Content warning: This article explores the difficult topics of mental health and suicide.I recently wrote about completing Joja’s route in Stardew Valley for the first time, explaining how my usual priority task in the game – making friends – got pushed aside in pursuit of money-making methods and profiting from selling everyone’s favorite gifts. After completing Joja’s Warehouse, I started playing Animal Well, and the two games couldn’t be more different.
Despite not being a fan of Metroidvanias, I thoroughly enjoyed Animal Well. However, when I finished playing it, I felt like I had escaped from a creepy, puzzle-ridden basement myself and wanted some fresh air. Wanting something more light-hearted, I returned to Stardew Valley’s Joja save and played through all the new content from March’s 1.6 update.
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Now, with no dollar signs in sight, I no longer had to worry about the monetary value of the gifts my neighbors would like. Instead of toiling in the mines on Friday nights in search of gems to sell or ore to smelt, I saddled myself with a backpack full of gifts and headed to the tavern. Anyone who didn’t have a special gift was given a beer I’d quickly grabbed from the counter with Joja’s loot, as if to buy them a drink at the bar.
Since I didn’t grow many peppers in the summer, Shane also got some beer. Thanks to that, our relationship steadily grew. Even as I started to actively befriend people in town, Shane wasn’t a priority outside of the tavern. I also decided not to manually trigger heart events or cutscenes. And because Stardew Valley’s heart events can be triggered in any order as long as you meet the friendship requirements, I barely spent any time with Shane when I entered Cindersap Forest on a stormy summer night and accidentally stumbled upon his sixth heart event.
Finding People at Rock Bottom
Having played the game a few times, the cutscene was nothing new to me, but there was something unnaturally realistic about stumbling across someone in the worst possible situation. I never thought of Shane as a friend; I barely thought of him as a friend. But there he was, alone, drunk in the rain on the edge of a cliff, begging for me to not tumble to my death on the rocks below. And sometimes everyone seems like a friend when you’re clinging on for dear life.
I’ve been in Shane’s shoes before: Treated for depression since I was 14, working soul-crushing customer service jobs to make ends meet, and trapped in a cycle of waking up, working, and wanting more. At his lowest, I empathized with Shane’s groaning at the edge of despair: “I’m too small and stupid to be in control of my life.”
There are four things to say in this scene: you could vaguely assert that there’s still a lot to live for, you could appeal to him by bringing up his niece who he loves, you could tell the depressed atheist that suicide is a sin, and you could tell him that you’ll be there for him no matter what he does.
I told him it would be okay because I was there for him, because sometimes when things are really low, that’s what you need. Of course, friendship isn’t like a bandaid, but one of my own low times was soothed by a friend I made while working at a grocery store that was similar to JojaMart. During one particularly tumultuous time in my life, I was crying in my car on the way home from that job, so nervous to drive that I pulled into the parking lot. I hung my head, ran my hands through my hair, and screamed until I was out of breath, crying in the parking lot of the Target near my house until the phone rang.
I was about to darken the screen, regretting that I hadn’t put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode, when I saw a message from that friend. He and I had been good friends at the store for a while, and we had hung out together a few times outside of work, but that day he noticed something was off about me and wanted to check in. He told me to reply when it was convenient for me, but to let him know if I needed anything, even if it was about a friend.
Showing kindness in the worst moments goes a long way
Of course, that email didn’t cure my depression or solve the real problems I was facing. But it was an act of kindness I never expected that helped me when I was feeling so alone and hopeless. Just as a message from a friend inspired me to wipe my tears with a napkin I grabbed from the glove compartment, drive home, write him back, and make plans, Shane is asking me to take him to the hospital if you helped him see the light by being with him in his ugly moment.
After a cutscene at the clinic with Harvey’s sympathetic words, Shane stops by your house to tell you that he’s going to consider treatment for his depression because of how much you feel for him. In the same way, my experience of “the right moment at the wrong time” was what prompted me to start taking antidepressants again.
Sometimes light in the darkness comes when you least expect it, from a source you never thought to see, and mental health is a tricky, ugly subject, but as someone who has dealt with it myself and felt the emotions Shane felt at every stage of that emotional event, it’s refreshing to see it handled so realistically and with so much grace in Stardew Valley.
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