Heya! I'm Kisaa (aka. crystalinerose) and this is my Stardew Valley/Fields of Mistria sideblog. I draw, have brainrot of my farmers, and... oh, I'm a SDV mod author too! I specialize in mapmaking, particularly farm and farm building interior maps, and PIF mods because one could never have enough PIF rooms.
If you access the desktop version, you can use the triple dot button on the top right corner to navigate my blog. Otherwise, here's some handy links! (P.S. Please read the mod masterpost before asking me what mods I use in my pics):
🍊 Stardew Mod Comms status: Waitlist Always Open! 🍊
🍊 Nexus Mods | Socials | Main Blog | Buy Me a Coffee? 🍊
🍊 Meadowlade's Mod Masterpost - SDV | FoM Mods 🍊
🍊 Original Character Tags - SDV Farmers Intro 🍊
Stardew Valley - 🍊: eury | 🌹: alba | 🌊: lyris | 🌌: vega
Fields of Mistria - Petals Upon the River Wiki | 🌸: cheri | 🎐 : chihiro | 🌑: dragonfly lord | 🎇: nagamitsu
More tags under the cut!
General navigation tags:
#meadowlade.zip - My mod release/update posts :)
#meadowlade art - My Stardew and Mistria art!
#meadowlade.txt - General text/ramble post tag
#meadowasks - Answered asks
#meadowthoughts - Headcanons (OC and canon characters alike)
#starving artists club - Anything related to Elliott and Leah (my beloveds...)
#stardew fanart - Other people's SDV art!
#mistria fanart - Other people's FoM art!
#stardewposting & #mistriaposting - Shitposting tag (lol)
Summer is the first outfit to have an alt version (followed by the practice gear). It's the one that's most obviously inspired by the characters I had in mind while writing various analyses on Cheri's character: Wanderer, who is still my favorite Genshin character, even way after I quit playing the game lol.
This outfit got a slight change after it was first finished, which is the sides and back opening becoming much lower, because if I remember anything silly while playing the vanilla game, it's how shooketh I got at seeing Balor's beach portrait. The artists really drew him posed in such a way to strategically cover... all that. And that's my goal with Cheri's summer wear, because even a tight, backless halter top is scandalous for someone who spends most of their life not just covered up but also deliberately obfuscating their body shape.
Some trivia: The rest of Cheri's wardrobe, other than spring and the practice gear, was tailored by Louis as a favor he owed them. Ryis was the first person to cheer Cheri on this particular fashion choice because they weren't very comfortable dressing this femme early on.
The first step towards my grand redrawing project of Cheri's portraits has commenced! So proud of how far I've come with my pixel art skills (after ~10 months of 30 something portraits and losing my mind over kimono sleeves lol).
Aside from the fact that Cheri looks more like their key art now, the redesign also actually captures the silhouette I was aiming for (soft, round shapes up top and wide, square, billowy shapes under). I'm so excited to work on the rest of her outfits!
Also, I'm pleased to say that even with a complete redrawing, Cheri's portrait is still 1 pixel taller than March's. Very important difference there.
It's been a month since the last update wave, and now it's time for the next one! This wave is mostly bug fixes, but we do get some new content for Mystwood Homestead: it has a farm world map asset now!
Details under the cut.
🍊 crystalinerose Tilesheets v.1.3.2
Fixed a wrong texture for animated grass tiles in Vanilla winter_CR_outdoor.png.
🍊 World Map Recolors v.1.1.0
Added compatibility for Mystwood Homestead and Bunny Burrow.
🍊 Bunny Burrow v.1.0.3
Re-added fix for spouse getting stuck exiting farm/player stuck in events (thanks raecrowned!).
Fixed constantly respawning hardwood stumps.
Fixed minor passability issues (thanks trulyvivid!).
🍊 Mystwood Homestead v.1.2.0
Added seasonal world map assets!
Revamped light system. The mod now REQUIRES Misc Map Actions Properties.
Fixed missing CanCaskHere map property in custom farm cave.
🍊 Sleepy Glade v.1.0.1
Slightly reduced number of LeaperFrogs (i.e. less frog sounds, still enough frogs).
Fixed wrong spouse position in spouse patios.
🍊 Twin River v.1.0.1
Fixed constantly respawning hardwood stumps.
Fixed formatting error in FTM component's include/exclude areas.
Next up on my agenda is to release my latest project at last, but I have a particular mod that I've volunteered to help updating. Additionally, every part of the Cozy Rustic suite will get an update/bugfix alongside the new release. As always, thank you for your patience and support! 🧡
I've been going back to the bugfix list because of the roadblock I mentioned in the previous post (another batch update will be live soon!), and it seems like I'll just have to cut my losses since it's a vanilla bug.
Chu (who worked on the newest MMAP features in parallel with the development of my latest project) has done a valiant attempt at fixing it, but it still affects custom buildings, which my mod sort of adds. So we're all going to have to suffer this specific issue and that's okay!
In the meantime, have this tiny little thing I made for the project as a final preview. It'll be published as soon as I find the motivation to write the mod page. I'm excited to release this one!
An insight into Cheri, written in the style of Disco Elysium's skill menu flavor text.
TW: Mentions of death and violence (sometimes flippa
[TW: Mentions of death and violence (sometimes flippant); discussion of depression, suicidal ideation, self-hatred, and destructive coping mechanisms; lightly implied transphobia. I also preemptively apologize for the copious amounts of sword and horse-related wordplay.]
I ran into a modding roadblock for my latest project and got a bit tired from setting up the mod pages and such, so I've been spending the last couple days writing!
Disco Elysium has me in a chokehold. Actual life-changing experience. Highly recommend playing if you haven't. And I've been looking for a fun way to present a dive into Cheri's psychology, so what better way to do that than in the style of DE's Skills? I sure had a lot of fun choosing archetypes to fill the COOL FOR: sections of every skill.
This writeup does mention/refer to certain events in Cheri's past and present that i've written down but have never shared in great detail (or at all) in more public spaces — so if you happen to read this and go 'aha, I know exactly what that bit is talking about!', you get a cookie.
Author's Notes below the cut (best perused after reading the writeup):
On Style Imitation
I chose this format not only because I'm very fond of DE's striking prose, but also how Skills work in DE. Unlike most RPG stats and related level-up mechanics, having too much of anything can be actively detrimental to your gameplay (having not enough is, obviously, also detrimental for skill checks). It's a perfect way to explain Cheri, because if there's something she's really good at, it's being consistently inconsistent. She's a walking contradiction. Her best qualities can be her worst and vice versa. Consequently, the DE Skills are a good way to look at her (and your!) character not as a fixed archetype, but as a person.
Most of the writing time was actually spent sorting and outlining the skills! While the Detective's skills are categorized into more RPG-sounding sets (Intellect, Psyche, Physique, Motorics) and are personifications of his body and nervous system, Cheri's skillsets are categorized based on the major aspects of her character journey and are manifestations of those aspects. I try to keep them grouped up in an adjacent manner to the original skillsets as an extra challenge.
Some of the skills are straightforwardly similar (but not the same in their effects) to the DE skills, such as how Ikigai is Cheri's Volition and Yōjō is her Endurance. Some others are combinations that are adapted to Cheri's personality, like Martial Prowess (Physical Instrument + Hand-Eye Coordination), Prey Instinct (Half-Light and Empathy for a specific type of individual), Rationalization (Rhetoric + Logic), etc.
I also tried my best to capture the self-deprecating 'wink wink, nudge nudge' yet consistently devastating way DE captures the emotional aspects of its story and character writing (seriously, how am I getting IRL psychic damage from reading flavor text and tooltips?), but adjusting it to the tone and setting of both Cheri's internal narration and the world she lives in. I think I did pretty well!
Skill Names
DE has a very Francophone world and French names for certain skills (Esprit de Corps and Savoir Faire) so I thought I'd do the same for Cheri's using Japanese terms. There's extra amusement for me in this context because 'Cheri' is a French name, too.
Some are themed around her status as a bushi and iaido terminology/philosophy: Bushidō (samurai code of conduct), Chiburui (the, nowadays symbolic, gesture of shaking off blood from a blade), and Satsujin-Ken (lit. 'the killing sword', an older philosophy from the Yagyū Shinkage school of swordsmanship focused on performing lethal strikes at all costs). This one is self-explanatory.
Some are, straightforwardly, certain Japanese life philosophies that a lot of you may have heard of already: Mono no Aware (the appreciation for impermanence) and Ikigai (one's definition of the meaning of life). Yōjō is a bit more niche, but it's an analogue to the Daoist concept of yangsheng (self-cultivation to promote health and longevity). Cheri comes from a Buddhist background (and is very much Buddhist in philosophy and character), so I took care to draw inspiration from less Shinto-oriented concepts.
Some are named after theater/performance terminology: Kuroko (stagehands wearing all black, often a part of bunraku puppet theater) and Jo-Ha-Kyū (modulation and movement in various Japanese performance arts, including iaido, the sword-based martial art Cheri specializes in). Her love for aesthetics and performance arts has roots in the curriculum she had as a child; her Master doesn't want his students to grow up uncultured and only able to do fight as a living.
There's also other thematic names based on Cheri's motifs, such as Gravity Well and Dark Side (of the moon). The moon is one part of the Mikage Clan's Threefold Regalia, i.e. the Imperially-mandated system for family crests, and the worldbuilding for Cheri's homeland is generally themed around celestial bodies, so it would be appropriate.
The Horse Thing
aka. 'Cheri has always been a horse girl in-universe, the author is just a fool who never considered that she should have been one much earlier in the writing process and is now suffering writing an extra 10k words of justification/motif explanation for the character and her Shockingly Plot Relevant Horse(s)'
This was a relatively recent idea in the character building process that has resulted in major progress in the arcs of Cheri's life that I'm having trouble developing, i.e. her teen years, the years between her separation from Balor and arrival in Mistria, and her future arc with March and Chihiro. Just like how her Master becoming a full-fledged character of his own has helped me flesh out her distant past, Cheri's affinity for horses works in the other direction. It's also why Snow White now qualifies as a real character and not a prop — girl has a lot of personality.
So of course, during the writing of this piece, I had to go hard on the horse thing. It's thematically relevant! Things like Prey Instinct is, in part, why Cheri is good at handling horses: she understands their temperament because she herself has the temperament of one. Strong fight-or-flight response, social creatures that are prone to bad habits if left isolated or without exercise for too long, surprisingly expressive, the fact that their life is practically over if they can't run anymore, gets upset if their schedule is disrupted, can sleep standing up... yeah.
The long and short is, Cheri's status as a Horse Girl™ is excellent insight into the basest parts of her mind. It's also fuel for more character trivia that I'm always happy to share:
Snow White is the third horse to become a relevant part of Cheri's story. Her first companion is a blood bay gelding that she liberated from the estate's stables to escape her homeland; unfortunately Cheri had to hand him away to a poor old man, who happened to need a working animal, because she couldn't well enough smuggle an entire horse across the sea. Her second companion is Kintsugi, a little, scarred black stallion that she stole from his owners because they were beating him. He's her mount during her time travelling with Balor up to some time before they reunited again; she had to give him away, too, but for less altruistic reasons. I kind of want to elaborate on this in a comic, but we'll see!
Her childhood left Cheri with a fondness for war horses, so after she got her job as Mistria's official fixer, she went looking for a breed that would both do well in combat situations but also having an elegant appearance and gait (guess to whom this is similar to). Enter Snow White: A horse of Caldosian stock, historically used by cavalry soldiers during the War of the Lilies, and in the present day a favored breed for the Aldarian royal guard as parade or dressage horses. For an IRL comparison, Snow White is an Andalusian mare; in my gameplay, she's represented by the Tier 6 Winter horse. I would like for Snow White to be the star of NPC!Cheri's post-8 heart event follow up storyline.
Cheri has a soft spot for horses that are considered 'difficult' or 'ornery'. As Balor puts it, she always goes for the ones with a kill count (Snow White is no exception). She likes a project, but she likes soothing even the most problematic horses so they get along with her more. No wonder she ended up with March.
As a final note, I could have named Acumen as Horse Sense for maximum horsing around (ha), but unfortunately it's not snappy-sounding enough for something that's part of the INT-adjacent skillset.
Every time I go to Bsky to post something (mostly about my modding updates) I am reminded of the fact that I am noooot made for social media where posts have a character limit. I need to YAP. I need to go into excruciating detail when explaining what I'm up to or what I'm into. My hate for short form content also extends to short posts. Why should I break things up into multiple bite sized posts and not being able to edit them after posting too. Whose idea is this.
Anyways this is precisely why I only ever post stuff about Petals Upon the River on Tumblr (and Reddit); my yaps outside of the wiki cannot be contained within 300 characters.
More previews for my upcoming mod! I've got some fun customization options that are only possible thanks to (also upcoming) features included in Misc Map Actions Properties 🧡
I've survived yet another round of my artistic hubris and finished this art! That sword is going to be the death of me lol.
I thought I needed to draw these two as a couple more often, so I ended up using it as a chance to design yet another outfit. Some fun facts under the cut:
Both outfits are based on kuromontsuki haori hakama and kurotomesode (both outfits of the highest formality for married men and women, respectively). I'd like to think they commissioned a matching set to wear as a couple but March took a special liking to the haori and put his own spin on it!
The symbol on the outfits are their family crest after marriage, which combines the symbol on March's necklace (my interpretation of it is of a stylized anvil) with a white circle representing a full moon and a cherry blossom for Cheri's side.
Neither of them wear rings. For March it's because wearing a ring would bother his work (but he still made a plain silver band to put on his new necklace), for Cheri it's because she has her sword and tanto (dagger tucked in her belt) instead to indicate her marriage status. Both are made by March!
It's part of my greater worldbuilding for Cheri's story, but the gist of it was that symbolic items like rings hold no value in the marriage traditions of her homeland; people give their spouse-to-be a betrothal/wedding gift that they can use in their day-to-day life instead. However, as a consequence of the wartime era, this gift ends up taking the form of weapons, most commonly swords. And due to the amount of time, effort, and degree of personalization that can go into forging a sword, gifting someone a sword becomes associated with marriage specifically, i.e. an auspicious and lavish occasion merits an equally lavish gift.
In the main canon, March accidentally asked for Cheri's hand in marriage by giving her a replacement sword (completely unaware of the Connotations of the gesture), so after some discussion they settled on engagement. The real wedding gift is the tanto, which he did end up giving as part of the ceremony.
It's been A Week of tinkering with my latest mod, which is all but finished at this point (only finishing touches and re-testing some features to go) and I miss them so I had to doodle...
Ft. world record for fastest outfit design by me:
(I like to think they got a set of matching formal 5-mon outfits tailored to wear as a couple to events, but March took a special liking to the haori and put his own spin on it. Plus, there's no way he didn't develop some kind of fancier fashion sense, not after marrying Cheri of all people.)
The blog now has new banner art by the amazing and talented @moonfloat! This is my second time commissioning him and now this blog's banner matches my main. I'm so happy with the results, so please check out Ezekiel's works! 🧡
Elliott's summer fit is by @diversestardewvalley with a slight touch of the old Elliott design, which is his earring from the beta portraits (earring Elliott you'll always be famous).
This was based after a moment in Eury's save where, thanks to the Happy Birthday mod, Elliott ended up giving a single (1) orange to the orange farmer. I set myself up here since the birthday gifts you can get are entirely controlled by yourself, but it was still incredibly hilarious when it happened because in my head, by the time this happened he's already trying to (very nervously) woo her.
A new PNGtuber-style commission in the Fields of Mistria art style~ ✦🌸🎀
This is the first time I've ever gotten an animated comm and it's honestly so fun to put together the GIF previews.
Also, there's only 2 slots left for my verification sale (15% off). Since there will be price adjustments for this service after both slots have been taken, this is your last chance to get something from this service at the current price. If you're interested, do check out my VGen!
Ooh boy this is a fun one to encounter when you're having a hard time sleeping, so I want to talk about Cheri a bit since her wiki is now out there, and I have a dream that eventually I can release her as a custom NPC for Fields of Mistria. It's a pipe dream for now but I do consider conceptualizing her as an NPC as a good thought exercise.
My answer would be "too problematic" (in all the vague, arbitrary glory that word means in fandom these days) for so many reasons:
Cheri is not morally clean. She's not even morally grey in a palatable way. "Remorseless murderer" is an incredibly enduring part of her character, even post-high hearts. No matter how she explains and engages in her philosophy, at the end of the day she is someone who has killed for profit and her own survival—and she doesn't feel bad about it whatsoever.
She is deeply traumatized, but is not a "perfect victim". She ceaselessly defends her Master despite everything he's done to her and what he's made her into. She lashes out when confronted even if your take is objectively right. The list goes on.
Related to the traumatic upbringing, Cheri has very rigid personal standards. They will not bend no matter what you say or do unless she chooses to make room for them to bend. Even if you romance her, this will be a gradual change, and she may fight you about it or at least have a hard time listening to you.
She does not exist to please or validate you - in fact her opinion of you when you first encounter her is neutral-to-wary. She can be cordial, but she does not particularly care to butter you up outside of business reasons.
She can and will hate you. And when she does, it's because of reasons that only make sense to her vis-a-vis her principles.
Basically, you can't fix her. Only she can fix herself, and it will take time. Lots of time.
That's the basic rundown, but I have some more going on that are specifically because of stuff I'm critical of in FoM, so, more under the cut:
I am not fond of farming games' tendency to Must Romance Character for Maxing Out Character Development. Plus, I personally find the current dating system in FoM restrictive and poorly executed, specifically that:
You can't choose to date characters in your own time; if the 8 heart requirement is reached it happens. The most egregious case is March's.
You have to make the choice right then and there in the 8 heart event, which makes the script rigid because somehow the event has to be definitely platonic and definitely romantic at the same time. My heart breaks for some of these characters because choosing the platonic option feels like I'm friendzoning them.
No changing your mind. You make a permanently run-altering decision with no take-backsies. This is also related to the 2nd point; how do you come back from friendzoning someone to wanting to date them in a way that doesn't seem stilted?
So with consideration to this critique I have, Cheri is going to take an immense amount of effort to romance, through multiple sets of quests and subtasks. Partially because her past and present issues run too deep for her to consider romance on the spot, partially because she's incredibly dense (which is also related to said past issues).
... That is, if she even wants to - because Cheri is strongly monogamous. I know FoM lets you date multiple people, but I won't be pleased if in full release the characters involved won't even address the fact that you're dating multiple people. It will just feel like pandering to community requests without putting the necessary depth such a feature needs—especially because what I like about FoM NPCs over most farming sims is the fact that they have previously established relationships that the player cannot interfere with in any way. March will still be friends with Ryis even if you date either of them, for example; neither one magically forgets they have a best friend or stop hanging out because you happened. Looking at you, Elliott and Leah's 4 heart threshold.
(Which is why I find it eyebrow-raising that NPCs you date won't even comment that you're dating multiple people, considering the huge amount of inter-NPC interactions that exist as is. I find it even more eyebrow-raising that nobody comments if you're dating both Adeline and Eiland or that that wasn't a 'blacklisted' interaction in the first place. There's item tags preventing Dozy and Henrietta from being gifted chocolate and coffee; why not that? I sincerely hope it's an oversight or a product of early access.)
So if I could have my way, you can't date Cheri if you're dating anyone else (with one very special exception circumstance), nor will it end well for you if you try to woo anyone while you're with her. This is a matter of me writing Cheri as a person—who famously have preferences—and a matter of me noticing that players can be weirdly entitled about custom NPCs not being romanceable in farming sims in the way they like, especially if they're attractive. Which Cheri is, I won't deny it. I made her to appeal to my tastes, after all :))
Anyways, I didn't expect to yap this much, so thanks if you read this far - Cheri is currently my favorite paper doll to dress up and throw into Situations and trust me, I have put way too much thought in her.
