Starry Night Festival in Island of Happiness

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Unfortunately, I am having trouble with my wireless connection on my laptop, and I have been forced into 'Recovery' three times, which is an awful time-wasting procedure afterwards, as all programmes must be re-installed. Days ago, I had intended to write a post about the Starry Night Festival in Island of Happiness.

I have to confess (once more) that I am attracted to guys with long silver hair. I am not certain bachelors with long silver hair in Harvest Moon games tend to have complicated schedules and only occasional appearances, making them more difficult to court, but Vaughn in Island of Happiness, like Skye in Harvest Moon Cute DS, is absent much of the time on the days when invitations to romantic festivals must be made.

I have been able now to spend the Starry Night Festival with every bachelor apart from Vaughn. Mark, like the Magical Girls in HM DS/Cute DS will spend the evening at YOUR home and, like the Magical Girls (and Skye in Cute) will provide the food and help with the cooking. It is very endearing.

Vaughn, sad to say, has not been on the Island yet on 23 Winter when the invitation for the Starry Night date must be made. I am running out of time on this temporary game. I either have to marry Vaughn to be able to experience the festival with him or I have to move forward into marriage with some one else without ever experiencing the event with him. I have married a couple of the bachelors on a trial basis, never saving the result, but I need to fix upon a real spouse in order to experience pregnancy and childbirth. I only have a couple of weeks before the game is released. It is time to make a decision.

I would like to see how Vaughn behaves, though, when he celebrates the Starry Night Festival as a bachelor. I suppose that minor detail can wait until I have my own retail copy of the game, though. There are far more important goals to complete before then.

Vaughn is an odd, taciturn guy, very unlike the smooth-talking, romantic Skye whom I adore in Cute. He does possess his own attractive qualities, though. Mark would be my other choice. He is the classical blond-haired, wide-eyed hero of storybooks. (I almost wrote 'blue-eyed' but Mark's eyes are green.) My only dissatisfaction with Mark occurred in his Blue Heart Event. I had to pretend to be weaker than I was, but not TOO weak, in order to please him when we competed in a trial of strength. Ideally, I would have liked him to have admired me for besting him but I don't suppose there are many males who would not have a bruised ego if a girl they liked were to be superior to them where sheer brute strength is concerned. (Even Gannon lectured me when I had the audacity to WIN the rock-pushing contest!)

When a trial of strength occurs between romantic partners, I always think of Brunnhilde in the Niebelungenlied, who demanded that her husband-to-be have the ability to defeat her. When she discovered that she had been tricked, she took her newly wedded husband by the scruff of the neck and suspended him by his collar from a peg on the wall, then calmly went off to bed alone.

Brunnhilde was not allowed to triumph ultimately either though. The entire saga ends in tragedy. In IoH, there are no great tragedies and even if you beat Mark in the rock-pushing contest, lowering his heart level in the process, you can raise it again afterwards by winning more contests. I was rather upset, though, that despite the fact that he displays signs of hero-worship towards my character, he still had to be deceived by a result that showed him to be stronger than she! What rankles a little is that he basically insisted I compete with him in that fashion. I wasn't the one to issue the challenge. He was. If it had been my challenge, I happily would have involved myself in a small deception to boost his ego, but as he basically forced me into the contest, he should have been willing to accept an honest results.

Never mind. He redeemed himself by his gentlemanly behaviour on the night of the Starry Night Festival, when he provided all the ingredients for the meal and helped me prepare them. He is truly adorable with those huge . I will let him have his illusions of strength and indeed may allow him to sire my child. After all, if I marry Vaughn, I lose the opportunity to bring one of the rival children to the Island's population...

I have added a couple of screenshots of the Starry Night Festival with Pierre, who waxes rather poetic and combines his inspiration for culinary creativity with his appreciation of the heavens...