By David Futrelle
Is Stardew Valley just a miniature version of the infamous Harper Valley of Jeannie C. Riley’s classic song, a hotbed of debauched infidelity in which the residents secretly swap a lot more than yams?
Players of the popular farming role-playing game have been wondering aloud about the secret lives of some of the inhabitants of their little valley for some time. Questions have been raised about the real father of one of the main characters, and one seemingly innocent female character has been discovered climbing another man’s tree, wink wink, nidge nudge, knowwhatImean?
A couple of years back, one poor player turned to the Stardew Valley subreddit for relationship advice, fearing that his beloved game waifu was cheating on him. (I’ve removed her name so as not to spoil anything.)
I married [Waifu] and everything seemed fine at first.
But after a few days, she would be in the kitchen every morning. I’d talk to her and she’d say “I’m going to town! Eat a healthy lunch! Bye!”
That’s all fine and good. She deserves to get out and have some fun. But what worries me is she doesn’t come home at night.
Uh oh.
I’ve stayed up until midnight waiting for her. Most nights she just never comes home. And when I go into town, I never see her. I’ve been in the museum and Pam’s trailer many times; I’ve looked under the tree where she read books when we were dating. No sign of [her].
Oof. Not looking good for you, my man, not looking good.
[She’s] at full hearts and I hug her and give her a blueberry every day.
Dude. Someone else is giving her something other than a blueberry every night.
And not even the arrival of a baby was enough to change her ways.
Sometimes when I talk to her, she says “Everything is different now that we have a baby,” but nothing is different. I come home around 6:00, [she] is nowhere to be found, and the baby is in his crib completely unsupervised. I go to bed alone most nights.
I think there is another man. To be completely honest, I’m not even sure the baby is mine. What should I do?
Well, now one mod-maker has a solution, of sorts, for every player who feels there’s just too much of this sort of cuckery going on in and around their little farm.
The “Stardew Valley Cuckoldry Removal Service” mod, uploaded on NexusMods earlier today, changes some of the dialogue in the game to remove several subtle hints of infidelity.
“[T]his game is hella cucked,” the mod-maker, Havitner, writes in the game’s description, noting that his own enjoyment of the game had been tarnished one day when,
while casually browsing the wiki, I found out that it’s heavily implied that [a female character] cheated on her husband and tricked him into raising another man’s kid for ~20 years. My comfiness levels suffered a catastrophic decline.
Not knowing [Stardew Valley developer] ConcernedApe’s home address or how to rig a goat carcass to explode, I had to settle for making a mod.
The new dialogue is designed to match the tone of the original, without the depressing cuckshit.
And while he was at it, he also removed some hints that another female character regrets not boning more dudes in her younger years. Because to some dudes this somehow also counts as cuckolding.
In vanilla, [she] casually tells the player that she regrets marrying young, because she didn’t get to enjoy her youth and freedom.
Protip: When a woman talks about ‘enjoying her youth and freedom’, that means exactly one thing.
Playing Stardew Valley until 3 AM? Nah. Riding the pixelated cock carousel.
I suspect that this mod might turn out to be quite popular with the sorts of dudes I write about regularly on this blog, who think that every time any woman has sex with someone other than them they’re being cuckolded, and that this somehow also applies to imaginary pixel ladies in video games.
H/T — Thanks to longtime WHTM commenter @pecunium for pointing me to this amazing mod.
BONUS: Here’s the original Harper Valley PTA song, in case you wanted some reminders of what was going on in THAT little Peyton Place.
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@varalys –
A certain Spinal Tap song comes to mind…
@ TheKND:
I have… no idea what you’re saying….
My “gaming” consists of having been decent at Donkey Kong in the early 80s when it was a stand-up 25-cent arcade game. I do (did?) really like Crash Bandicoot, too.
“Don’t ya see my silo rising high-igh-igh-igh-igh-iiiiiiiiiiiigh!”
I live on the ragged, tattered edges of a small, small town.
Believe me, whenever you get out into the high grass, everything may look as smooth and pastoral as a motel mood-piece on the surface, but once you start peering down closer to the ground, you’ll see all sorts of things you wouldn’t have expected to start out with, and I mean all sorts of things.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it doesn’t matter whether the high grass is dirt-world or virtual. Some truths are universal.
No, Maru!
1A. Haley. Has the most interesting arc, anyways.
1B. Abi. Most fun and the heart scenes are all charming.
1C. Leah. Easiest to keep happy once married – long as you’ve got a couple goats – and I rather like the whole artist thing. It’s nicely fleshed out.
2. Everyone else.
3. Sebastian. Whiny little sod, isn’t he.
@MrsObedMarsh:
Yay!!!!!
If there was a chance of getting Maru as a pet in Stardew Valley, I’d probably play it!
Re Multiplayer, you can romance the human player (my wife and I are playing a game; and she’s also playing with one of her other partners).
It’s a hella calm sort of thing. Just get home before midnight, or the fairies steal your stuff.
(Also, you can take a nap in the middle of the day).
@Yutolia:
^_^
@varalys:
*There are 10 romances now. Chad will have to romance Emily and Shane in addition to all the others!
@Hambeast
Maru is a person, and a romance candidate. https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Maru
@Yutolia: Yeah I forgot those two. I’m tempted to go for Shane as a husband because he has a great arc with some really dramatic moments and when you get his life back on track, it’s.. well really charming.
That said I am really doing it for the scene that apparently happens when all ten of your lovers discover each other and dump you. I already have the acheivements for marrying and having kids with Leah on another character so Chad’s shenanigans are basically for the lulz
> Bekabot
You see wild pokémons ?
On topic :
Ah, yes, we have forgotten that “ethic in video games” implies to be able to replace the story proposed by the author by your own bland one. I wonder that if that the developper had been a woman, she would have been burn on a pyre, maybe… Well, at least, it is just a mod, not a downvoting campaign assorted with various threats.
I just checked out the link to the mod (wanted to see if he gave any examples of the “better dialogue”) and it is no longer up.
I don’t know who runs Nexxus Mods, but apparently, they don’t like this kind of BS. And good for them!
Also, just as a side note, any and all references to possibly dating other people always are programmed to happen BEFORE you give the “Let’s commit to each other” bouquets, although you may wind up triggering the lower-heart events after you give the bouquets, if you are fast and avoid the triggers until afterward. That means, though, that the programmer specifically wrote it to avoid any “is my spouse cheating on me” questions. It is NOT in the programming. It IS possible for the player to “commit” to every marriage candidate in town, at the same time, but once you actually get married, you can’t even do that. You’re back down to basic conversation and presents again, with all of them.
Because, dudes. If you’re not actually in a committed relationship, you’re NOT committed, and it is, therefore, impossible to “cheat.” Cheating requires a commitment, first! It’s in the very definition. Except to these nodcocks, who don’t know what words mean. To these jackasses, it’s cheating for a woman to even look at another man, after they have looked at her, and claimed her in their “hearts.”
For non-players – you work on a “hearts” system. Every villager can have up to 10 hearts with you, except the marriage candidates. They stop at 8 hearts (some hinting that they might think romantically about you, but not quite admitting it directly – 10 hearts is where they admit it to you, directly, and you have the choice to agree with them, or reject them). The only way to progress beyond 8 hearts is to give them a “Let’s go steady” bouquet. You can give out multiple bouquets. In fact, if you want to zoom from 8 hearts to 10 hearts, you can give them 20 bouquets, all at once, because it is the only gift you can give without limits. Otherwise, you are stuck with only two gifts per week, and birthday and Winter Feast gifts.
After marriage, you can progress your spouse up to 12 visible hearts, and one more invisible heart. If you hit 13 hearts with your spouse, they will give you a Stardrop, which increases your energy, and is awesome.
Speaking of invisible hearts, I once spammed bouquets on Abigail, the first day they were available, and actually got her to give me a Stardrop, right there in her father’s store! Sometimes, the programming has loopholes. It was rainy, so I was able to take a quick trip to the beach to buy the “will you marry me” shell from the Ancient Mariner who only shows up on the beach on rainy days, and then return to the shop to spam more bouquets. It was awesome!
But despite the fact that you can divorce and remarry, you only ever get one spousal Stardrop. So, serial marriage is only for the lulz.
You can get extra Stardrops by cheating, and naming your farm, your farmer, or your animals [434], but I do not recommend this. It makes it far too easy, and is kind of game-breaking when your energy bar actually goes higher than the top of the screen. Also, if you have a tool in your hand when you get it, you’ll lose the tool, and have to get Lewis to replace it, at base level (there are upgrades you can buy). So, don’t do that. Or at least, don’t name *yourself* [434]. Name a chicken that, and you can plan to have an empty hand when Marnie sells it to you, says the name, and gives you a Stardrop. You can even sell back the chicken and do it again, as many times as you want, to have a tall energy bar. But really, after your first year, the energy bar rarely runs out, anyway, unless you’re really bad at the game.
Which reminds me – be sure when you’re talking to your spouse, if you’re close to getting that Stardrop, that you have an empty hand. Best bet is to have a single gift item in your hand, give the spouse the gift, and then you won’t have the tool-glitch when your spouse gives you the Stardrop, in return.
And now, I just have to start another farm! Whee!
Also, here’s a pro-tip. SPOILER!!!
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If you are going to put Lewis’ shorts in the grange display, stock the display BEFORE you talk to him, because if you have them in your inventory, at all, and talk to him, he’ll take them. So, stock the display, talk to him, talk to him to get the judging results, then do any more talking you may desire, and then take them out of the grange display, take them home and stick them in a chest, so you can save them to put in the soup next summer.
To someone who’s never heard of/knows less than nothing about this game, the entirety of the above conversation reads like the most unbelievably surreal, headspinning, mindboggling, off-the-wall crack (or maybe even craic) 🙂
It reminds me of a time in my late childhood when my family was playing the original King’s Quest games, and apparently my father, while at an academic conference, found another attendee who was playing it and they confused their fellow professors with their conversation about how to get past the giant rat.
What will crack me up is if the guys who get this mod also download the naked stardew girls mods that float around, or the mods that give large breasts to everyone… these idiots are the reason I can’t let my daughter search the Nexus.
I’m so sad I missed Stardew discussion & now probably everyone has moved on from this thread.
My husband & I started a multi-player game and my kids started one with each other, but none of us have played in months. I’ve been too busy with things I really should be doing because I’m spending money on them and getting OCD sucked in to Facebook (I really do have OCD, luckily mild, but when I’m depressed or procrastinating, one of it’s fun manifestations is endless FB scrolling & opening eleventy billion tabs and keeping me from doing anything else)
Aannnyway. My husband always goes for Penny or Leah and so far I’ve only ever married Sebastian, but maybe I’ll try a different character next time I start a game.
I really do love the game. I was a big fan of the original Harvest Moon and it fixed some of the things that bugged me about that game while adding some annoyances of it’s own that don’t detract too much. My main one is kind of silly, anyway, namely why do Jodi & Kent have a teeny single bed room when both their kids have giant rooms?
I think I somehow messed up my own user name by clicking the wrong drop down option & not noticing, so I guess my post is now stuck in moderation. Sorry!
Your liberal bias is showing, urinalist.
@Bigdaddybulge420
Your desperate edginess is showing.
Troll will almost definitely never come back, which means I will never know why they chose to necro this particular March 2019 post about Stardew Valley, of all the posts. It eats at me.