Notice the shapes above his face? What if that’s a visual representation of the phenomenon that Mae describes happening to her, where everything is just shapes, lifeless? What if the dreams Mae was having were because she was a medium like Gramercy? And what if the beings in the dreams are what created the state of being a medium? Also, side note, Gramercy looks a little tiny bit like the Janitor, the bird with the hat and the scraggly beard. I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or if the Janitor is immortal because he certainly seemed wise in an otherworldly way, and Gramercy’s story was about his spirit returning to his body after his death, so maybe we have a case of reincarnation on our hands? I don’t know what all this means, it could mean nothing, but I just wanted to put it out there.
Edit: Looking back, I confused the janitor’s appearance with a statue in the graveyard that looked a lot like him, the statue had a hat on. The janitor was always shown without a hat.
Also sorry for my poor grammar, I’m too lazy to care rn
When you are in the mine and talking to the cult dudes, the one talking talks in a special way, like "s'pose" instead of "suppose". And at the end when Mae talks to her dad and he talks about how he hates his job, he talks like that too! And the way he describes things is exactly like the other dude. like "job s'pose to pay you well" "you're s'pose to be able to live" and that other dude was also crowing about keeping things alive and being able to live in the town. I mean the main gang DID trap the cult members in the cave, but I like to believe that they got out somehow and now afterwards, the day after the sacrifice hole in the ground had been fucked over, Mae's dad finally comes clean, like he's finally being honest about how he feels, maybe because he knows they're fucked. Also all the cult members are hinting at the fact they used to be miners before the mine shut down, AND Mae's dad was a miner
So in Lost Constellation, Mae is getting a story told to her about her Grandpa (she had said in the main game that he would read her ghost stories), but what if they actually happened? So, Mae's grandpa has a tooth locked in a safe. It makes him seem like he was just a cooky ole fella, but when you're in the library with Bea searching for information on the ghost, there is an article about miners who went on strike against their boss and as a keepsake, each one of the miners took one of his teeth as a reminder of the loyalty of the miners. When in the cave, the members said they had prayed to the weird cave God or something along those lines. Some wished for luck with jobs, wealth, or for the town of Possum Springs to thrive. So what if after all of this, Mae's grandpa was a part of the weird cave cult? Mae's mother talked to Mae about how she was a miracle baby because she had so many miscarriages before finally getting pregnant with Mae. So, while the other members wished for things like wealth and such, Mae's grandpa could've wished for a grandchild. Then, after Mae is born, he told her ghost stories, which could actually be stories that he himself experienced while a member of the cave cult, or from other members. Also, maybe Mae had the weird visions and experiences because she was basically a gift from the cave God. If the others wished for material things, and Mae's grandpa wished for Mae, she would be the only living thing wished for; giving her a connection between herself and the cave God.
Night In The Woods - Witches, Astral Projection, Dissociation, and the Hole at the Center of Everything
Here’s my Night In The Woods theory out of left field because I love!!! this game! so! here we are. Lots of spoilers regarding literally everything so only read this if you’re familiar with at least one complete playthrough of the game. Sorry if this doesn’t have the best structure, I’m still trying to condense my thoughts on it all a bit but I wanted to get this out there!
The ending of Night In The Woods has seemed to confuse a lot of people, and I can understand why, because the deeper story elements can seem quite nebulous the first go through. But! fear not. I have some ideas that I’m throwing together here to hopefully consolidate some of the meaning and shine light on a plot a little more conclusive than what we have now. I’m not going to claim this is an original theory, because I’m new to the fandom and unfamiliar with any of the present conjecture, but I still wanted to share my ideas. I’ve only seen one playthrough of the game, so I’m unfamiliar with alternate choices, all of the evidence, and any of the companion game content, so if this interests anyone reading it more knowledgeable on the bigger picture of this universe please tell me what you know! Talk to me!
There are 3 key parts of the plot that I’m going to tie together here: Mae’s issues with dissociation, her dream sequences, and the cult of the Black Goat.
Part 1: Mae’s Issues
The focal point of this story is Mae’s struggle with mental health, namely depression, anxiety, and dissociation. To quote: “And suddenly, like, something broke. It was just like… pixels/No like… reality broke. The characters onscreen… Like I’d felt like I knew them… But they weren’t people anymore. They were just shapes. And their lines were just things someone had written/It was all just stuff. Stuff in the universe/When Andy stepped up it was like… And he was just shapes too. Just lines someone wrote.”
Mae very clearly outlines an abrupt and dramatic disconnect from reality. The important part here is understanding that this is not based on psychosis - wherein one becomes delusional and hallucinatory, replacing or reinventing reality - but ‘depersonalization-derealization.’ This is when someone feels detached from themselves (either simple self-estrangement or actually feeling as if they are a third person observer of themselves) and/or their surroundings. Depersonalization Disorder (DPD) could, then, sound like a bit of Mae. Dissociation is, largely, a coping mechanism for stress, so then it’s no surprise that dissociative disorders - here DPD - are usually developed after prolonged trauma or very traumatic events. Mae’s past is largely unknown to us, but from the sounds of things, the trauma that incited the onset of these dissociative issues were existential crises: her first break occurs after she loses sight of significance and meaning. Things are just shapes and predetermined lines, performing the functions they were made for until they stop, associating reality with a script more than a series of natural events. Everyone and everything is just a series of shapes and lines. This is a feeling I can understand. It deals with pointlessness and inevitability and whether free will actually matters or even exists at all, what the purpose of anything is, forgetting that everyone has a personal life and inner monologue just as complex and unfathomably large as your own, and reconciling your feelings with these thoughts and truths. Mae then goes on to discuss how her symptoms worsen whenever she’s around new places and new people by herself, and alludes to her journal as a sort of anchor. Now I’m not a trained psychologist, just a second year high school student who’s done some research and had some feelings, so I can’t for certain say the significance of this? Maybe consolidating things, thoughts, and feelings, helps ground them in reality? On paper, from her hand, they’re somehow more real, more significant? Something immutable that she has made which condenses and validates her experiences - at the end of everything, hold onto anything. With all of her dream sequences being very spacey and barren, all the talks about stars and the spaces between them (and the meanings we give them, something which would be V important here and explain why she likes constellations so much), and the (black) hole at the center of everything are all things that deal with distance and emptiness, which is something to keep in mind in regards to all that. So! That’s our backgrounding on Mae and the key to the premise of this theory.
Part The Second: Mae’s Dream Sequences - The Astral Plane
Mae’s dream sequences are really cool, and I can’t tell you what all their constituent parts are. All I know is that they feature amalgamations of Possum Springs and her university. I think it’s worth mentioning here that the songs for her dream sequences start with Astral, even Astral Train, which rhymes with Astral Plane, which is where we’re headed on this journey together.
So there’s a lot of significance to Mae’s dreams, ranging from the first sequence we see where she destroys a looooooooot of things, to the all-important talking with God, and you could make a lot of connections to different things (including her issues with dissociation and how they manifested), but that’s not quite my angle per se. Mae’s dreams are astral projections: her soul left her body and traveled through reality, where she would encounter the star giants, and ultimately God, as well as find the Black Goat. Astral projection, in and of itself - when one’s soul wanders through existence separate from the body (which ties in to Mae’s wandering tendencies nicely) - is very similar to dissociation: the soul (seems to) leaves the body, severed from the confines of physical reality. Through astral projection, it is thought that you can encounter higher powers, such as God, which Mae did. During her conversation with God, they alluded to the ‘hole at the center of everything’ and showed her visions of eldritch beings who - because I’m a Homestuck - we’ll refer to as Horrorterrors.
Now it could be said that there aren’t actually any mystical forces at play in NITW, considering Mae - with her mental illnesses - makes for somewhat of an unreliable narrator, but it’s undeniable that Eide possessed supernatural abilities from an unbiased perspective (with all 4 friends present), and I’ve seen cut content featuring Germ’s grandma where she predicts Mae’s future regarding the cult of the Black Goat and discusses how she started ‘walking in her dreams’ once the mine shut down and the Hole opened. So we have God, the Horrorterrors, the eldritch horror that is the Black Goat (who I believe to be inspired by the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young from the Lovecraft mythos). We also have two related figures to back them up: the witch and the Forest God.
Now, astral projection features in Wicca, and before that, a variety of other religions pagan or otherwise. Wicca is the practice of witchcraft, which we see reflected in the witch of Possum Springs, who could have been drawn to the area because of the slumbering Black Goat, or - if they weren’t in Possum Springs already - somehow have summoned them there through their practices. One of the primary two Wicca deities is the Horned God, god of nature, wilderness, sexuality, hunting, and the life cycle. He can be reflected in both the Black Goat, as the Horned God so often appears to be, or in the Forest God who banishes the witch to “wander the stranger places” with the “ghosts” which also sounds a lot like astral projection. Either way, there seems to be a lot of pagan imagery going on here (and the janitor is a whole theory in and of himself).
The important part to take away from all this is that Mae’s dreams and otherworld events aren’t just in her head: they are real, as is God, the Horrorterrors, and the Black Goat (but if you wanted to argue the delusional dissociation theory I’m down for that too). I think something important to note is that when Mae was pulled into the hole through the river, Gregg described her as looking like she was sleep-walking, which she would be, if her soul had left her body to travel across dimensions.
Part Fuck Man: The Cult Of The Black Goat
Now this is where we start to tie things together.
The cult of the Black Goat all share something very important with Mae: they’re displaced. Displaced in society. Displaced in time. They’re disillusioned by the contemporary era and are scared for their dying back-end town. They’re depressed, anxious, and dissociative. This is how the Black Goat gets you. The weak and vulnerable, with wandering souls. It calls to you in your sleep, much like the Horrorterrors, whispering to you, like any outer god. A dark, enigmatic, ineffable, cosmic, selfish force.
And so, like every cosmic horror who manages to tear a hole in the fabric of reality with its dark, dark hooves, hiding within an interidmensional pit in the abandoned mine of your abandoned town, it makes pacts with the vulnerable residents it can prey upon within their astrally vulnerable dreams. Whether or not it actually makes the town prosper - if it even has the sort of power something so intricate and unquantifiable like that requires (though it is worth mentioning that material wealth is the easiest to get from these things because it just becomes a matter of equivalent exchange) - it convinced the cult to throw people into the tear to feed it. In reward, some got abilities, most notably Eide. Throughout his appearances we see him use intangibility - whether it be during the Harfest kidnapping or jumping us in the mines (which would require him to faze through solid rock because he definitely didn’t use the elevator to appear out of nowhere).
Nowhere as in he literally appears out of nowhere. During this sequence everything starts going dark and the lights are flickering. Perhaps there’s some connection between his powers and darkness, which would make sense, considering their origin.
Before this you could have written the paranormal off: ‘Mae’s an untrustworthy narrator with mental issues and the game is a series of delusions’ or (as the article in the library mentions) ‘everyone is bugging out on mine gas’ (which is such a flop theory because to share a specific, collective hallucination for so long is SOOOOOO improbable and the nature of the people selected is too evident of a pattern yet random i.e. - Mae was never in the mines and nobody else in town was affected by the gas besides the cult, but both of these parties have mental issues and supposed astral travel capabilities making them vulnerable to cosmic interference). But here we have it. The elevator doesn’t move in these few seconds at all. The whole group is there. The narrative is not untrustworthy as long as they are there, experiencing events. This moment cannot be a hallucination, because one of them would have noticed the elevator moving, even though we can clearly see it wouldn’t have had the time to in the frames of darkness knowing how slowly it moves. Irrefutably, there is paranormal bullshit going down in Possum Springs involving the Black Goat. It preys on the mentally vulnerable and detached in their dreams, and offers them power and material gain in exchange for food. Typical Horrorterror stuff.
So what does it mean
You know what? I’m not sure what it means.
For one, it means everything actually happened. 'Mae’s total psychological break down' and 'a variety of hallucinations' are neither interesting explanations story-wise, nor the story I think this game was trying to tell. I think mental illness and what happened went hand-in-hand, but in a more causal nature, or a symbiotic relationship kinda thing, not just one over the other. I wish I had something really profound to say about it but I don’t think I’ve got that far. I think the hole in the center of everything is relatively omnipresent, like a disease. It exists in the literal center of everything, it manifested in Possum Springs, and it consumes the affected residents from the inside out. I think it’s a metaphor for Mae’s issues as much as the Horrorterror stuff is related to them, so it has a bunch of meanings.
In the end all that matters is that everyone’s hopefully going to get better.
I don’t think she closed the hole yet, but I think she’s working on it, and I think there are good people who can help her.
A hole that doesn’t care, and people who do.
If you have any relevant ideas or perhaps more of a satisfying conclusion, or you just wanna talk about things, please! do! I would love to talk about this or this game with peeps so HMU if you’re interested God bless. Perhaps theory isn’t quite the right word for whatever this analyzation is, but here we are anyway. This game means a lot to me, so I wanted to put my thoughts down and get them out there.
So like when are people gonna talk about the fact that the janitor guy is literally the ghost Mae is looking for? I mean, he has a statue in the graveyard and he knows Mae's name at the end of the game I keep waiting to see theories about it and I don't so here ya go janitor guy is Mae's ghost
We know that the cultists were sacrificing people to the black goat to save possum springs from dying, so assuming that there is some credibility to that could it be that all the "good" that came from their sacrifices had really bad side effects? We know that they started their sacrifices around 20 years before the game starts, we also know from Mae's mom that she has several miscarriages until 20 years ago when she had her "miracle baby" Mae. One of the things the cultists were worried about was the towns stagnant population, and we see plenty of folks in the game who are around 19-21 or younger, and adults who are much older. We also see that many of the 19-21 or younger crowd have mental issues, depression, anxiety, dissociation, ect. Could it be that the black goat, while granting the cults wish to extend the towns life helped make the generation of kids we see in the game, but in order to ensure it would continue being fed tried to make sure that many of them wouldn't, in the eyes of the cultists, be productive and would make few attachments to others thus "not be missed"? It obviously didn't have a good grasp on peoples tendency to help one another and work together despite their differences, but if seems likely that, even though we don't know all of its motivations, the goat would try to ensure its own survival.
