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In 2023 I gained an interest in making mods for Stardew Valley. I was initially drawn in by the idea of making portraits for the NPCs in my art style, but I was sort of intimidated by the amount of art needed to pull off something like that so I decided to initially go with something that was a little bit more bit-sized and manageable. Eventually I settled on the idea of making pixel art renditions of the covers of Beatles albums and adding them as furniture. I pretty much knew going into the project that most modded Stardew players wouldn't be interested in something sort of niche like that but I knew it was something I would enjoy having in my own game. This is a philosophy that I have maintained throughout all of my modding projects; they are always for myself and my own interests first and foremost, and if other people happen to like it then that's a nice bonus. That first mod released in May 2023 and I quickly got ideas for other projects, such as pride flag rugs to celebrate Pride Month and another series of paintings based on the in-game hats, as part of a modding jam from the SDV Discord server.

Then my big idea to create an interface recolor came along. I prefer a specific shade of pinkish, pastel purple and was unable to find any recolors for the game that had that exact shade. So, of course I asked, why not make it myself? It was a daunting undertaking to be sure, as there are SO MANY UI assets scattered throughout the game files and it's not always clear what they represent and where the game uses them, if at all. And it was my first time working with Content Patcher, the main framework that the modding community uses. But I grinded away at the project for over a month and eventually got it to a state where I was truly happy with how it looked, and I released it in July 2023. Lavender Dreams, as I eventually decided to call it, has become my most popular mod over the years. I've continued to make lots of improvements to it over that time as well of course, and I'm very proud of it for both of those reasons. I currently don't have any plans for it in mind beyond keeping it compatible with future game updates as needed.

For the following year I continued to release an assortment of mods, mostly aesthetic in nature and not particularly difficult to code. But I had started to get aspirations for something more substantial, that changed the experience of the game, even if only by a little bit. Of course, these aspirations were for making an NPC, an idea that basically every mod maker considers doing at least once, however briefly. I had, for some reason, specifically latched on to the idea of carrying over one of my Pale Horse Locomotive characters, Honeyfuggle. I took the plunge in August/September of 2023 and had assembled most of the essential parts of an NPC, including seasonal outfits, a custom map, a schedule, and custom animations, in a very short amount of time. However, I hit a massive road block in terms of the character's story (in the form of heart events) and dialogue. I had pretty much burnt myself out doing all the other aspects without taking the time to first figure out the foundation of Honeyfuggle's reasonsing for being in the game. So I put the mod on the shelf for almost two entire years after that, not wanting to untangle the mess I had made. Around this time I had also gotten the idea to do a botanical garden mod, something similar to the Stardew Aquarium mod or the museum from the Animal Crossing series (which I could also inject with characters from my own original projects). But obviously, if I couldn't handle implementing one NPC, an entire expansion would certainly be out of reach.

I pretty much went dormant with mod-making from mid 2024 to mid 2025, beyond maintainance updates. Frustration with Honeyfuggle probably played a role to some extent, but I had also simply been preoccupied with other things; I tend to jump around between projects pretty frequently, without much warning and without consideration of whether the previous project has been finished. I don't like leaving things unfinished, especially after my best friend composed a custom music track to be used in the Honeyfuggle mod, but I can't control where my brain takes me! :/ If I recall correctly I think most of that time was spent with Sparks, as I binged all of their music and made art to express my newfound obsession with them. I did manage to crank out one more mod that turned their albums into wall art but then it was back into hiding for me.

Around May of 2025 I started thinking a lot about how I had left Honeyfuggle unfinished, and particularly about the music track I had let languish. It was one thing to toss aside my own unfinished work indefinitely, but my friend and his creation didn't deserve that. I decided I was going to restart on Honeyfuggle and get it released that year. I threw out pretty much everything from the old iteration, besides the map because I think it held up pretty well and also I hate making maps LOL. I made a much better portrait for them, went into the project with a clear idea for the story and "arc" that they would go through, and focused on getting that done before doing fun extras like outfits and crossovers with other mods. The mod released in August 2025, exactly one year and two days after the release of my Sparks mod and almost two years after I created the Nexus page for Honeyfuggle. I still have my own doubts about the quality of the writing/story in the mod, but I'm very proud of myself for finally getting the thing done, and I also believe it has some of my best pixel art to date.

I've sort of gone dormant again after that, as of the time of me writing this in January 2026. I've been tinkering away behind the scenes, mostly for an overhaul of my wall art mods that converts them to Content Patcher instead of Alternative Textures, but it also involves adding a lot more art (for the Beatles' solo albums) and that is a rather daunting task. But maybe once my fixation on making wikis and websites dies down, I could pivot back to doing modding "full-time". I still really want to get that botanical garden idea off the ground, both so my characters can see the light of day but also before someone else inevitably publishes something with the same concept lol.

I plan to add links to all of my mods with fancy buttons and stuff in the future but in the meantime, here's a link to my profile if you want to browse what I've made uwu Link