#nitw analysis

Like all the characters in this game are so relatable and understandable but in such different ways that make them clash with each other.

Mae is a mentally ill naive opinionated honest idealist who is reasonably upset that the world around her is worse than what she thinks it should be and that spurs her argument with Bea. Mae loves the people around her and wants the best for them but she can struggle with expressing that due to her occasional emotional immaturity. Bea is more of a jaded realist who is far too familiar with how the deeply flawed world works and is dissatisfied with her life but has also accepted that. Mae wants Bea to do what she thinks is right but Bea doesn’t want to risk messing stuff up or making things harder for herself and her family’s business.

sometimes, it's hard to acknowledge difficult situations. if you pretend it's all fine and normal, if you lean into hope, that's great. but bea shows that if you can't muster hope, you can muster motivation through anger.

it's kind of like harm reduction. if you're doing two negative activities, do the one that is least harmful. bea could cling to hope, or she could cope with rage. it's difficult to lean into hope after all that she's experienced, and the letdown of any expectation at this point might kill her, so she's using open rage to cope with her situation.

but despite open rage, she is not a mean person. she tears the shit out of mae on the way home from the party, but then walks her up to her room and puts her in bed. and she calls her mayday, even thought she knows mae won't hear or remember.

I should preface that I am a huge Mae fan, she is my favorite character. So there may be inherent bias however there are concrete things in the story that don’t have bias that I’d like to point out in the complexion of her own character. To start let’s say that Mae has many issues that kind of go under worked on. It’s obvious that she’s reckless, adventurous, and a little oblivious. However core issues seen in her is her lack of mindfulness, apathy, and general privilege.

Her black and white vision is troubling as she doesn’t think clearly on what is correct or true about other people. She lacks filter, she doesn’t have consequences and this is a huge part of her character. Her lack of consequences is due to her childish like nature and her privilege she has unlike characters like Bea, Angus, and Gregg. She is of course aware of some things, similar to how she is aware about the fact that her friends just deal with her because she is all they can get.

She’s learned not to ask for help, and this is mostly through some form of miscommunication through childhood. We see her parents to be extremely supportive. They talk to her and ask her caring questions, but It could be the possibility that she through her extreme tunnel vision was never clearly taught what to do. This is common in every parent to make, even small mistakes, but specifically with Mae was she grew up surrounded by reckless people and wanted to stay in that childhood. Where she could smash things and have fun, and not deal with the consequences from her parents. This is especially normal throughout people you see growing up.

However one of her largest flaws is her ineptness to ask for help. We see her rot away often despite the support she has, however this recklessness could quite be the same answer to explain this conundrum in her character. When characters grow so used to something, it becomes that coping mechanism. It could be very well that she genuinely believes help just isn’t something she needs. Just because it’s an option doesn’t mean a character is comfortable to take it. Mae likes short, easy things. She doesn’t like the long route, and because people around her have enabled her to have it she doesn’t see the point in reaching out. That even means helping others, which is why she’s so apathetic.

Mae is another thing, incredibly blunt. Not only does her black and white thinking interrupt any form of interaction with other people, she has odd dialect and views everything as something not as serious as it is til it effects her personally. She thinks Bea is “badass” for her moms death, or dealing with the shitty situation she’s in. This is a harmful mindset that she applies to herself. She’s extremely self destructive and stuck in her own head about her own fantasies.

This is most likely a cause of her dissociative disorder she seems to have. Dissociation is a feeling more then just feeling outside your body, it’s like being stuck in it as well. Even when your thousand of miles away you’re still stuck in your own bias. Mae realizes things often, but chooses to stay ignorant to them til it hurts. Like her knowing half the time her friends only stick with her because they are all they can get. They know her for her childish and dangerous attitude and know that it’s something that she needs to move on from.

Mae holds extreme privilege from everyone else in her life. Bea is poor and has to work emotionally and physically constantly for her father and the business, Gregg works a bad job with constant fear that he’ll lose Angus, while Angus is still dealing with his own emotional turmoil of his trauma but also his want for something more then where he is. All of them have that theme, wanting more then what they have but having to cling onto what they have no matter what happens. Which funny enough happens to be each other. They rely on what they are given, and they are given Mae who is to ignorant to be a genuine person around them. Half the time she’s a clueless asshole, but apart of her is charming in that it helps reflect a newer perspective to others. Which is half the reason the three stick around her.

Not only does Mae lack social cues with other people, but mindfulness of her own actions. She’s constantly self destructive and hating herself that little does she realize the pain she causes herself. It’s a painful process of self harm that affects other people in ways she’s not aware.

Now there’s the elephant in the room, which is her dissociative break in high school where she attacks a student almost to death. She doesn’t have consequences for this, rather is shifted into shitty solutions that heightens and again, enforces her mental anguish. She does not have the resources to help herself and doesn’t even know how to obtain them because of lack of understanding of how being a person works. This is definitely an important thing to remember about her is that she’s only broken the shield of ignorance when everything gets the worst that it gets.

Finally, when her consequences catch up to her and she meets the weird cat god and the cultists, does she have her realization. While in a realistic situation, having the realization after all of this isn’t recommended. Having to make sacrifices to realize something about yourself is an extremely destructive thing to do, but it fits Mae’s narrative and that’s why it works. It shows the theme of her own self destruction build up and finally bite her back down. As a story plot, it works that she only comes to the epiphany here. Then, does she apologize and work towards a better self. She feels bad for her actions and the way she’s been affecting Bea and Gregg especially. Bea seems the most affected as she has her always tagging along, and Bea has her own situation that with Mae’s blunt force doesn’t help.

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.

something about the literal only light in the current dark is something undesirable, something that will kill you. something about something so mundanely deadly being a grounding point in reality.

Some things that I forgot to mention and would like to emphasize are three points i’ll split up so it’s easier on the eye is; Bea and Mae’s relationship and Mae’s homelife,

Starting with one of the heaviest of subjects is the twos friendship. Bea appears to begrudgingly allow Mae on her ventures but they end up bonding in clearer areas with one another along the time with one another. I think it’s really important how they interact and enjoy one another, while Mae still constantly making mistakes. As I said last time, she has a hard time knowing when to not speak and it’s very apparent less with Gregg and more with Bea. I believe it’s this way because of the familiarity with their relationships. Gregg knows Mae and her personal flaws, and are close enough to feel comfortable to at least not screw up around one another. Bea and Mae on the other hand have little to no communication or build up with one another as the prior. This is what really drives the dynamic between the two, and It’s really important to enforce that while of course they care for one another, it’s under extreme circumstance. Mae implies in the scene after the party they are just friends out of being stuck with one another, while Bea seems to think this is funny she doesn’t correct her. In fact, despite the quite sad fact it’s true, Bea sort of confirms it with the other with a silent agreement.

Mae continuously messes up situations with Bea, but always apologizes without really know what she did wrong. I think because of Bea’s extreme enclosed self, it’s hard for her to communicate with Mae who’s the exact opposite. But they still share the same humor and love for one another, they struggle to communicate and it leads to repetitive issues. While it’s definitely Mae’s wrong for ruining Bea’s social situations, plus being a general asshole when the two talk— but perhaps it could have changed if Bea explained her feelings more. I adore these two, they allow one of the most crucial features in the game and that’s frustration. Time and time again, we as the player watch as the narrative forcefully makes us upset by the game because that’s how realistic and personal it gets. Like Mae’s breakdown at the party, or the car scene.

Another important thing to point out is, while both her parents are supportive as we see, it appears it’s hinted at what it was like in the past. Children are like sponges and I think with what issues they exhibited, Mae absorbed them like a sponge. Mae’s mother, is asked if she’s having mood swings again. While small, sudden outbursts or unexplained emotions mark children a lot growing up. Especially teenagers because they believe that when behavior is shown it can easily be mirrored as they are aging into adults and need a person to grasp onto. As well as it being said her father used to be an alcoholic and a danger to his wife and child. It’s never explored again, but did this effect Mae as well? It’s small details like this that can make as presume that Mae didn’t have communication growing up. While she wasn’t abused or neglected, she picked up harmful traits her parents exhibited which could be a possibility of her mental illness from a young age. That for so long in her life she’s been struggling with these issues, and her family at a point in time didn’t help like they do now.

I don’t have much room to talk about Mae’s theorized BPD or Psychosis but if you’re interested I’d recommend “Exploring mental illness in NITW” By PushingUpRoses on youtube. It definitely inspired me to make a follow up because I appreciated the attributed themes I didn’t yet realize.