FluxBlog

Imagine turning 17 and your internet boyfriend gifts you a game for your birthday called “Night in the Woods” on Steam because he thought the main character was “literally you”, only to figure out the main character later is an anthropomorphic schizo-borderline cat with anger issues.

NITW is one of a kind game that I will never forget for TONS of reasons. For personal reasons and non-personal alike. I look back at my teens and playing this game is a highlight. The game even has one of my favorite video game soundtracks of all time. I’m not going to talk about or explain this game, there are many video essays on youtube for that. I’m not lying.

But briefly, the game takes place in an anthropomorphic world, and we play this sick fuck of a cat main character called Mae Borowski who is going through it. Just dropped out of college, comes back home to her small town, and you realize everyone in this town still hates or is scared of her because she has beaten up a boy to near death with a baseball bat in a psychotic episode just before leaving for college. She’s back, living with her parents and vibing with her friends until some weird shit starts going down. And now you have a game to play.

But you know what really, really stuck with me about the game even after all these years? It’s this particular line that comes up at the end of the game,

I cannot find a single fucking screenshot of this in-game, but anyway, this line.

I’m not a quote-y type of person, but this line changed me. As cathartic as playing this game was, this one line summed up the whole game. My angsty emo 17-year-old found an answer. An answer to the angst. From a video game!

For someone who was constantly on edge, crippled with anxiety these words came in like a sweet breeze of certainty and reassurance. “Hold onto anything.”

Hold onto anything.

Hold onto anything.

At the end of everything.

I did not find this hopeful or anything even remotely positive. For me, it came off like a harding hitting fact. Like someone screaming at me to grab and hold onto anything I could in my reach as I was getting sucked into a vortex. Or someone telling me to swing my bat at the killer approaching. It was not just a pretty little line from a pretty little indie video game. It was the truth. A fact.

In fact, one time it practically “changed” me. My panic attacks often felt like the end of everything. And no, I did not hold onto anything whenever I had one, just my chest. But when I did panic one time, comically, this quote was the first thing that came to my mind. I was on the floor (crying and throwing up) regulating my breathing, just my head repeating “At the end of everything, hold onto anything.”

Can you believe it got me through a panic episode? Embarrassing.

Today I look back at this game and the emo in me rejoices. I look back and remember Mae, the schizophrenic cat with a personality disorder, who was “literally me” as the symbol of my late teens. I remember the internet. I remember my internet “boyfriend” from the other side of the planet. I remember the loneliness. I remember the anger.

Most of all, I remember just how much things have changed since then. Just how much I’ve grown, just how much I’ve discovered, just how many new storylines, paths, and scenarios I’ve unlocked in my life like the game.

Just how much I’m not 17 anymore.

It reminds me that things will continue to change, so that I should at the end of everything, hold onto anything until I get my best ending.

TLDR; A game that symbolizes change for me so I look back and think NITW, FTW.

Yours,
Samy 😘

ncG1vNJzZmiulafGs63BrqmyZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonyxe8CtZK2glWKyr7CMqJ1mnaaav7rAx6KloGWYpLmlec6nq6g%3D