It comes with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have to inform you that the mod I chose to scrutinize this week was Stardew Valley with Anthro Characters—or what is known more colloquially as “The Furry Overhaul Mod.” This mod created mainly by Gaveliere with the help of various others is purely cosmetic as it works to reimagine all NPCs throughout the game as a variety of creatures that scale from common farm animals to mythical creatures.
The updated NPC furry roster.
Carefully Crafted Claws and Paws
While at first glance of the updated roster, it may seem that there was no rhyme or reason given to the attributed species of each character; however, while playing I noticed subtle details that gave me a greater appreciation for the work that was put in. For example, the family resemblance lineage still is present in these updated models, for the children often share the same species of at least one of their parents—as we can see in both Penny and Pam being rams and Sam, Vincent, and Jodi being cheetahs; however, this does raise the attention to the anomaly of Abigail, for I may have done my math incorrectly, but I do not believe that a racoon (Caroline) and red panda (Pierre) can produce a dragon offspring. I believe that Abigail as the black sheep within this mod pack further perpetuates the popular fandom theory that she is not actually the biological child of Pierre and Caroline; however, instead of purple hair being the reason why she could not be blood related to her parents—or at least her cuckolded father Pierre in the most popular headcanon in which Caroline and the wizard had an affair—it is because she has scales instead of fur. This subtle, yet undeniable, difference within Abigail when it comes to this mod epitomizes the way in which the hypothesized lore of a game can make it into the creative consciousness of its audience. For while I cannot say where the motivation for Abigail’s dragon form comes from, I can hypothesize that the inspiration, whether subconscious or not, is based within this collective community history. Thus, in creating a mod that replaces the main NPCs with anthro characters that still plays into the original obscurity of Abigail’s true parentage, the creator himself sees this visual mod as an extension of the base game that tries to emulate the experience but with a slight new twist. If the mod creator had chosen to design character models with complete creative freedom, than these subtle nuisances present within the base game would be lost; therefore, their inclusion allows the player to both be excited in the way the game changes visually and comforted for the presence of what they know and love about the game. For mods that stray too far from the source material often become something else entirely and fail their job to capture an audience that wishes not to play something new, but modified.
A Fox in Sheep’s Clothing
The closest I could get in the base editor to a “foxish” design.
A peculiar detail about this mod is that the focus of living in an anthropomorphized animal world is placed on your surroundings and not yourself. For the mod has no options to change oneself into an animal; thus, you exist as the only human in this world of animals. While strange in nature, this modification in the visual difference between your player character and the NPCs allowed for me to interpret the narrative of the game in a new light. For I created a character called ‘Foxer’ who I tried my best to design with as much orange hair and facial hair as possible. Thus, I created this story for myself that I was a disguised human living and observing this town of animals I had just moved into, sort of like an ethnographer (or a zookeeper). I feel that this new twist was able to take away a proceduralist aspect to the Stardew Valley story, for this time I was able to create a narrative out of an unexplained feature of the game that modified my game playing experience, even if it was only visual and not mechanical.
The Male Ga(ze/ys)
While all the features within “The Furry Overhaul Mod” add a lot to the interior of the game, a look at the exterior world in which they were created is able to contextualize the mod in a way that cannot be done if you do not understand the underlying community. As this mod was created by a popular gay male NSFW furry artist, Gaveliere, there is an intense focus on the romanceable bachelors present. The mod comes with a specific package that allows all six bachelorettes in game to be switched over to furry male counterparts; however, there is no option to gender bend the bachelors. This seemingly strange choice would not make sense if you did not understand that the majority of the furry community is made up of gay men—an international study done in Winter of 2011 found that 87% of furries identified as men and 72.2% identified as being either exclusively gay or bisexual (Plante, Anthropormorphic Research Project). So while the mod obviously appeals to the broader demographic of furries, it does so in a way that both further queers the game and excludes a demographic of LGBTQ+ gamers. This differs from Welch’s observation of common “queer cosmetic enhancement mods” that “often rely on switching gendered assets from one avatar to another within
The female to male redesigns of all the bachelorettes in the game.
the game” (Welch, Labour of Queer Mods), for instead of focusing on the player characters abilities, the anthro mod places emphasis on the NPCs. Thus, “The Furry Overhaul Mod” can be utilized as a great digital media tool that provides further insight into the community; the shift of focus on the exterior characters of the world and modifying them exemplifies the voyeuristic nature of the furry community. So much of the community’s art, discussion, and creations rely on admiring and sexualizing anthropomorphic animals from afar. While often people attribute fursonas to being a personal wish to anthropomorphize themselves, it more often times is a way in which to fetishize anthro characters and exist as an exhibitionist observer to their visual and sexual appeal. For I say this not to oversexualize the community, but instead respect the ways in which sexuality and queerness are embedded into work, hence the NSFW creator behind this mod. The Anthro character mod thus acts a microcosm of the community in which we can see the gay male majority and their desires reflected in its content.
Works Cited:
Welch, Tom. “Game Studies – The Affectively Necessary Labour of Queer Mods”. http://gamestudies.org/1803/articles/welch.
Plante, Courtney. “International Online Furry Survey: Winter 2011 – Anthropomorphic Research Project.” Google Sites, https://sites.google.com/site/anthropomorphicresearch/past-results/international-online-furry-survey-2011.
(If you do choose to do further research into the world of Anthro Stardew Valley, please proceed with caution and a careful eye as this was the developer’s note on the mod FAQ page.)
