Posthuman Cuteness: Affective and Agentic Tensions

This paper examines cuteness in videogames through a textual analysis of the Turnip Boy series, namely Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (2021) and its sequel Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (2024). Its central question is how the affective qualities of cuteness disrupt subject/object relations within a posthuman framework. The author argues that cuteness, by offering an instrumentalised emotive form, allows cute things to resist their subordinate position and become agentic subjects. The analysis draws on Sianne Ngai's account of cuteness as an aesthetic that spans tenderness and aggression, and on Rosi Braidotti's critique of species supremacy in humanist worldviews.

The argument rests on the observation that Turnip Boy is framed as subordinate in several overlapping ways: as a vegetable positioned as "less than" human, as an avatar subordinate to the player, and as a cute object apparently posing no threat. Yet the games depict him threatening economic structures such as capitalism and, in the sequel, shaking down fellow vegetables for money. The paper proposes that cuteness works to extend affective forgiveness, offsetting this threat, and that the resulting vacillation in power is central to the pleasures of cute content. Textual attention to visual, aural, and narrative elements, including the sleeping introductory menu and the soundtrack, supports this reading.

The scope is confined to the two Turnip Boy titles, and the framework is presented as relevant to posthuman game studies, the affective negotiation between avatar and player, and, through overlap with cosy game scholarship, to the study of cosy games. The paper deliberately distinguishes cuteness from coziness, arguing that conflating them would be reductive.