Hey, stardew valley fandom, when are you gonna fucking mature and admit the only reason you hate Clint is fatphobia.
"oh he's a creep!!! He stalks Emily!!! He's sooo weird!!! He's an incel!!"
Ok so where's the stalking. Because if you're talking about the 1 (ONE) cutscene where he WAS GOING TO CONFESS and chickened out, then you're wrong. That's not stalking. You know what stalking is? Hiding in bushes and listening in on conversations ON PURPOSE. oh wow that sure sounds a lot like WHAT THE FARMER DOES IN HALF THE FUCKING HEART EVENTS EVER. you don't hate him because he's a "stalker" because then you'd hate the farmer, so that's out of the question.
What about him being a creep? Surely this one is a real accusation with some substance behind it, maybe he's super obsessive over Emily or something- oh wait no. You're wrong, again. He actually shows that he's willing to move on from Emily in his dialogue where he questions if he should get a computer to try and find an online girlfriend. "Ew but that's such incel behavior!!" Dating apps. Think about dating apps for three seconds. You make an online profile and find someone to date through the Internet. His idea is actively NO worse than any dating app ever. In fact this dialogue shows more good about him than bad because he is 1) trying to move on from Emily somewhat, and 2) is willing to actually put in EFFORT to find a woman who likes him instead of harassing one who doesn't (which makes him the opposite of an incel). "Oh but his dialogue about Emily is so weird!!" Ok, if you can't understand why he says the things he does, let me go through them for you:
If anything, this one is cute. He thinks there's a disaster happening and he's worried about his crush and wants to keep her safe. Next.
?? He's literally just wondering. He has a crush on Emily, he wonders if she'd be interested in dancing with him. If THIS is a dialogue you have a problem with, I'm concerned for how you think crushes work.
So, this one is a little ridiculous. I get it. You might think this makes him sound like those creepy guys at the bar who always think girls who are uninterested are playing hard to get. But he's not doing that. He's not saying "oh my yoba this means she's in love with me!!!" He's simply overthinking a simple action: something everyone with a crush ever has done at some point or another. "Omg they smiled at me when I walked by do they like me back?? Omgomgomg" is like. A basic 'having a crush' experience.
That's literally all his dialogue about Emily I could find on the Stardew wiki, other than when he awkwardly congratulates the farmer for getting with her if you give her a bouquet. Which is also fair, because if someone who knew you liked a person started dating them, you'd also be a little disheartened. That's his long time crush, guys, cut him some slack.
"that's not what's creepy, what's creepy is that he still says all that stuff even after you date/marry Emily!!" Im actually so baffled by this one. I see it a lot and it just blows my mind that you guys can't think for three seconds why that might be. Take this issue up with ConcernedApe??? Like. It's not Clint's fault the developer didn't want to go through the effort of adding more dialogue that he'd have to SPECIFICALLY tailor to only show up when the player is dating/married to Emily. LITERALLY yell at ConcernedApe if this is such a problem with you, I'm sorry the videogame NPC built with code can't just randomly become sentient and make up its own dialogue so as to not be a "creep". Like what the fuck is wrong with you, actually.
Im sooo sick of the "Clint is a creep!" Narrative because he is literally the opposite.
He specifically doesn't go see the mermaid show even though he thinks it would help him calm down because he's SCARED THEY'RE GOING TO THINK HES BEING A CREEP. Clint is so so terrified of being perceived as a creep. That is literally the last thing he wants, ever.
"oh, but why would he be so concerned about it if he wasn't a creep?!?" Because he's socially awkward, middle aged, and fat. And EVERYONE always thinks those kinds of men are creeps. He's scared of being STEREOTYPED. AND YOU GUYS ARE STEREOTYPING HIM.
Onto my final point: You guys hating him is a blatant tell of your internalized fatphobia and ableism. Fatphobia first:
Every single Clint "fix" mod for sprites, portraits, even his character in general, changes his body type. They either make him a fucking twink or a huge muscled up man. If his weight WASNT what bothered you guys, then why the fuck are y'all changing it? Like actually. This is fucked up.
Alright, now ableism: the OTHER reason y'all hate this guy is his social awkwardness. There's zero doubt about it because I've HEARD people complain explicitly about this one. You call him weird and creepy because he doesn't know how to interact with people. You immediately jump to blaming and judging him for something he can't control; the way I see it, Clint could very well have anxiety, OCD, or be autistic. Anxiety and OCD because of how scared he seems to be of being perceived as a creep. He gets too scared to confess to Emily and doesn't let himself enjoy the mermaid show because he's scared. This could very well stop him from having positive social relationships because of his fear of being stereotyped. My argument for autism is that he doesn't seem too keen on social interaction in the first place; he speaks very bluntly ("don't you have work to do?" "You should upgrade your tools. I could use the money") and largely brushes the farmer off until you have a decent amount of hearts with him. He sits with Willy in the saloon, but they don't appear to speak to each other. He's either socially awkward because he doesn't like being social a whole lot or because his fear is holding him back. Both of which are completely reasonable things that can be helped by people acknowledging these issues and supporting him instead of literally bullying him for them.
I SWEAR to all that is holy, if I see one more "no one saw clints special shoes XD" meme I'm going to lose it. How would you feel if you dressed up for a special occasion and no one in your entire town- let alone the people you call friends- noticed. It would feel like shit. So leave him BE oh my GODS.
You can dislike whatever characters you want. I have no say in that and no right to tell you who you should or shouldn't like. But I do think you should examine what exactly your reason is for being such a cunt to this guy. Genuinely. Cause I think a LOT of you are gonna find some internalized fatphobia or stereotypes you still have to deconstruct.
EDIT: this post has been very well received so far and this was a thought I had while writing the post but, I thought I'd ask here. Do you think I should make this into a mini video-essay? Obviously not all of the Stardew fandom is on Tumblr and I do want this message to get as far as possible because the Clint hate is so dumb, and sometimes people really just need a wake up call.
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