Thank you for this, it’s so well done, and perfectly paced. I’ve not played Stardew, but the general attitude you’re describing is one I notice and deal with all the time, and I’m glad to see it recognized and criticized.
This was my first experience reading a bitsy essay. I had no idea such a thing existed! :D
I appreciate the perspective of your essay and you make a fair point about mainstream standards of attractiveness and the harsh discriminatory attitudes against fatness in particular. I just wanted to add that, for me, Clint's appearance has virtually nothing to do with my finding him creepy. Rather, his creepiness comes from his actions and behaviors that play out in his story arc.
I also agree that it's a total stretch to call Clint an 'incel' - especially in the modern sense of the word in our society. He obviously struggles with self-esteem and insecurity and these issues compound the problem of his unrequited love for Emily.
I think Clint's creepiness stems from the lack of development of his story; it attempts to give him character growth through the series of events, but it remains unresolved in the end. This is an oversight on CA's part (no shade - I love this amazing game!). Particularly, if the farmer ends up dating or marrying Emily, Clint shows no awareness of the relationship and continues his passive pursuit of her. It would probably also help if Emily were given more agency in the dynamic. I don't think we ever really learn how she sees things. She's written to treat Clint more as a friend and shows no indication that she's aware of his more romantic intentions. But this is all besides the point, I think.
Ultimately, I think all the criticism that writes off Clint as creepy based solely on his appearance is shallow, boring, and completely misses the mark.
Hey, thank you for making this. It means a lot to see other people talk about how frustrating the attitude towards Clint and fat people in general is <3.
Well-crafted and thought-provoking. I think Clint's reputation among fans is also likely influenced by him being a shopkeeper- you don't see him around town as much, and your main interactions with him are likely going to be either quests or using his shop, so you might not build friendship as fast, which means you're seeing his less engaged, more standoffish low-friendship dialogue. But of course, if he wasn't fat that probably wouldn't be as much of an obstacle for players, whether or not he was a love interest. Look at Shane- people loved him so much they voted him in as a marriage candidate, and he's not just standoffish at first, he's hostile.
I'll admit that I don't care for Clint, since the "nice guy" character type is one I really loathe and he seems to fall into it based on your low-friendship interactions with him. But your essay made me curious, and looking at his wiki page, he doesn't seem to exhibit any toxic "nice guy" behaviors aside from that one line; he's just shy and socially awkward. But because he fits into the way we expect creepy dudes to look, it's easy to interpret him that way. You've given me a new perspective on his character. I also loved how you formatted your essay into bitsy, and you did a great job recreating Clint's workshop.
I played this game some time ago. A while after I did, I checked out a post on Reddit about disfavored gifts in SV. Some of the comments talked about how nothing they gifted to Clint made him happy, and a select few mentioned him being "creepy". It reminded me of this, and I almost told that person to play this so they'd understand. It's a shame that even now people still misunderstand Clint's character.
Great work. Resonates with me a lot as a well, someone who would be considered 'fat' and thus 'ugly'. I havent played Stardew Valley but it still is a good read.
Ugh, this is... very relatable. Even beyond the inherent crappiness to people who are fat, it's... dehumanizing/monsterifying of people who find them attractive, in a way that's almost impossible to talk about because being attracted to an ordinary way a human body can look is automatically considered a fetish.
IDK, I just don't think I can verbalize how badly the cultural attitude of "not only are we going to treat your partner like an inherently awful person, we are also going to treat you badly for daring to have affection" messes someone up.
Fantastic work, I loved it. Thanks for doing this. This is one of the things I really don’t like about dating games (espacially with anime characters), they all look the same, with “pretty”, white and thin datable characters. That’s so fucking boring! This essay makes a lot of sense to me.
the whole argument is made on things that were never said or never i heard of like when did people said clint is an incel (wich he is very clearly not) i just don't get the argument
(googling "clint stardew nice guy" should turn up more of these threads)
and what i'm saying in my game here is that this hatred is driven at least partially by how he looks. (that second thread i link calls him a "fat neck bearded son of a bitch".) i think that the way he looks causes people to make nastier assumptions about him and what he says, and i think it's unfair and gross
oooh now i get it but still i'm pretty sure this people are a minority or at least exclusive to reddit cause from the few things a saw in the steam community people or completely ignore clint or just don't care about him
yeah, i don't think it's a lot of people, i think the clint thing is just a small example of a larger problem of people make assumptions about people based on how they look. it was something that made me feel weird when i saw it, so i used the clint thing as just a way to make the game more personal to me.
I love this essay and the way you walk the player through it. I initially thought Clint was kind of a creep because of his interactions with Emily, but now I feel like he was given an unfair hand. I'm sure it wasn't intentional but now its hard to ignore. He deserves a better character arc. Fat characters deserve better, and we deserve more fat characters. We deserve to see ourselves reflected in the media we consume, even if (especially if) we aren't thin, white, or pretty. Thank you for sharing this
hey, really glad you enjoyed this! yeah, i don't think anyone intentionally meant any harm, but i'd love to see people break out of this subconscious association of fatness with creepiness. i appreciate your comment! thanks :-)
I've never played Stardew Valley but this is a very nice essay that exposes some serious flaws with mainstream Leftist rhetoric with fatphobia, not to mention touching on the roots of that rhetoric that's hurt... a lot of marginalized men in general, really.
Whenever I did meet Clint in Stardew Valley he made me feel good about myself. Since like I saw a nice person that did their job with a smile on their face because they enjoyed it. I never looked at his figure and saw him as fat or ugly. I just saw him as this big loveable guy that deserves some love. He honestly is in my top 3 of the game the first two being Shane and Sebastian. I haven't gotten to him getting upset about being rejected and he never seemed to exhibit the red flags that my mind constantly searches, in fact he made me feel better every single time I walked out of his shop if I remember correctly. If he's getting this hate I see no reason why he's getting it since he's loveable in personality (and we all seem to agree that Shane's fine and he's like an alcoholic) and he is still conventionally attractive. Sorry about how long this is, but this boi deserves the love.
oh definitely, i loved him too! he's not really characterized like that at all, i think people just make a ton of assumptions about him based on some throwaway dialogue
Furthermore: how could having a "neckbeard" be a predisposition to misogyny? Supposing a causal link between these two absolutely unrelated phenomena could be found in the culture of the present, wouldn't that be sufficient reason to alter the culture?? It feels like the exposure of a guilty conscience when one confuses one's own aversion to minor, arbitrary detail for ["CLEARLY prejudicial"] aggression towards one's self.
Additionally, why would being kindly EVER serve as a "red flag"? It's obviously not up to "Emily" to decide whether or not "Clint" is truly a "nice guy", unless she is supposed to be some sort of deified Authority on the matter. I should hope that she would be a lady and reciprocate the kindness; it's kids' stuff that hardly requires explanation, L.L.O.L.
Finally, I don't claim to understand the intricacies of feminism, which are surely encyclopedic in length, (as is most rationalization and ideology) but it's hard to imagine that any academic, politician, or clergyperson would ascribe moral credibility to the sorts of teasing we encounter in f*cking Elementary School. Cheers, mate. Keep it Hurley, Dude.
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thank you for making this
this made me think differently. thanks for making it!
Congrats to getting in the Bitsy exhibit at the Museum of Screens! I think this was a worthy entry. Thoughtful, funny, and used Bitsy beautifully.
thanks! glad you liked it. had no idea it was featured at Museum of Screens, thanks for letting me know
Thank you for this, it’s so well done, and perfectly paced. I’ve not played Stardew, but the general attitude you’re describing is one I notice and deal with all the time, and I’m glad to see it recognized and criticized.
This was my first experience reading a bitsy essay. I had no idea such a thing existed! :D
I appreciate the perspective of your essay and you make a fair point about mainstream standards of attractiveness and the harsh discriminatory attitudes against fatness in particular. I just wanted to add that, for me, Clint's appearance has virtually nothing to do with my finding him creepy. Rather, his creepiness comes from his actions and behaviors that play out in his story arc.
I also agree that it's a total stretch to call Clint an 'incel' - especially in the modern sense of the word in our society. He obviously struggles with self-esteem and insecurity and these issues compound the problem of his unrequited love for Emily.
I think Clint's creepiness stems from the lack of development of his story; it attempts to give him character growth through the series of events, but it remains unresolved in the end. This is an oversight on CA's part (no shade - I love this amazing game!). Particularly, if the farmer ends up dating or marrying Emily, Clint shows no awareness of the relationship and continues his passive pursuit of her. It would probably also help if Emily were given more agency in the dynamic. I don't think we ever really learn how she sees things. She's written to treat Clint more as a friend and shows no indication that she's aware of his more romantic intentions. But this is all besides the point, I think.
Ultimately, I think all the criticism that writes off Clint as creepy based solely on his appearance is shallow, boring, and completely misses the mark.
Hey, thank you for making this. It means a lot to see other people talk about how frustrating the attitude towards Clint and fat people in general is <3.
i'm glad you enjoyed it! always nice to hear that someone else feels the same way
I don't even know who Clint is but I love this
thanks! glad you liked it :-)
Well-crafted and thought-provoking. I think Clint's reputation among fans is also likely influenced by him being a shopkeeper- you don't see him around town as much, and your main interactions with him are likely going to be either quests or using his shop, so you might not build friendship as fast, which means you're seeing his less engaged, more standoffish low-friendship dialogue. But of course, if he wasn't fat that probably wouldn't be as much of an obstacle for players, whether or not he was a love interest. Look at Shane- people loved him so much they voted him in as a marriage candidate, and he's not just standoffish at first, he's hostile.
I'll admit that I don't care for Clint, since the "nice guy" character type is one I really loathe and he seems to fall into it based on your low-friendship interactions with him. But your essay made me curious, and looking at his wiki page, he doesn't seem to exhibit any toxic "nice guy" behaviors aside from that one line; he's just shy and socially awkward. But because he fits into the way we expect creepy dudes to look, it's easy to interpret him that way. You've given me a new perspective on his character. I also loved how you formatted your essay into bitsy, and you did a great job recreating Clint's workshop.
thabk you so much for playing and commenting! i appreciate your thoughts here.
I played this game some time ago. A while after I did, I checked out a post on Reddit about disfavored gifts in SV. Some of the comments talked about how nothing they gifted to Clint made him happy, and a select few mentioned him being "creepy". It reminded me of this, and I almost told that person to play this so they'd understand. It's a shame that even now people still misunderstand Clint's character.
l screamed when mlady popped up l had no idea you could do that in bitdy, is that a hack?? looved the character ideations, its exactly this!!
haha yeah, there's a hack that lets you add images and gifs into bitsy. glad u liked it, thanks for playing!
hey, I just wanted to say that as a fat butch person who likes women (and Stardew Valley), this meant a lot to me and I appreciate you making it.
i'm glad! critical support for fat butches
I haven't played Stardew Valley, but I liked your essay (and your edited Bitsy avatars). It was a thoughtful read. :)
thanks!! glad u liked the bitsy avatars bit, it was fun to play around with that
Great work. Resonates with me a lot as a well, someone who would be considered 'fat' and thus 'ugly'. I havent played Stardew Valley but it still is a good read.
glad it spoke to you! thanks for playing 🙂
Sorry I'm getting to this so late but YES this is fantastic 🎉
thanks Emma!! :-)
Ugh, this is... very relatable. Even beyond the inherent crappiness to people who are fat, it's... dehumanizing/monsterifying of people who find them attractive, in a way that's almost impossible to talk about because being attracted to an ordinary way a human body can look is automatically considered a fetish.
IDK, I just don't think I can verbalize how badly the cultural attitude of "not only are we going to treat your partner like an inherently awful person, we are also going to treat you badly for daring to have affection" messes someone up.
yeah, definitely, it's frustrating. glad this spoke to you!
I love it ❤️❤️❤️
thanks! :-)
i like this
thanks! 😊
Fantastic work, I loved it. Thanks for doing this. This is one of the things I really don’t like about dating games (espacially with anime characters), they all look the same, with “pretty”, white and thin datable characters. That’s so fucking boring! This essay makes a lot of sense to me.
thanks! glad you enjoyed it :-)
what? 1/10
this whole game makes no sense
the whole argument is made on things that were never said or never i heard of like when did people said clint is an incel (wich he is very clearly not) i just don't get the argument
fan threads pop up every so often on reddit, stuff like this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/7g7z8t/clint_is_a_niceguy/?utm_m...
https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/49y7dr/i_hate_clint/?utm_medium=..
(googling "clint stardew nice guy" should turn up more of these threads)
and what i'm saying in my game here is that this hatred is driven at least partially by how he looks. (that second thread i link calls him a "fat neck bearded son of a bitch".) i think that the way he looks causes people to make nastier assumptions about him and what he says, and i think it's unfair and gross
oooh now i get it but still i'm pretty sure this people are a minority or at least exclusive to reddit cause from the few things a saw in the steam community people or completely ignore clint or just don't care about him
yeah, i don't think it's a lot of people, i think the clint thing is just a small example of a larger problem of people make assumptions about people based on how they look. it was something that made me feel weird when i saw it, so i used the clint thing as just a way to make the game more personal to me.
Problem? Trollfcae
I love this essay and the way you walk the player through it. I initially thought Clint was kind of a creep because of his interactions with Emily, but now I feel like he was given an unfair hand. I'm sure it wasn't intentional but now its hard to ignore. He deserves a better character arc. Fat characters deserve better, and we deserve more fat characters. We deserve to see ourselves reflected in the media we consume, even if (especially if) we aren't thin, white, or pretty. Thank you for sharing this
hey, really glad you enjoyed this! yeah, i don't think anyone intentionally meant any harm, but i'd love to see people break out of this subconscious association of fatness with creepiness. i appreciate your comment! thanks :-)
I've never played Stardew Valley but this is a very nice essay that exposes some serious flaws with mainstream Leftist rhetoric with fatphobia, not to mention touching on the roots of that rhetoric that's hurt... a lot of marginalized men in general, really.
thanks! glad you enjoyed it
I've always liked Clint, so it really bothered me when I realized that a big part of the community really didn't like him.
Thanks for taking the time to make this
thanks for playing! <3
Whenever I did meet Clint in Stardew Valley he made me feel good about myself. Since like I saw a nice person that did their job with a smile on their face because they enjoyed it. I never looked at his figure and saw him as fat or ugly. I just saw him as this big loveable guy that deserves some love. He honestly is in my top 3 of the game the first two being Shane and Sebastian. I haven't gotten to him getting upset about being rejected and he never seemed to exhibit the red flags that my mind constantly searches, in fact he made me feel better every single time I walked out of his shop if I remember correctly. If he's getting this hate I see no reason why he's getting it since he's loveable in personality (and we all seem to agree that Shane's fine and he's like an alcoholic) and he is still conventionally attractive. Sorry about how long this is, but this boi deserves the love.
thanks for writing this! i'm always happy to hear from other ppl who like clint :-)
I DID NOT REALIZE THAT THIS WAS THE CLINT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT. i never noticed him as a nice guy creep type. I loved him :(
oh definitely, i loved him too! he's not really characterized like that at all, i think people just make a ton of assumptions about him based on some throwaway dialogue
so powerful. "look at us side-by-side. one of us is different."
how did you manage the "tips fedora" image import? it looks like an overlay and not something made through RGBitsy.
heyo! i used the character portrait hacks here: https://github.com/seleb/bitsy-hacks/blob/main/dist/character-portraits.js and here: https://github.com/seleb/bitsy-hacks/blob/main/dist/character-portraits-animated.js
it takes any image and just draws it over the bitsy canvas
Just right off the bat: how is Clint both a "nice guy" and a "creep"??
Furthermore: how could having a "neckbeard" be a predisposition to misogyny? Supposing a causal link between these two absolutely unrelated phenomena could be found in the culture of the present, wouldn't that be sufficient reason to alter the culture?? It feels like the exposure of a guilty conscience when one confuses one's own aversion to minor, arbitrary detail for ["CLEARLY prejudicial"] aggression towards one's self.
[({R.G.)}]
Post: it's ironic, but in my experience "skinniness" isn't really widely revered either in men, though in women it remains appealing to a fault. Haha.
Additionally, why would being kindly EVER serve as a "red flag"? It's obviously not up to "Emily" to decide whether or not "Clint" is truly a "nice guy", unless she is supposed to be some sort of deified Authority on the matter. I should hope that she would be a lady and reciprocate the kindness; it's kids' stuff that hardly requires explanation, L.L.O.L.
"Mindset" was not specified in the essay; please include annotations or direct quotations longer than two words.
Finally, I don't claim to understand the intricacies of feminism, which are surely encyclopedic in length, (as is most rationalization and ideology) but it's hard to imagine that any academic, politician, or clergyperson would ascribe moral credibility to the sorts of teasing we encounter in f*cking Elementary School. Cheers, mate. Keep it Hurley, Dude.
Rinzai.
this is an awesome essay!
thank you! ☺️
great game, thanks for making it
thanks for playing it!
love how this is constructed & love your message. keep up the great work
cheers, thanks!
Nice game! Nice content! And nice artwork! I hope many people will play your game! :)
thank you for the kind words!!
this is good
thanks!!
yessssssssssss this was awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you!!!! 😊