T w e n t y S i d e d

Lottie’s BookNook is a modest success. It’s not lines down the block or somewhere people drive to go see, but completely empty afternoons are rarer than full ones. Kids 12 to 16 come in and pool their money together to rent the Wii for a few hours to play Super Smash Brothers. They’ve gotten requests to sell manga and anime art books, and fulfilling that request gives them another little bump in activity. Manga isn’t yet the easiest thing to get in their area of the world, it will be soon, but for now the couple is jumping through some hoops to get it. Kitchen Princess, Naruto, and Bleach are their main sells, because they’re some of the easier to stock, but they start to get kids asking about renting the books instead. Manga is expensive and the current main demographic for it isn’t old enough to have money to buy. The library doesn’t have manga yet, and it’s leaving the BookNook as the only outlet to get it. They begin a rental system. For $3 the kids can rent any book for a week, with a surcharge if they get damaged in any way.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: David”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

The year is now 2012. This is the moment that I realize I’ve made Logan just a few years younger than myself. He turns 12 as the year does (or close to it, anyway) just like my younger brother Peter did when he hit 12. This makes keeping track of time relatively easy, thank god.

Lottie’s BookNook has had some shockingly successful months, three to be exact, since they opened. Michael and Kelly had imagined a steady stream of cost or income which they would find once their store had been open a year. They assumed that once open it would be clear if they would enjoy a little boost from it, or an ongoing cost they’d have to budget for. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Some months the shop feels like a consistent bleed of money, and some they get an exciting little payout. Annoyingly, it doesn’t ever line up with when they expect the highs and lows to be.  A popular book comes out and they expect more traffic, but the mall has it for cheaper and the wholesale price for a store barely makes it worth carrying. A month is supposed to be bad and then a regular D&D group rent the place every Friday night for two months. They get used to the group and appreciate the people they bring in, and then the party stops meeting because someone went to college and someone else got a new job.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: The 8th Graders”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them