One of Stardew Valley’s Bachelorettes is Emotionally Abusive and that’s not Okay

Abigail’s plotline in Stardew Valley begins rather innocuously. Abigail is nice and quirky. As you befriend her you play video games together, and play instruments in the afternoon rain. She’s never written as mean or controlling in these scenes. She’s painted as the edgy 20-year-old at odds with her parents. She’s, initially, an interesting character to get to know. In a recent save file, I decided that I would give her storyline a go and, being my naturally impatient self, I looked online to see what her dialogue was like. This is when I discovered Stardew Valley has an Abagail problem.

Beware: Spoilers for Abigail’s Dialogue

Credit: Chucklefish

I first became aware of the issue when I was looking at her post-marriage dialogue. The first clue I got was from a line she says if you give one of the other bachelorettes a present. It reads, “I heard you secretly gave [bachelorette’s name] a gift, do I need to feel jealous?” The second issue came in the form of a line where she says, “I wonder if we’ll live here our entire lives? I might get bored.” Finally, the last, and most devastating, “I wonder if I could’ve done better… I was very good friends with Sebastian before we met. He was probably the one…”

While this isn’t a long list, Abigail’s lines contain more instances of projecting her insecurity onto you, controlling who you talk to, or insinuating she’ll leave you than any other bachelorette’s (you can check if you want to.) The fact that she is the only character to have a line as cruel as saying she wished she had married someone else, should be proof enough that Abigail is written as uniquely abusive.

It Could Have Been Handled Better

If that wasn’t bad enough, within the game, this is framed as acceptable. But, it’s not. A partner should never emotionally manipulate their match and Stardew Valley does nothing to show that Abigail’s behavior is based in harmful relationship practices. If the game were to be introspective about Abigail’s treatment of her partner or give the player an option to call her out, this could have been a different conversation. But it doesn’t. This is unfortunate because Stardew Valley has been hailed as a socially aware game, and yet, it goes so very wrong with one of its core characters.

All information for this article was collected via Ribbons and Star’s Master Post on post-Marriage dialogue the Stardew Valley Wiki and verified by me.

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Nicole is a video game and pop-culture critic with a lifelong relationship with video games and the strange tenderness that can be found within them. She is an avid collector of DS games and a reluctant collector of Amiibos. She has a strong belief that the gaming community, with some work, can become an inclusive and nurturing environment to all who seek to belong to it.

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Comments

5 responses to “One of Stardew Valley’s Bachelorettes is Emotionally Abusive and that’s not Okay”

  1. SpaceJanitor Avatar
    SpaceJanitor

    I’m failing to see what the problem is. The developer put this in and it was his choice and it’s his game. Who are you or anyone to say it shouldn’t have been done and it’s a problem? The game is a live sim right? Guess what, in real life some people are like this and would say these things to a spouse lol. Heck maybe this happened to the developer in real life and he put it in because of that. Does that ruin the game or constitute as a problem at all in my opinion.

  2. SpaceJanitor Avatar
    SpaceJanitor

    Deleting my comments because they destroy your reasoning eh? Well there goes your credibility as a journalist as you’d rather sound right than enter into a conversation. Joke author.

  3. SpaceJanitor Avatar
    SpaceJanitor

    I’m even going to post it again because I know you’ll delete it as you clearly know I’m right and destroyed your article.

    Original post deleted by coward author:

    I’m failing to see what the problem is. The developer put this in and it was his choice and it’s his game. Who are you or anyone to say it shouldn’t have been done and it’s a problem? The game is a life sim right? Guess what, in real life some people are like this and would say these things to a spouse lol. Heck maybe this happened to the developer in real life and he put it in because of that. Does that ruin the game or constitute as a problem at all? In my opinion not even close. Clearly relationship abuse is not okay but its a frigging game. Next you’ll say GTA has a problem because you can kill random people and that’s never okay? If anything the author of this article has the problem of not being able to seperate reality from gaming.

  4. AuroraMoon Avatar
    AuroraMoon

    Okay, I married Abigail in game and I’ve never seen those lines before in my life. not even when I gave gifts to other girls and boys. But then again, I always give her the gifts first because she’s the first person I see now every morning.
    Are you sure that those lines only exist if you kept on “cheating” on her? and making her lose interest in you? By cheating, I mean ignoring her completely while you focus your attention on another girl. I dunno, if I was her and my husband was clearly more interested in another girl than he was me, I’d end up saying pretty similar stuff too.

  5. I’d just like to point out that it’s very bad journalism to have merely looked up these lines on a tumblr post, not experiencing them yourself for the full context, and written such a critical article, not even including at what points these lines are triggered (even though the tumblr clearly states that.) I’ve never gone very far with Abigail but still understand she’s a pretty sarcastic, jokey character, so the first line about the gift is probably in that context (a joke). The second line is said at mid-range hearts/neutral mood (and really isn’t that bad wtf), and the last one wondering if she could have done better is when she’s at low hearts/bad mood (when YOU’RE NOT PAYING ANY ATTENTION TO HER.)

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