Night in the Woods, Part One
Aug. 16th, 2019 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingOne of the things I find interesting about Night in the Woods is the relationship Mae has with her parents after she drops out of college and moves back home. There are a few moments of tension, but they're resolved in a satisfying way; and, on the whole, Mae's parents are kind and supportive.
I'm not sure how much I want to write about this, but my own situation with my parents and family was so dysfunctional and abusive that I had a lot of trouble understanding the relationship between Mae and her parents as "normal." I kept waiting for Mae's parents to show their real faces, but that twist never happened; both of them were kind and supportive for the entire game. It's embarrassing to admit this, but most of my adult years have been an ongoing process of re-evaluating what "normal" relationships look like. Partially for this reason, I think Night in the Woods is incredible in the way it portrays an extraordinary range of relationships between different people. Even though none of the characters is a perfect model of what a person "should" be, the game serves as a set of useful examples for what healthy interactions between different people can look like.
Speaking of which, here's a wholesome Tumblr post about good parenting:
https://furiousgoldfish.tumblr.com/post/187001680915/today-im-going-to-talk-about-the-opposite-of
It's useful to be able to identify signs of abuse, of course, but it's important to have access to models for healthy relationships as well.
I'm not sure how much I want to write about this, but my own situation with my parents and family was so dysfunctional and abusive that I had a lot of trouble understanding the relationship between Mae and her parents as "normal." I kept waiting for Mae's parents to show their real faces, but that twist never happened; both of them were kind and supportive for the entire game. It's embarrassing to admit this, but most of my adult years have been an ongoing process of re-evaluating what "normal" relationships look like. Partially for this reason, I think Night in the Woods is incredible in the way it portrays an extraordinary range of relationships between different people. Even though none of the characters is a perfect model of what a person "should" be, the game serves as a set of useful examples for what healthy interactions between different people can look like.
Speaking of which, here's a wholesome Tumblr post about good parenting:
https://furiousgoldfish.tumblr.com/post/187001680915/today-im-going-to-talk-about-the-opposite-of
It's useful to be able to identify signs of abuse, of course, but it's important to have access to models for healthy relationships as well.
