact that, at some point, Cordell’s kids might just end up being your step-children. Hell, the two of you might just pop out a baby of your own, if you have the opportunity.

You’ve been so busy packing and getting ready for being gone for two weeks that you and Cordell have barely had time to see each other in several days. You decide to stay with him the night before you leave, just to make things a little easier for leaving in the morning. The kids go to bed early, so you decide to head out to your renovated guest house for a couple drinks and an episode of whatever before you hit the hay.

“You know,” Cordell says, watching you toss the spare pillows on your side of the bed to the floor, “we’re not gonna have much alone-time for the next couple weeks.”

“Oh?” You crawl up onto the mattress. “That so?”

He hums, allowing you to crawl on top of him. “Figured we could have one good romp to keep us good and happy.”

You giggle when his hands slide up your sides, teasing your robe off your body until it flutters to the bed behind you. “I think I got enough for a good quickie in me.”

Cordell grins, pulling you down against him until your mouth meets his. He tastes warm and minty-sweet, and when you lick at his lower lip, he lets out a playful moan that makes your cunt throb. His hands dig into the cheeks of your ass, and you arch your back when he moves his hips up, rubbing his growing erection against your belly.

“Gotta get you ready,” he murmurs, “get up here.”

You hold your breath when he tugs you up, scooting down just enough to get far enough away from the headboard and get his head between your legs. He pulls you down when you don’t move fast enough, kissing the inside of your thigh before licking through your folds. A hoarse sigh escapes your throat, and you brace one hand against the top of the headboard to keep yourself steady as his fingers dip into the soft flesh of your hips.

“Y’taste like sugar, baby,” he praises, smirking like the devil himself as he buries his head between your legs. Your hips roll, guided by his hands as you reach for the headboard for support. He hums, kissing the inside of your thigh before returning his attention to your clit. It’s all you can do to keep your composure, gently rocking your hips back and forth as Cordell squeezes handfuls of your flesh, moaning with satisfaction.

“Oh, fuck…” you tilt your head back, one hand sliding down to tangle in his hair, “Cordi… holy shit, please—”

He makes a muffled groan between your legs, lapping quicker and harder until you start to shake. His hand falls on your ass, the sting of it earning him a whimper of pleasure from you. Two fingers curl up between your legs, pressing at your entrance until you rock down and take them in. He’s gotten real good at doing this, massaging the sweet spot deep inside you while he licks your clit in perfect rhythm.

He has you cumming in minutes, eyes sparkling wickedly as he watches your body move under the force of your orgasm. Your mouth opens in a wide O, your breaths getting higher and faster until you pull away, pussy hovering just out of reach as you shudder through the blissful aftershocks.

“That’s m’girl,” he purrs, pressing and squeezing on your thighs. “Get on down there, baby… wanna see you ride me.”

You hum, rubbing your hands over his chest as you settle over him. He reaches down, grabbing himself firmly to guide himself right up where it’s warm and wet, and you let out a high, breathy sigh when he pulls you down on him. His hips press into your inner thighs, warm and firm against soft flesh, and where he’s splitting you open, throbbing deep inside you… it feels so fucking perfect that you can’t even let yourself stretch out to take him properly before you start moving.

“Fuck,” you whisper, “baby…”

Cordell lets out a raspy groan, pusing his pelvis up into yours at the same time you rock down. You take his hands, guiding them up your sides until he takes over. The flesh of your breasts curves soft in his palms, and you arch forward, giving him a show as you start to ride and grind on him.

“Fuck, that feels real nice,” he praises, “c’mon, baby, ride a little harder, this bed ain’t gonna break.”

You let out a breathless moan, digging your nails into his chest until he lets out a soft huff and tips his head back, eyes squeezed shut. You’ve figured out what he likes best, all the little tricks that make him lose every ounce of control, and when you give your hips a little twist and roll, his palms slap down on your hips, fingers digging in hard enough to surely bruise.

“God, you little fuckin’—” his voice cuts off when you do it again, and he cranes his neck, teeth bared up at you. You lean down, arms stretching over his shoulders as you hold your hips down on him, and he claims your mouth in a fierce, heated kiss.

“You love it, don’t pretend you don’t,” you murmur.

Cordell laughs, the sound breathless against your mouth, and his fingers dig into the soft flesh of your hips. “Damn right… go on, baby, grind that pretty little cunt on me.”

You hum, leaning back slowly and pressing your palms against his chest. He tugs you roughly back and forth, eyes unblinking and fixed on the bounce of your breasts. He lifts one hand, sticking his thumb between his lips to wet the pad, and sticks it down between your legs, rubbing firmly on your clit.

“Fuck,” he gasps when you squeeze around him. “That’s it, baby girl, faster… fuck, you look so goddamn pretty…”

You let out a soft whimper at the praise, allowing your lower jaw to go slack as Cordell braces his heels in the mattress, meeting you thrust for thrust. He fucks you into a different rhythm, setting a rough, steady pace that makes the scoop of your hips on his feel even more delicious. His thumb slips back and forth on your clit, earning high-pitched squeaks and moans as the pressure helps your orgasm creep closer and closer.

“Shit, I can feel you,” he mutters, “g’on, baby girl, cum for me. Wanna feel your pussy cummin’ on my dick.”

You don’t need to be told twice. Your head falls back, mouth open wide as your body takes over. The rough movement of your hips coaxes his cock against your sweet spot, and just when you think you can’t take any more, and your thighs are burning with the effort of moving, you shudder through a wave of heat that has you slumping forward, pelvis dragging hard against his as you fuck him through your climax.

“Yeah, that’s m’girl.” Cordell grunts when your movements stutter. “C’mon, ride it outta me, I’m almost there.”

“Can’t,” you gasp, “fuck, Cordi, I can’t…”

He takes over without protest, wrapping one arm around your waist and rolling over to dump you right on your back. He takes advantage of your proximity to the headboard to reach over, wrapping nimble fingers around one of the sturdy rungs for leverage. You have to bite your lip to stifle a cry of overwhelming pleasure as Cordell takes what he wants, fucking into you with long, desperate strokes that have your eyes rolling back into your skull.

He wasn’t lying about being close — he only makes it a minute or so, and you cling to him when he shoves forward, looking down between your legs so you can watch his cock throb and pulse. He loves cumming inside you, especially when you squeeze him extra tight and get his orgasm to last a little longer.

He pulls out with a hiss, sweeping his fingers through his hair as he stares down at you. “You’re fuckin’ perfect,” he whispers, “I’m gonna miss fuckin’ you, you know that.”

“It’s only two weeks,” you reply, grinning up at him as you press your thighs together. “We should clean up ‘fore I wreck your bed.”

“Wouldn’t be mad if this is the reason.” He kisses you, deep and hard, and kneels back to help you off the bed.

The shower is quick, just enough for you to scrub away sweat and slick and as much of his cum as you can. Cordell leaves you to wash up a little longer, and when you pad back into the bedroom you find him dressed in a tee shirt and a pair of ratty sweats, arranging the little fan on his dresser turned towards the bed. The room smells like sweat and sex, and you giggle when he reaches for the lavender and vanilla room spray you’d bought him a while back.

“Stella’s on the couch,” he whispers, “she came in while we were in the shower. Don’t want the whole house smellin’ like this.”

You offer him a soft smile. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s good.” Cordell sprays a few pumps of mist into the air. “Sometimes she can’t sleep in her own room, she sneaks in here and camps out on the couch. Besides, it’ll be easier getting her up earlier.”

“Mmm.” You reach for a nightshirt and drop it over your head before climbing underneath the covers. “Get in here, don’t let me get cold.”

He chuckles, turning off the bedside lamp and snuggling in beside you. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

You stretch out when he slings an arm over your waist, his head resting on the large pillow you’ve figured out how to share. “I’m excited.”

“Well, hold on now, missy, we just—”

“Not like that,” you reply, “I mean about going on this trip. August and I are kinda on the same track, but I think Stella’s a little more anxious about it. It’ll be good.”

Cordell hums in agreement. “Can’t argue with that. Get some rest, we got a long day tomorrow.”

You can’t help but smile when he leans in, kissing underneath your jaw. “I’m trying to, go to sleep.”

He chuckles. “All right. Night, darlin’.”

“Night, Cordi.”

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