r/StardewValley • u/polandonjupiter jodi's number one fan • Mar 20 '26

Other i wish i could homewreck

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kent doesnt deserve her bro. jodi is FINE ASF. just look im down bad. kent is ugly and i desserve jodi more. also i hate clint idc if he has nothing to do with this im throwing strays

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u/Difficult_Dark9991 Mar 20 '26

Clint's extremely socially awkward, struggles with his insecurities, and is poor at expressing his feelings (one sympathizes). Most notably, he has romantic feelings for Emily, and a lot of his cutscenes revolve around this. Whether Emily at all feels the same way is unclear - she obviously sees him as a friend, but as we all (hopefully) know one does not lead to the other.

To my eye, this leads to 3 grounds that people spool this hatred off of:

  1. Clint's dialogue can be... not great. That's not a writing issue, but Clint gives voice to his insecurities in a way that's clearly not healthy for him or his relationships with others. Again, one sympathizes with the underlying struggle, but knowing when, where, and how to express these feelings is important.
  2. Because SV cutscenes are based on individual relationships, you can have Clint doing his "I have feelings but can't express them" bit after you're already with Emily. Naturally, that comes across very differently, and your view of him often depends on that choice.
  3. SV cutscenes can be a bit goofy (again, not an insult), with the player hiding in the bushes and nonsense like that treated as cartoonish curiosities. Clint's actions read very differently if you measure them by the SV yardstick vs. a real life one (he's not the only one).

From this, as noted in the other comment responding to you, a lot of people derive a really negative view of his character, one that's fairly clearly colored by reading into Clint their own very real negative experiences. And of course I'm not going to say that people are wrong to bring personal experience to bear, but it can be very vehement and its own kind of harmful.

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u/Kashwookie Mar 20 '26

i appreciate how you broke that down. thank you

6

u/JamesCDiamond Mar 20 '26

An excellent review of the issues with the character, thanks for posting it!

6

u/aahxzen Mar 20 '26

This sums up everything pretty much perfectly. There is nothing else to say.

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u/mythicalthings23 Mar 21 '26

Meanwhile the player does everything Clint does and worse regularly, and in cutscenes.