#nitw spoilers

[siffrins-therapist]

Dialogue is from Night in the Woods (just edited a tiny bit) :3

[lightbluesleeper]

just been thinking about how well night in the woods captures derealization

i don’t think i have the exact same problems as mae but as someone who struggled with derealization for like 7 months the feeling she describes as everything just being ‘stuff in the universe, lines that someone wrote’ hits so hard. when you’re in a state of derealization, it feels like you’re untethered to anything. everyone is a cardboard standee to you and you feel like you’re in a tv programme, and everyone’s just reciting their lines, repeating lines of codes. you want it to hurt, cause god damnit it would mean something.

when it got real bad i would just thrash around my room and try and break shit, just to prove i can touch something and my hand won’t go right through it, and i think mae’s breakdown on andy cullen is exactly what i wanted to do to make myself matter somehow and prove that the world i was living in was full of objects i can interact with.

it was all shapes, everyday, and it felt like everything was gone forever, but it being talked about it in a game,, i dont know it made the world feel a little more real to me. the whole idea of ‘at the end of everything, hold on to anything’ is such an important sentiment because at times like that you’ll use anything to ground yourself; little things that remind you that you’re a real person are crucial.

i don’t know i’m just rambling but i’m so glad i got out, and i just wanted to share what this game means to me :) if you’re going through something like this just remember it’s not forever. there’s always hope for you. i love you and you mean alot to me even if all you’ve done is read this post - we’ll feel real again soon friend

[kitkinnie]

because casey was described as having orange hair instead of orange fur, the first time i played NITW i imagined him being a black cat like mae but with orange hair dye... or flecks of orange in his fur, like a tortie.

i used to have a childhood best friend who looked very similar to me to the point that strangers would think we were siblings; i think that would happen with these two as well.

[bitethetablet]

just lines someone wrote

[grubscouts]

[skykiuwu]

There’s a black goat at the center of everything

[schnanko]

it's so cool to me that mae's preferred weapon throughout the game is a baseball bat. in the first dream, when she's in the basement with bea...but before either of those, she used one to bash someone's head in.

there's an interesting lack of discomfort. think about it - if you had a break from reality and significantly hurt someone with an object, don't you think you'd want to keep that object far away from yourself? don't you think even seeing it, let alone using it, might be triggering?

but not only does mae continue to veer towards bats, there's no acknowledgement when she uses them. no self reflection needed. it's like she's got no dangerous history with baseball bats.

did she work on that trauma to get to a point where baseball bats aren't a trigger? did it ever register as a trigger? i think the presence of the baseball bat, and mae's response to it, has some interesting insight into mae's feelings towards the event and the impact it had on her. not quite sure what those insights are, will update if i land on something more solid.

[ihhfhonao3]

Games about characters struggling mentally or going through a lot of bullshit ending with them going to their friends/family/loved ones/a therapist and saying “there’s a lot I need to tell you” I am kissing you on the lips

[am-null]

bruh if you think ab it echo and night in the woods are the same game. college kid comes back to their dying hometown to hang out with their old friend group (one of the friends died under mysterious circumstances) and get wrapped up in weird phenomenon including weird dreams and mine shenanigans and has multiple endings based on which friend you choose to hang out with most.

theyre also both super gay and furry.

[initial-lime]

There’s something so genuine profound about Gregg SHOOTING someone for mae, no hesitation. Like yeah okay at that point they all know it’s like a murder cult thing but sticking a crossbow bolt in a guy still takes effort, and he even says he “wasn’t aiming for the shoulder”

The people in this game. They are honestly very mundane and realistic ‘people’ especially coming from a small nowhere town

But god I just. Mae and Gregg, they make me SICK your honour

I have a 100% completion in this game and I still keep re-playing it, it has changed and continues to influence my brain chemistry even if it’s not the front burner fixation

[lemonofthevalley]

i would love to hear about your dndads nitw au :)) (<- recently played nitw very very good)

HEHEHE YIPPEE :3

so basically it's a kiddads au

grant is mae, sparrow is bea, lark is casey, nicky is gregg, and tj is angus

still deciding on what animals they'll be but grant will probably be a moose (my fav animal), l+s will obv be wolves, not sure what to make nicky . a goat for the "demon" horns maybe?? and I have literally no clue what to make terry at all

I can't decide if I want grant to be transfem in this au too ,,,, I will probably bc it fits better in my mind

also grant wilson is literally mae borowski I need to put them in a blender

(night in the woods spoilers under the cut)

I was struggling on where to place lark because gregg doesn't really fit him, and germ doesn't fit Any of the kiddads, so I literally just killed him off 😭 whoops sorry lark

but really it was more because the scene with the cult where they said that nobody cared about him and he was just in the way when his twin is literally right there? heartbreaking I love aus where one of the twins die it's so sad

[sordid-dog]

shapes

[flowerfelled]

Sorry, just thinking about Night in the Woods, and Mae Burowski, and her parents, and her journal with doodles in it, and Greg and Angus, and Bea, and Casey, and Germ, and the repair man, and how nostalgia is presented as a neutral thing that exists in life, and Mae’s dreams, and the garage band, and the arm with the diamond tattoo, and Mae and Greg’s knife fights, and the pretzel place that rests in the sewers, and Mae and Greg placing an animatronic in the woods to scare kids, and Mae and Angus looking for constellations, and Harfest, and the Chamber of Commerce play, and the cult that sacrifices people in the mines, and why Mae dropped out of college, and Mae wanting to go back home because it’s the one place where everything isn’t just shapes and having to deal with the changes that happened while she was gone, and Mae saying that when she dies she wants it to hurt, and the story of the miners who removed all the teeth of the boss that treated them poorly, and Selmer’s poem, and just the entirety of Night in the Woods in general.

[et-ceterart]

“and i cried, because it was all just stuff in the universe. just… dead. and the next day was that softball game. and andy cullen was the pitcher when i was up. and he was just shapes too. like nothing in there. just shapes. red shapes all over the grass.”

[bitethetablet]

a buncha drawings i did related to the actual game

[grubscouts]

i heart them