012: LDR / fake a** moms
Arns lets herself wallow in sadness about long-distance loved ones. Nins is touched by Letters from Mom in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Referenced in this episode:
Animal Crossing Context & History (National Videogame Museum)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Wikipedia)
Parents/Letters (Nookipedia)
"Letters From My Dead Mom in Animal Crossing" by Alex Shevrin Venet for Modern Loss
0:00 - Intro
7:48 - Arns: LDR
25:55 - Nins: fake a** moms
[WARNING: this content contains spoilers]
episode summary
In this episode, Arns begins by diving into her personal experiences with long-distance relationships, talking about some of her close friends she only sees once in a while and how technology can help mitigate the sadness that comes with having loved ones who live far away.
Nins discusses the emotional impact of Animal Crossing: New Horizons through letters sent by the character’s in-game mother. Nins uses these letters to talk about her feelings of love and nostalgia, emphasizing the power of imagination in video games and how they can provide an emotional escape.
Until next time…brb crying :’)
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hi I'm Angela Nons I'm Ariana Kempis and this is brb [Music] crying hey everyone welcome back to BRB crying I'm Ariana also known as arns and I'm nins also known as [ ] you know what 12 episodes still haven't nailed it quite yet yeah your name is really a hard thing to learn so you know have some Grace yeah yeah yeah nin also known as an also known as Angela yeah [ ] it I don't think you've ever referred to yourself as an on this podcast yes correct in real life I always refer to myself as an many people refer to many people refer to me as an and you're the only one that calls me nins and it was hard for us to yeah I just figured okay nins will be [Music] personality but I don't know I just the an naturally comes out yeah you you are the only person who calls me arns that's so not true it is really yes no Mark Mark calls you arns for sure um sometimes I guess she does actually never mind exclusively two people you and one other person no that's still that's still not very many that's true so that's true and now the rest of the world will know us as nins and arns arns and nins yeah anyway we're back we're back we're back to do this podcast where week after week after week say it 12 times because it's the 12th episode we just keep on [ ] crying and we keep on talking about it yeah and uh we decided to press record while doing so mhm so that you can listen in fly on the wall yeah and you can be like wow that would also make me cry yeah exactly wow I think the same things they do yeah yes I like them uh-huh yeah I want to be their friend mhm keep going I'm going to like all their social media posts I'm going to rate them five starns I am going to subscribe uh-huh to their substack yes you are you are and by the way we have a substack so go and find our link and bio on Instagram so on Instagram and all socials we beb crying. podcast and we will also link it in our show notes but please follow us we are so funny online we're so funny in writing too crazy if you can believe it yeah so um that's my [ ] pitch please we funny I promise please I swear yeah yeah the substack is not only us being so funny and witty and cool but we also share just more material that really resonated with us in some form it'll be links to things that we found really interesting that we don't necessarily have the bandwidth to share on an episode but we still thought it was important enough to blast out in some way or other so and some some Reflections some you know cry thoughts maybe even Community Building aspects you know I mean what more can you ask for honestly yeah so I I don't think do you have anything else just I guess checking in on my bestie how are you doing how are you feeling I'm feeling good yeah yeah I went down a as you know a skin care Rabbit Hole this morning found an influencer mhm I was like when you sent me that video of her Perfect Skin I was like I didn't know skin could do that I know you know is what I'm saying and if you look if you scroll back she had cystic acne she struggled with a lot of stuff and so to see that potential it's just really cool how sometimes social media can open your eyes to things like that yeah and she's just so funny and honest and I was like you know what I want to take this form of self-care upon myself like I want to really start taking care of myself that way yeah one of the things that I really love about like the Skin Care culture is that it's really trying to emphasize like not only finding that healthy version of You by taking care of yourself but just like embracing the natural features of yourself by saying like hey you don't have to wear as much makeup if you can just take care of your skin take care of you mhm you know I love it yeah it's a pretty penny but yeah [ ] yeah you know I'm I'm dabbling yeah what was the name of the Creator I'm pretty sure her name is Pauline J Choy okay honestly I just I love when people are okay sorry I'm a dick but I love when people are funny enough to make me laugh do you know what I mean I know you know what I mean yeah when you don't have to do like a laugh because you feel obligated to yeah and you're just like yeah yeah which I know none of you listening are actually doing because we're genuinely hilarious no yeah that was horrifying um but yeah I know what you mean yeah yeah how are you I'm doing good I was having a rough couple of weeks but we've entered Virgo season he have we Virgo season oh my gosh what a time I know I'm pretty sure this episode will publish the week of your birthday I think I think it'll be right after my birthday yes happy birthday oh thanks you know I cried I know I was just going to say hope you've recovered from crying on your birthday I I don't know what it is I I cry every birthday yeah Arns was like she wrote in our group chat once she's like you know how you guys like always cry on your birthday right and we were like babe what no might be the minority in this group but I totally see that it's a thing birthday Blues you know the that song it's my birthday I can oh it's not birthday it's is it party or oh I think it's party okay well anyway obviously I've internalized it as it's my birthday I can cry if I want to yeah yeah um yeah I don't remember a birthday I haven't cried so yeah and that's fine you know what that's the [ ] that's the whole [ ] thesis of this it's okay to cry yeah it's actually fabulous yeah yes exactly yeah so yeah doing good chugging along like we always do we'll figure it out like we always do that's what I got that's what I got today all right so should we get into it just [ ] do it I guess all right [Music] okay looks like you're starting off this week arns yes I am starting off I would say it's a pretty short and sweet little one yeah yeah okay well because it's a personal thing okay okay so you know I don't have a ton to say yeah just kidding are you sure us the biggest lie that's ever come out of my mouth um yeah so today I'm going to be talking about missing your longdistance loved ones okay so recently I went on a little trip to New York to visit my cousin jelly pie who I also coincidentally shot it out last week so you know jelly pie you're just yeah you're doing it you know and some context for everyone who does not know me personally I have a cousin named Angelica we call her jelly pie and we grew up together we all really grew up together yeah but she really was more like my sister we went to all the same schools all of that but then after school our grandparents would pick us up I mean we have all these stories of us wrestling on the ground and like fighting over who could wake up my grandpa for coffee things like that so very much integrated in my childhood and my adult life and so she lives in Brooklyn and because of that we really only see her like maybe two or three times a year mostly just when she decides to come home holidays maybe weddings and I should probably say how we're related um maybe that doesn't matter our dads are brothers if you cared she is only 9 months younger than me so we were the closest Cousins in age growing up to each other yeah so because she lives so far away and we only see her when she comes home we decide we would try and make a trip out there to see her it was just four or 5 days it was really short but I have a child so I'm not planning anything Virgo who you know for once in our lives you know what I mean mhm mhm and the thing is she's one of the few people who I could trust to piece together the itinerary and I knew that I was going to have an incredible time no matter what she chose yeah does she also have Virgo in her chart cuz also really excellent yes but I don't think she has her birth certificate so she doesn't know for sure but there's no way she doesn't because she's so so there's some sort of Earth sign there for sure for sure yeah so she had this whole itinerary planned and it was so thoughtful it was like she knows what it's like to have a kid not that that was very Mis excuse me I'm so sorry that was so mising news she does not have a kid but she has her nieces and her nephews and she knows what it's like and so it was just one big thing every day and then a meal but the caveat for all of it was it's all flexible and I was like I could have cried just looking at that I was like oh my God you know farmers markets museums Central Park fairy ride Incredible food and I like how I said that I don't have a lot to say and everything I just said is not even on my [ ] notes anyway um I don't have your stamina I I can't recount this whole trip but I will tell you my highlights sure give you a little taste so my first highlight I have three that I wrote down so my first one was seeing this incredible community that she's built after living there for how many yearns and I mean we're walking down the street near her apartment building and she's saying hi to people she knows their dogs names and they're having conversations actually catching up about their lives you know we're eating at this one restaurant and a friend passes by and they're like hey and they're like oh are you going to this this this later and they're like yeah yeah we'll see you there and it's like oh my God it's so cool it's very different from the life I lead at least and it made me realize that I could be way more intentional about cultivating Community not just online what we're doing here but even the people around me and so I've been like like I mean my neighbors are old and stuff but you know i' try and wave to them now and I would probably if I see them around just standing outside their house I'll probably try and talk to them more and so that was a really cool thing to see and then another highlight for me was when we were at Central Park I'd been there before but I didn't know there was a lake in the middle and we walked around it and we went to all her favorite nooks and crannies it felt like we were in a rainforest almost it was so beautiful there were these birds chirpping and it was such a great escape from the Heat and SAA knocked out instantly in her stroller and I was like that's how you [ ] know this is a Vibe when she falls asleep and so that was just a really cool little reprieve from being in the city and my last favorite moment that I'm wanted to highlight was so she has a courtyard in her apartment building and there is a corner just full of kids toys there's scooters and bikes and slides and wagons and everything is dirty and Rusty and half working but we went to the courtyard and we were just messing around we were like sitting on the wagons pushing each other around and it was just so it was so fun and it was such a playful moment and for me it was like I had kind of been transported back to just this common threat throughout our whole lives just being young together and you could be kids again being kids again being girls together being girls together yeah it was like that and joar is just kind of there yeah joar and her partner Jay no no no I mean it was it was all but you know I feel that way a lot at home because I have SAA but to feel it with other people too is really refreshing who were there when you were yes genuinely that age exactly and what's funny is that could have been anywhere we didn't have to be in the middle of Brooklyn doing that so yeah that was I think my favorite moment of the whole trip but overall incredible I will say the travel piece itself uh horrible really oh yeah oh dang checkin was overweight trying to do the Mad scramble oh my God they waited uhhuh there was oh you forgot like the bag or something I forgot the [ ] diaper changing pad oh my God my heart's freezing a little bit like oh my God that was such a big [ ] up you know and then when we landed so if you have a kid and you're ever visiting New York bring your own [ ] car seat because I had done research and we thought that Uber and lft would have car seats because that's what it said they were rolling this out okay um it's kind of true but it takes like over an hour to try and get someone to agree to it yeah yeah yeah and even like leaving going back home from her place to the airport I got canceled on like three times even though I scheduled it the night before yeah it was bad and also TSA they tell you you can bring liquids for a baby as long as it's for a baby and so I had a jar of milk and we almost missed our flight because they held us up because they had to have a specialist come oh we need the specialist to come test and I'm like do you want my kid to [ ] drink the milk right now and prove that it's safe so yeah that was really bad yeah but other than that M great time yeah but all of it is to say yes that it's worth it oh because the moment you're there this is what you're experiencing 100% 100% so yeah with all that context said I wanted to talk a little bit more about that whole piece of saying goodbye to people when you're leaving so I think I've mentioned this in a prior episode I tend to get wistful during goodbyes and normally I brush it off I'll tear up but I'll brush it off and suppress the sadness a little bit and act casual and wipe my tearns away and laugh at myself for being silly because in the grand scheme of things saying goodbye to someone doesn't feel like that big of a deal it feels feels like there are so many worse things that could warrant sadness and tearns and so in my mind it's like especially if it's not the last goodbye exactly yeah it's just a see you in a couple months probably so this time when we were saying goodbye Uber cancelled on us three times so I was [ ] we were scrambling at that point I wasn't I didn't have that time to be sad but when we finally got into the car I'm very quiet and joar turns over to me he's like are you okay and I'm just like the tearns are just coming down because For the First time ever saying goodbye to a loved one who's far away I actually thought about it and I was like oh I love this person so much and they're really far and as as much as technology can bridge that Gap as much as we have FaceTime to stay connected and it's true we do stay connected way more than people used to but it's different when you're in person with someone like here right now you forget the way they walk their little mannerisms the way they laugh and you miss out on that mindless chatter about nothing so this brought to mind that statistic that came out I think it was an article a couple yearns ago where they said that if you have loved ones that are aging like your parents or whatever and you only see them a couple times a year and then they only live for 20 more yearns you're only going to see them like so many times before they pass and I don't know I remember reading that for the first time and being a little startled by that but you know not really as applicable to me or so so I thought but it's true like for as long as my cousin and all our other loved ones who live far all my other best friends who live far away for the rest of our lives I'm only going to see them so many times so when we were in that car I really let that sadness like Steep and I didn't try to brush it off I didn't try to laugh it off I didn't try to pretend I was fine I just cried and cried and cried and I thought wow I'm going to miss her so much and how unlucky for me that someone I love so much Liv so far away and how unlucky for any of us who have loved ones who are really far away you can't just hug them when you want to hug them it was just the first time I'd ever really let myself be sad about it and again yes technology yes ways to stay connected at least you have these people in your life who you could feel this way about I know this is true but whenever we are anyone else are sad or hurt about something and I'm so guilty of this too we always try to jump to a solution or a silver lining or something to comfort that person you know when someone passes it's like at least they're in a better place I wrote It's better to have loved and lost and to never have loved at you know that [ ] [ ] don't cry because it's over smile because it happened you [ ] know but yeah I mean we we cheapen our pain and our sadness and we're not giving our hurt the space it deserves because we are so afraid of feeling even an ounce of discomfort and like we always say sometimes you just have to [ ] cry about it and feel like [ ] about it because feeling that pain is in a way acknowledging how profound that love is in your life in a way it is a form of gratitude you're recognizing that and that's why it hurts so much and I know you have loved ones that are far away too you have a best friend that's far away too and I'm really not trying to give advice or a solution I don't want to do that just affirmation that I [ ] know that it sucks I know how you feel if you do have loved ones that are far and most days it's easy you know most days it's like it's chill again there are ways to stay connected but other times you're saying goodbye to that person and it's really hard and it's really sad and that's okay we don't have to try and explain the pain away we don't have to try and pretend it's not there we don't have to stifle it we shouldn't I don't know maybe if you have a loved one and and you say goodbye to them maybe next time let yourself just wallow in it you know let yourself recognize how much it hurts everything you said agree with wholeheartedly especially with being physically around a person because the facetimes and all of that it does seem almost ceremonious like okay are you going to be available at this time to you schedule it yeah you ask very focused questions about how they're doing yeah and you're just catching up yes but there is such a stressfree Joy of just sitting on a couch and even if you're both digging around on your phones at least you're together and you feel that proximity and you can watch them do nothing and it's just like ah this is great and it's hard because you adapt so easily and say oh yeah if this is my new normal how wonderful and then those go buys come and it's like wait I have to go back to my other life and that adjustment period is the hardest part cuz part of you is still there wanting to be in that space where you're just on that couch and you said most days it's easy because those are the days when we not forget but we're not as it's not as raw yeah those those are painful especially when it's someone that has seen so many versions of you every version every version of you where there's like no need to talk it's just kind of a look at you and I get what you're feeling I get what you're thinking and yeah we should treasure those we should feel how we feel about those people wholeheartedly yeah I know I talked a lot about a lot I only talked about my cousin today but you know my other best friends I know you're listening like my best friend Nikki I mean I haven't seen her in like two yearns and we see each other maybe every few yearns and that statistic again it's like we're most likely never going to live in the same place ever again so what I'm going to see her maybe I don't know 15 20 more times and that's really sad it's almost not even I mean for me I don't necessarily have as many loved ones that are physically far away don't worry Marty yes you're like one of the few but for me it's not even the physical distance it's the fact that there are people who were in my life that I was so so so so close to at some point and for one reason or another we just don't see each other that much even though they're 40 minutes away you know they're just the next town over but life happens we enter these new phases in our lives we have children we get married we go to a different job it's just like a sadness of like what that time in our life was like and missing that missing that closeness mhm yeah there's no solution there isn't you really just have to sit with it mhm and that's okay and it's okay yeah whoever you are miss you love you all right this might be a hard one for me to get through oh it'll start out really fun okay so I guess not really a hard pivot in what sense that we cry about it fair fair all right I'm ready all right oh you didn't say your cry level I realize that we keep forgetting to [ ] do this like the one structure when I write the blog post I make it up five out of 10 tearns for yeah yeah um five out of 10 yearns okay yeah yeah okay five out of 10 this one is three out of 10 but I think it's because I'm suppressing oh we're still learning how to unleash but before I reveal my topic today I unfortunately have to take us back to a time from not too long ago the month is March the year is 2020 let me set the scene your dining room is converted into a makeshift office mhm you have cords flailing about on your floor starting to sound Vaguely Familiar your husband's whipping a dalona coffee every other day oh my God you go on Instagram every story is a push-up challenge or drawing fruit do you remember this yeah everyone was like a [ ] artist drawing oranges I was like how the [ ] are you doing this with the shading and stuff I couldn't do it the bread oh the bread my the plants I'm obviously clearly talking about the first quarantine during the covid-19 pandemic and those will be the only descriptive settings that I will include here because I think we all [ ] know like how traumatizing it all was but we were stuck at home we were left to our devices looking for anything to distract us from what was happening in the world and what was one such distraction for me a game serendipitously released on March 20th 2020 it was a low stakes social simulation that allowed us to create our own worlds spend our day planting trees and fishing and picking out cute furniture and forgetting everything around us and I am of course talking about Animal Crossing New Horizons you know I never played it really I didn't have my own switch yeah so I was just sitting there behind people's shoulders watching but I [ ] know what you're talking about so go on yes yes okay but first for those of you listening contest cont [ ] hit it okay so Animal Crossing was a game that was first released like in the very very beginning was first released on the Nintendo 64 in 2001 and it was conceptualized and created by katua Uchi and hasashi Noami and the game is a firsters human character that lives in a village inhabited by various anthropomorphic animals and what is anthropomorph I don't even [ ] I can't even say it anthrop what anthropomorphic what does that mean it's like animals that talk and like they wear clothes and they act like humans okay so it means animals acting like humans correct okay yeah and the goal of the game is nothing you basically just live in this case for New Horizons you live on an island and you just develop this island and you do low stress tasks and chores accumulating wealth by fishing or farming or crafting and then selling your goods in the market just like in real life capitalism and it's basically just a cozy open-ended game that you can mold into anything that you want it to be and there have been several different installments since its first release in 2001 so we have city Folk wide world New Leaf and then this latest version New Horizons so full transparency like you I never played these when I was young even though they've been around since I was a we young TT just kidding I was like eight yearns old um but I never picked up the game until I was at the ripe old age of 27 MH because I just literally had nothing else to do at that point did you already own a switch I already owned a switch me and Lou shared a switch so Lou downloads the game on the switch and then he's playing it I'm like what are you doing and he was like oh I'm playing Animal Crossing you want to play he hands me the thing and like one of the first tasks that you do on this basically remote dessert Island deserted island desert yum one of the first things that you do you literally like walk around you press a and it's you picking up weeds you're just cleaning up this island and I was like this is amazing like so give me that exactly like I could do this all [ ] day you know just very easy mindless things on this cutesy little game hooked you know to me it was just like the perfect escape and I wasn't alone in thinking this because everyone everyone was talking about this it was all over like Instagram stories everyone was talking about it on Twitter and you know sharing these cute little pics of their islands and one of the best parts was that even though we were all cooped up at home this version of Animal Crossing allowed you to virtually visit other people's islands and then people start doing [ ] insane [ ] weddings graduation ceremonies I mean truly like Peak unhinged quarantine Behavior you know what I mean so a lot of our friends had grown up playing these games and they were pretty familiar with the functions of the games how to accumulate wealth pretty quickly and like how to create all these really cute custom designs and people were creating [ ] like masterpieces on their Islands if you ever go on Pinterest and type in Animal Crossing inspiration insane it's like art really what they can do on it but again this was my first time playing it so everything was new to me and I was really surprised by a lot of the features on this game and one of the things that really caught me by surprise were these occasional pieces of mail that get delivered to your house just randomly so when you turn on the game there's usually like some announcement about what's happening on the island that day and then the next frame is you coming out of your house and right outside your house there's a little mailbox and it kind of flashes if you have new mail and sometimes the mail is like annoying bills from Tom Nook capitalist Lord that you constantly owe money to other times it's funny little notes from the other villagers on the island but every once in a while you get a letter from Mom did you know this mm it's these letters that I want to focus on today letters from Mom and Animal Crossing so to put the story together I whipped out the switch I haven't played this in a while but I whipped it out and I scrolled all the way to the bottom of my mailbox and I scrolled back to the very first letter I ever got from this computer generated mom of mine and it's a letter that's sent to every player once they first move on to this island and it reads my dear an cuz that was the name I picked how is your new life treating you are you eating well brushing your teeth washing behind your earns oh dear I'm all worked up here's a little something to help you out and she gives you like a piece of fruit eat it or plant it but think of me Mom and she doesn't send you letters every day they kind of happen at random you don't really know when she's going to send you one but these letters are all just short and sweet little notes and I went down a rabbit hole and looked up every single letter that you can receive from Mom in every version of this game it was like 100 letters right oh my God and these letters as simple as they are they offer this wonderful picture of who this mother is and sometimes they're funny and silly for example my dear anch I decided to lose a few pounds so I started doing aerobics what a fiasco it's a long story but your dad ended up calling the fire department firemen are cute love Mom and then each year on your birthday she'll send you a birthday card my dear an do you remember when we first met of course not silly but it was on this very day if that's not caused to celebrate I don't know what is happy birthday Mom and then enclosed in the letters like a small little birthday cake that she made you and some of my favorite ones are of her just writing to share a special moment that she supposedly have this fake mom darling anch there was a full moon tonight looking up at it I couldn't help but see your big silly grin I smiled too Mom like dude who is writing these here's another moment that she just decided to share my dear aun the house is covered in snow like a thick blanket one that's cold and wet as I battle the bitter cold I think of you and so through the night stay warm my child mom so yeah again they're just such simple notes short and succinct yet in those few words they capture what it feels like to be loved by your mom and sometimes it can come off as annoying as all moms are at some point even though you know the intention was coming from a place of loving concern dear an would it kill you to visit your folks once in a while we miss you I think about you often and your dad well he misses you too but you know how he is your ever loving mom and then sometimes they're just words of pure love my dear an you know as a mother I'll never let go of my precious memories of you like those fabulous funfilled 46 hours I spent in labor you were worth every minute weren't you heart mom now the whole point of this game is to to create our own world and live our own fake life and even though it's all made up and it's all pretend every once in a while you can still find those small glimpses of humanity that seep through and in my research I came across this feature that the national video game Museum did on Animal Crossing and they Shar some context behind the inspiration of the game and in this article Katsuya iguchi one of the creators talks about moving to Kyoto in 1986 when he first joined Nintendo as a designer and he says when I moved there I left my family and friends behind in doing so I realized that being close to them being able to spend time with them talk to them play with them was such a great important thing I wondered for a long time if there would be a way to recreate that feeling and that was the impetus behind the original Animal Crossing well he [ ] crushed it um I just realized as I was reading that how relevant that was your story unplanned but yeah the game especially during the the pandemic offered that exact feeling of feeling connected and finding some peace with the Villagers with other players that were also online but also through these letters from Mom and you and I will come back time and time again to this theme of how simple things can be and even though A Mother's Love is probably one of the most powerful forces in the universe it's crazy that it can be expressed in just a few short sentences in a cutesy little game about living on an island with a bunch of animals and there was one article I came across written by Alex shervan venet who talks about her experience playing this game shortly after her mother died of cancer and what it felt like to receive these letters and she wrote on my birthday this year quote mom sent me a letter in Animal Crossing it read you'll always be my baby attached was a birthday cake which I placed on the kitchen table in my onscreen house I cheered up overwhelmed opening my gift from animal cross in mom knowing I won't ever get a real card or cake from my mother again at the same time it was a strange Comfort it felt good to pretend for a moment that my mom could send me a message from the Beyond and I read that and I was like dude it's true you know I think especially when we're going through hard things it just feels so [ ] good to pretend I know that there were other players like venet having the strange experience getting these letters from their moms who have passed but I know for a lot of us whose mothers are still around the experience could still be a disorienting one because you know there are lucky ones out there that can look at their moms and say definiely like this is my favorite person this is my best friend but I know that there's also a lot of us who have more complex relationships with our mothers especially as we get older because after all no mother child relationship is a perfect one and sometimes it can be hard it can be really hard but in this game it's easy and the thing about this game and these letters it doesn't really offer you a complete picture of who this mother is we're left to imagine her ourselves we can fill in the gaps we can finish the narrative about who this is that's sending us these notes and she's lovely and she's funny and she loves us and she loves raising us and even though she may not understand some of our choices she's always there to offer her support we can bring more Dimension to this character with our own imagination we can pull inspiration from our real life mothers or we can pretend we have what we've always wanted in a mom so yeah when things are hard we can allow ourselves to feel shitty but we can also allow ourselves to indulge even for just a moment and Escape into a fun little world where we can find some temporary peace and bask in the warmth of unconditional love that only a mom can provide you want to see some oh yeah I made a little PowerPoint for you just so you can see the graphics so I'm sharing a collection of the ones that I liked most with orangs feel free to read any out loud that you like my dear Abby so did the groundhog see its shadow today or not I saw your father Shadow it seems to grow wher every year someone was in charge of these letter and they were like this is going to be my little creative writing exercise I tried so hard to figure out like who wrote These but I couldn't find anything on it I'm sure it's a whole team of people behind it you know which makes me think like maybe some of those people on that team were like what you were saying people who didn't necessarily have the mom that they needed or wanted someone who couldn't NE neily be there for them the way they needed them to be someone who couldn't necessarily love them the way they needed to be and I wonder if anyone out there was writing these and saying it would have been nice to get a letter like this from my mom yeah or it could also just be the amalgamation of everyone's mom mhm thank you for sharing that I didn't know about those letters like just let me pick weeds like why you got to [ ] shove this in my face [Laughter] yeah you know what's interesting too is that on the game when you receive mail you can always reply like if a villager sends you a note you can send them a note back but with Mom you can't there's no obligation to there's no work that you need to do to maintain a relationship with Mom it's just automatic it's easy it's just there you know it doesn't matter what you do or don't do her love doesn't change mhm that is really interesting mhm but probably one of the truest parts of being a mom oh for sure love that yeah that's beautiful Animal Crossing Animal Crossing dude incredible work great job guys yeah Nintendo props well that's our show did we do it again I think so I think we did it again I think we did it again too yeah you told the story you told the story well this is the part where we beg you to follow us on socials beb crying.com . podcast sign up for our newsletter in the lincol bio send us a sob story or a recommendation for something that you think would make us cry you can find that on our website beb crying podcast.com or you can email us hello beb crying podcast.com you can even DM us if you wanted to honestly we just love hearing from you all probably the best part of this gig for sure and the crazy part too is that if you do just one of those things that arens mentioned you get a prize and that prize is you become a crybaby yeah congratulations in advance mhm we forgot to add to that list a five star rating only five starns only five starns you're not a crybaby unless it's five starns yeah yes you're just a baby I think that's [ ] it that's [ __ ] it truthfully that's all we got that's all I can muster for today so let me rest mhm and you too you go rest dear listener will rest mhm and then we'll come back oh my God yes like rising from the dead mhm yes but until then BRB crying