jojaqualityheadcanons

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Diverse Stardew Valley 4.0 Sneak Peak!

Hey everyone! DSV 4.0 is getting close to being done, so I thought I’d show off some of the cool stuff that’s gonna be included! 😊 I’ve also been sharing little snippets in the DSV Discord server recently, so if you’re not already a member, check our website for the link.

It’s pretty long and has a lot of images, so click through to see them!

Keep reading

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Emyn's Diverse Ginger Island

bit of a weekend project - a redesign of stardew valley's ginger island to be a bit less uncomfortable to play :D

#briefly breaking this blog's hiatus to boost this #mods

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Lightweight Diverse Stardew Valley is now available!

As the name suggests, it's a lightweight version of the main mod for Android players and PC players experiencing lag.

Features:

one outfit set (indoor/outdoor sun/outdoor rain) per season

one outfit per festival

some locational outfits (such as for aerobics and Harvey's doctor coat)

some extras related to the diverse variants (such as Samoan Alex's traditional tattoos and Black Haley's braid cuffs).

an "ultralightweight" setting which removes the majority of indoor/outdoor checks in favour of a simple sunny or rainy day outfit per season.

All of the vanilla and diverse character variants from the main mod are included, so you can still pick your preferred variants.

It is still quite big for a Stardew Valley mod, so it may cause issues if you try using it with a very heavy Android mod list. However, it's been tested and it works fine if installed by itself, so please use your judgment when building your mod list and take into account how powerful your phone is and how many other mods you're using.

📌❕ If you're still having trouble running Lightweight DSV, you can try using Non-Seasonal Diverse Stardew Valley instead. Non-Seasonal DSV has just the vanilla outfits with all the character variants from the main mod.

All versions of DSV can be downloaded here:

[ModDrop] [GitHub (via DropBox)]

#dsv #mods

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

I just want people to understand why this content is harmful, how it might be affecting your biases and beliefs, and think of how they can engage with this media without exacerbating the harm that it does.

I know SDV has never been a shining example of racial/ethnic diversity and sensitivity (I mean... there's a reason why mods like Diverse Stardew Valley and a bunch of other diversity mods exist lol).

Did you bother reading the post or did you immediately decide to be nasty for no reason?

SDV’s 1.5 update contains content that plays into racist, colonialist, and imperialist myths and beliefs.

Disclaimer: I loved SDV (which is a given, considering I have an SDV sideblog lol?), and I’m not writing this post to get people to boycott the game or stop liking it or whatever. I just want people to understand why this content is harmful, how it might be affecting your biases and beliefs, and think of how they can engage with this media without exacerbating the harm that it does. I’m Filipino, and I don’t speak for all POC or all brown people, but I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by the content update. Please keep that in mind before you interact with this post. Explanation under the cut because of 1.5 spoilers (obviously) and because this got long.

(I will block people who clown on this post. Keep your opinions to yourself unless you also have firsthand experience with the issues I describe.)

Keep reading

#if you're reading this do NOT engage that commenter on my behalf or w/e thanks! #already blocked them lol #racism cw #mocking poc for pointing out racism in media just bc the creator has made racist content in the past? get well soon!!! #🤡🤡🤡

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

I'm so sorrry that 1.5 hurt you as badly as it did. I also really appreciate you putting your thoughts and hurt into words to outline the issues in the update. While I knew going in there were going to be issues considering the setting, your post really helped me understand a lot of the nuance behind why CA's writing choices here were bad. I hope you're able to take a breather from this stress and hurt. Thanks for all your amazing work in this community!

It's sweet of you to send this message anon, and I'm glad my post helped you understand the issues in 1.5 better. I've kind of accepted it and moved on since it's been a while since I unlocked the new location, so don't worry about me :)

#ask #anon

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Something don’t sit right with me with how the fandom claims you have a “saviour complex” if you romance Shane.

dude has a mental illness and alcohol dependency, but just by doing the bare minimum of being HIS FRIEND and showing him support, he recognised he needed help and fixes HIMSELF. Don’t take the credit you don’t deserve, he was the one that went to therapy, he was the one that fixed his family relationships, he was the one who put time and energy into something he loved. He just came to love you, honestly, at the end of his journey.

I love Shane because he’s sweet once you get to know him, gifts us things he loves because he thought of us, because he’s a good godfather to Jas, because he’s adorable with his chickens,

I ain’t got a saviour complex, I just recognise that some people need support when it comes to mental health, and that depression doesn’t make you a bad person. Thus I befriended him, and now his my favourite bachelor in the game.

#finally some good fucking takes on shane #like you do literally save his life in that 6 heart event #but that's all u do because after that he saves himself! #man decides to make his own life something that he finds worth living! #shane

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

SDV's 1.5 update contains content that plays into racist, colonialist, and imperialist myths and beliefs.

Disclaimer: I loved SDV (which is a given, considering I have an SDV sideblog lol?), and I'm not writing this post to get people to boycott the game or stop liking it or whatever. I just want people to understand why this content is harmful, how it might be affecting your biases and beliefs, and think of how they can engage with this media without exacerbating the harm that it does. I'm Filipino, and I don't speak for all POC or all brown people, but I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by the content update. Please keep that in mind before you interact with this post. Explanation under the cut because of 1.5 spoilers (obviously) and because this got long.

(I will block people who clown on this post. Keep your opinions to yourself unless you also have firsthand experience with the issues I describe.)

Background

I was already wary of the 1.5 content update because of how the previews featured ~tropical~ and ~exotic~ stuff, but I decided to give it a shot because maybe I was being too hasty with my judgment.

I wasn't. I made a new save to play with the 1.5 content update, and at first, I was having a great time! The new special orders made gameplay more exciting and varied! I could finally get rid of the nursery from my house without mods! The remixed junimo bundles made me change my usual game strategy. And then, I finally unlocked Ginger Island.

It seemed cool at first, but I had a sinking feeling growing in the pit of my stomach as I kept playing. It got to the point that I started nursing a stomach ache and lots of anger that took me days to shake off. I know SDV has never been a shining example of racial/ethnic diversity and sensitivity (I mean... there's a reason why mods like Diverse Stardew Valley and a bunch of other diversity mods exist lol). But while the lack of diversity in the pre-1.5 content is more of a missed opportunity, the 1.5 content is just... actively harmful and hurtful, imo. Here's a breakdown of the issues with the setting and the characters:

The Setting

Ginger Island, along with the Fern Islands in general, is a tropical island that is clearly based on islands in the Pacific. Its features include fertile soil and an abundance of natural, foragable resources. And for some unknown reason, it has no native human population.

Many islands in the world are uninhabited by humans, and there's always a good reason why. The island's environment may be too hostile, it could be too small to sustain human life, it could be sacred or otherwise culturally unacceptable to live there, or some disaster may have occurred to wipe out the local population or cause them to flee. Some uninhabited islands are nature reserves or privately owned. The point is that if an island is habitable, people are bound to call it home.

Writing Ginger Island as an uninhabited "tropical paradise" feels like a copout. It's as if the game is saying, "don't worry, you're not colonizing this land because no one really lives here! You're not stealing this land or anything because it's up for grabs and is just waiting for the right person to come along to develop it and turn it into a resort for other people who don't live here!" But that claim rings hollow when there are so many signs of civilization there, such as literal computers and ancient structures. And the canon reason for the existence of these things is that dwarves, non-human creatures, lived there once. I just think it's ridiculous and harmful that the game completely ignores and erases the existence of the people who lived and still live in the places that Ginger Island is based on and goes even further to use non-human creatures as stand-ins. I don’t think I have to explain why this isn’t good, considering that people of color have been compared to animals and treated like animals to dehumanize us and justify our oppression for ages.

To really hammer in my point about whitewashing and erasure, all the human labor on the island is done by a flock of parrots that you pay with golden walnuts (i. e., resources that you get for free from the island they live on). There's even an anthropomorphized bird who's a shopkeep! I get that creating a whole cast of human NPCs to fill a town would have been way too much work for a content update, but CA didn't need to use a bunch of animals as stand-ins for non-white human characters. There’s a troubling trend of creators prioritizing animal characters over characters of color, and CA plays right into it. He seriously chose to create more anthro characters instead of adding characters of color to the game in a setting that in real life has populations that are primarily made up of brown people. The game includes brown people's land and cultures, but it draws the line at brown people themselves.

The erasure of brown people and the portrayal of our lands as wild and untamed have been used to sanitize the narrative of colonialism for centuries. Pretending that our lands were wild tropical paradises that were ripe for the taking is pretending that colonizing forces didn't use violent, dehumanizing means to subjugate or wipe out countless peoples and cultures in order to make these lands available. Ginger Island's erasure of brown people just perpetuates this colonialist myth, and the context in which it does so disgusts me: the farmer, who already runs a successful farm that was inherited from their grandfather, goes off to a tropical island they have no personal connection to and uses its natural resources to expand their business further. They also open up a resort on the island for the enjoyment of other privileged people from their homeland, and going there is treated as a luxury. This is a classic colonizer narrative, and I cannot believe the game forces players to colonize an island in order to win.

The Characters

I'm honestly amazed that the amount of feedback about the lack of diversity in SDV didn't prompt CA to create characters of color. I'm amazed that he chose the setting he did and still didn't bother to create any characters of color. The fact that all three of the new human characters who live on this tropical island are white makes me go a little apeshit, to be honest! I hate all three of them for a variety of reasons, so I'll go over them one by one:

Birdie

My reasons for not liking Birdie are primarily related to misogyny (lady spent literal decades in isolation on this island moping over her dead husband?) and ageism (if you tell her to live her own life, she tells you that she's too old to???). Sooo they're not really related to the rest of my discussion here, and I won't get into them further. Moving on!

Professor Snail

White historians, archaeologists, and paleontologists have been stealing and plundering artifacts, relics, and fossils from colonized lands for centuries. These white scientists would send their “discoveries” back to their homelands with little regard for the people they stole from. I’ll acknowledge that Professor Snail doesn’t bring the bones and fossils off the island, so his character isn’t as awful as it could be, but he still canonically has this line:

I really just don’t understand why it was necessary to make this character white when making him a character of color could have easily prevented the uncomfortable real-world implications of a white man coming to a foreign land to plunder fossils without asking anybody for permission. If he he’d been created as someone who traced his ancestry to Ginger Island and wanted to study the island’s biological history, his character could have been so sympathetic and even admirable to me! But his character as it is just makes me think of this meme:

Here are some links for further reading about colonialism in paleontology and other social sciences: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Leo

I had a hard time figuring out how to write about this character because the way CA wrote him is arguably one of the most racist parts of SDV. So many aspects of his character left me speechless and appalled because I cannot believe people are still writing shit like this in the 2020s.

I’ll start off with his storyline: this white child gets stranded on an island and is raised by animals. When the farmer meets him, he speaks in broken English to show how “wild” he is:

As the farmer continues to interact with him, he begins to speak more “proper” English:

Wow... he’s becoming more “civilized” because of the farmer’s influence!

As his story progresses, he reveals that he’s lonely because he doesn’t fit in among the other birds. Eventually, he leaves behind his non-human family and assimilates into a primarily white, Western-coded society because that’s supposedly where he belongs.

This whole storyline is made possible by the problems with the setting that I mentioned earlier. Leo wouldn’t feel so lonely and out of place if there were people on the island. He wouldn’t be depicted as wild and animal-like if he had an adoptive family made up of humans instead of parrots. But because CA chose not to have native human characters on this island, Leo can only be around other people if he leaves his home and family behind. As a result, Leo’s story has very uncomfortable parallels with how colonizers have historically separated indigenous children from their families and cultures and forced them to assimilate into the dominant colonizer culture because they considered indigenous cultures to be savage and barbaric (1) (2).

Leo’s whole narrative unintentionally implies that a good life in a good community can only be had in civilized white Western societies. I’m honestly having trouble with further explaining why Leo’s whole character makes me feel so gross, so just read up on the White Man’s Burden, The Jungle Book and other works by Rudyard Kipling (1) (2) (3) (4) (5, PDF download link), and even Tarzan (1) (2).

Leo’s character is also used to further whitewash non-white cultures: 

Poi is a Polynesian dish. Mango sticky rice, which is also a recipe that Leo teaches you in-game, is a Thai dish. In the letter, Leo says that the dish is from his home and enjoyed by his non-human family. Considering that he probably learned these recipes on Ginger Island, and that the only “people” who could have taught him this recipe are literal animals, including these recipes in the game in this way just reinforces the equation of brown people to animals. I’m not Polynesian or Thai, but I know that if CA had included a Filipino recipe in the game and not only had it taught to players by a white character, but also passed off as something from the white character’s culture, I’d be angry. I’ll repeat myself: The game features brown people's food and cultures, but it draws the line at brown people themselves.

I don’t think there’s any way to tweak or edit Leo’s character to fix the issues I described. No matter how we change things, he’s still an orphan raised by animals coded as indigenous people, and he assimilates into the dominant white Western culture. The only way to address these issues is to completely redo his character and even the setting of Ginger Island. Here are some options that I’ve thought of:

Leo is related to someone in the Valley and stays with them for part of the year.

Leo lives with his human family and community on Ginger Island.

Leo’s parents are specifically from Stardew Valley/Pelican Town and he wants to visit in order to reconnect with his heritage.

This list isn’t comprehensive, but it does show that there are so many alternatives to having yet another Mowgli story in Stardew Valley.

Conclusion

I don’t think that CA had bad intentions when he made this content, but the fact is that he did create this content. I’m not calling him a bad person. However, he does have a lot of racist, imperialist, and colonialist biases that he has yet to unlearn. Considering the setting and subject matter of the new 1.5 content, he really should have hired some sensitivity readers to avoid creating harmful content. The man’s sold over ten million copies of his game, and he certainly has the resources to put together a sensitivity team.

I can’t look at Stardew Valley the same way I did before 1.5, but I’m not going to condemn the game as a whole. I might play the game again someday, but I absolutely won’t be going back to Ginger Island. If you’ve enjoyed the Ginger Island content, then good for you! Please just keep all that I’ve written here in mind and accept that that content hurts some people like me.

If you’re a content creator, I urge you to get sensitivity readers if you’re featuring  cultures that you’re not a part of to avoid making the same mistakes that I’ve discussed here. Creating from a place of understanding and respect can only make your work better and more accessible to a wider audience, especially to the people whose culture you’re borrowing.

#stardew valley #sdv #sdv leo #sdv birdie #sdv professor snail #racism cw #imperialism #colonialism #blabbering #ids for images are in alt text btw!

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Hi! Not a question and you don’t even have to post, but thank you so much for making the immersive Shane mod. I’m in love with him and your mod expands him in a way that I could never get with the vanilla game. So thank you!! <3

Thank you anon! 🥰

#anon #ask #ic shane #Anonymous

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Hey, out of every dateable character" is the best, as in, like, nicest n stuff?

I think most of the dateable characters are nice, if by “nice” we mean “doesn’t say anything mean.” So in no particular order:

Nice Characters

Elliott: very polite and speaks like a Victorian dandy

Penny: :)

Emily: :D

Harvey: gives unsolicited but well-meaning medical advice all the time

Sam: just vibing!

Leah: just vibing but in nature

Mostly Nice Characters

Abigail: cool girl who will kinda judge you if you’re not as cool as her

Maru: “Hey, have any interesting farm stories to tell me? Guess not.”

Sebastian: kinda rude and complains a lot but otherwise he’s nice

Characters Who Will Hurt Your Feelings

Shane: would spray himself with farmer repellent if it were a thing

Alex: probably reminds you of someone who bullied you in high school

Haley: definitely reminds you of someone who bullied you in high school

#tiawesomeness #asks #stardew valley #uh... so this wasn't exactly what u asked but it's hard for me to rank them lol #and i don't mean to talk crap about any of the characters #some of them just aren't that nice and that's ok! bc it makes the game more interesting! #also don't get me wrong i love maru but she does say some tactless things sometimes! and we love her for it! #abigail #alex #elliott #emily #haley #harvey #leah #maru #penny #sam #sebastian #shane

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Do you happen to have and or know of a mod that will make aging more realistic in Stardew and possibly let my children grow up? Thanks!

I never have kids in game, but here’s what I found from a quick search:

Child to NPC

Babysitter

Lumisteria Child To NPC Like Parent

The first two are requirements for the last one, so you’ll need to use all three together. Hope this helps :)

#fredweasleystan #ask #mods

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Hey everybody! Happy Aromantic Awareness week!!!

My friend Amaranth just released a brand new mod that allows you to have platonic relationships with the candidates! (NOTE: You can take your preferred candidates out of the config so you can have just that person be romantic and everyone else platonic!) She has also changed anything romantic related to be platonic, and there’s a commitment ceremony and such! I’ve been playtesting for her for awhile now, and it looks so so good!! 

There’s so many features that I can’t list here, and her writing is absolutely PHENOMONAL in my opinion, so you should go check it out!

Platonic Partners and Friendships (Nexus)

#hey check out this mod!!!!!!! #there's also config for aces if you want an aro allosexual playthrough #just check it out!! #happy aro week!!!!!!!!!!!! #mods

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

I have been thinking about this drawing by @elflion the last couple of days and i had to draw Shane on that outfit 👉🏼👈🏼😳

#shane

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

what's racist about the newest update, if you don't mind talking about it?

Believe it or not, talking about racism, imperialism, and colonialism, especially when it affects me personally, is not fun! I’ll discuss it when I am ready to discuss it.

If you’re just dying to learn more, read up on whitewashing, the colonial gaze, exoticism, the White Man’s Burden and idk fucking Tarzan. Connect the dots yourself.

Pro-tip: poc aren’t free encyclopedias on racism and other issues, we’re not your teachers. Don’t ask us to explain shit we’ve already said we’re not ready to discuss. Don’t ask me about this again because like I said, I’ll talk about it when I am ready to talk about it.

#ask #anon #i'll give u the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't read tags #but the next person who asks me about it MUST send me 50usd on paypal #i swear to god #i'm so fucking angry rn thaaaaanks <3 #i almost left the response empty with just the screencap but you're welcome for the links go learn something #id in alt text

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

Have you looked into the Coral Island game that's on Kickstarter right now? Let me know if you'd like me to find a link, but it's set in south-east Asia and is being developed by a team in Indonesia.

Yeah, I’m in their discord server! It looks really interesting and promising, and I’m already planning to back it. Link’s here if anyone wants to check it out!

#eludyaq #thanks for reccing! <3 #asks

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

oh my god there's so much racist content in the 1.5 update...

#blabbering #i *will* elaborate in the future but i'm super upset rn #and i'm seriously considering quitting the whole fandom because jesus christ it's really really bad and it hits me really personally :/ #stay tuned for me explaining the racist bits/challenging CA to a fistfight in a parking lot! 🙃

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

If you don’t admit that Sam’s rockin one of those 80′s giant mullet, you are still perfectly valid but pls look at my take of the baby. 

#sam #sebastian #queuetie patootie

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

penny’s  sprite in stardew valley looks like she could be wearing 50s fashion

#penny #😍 #queuetie patootie