🌟 Welcome to Nowhere 🌟

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hi folks! this is gonna be a thread for me to show off things i'm proud of in my town, Nowhere!

my first Animal Crossing town, in like 2008 on the GameCube game played on my Wii with the disc on loan from my public library, was called "Nowhere" because Cap'n asked "Where you headed?" and I was a snarky little kid. since then a bunch of my towns have been named that, for nostalgia's sake.

this iteration of Nowhere, like most of my Animal Crossing towns, is built around a theme of community. each little area I set up is shaped by what I think are staples of a community - physical spaces for neighbors to interact with each other and their environment, and shape it in a way that benefits everyone. lots of these end up being mirrors of what you might find in your own community IRL -- my towns have always have libraries, animal shelters, etc. New Horizon's key feature of putting furniture outdoors has been so much fun and has allowed me to build spaces that I'd like all communities to have access to.

anyway! let's get started!

 

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CURRENT RESIDENTS:
Lionel, Grizzly, Chevre, Dom, Paula, Julia
Leopold, Doc, Piper, Cyrano

KEY:
keeping forever sorry lol
love 'em! can leave if i can find a replacement i love more!

 

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that's the character i play as, based on me, lol

this is my house:

i love the bamboo noodle slide item, my IRL life goal is to have a grey-water system and that's the only reason i would ever even begin to consider owning my own home. there's also succulents outside because IRL i have about 30-40 succulents on my porch. they're adaptable and hardy, and fun to take care of. i love how many succulent items we have in-game!

here are some of my interior rooms:


i love kotatsus and use them entirely too often around my island, but that's because i want one IRL. my living room has a laptop with ao3 (archive of our own, the fanfiction site) open, a big bookshelf (the likes of wish i dream about owning), a little area to make coffee (because i am 100% caffeine dependent), and a bunk bed for a guest (because my home is always, first and foremost, a shelter)

i change up the wallpaper/flooring, rugs and pattern designs on customized furniture, and little knick-knacks as the seasons change; but the layout stays pretty much the same!

kitchen:


bathroom:


i'll post my basement, upstairs bedroom, and study/office in a separate post, i think!

 

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reserved for:
resident - hermit

this post should include:
- island ID
- house (exterior)
- explanation of "character"
- house (interior)

 

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RESERVED FOR:

neighbor yards & homes (if re-designed)


CURRENT RESIDENTS:

Doc
Doc's hobby is education, his home request is "a fun place for books", and his goal is "programmer". I didn't actually check goals before designing yards or interiors, so I kind of went with a language-learning theme; but I think this works well for programming too!

Dom
Dom's hobby is play and his home request is "house of gizmos", so i think all of the fun toys in his home look good!

Paula
Paula's hobby is fitness and her home request is a karaoke parlor! (her goal is volleyball player, which, again, oops! but oh well)

Kyle
haven't done the interior yet!

Julia
haven't done the interior yet!

 

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central northern shore

post office:

laundromat:

lavender garden:

Maker space:

 

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north-end of town center

bee farm:

orchard:

plant walkway:

i grew these! flower arrangement:

 

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around my house

zen island:

flower breeding is hard/front yard:

(i really need leif to sell me some yellow rose seeds so i can get hybrid red roses, rip)

 

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here's some more stuff around town!

this is on the northern-most shore, you can see the secret beach where Redd docks. (that area is a memorial to my late partner who died in 2018, an artist who was super excited for ACNH, and that's all i wanna say about that for now! this is a happy post)

this is where the pop-up books live, because the library has to have ALL of the book items on display

posting these made me realize i left out the space heaters from winter! oops! i'll be getting rid of those next time i start up the game.

anyway libraries are super important! support your local public library!

 

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THIS one i'm REALLY proud of, i think it came out super cute -- it's a playground with a dinosaur theme! my favorite thing to do with setting up outdoor areas is to find things in unrelated sets that pair nicely together. the egg day set, to me, always felt like the least versatile/usable set of holiday items, but i really like how i used them here!

public parks with playgrounds are also super important! children in your community are just as much your neighbors and community members as their parents are! it's important for infrastructure to be considerate of the needs of all of its residents, including families with small children. (i don't actually have any kangaroos on my island, but i think they're cute and i sort of wish their babies had names!)

public parks are also important IRL for reasons completely separate from childcare but this is not an urban planning class and i'm only writing these little blurbs for funsies so i'm done talking about this for now!

 

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i really love islands that have natural elements in them and i tried to do that in the area around my campsite!

i especially love the fallen log bridge, it works best on cliffs like this but i use it on the ground in another area of town as well.
here's the code for that:


here's another of little nature-y areas around town:

and here are some of the custom designs i used:

 

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this is sort of a gameplay update!

as many people know, you can farm balloons by lining your beaches with extra-tall items, like the climbing wall or jail bars.

well, the floating blocks work too!

they're harder to place, because you still have to be careful that there's only 1/2 space between them and you can't push/pull them so you have to pocket and re-place them, but they do work. and that means i can walk on my beach again, and get gulliver again!

you can also put items on top of the floating blocks, which i've done in a couple of areas, and i'll post those later.

 

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I've had a lot of minor changes to my town and I'm going to post them, because I need to earn some BTB, lol!

I'm crazy about Happy Home Paradise and am working towards editing my villagers' houses, because boy, some of these fools really need basic amenities in their homes. When I play HHD/P I always include bathrooms as a rule, and try to include kitchens as well; it's wild to me that only a few villagers have, like, toilets! I have two places around town with discreet port-a-potties and hand washing stations because of this. (OBVIOUSLY I am aware that it is a video game and does not matter but listen. It's my island and I get to decide which banalities to focus on).

IRL access to sanitation is a major issue! Many parks lock their public restrooms at night, and as anyone who lives near or in a major city knows, this can create problems. Sometimes food banks will stock hazard/bio-waste bags and it's a shame that practice isn't more widespread, but they're expensive and no one really likes talking about it. At least in my experience, ALL food banks stock basic sanitary products (bars of soap, menstrual supplies, toothpaste and toothbrushes, etc).

On that note, I've also set up a cute little free food station/public-access kitchen!

The general theme of my island is public spaces and how they foster community. Public parks, public library systems, public transportation (though I only have a teeny tiny bus station by the Airport, and since public transport in my area is.... not great... I'm not planning on expanding upon this), even things that you wouldn't really consider to be gathering spaces of sorts but still are anchors in a community, like the post office or laundromats.

Imagine, if you will, a public kitchen that follows the same model as your public library. (And sometimes!! Your public library HAS many of these tools in place!!! Some libraries have small appliances you can rent out! A friendly reminder as the holiday season approaches and crock-pot space is at a premium!!) Not only as a rent-a-tool system, but as a community gathering space in which to learn basic skills and share meals with your neighbors. Learn new recipes! (And I ADORE how New Horizons is adamant about sharing DIY recipes -- your villagers will teach you when they're making something, and even if you've already learned it they give you a DIY anyway, explicitly asking you to share it with someone who doesn't know it. That sort of focus on sharing knowledge is beautiful and something I deeply admire about the Animal Crossing series.)

Anyway obviously part of the appeal to building a public kitchen in-game is that you don't have to run home to cook something. And after cooking was introduced (CAN YOU BELIEVE WE GET TO GROW VEGETABLES AND COOK NOW???? I AM OVER THE MOON.) a lot of the kitchen items became more fun, as they weren't just accessories in your house anymore.

I actually had a whole side character set up whose house was a restaurant and I was going to make one of his rooms into a food bank, but maintaining the profile just got to be a chore and I ended up deleting him. rip Jacque lol.

Anyway I'll post pictures soon! I don't expect anyone to read all of this I'm just writing it for my own pleasure and to earn a couple bells lol

 

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here's a quick couple of pictures!

very excited about the professional headphones item from the 2.0 update! wanted to make my library more accessible and was gonna use the DJ cap for the longest time, but it didn't look good.

here's my little outdoor kitchen/community garden area! definitely nothing fancy but i'm pleased with it. i also LOVE 2.0's introduction of stable ladders. i have four or five around my island, but this is the only place that's only reachable via ladder. which, i really need to fix that, but i don't want to spend the nook miles on the pro construction upgrade...

this little area is nice and didn't change at all post 2.0, but i don't think i've uploaded it yet

 

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i've made some pretty significant changes!

first, i've changed the paths around town. i'm shifting to more of a citycore theme, still with an emphasis on community spaces, but with that in mind it makes a lot of sense for me to use a lot of citycore elements, like paved roads and sidewalks, lots of street lights and manholes, etc. the paths on most of the island now look like this; a sort of road plus sidewalk thing:

next, and i'm really excited about this one: PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. there's a "subway" system connecting the north and south of the island. it's actually super convenient to use! i was really expecting it to just be eye candy, but i find myself hopping in the pipes all the time, especially as i'm laying new paths everywhere.

because i had to shift stuff around to make the second subway area somewhere that was actually useful, i've gotten rid of the little lavender garden/greenhouse space and put the diy/pottery area in its place. everything is flush together and i'm really pleased with how it all looks next to each other!

i've also added a little forced-perspective train area, to kind of hint at the subway again, but it isn't quite cohesive and i didn't really leave enough space to make it easily visible. it'll stay for now, but i've gotta rework it somehow. and then there's the issue of what i'm going to do with that space when i move it. but whatever!

a lot of other areas on the island remain mostly unchanged, but some minor additions have made them look nicer. i love finding gyroids that work with little areas, like this bloopoid for my marine biology lab.

i reworked the beachfront restaurant, and it's functional re: cooking. i'm not actually cooking a lot, which is a shame, because i was really excited for that new feature but i just haven't found any incentive to do so. i think maybe if like, when you cooked things, your neighbors ate them instead of using them as decoration in their homes, i would cook more. idk.

another big change, i got rid of my big star gazing area and little fountain area, they just didn't feel original and i wasn't using them. so now i've got this huge space to play with! i'm going to build a giant sand castle with the castle items, but they're really expensive, so i'm saving up poki to get them.



finally here's a little fake building i made on my peninsula. it was hard to get this shot because i currently have floating blocks lining my beaches so balloon presents are redirected to the area i play in, and i'm not planning on getting rid of those any time soon because they were such a pain to place.