Gregg Rulz, OK!

 So I have been wanting to do something like this for a long time. 

 "But, Oggie, nobody cares about a video essay about a game from 2017. Plus you suck at video editing."

So? (I don't know if I'll ever make a video of this, but I want to try and organize my thoughts about this a little bit)

Anyway, Night in the Woods. As I heard about this game and played through it myself, it resonated with me in a whole bunch of ways that I did not expect. Growing up in a dying ex-mining town, being able to walk over to the corner store, and depending on friends to get driven around as a teen, I felt seen. Granted, my burg was a border town in Arizona and not in the Rust Belt, but the writings and the characters and the whole mythos of Possum Springs felt so flushed out. 

And then, we get a Gregg. Most everyone's favorite character from the moment you meet him, Greggory Lee is a fireball of gay, chaotic energy that leaves you smiling whenever you think of him. His boyfriend, Angus, is a bear and helps balance their natures. As you play through the game, you learn about Gregg, Angus, friends, family members, neighbors, and even strangers and strange occurrences. 

Needless to say, I love this game wholeheartedly and recommend you to play it. 

However, there is one moment in the game that cemented it as one of my favorite forms of media ever. The writing and dialogue just hit me in the right ways. Hanging with Gregg on Optional Night 3, "Wounds," wraps up with a genuine conversation and says a lot about each character. 

You and Gregg have been best friends, especially during high school. Being rambunctious, committing "crimes," and sharing some of that same manic energy. Both of you have had... episodes... and family situations in the past, but when together you are like two criminal peas in a pod. 

The evening has already been through a lot of high-energy moments. You hung on Gregg's motorbike to a remote location in the woods, behind the abandoned glass factory. There, Gregg shows you something he's worked on to pass the time - a makeshift animal decoy for hunting with his crossbow. Before that, you and Gregg get into a knife fight - just like old times. It's very risky behavior, but for both of them it helps them feel like they exist, like they're part of something and have contributed to it in a weird and dangerous way. 

Cue my favorite scene. 

A faint is noise is heard from the Glass factory. Is there someone inside? What might they be working on? Gregg acknowledges that "Electrical stuff" has been happening lately, and it's not just the factory - he, too, has been going through some electrical stuff. Mae comments on his bipolar behaviors, the manic episodes and downtrodden messages.  

"I'm a good person, right?" 

It's clear that something heavy is on his mind, causing him to reconsider not just his situation, but his whole being and identity. Mae assures her longtime partner-in-crime that he is, but it's clear he has doubts.

"I try really hard. Angus, like, needs me. He needs a Gregg, badly." 

Angus has dealt with his own personal issues, which at this point of the story we are not aware of much. Gregg wants to be there for Angus as a partner and support. Even if it were somebody else, he wants Angus to have that kind of support. Would Angus be able to survive on his own? Possibly, but that's not a risk Gregg wants to take. 

Mae tries to be supportive, "We all need a Gregg." (She's not wrong!) Without going into too much detail, Gregg calls Angus' family "really stupid assholes." But as he continues talking, it's clear not just that he thinks Angus needs a Gregg, it's clear that Gregg also needs his Angus. 

 Depending on how much time you've spent with Gregg up to this point, you know some extra backstory. While Mae and Gregg are out committing crimes like old times, Gregg has talked about he and Angus working hard to scrap enough money to move to a more expensive but queer-friendly town. A place where they can be themselves. However, Mae's return has started to unravel those plans: they've been arguing lately in part because of this stuff Gregg and Mae have been doing and how it could mess up their goals. They're not kids anymore, they're young and legal adults with jobs and rent and consequences. 

However, Gregg's own insecurities take over. "Maybe I'm just parking lot trash. I've known that all along. I've got no future if it was just me." In his eyes, every issue in their relationship is his fault. We don't know enough about Angus to put any blame on him, but Gregg doesn't want Angus to feel bad. However, his emotions continue to overwhelm him at this moment and he begins to lash out at himself more. 

The next batch of dialogue I now read in a much different tone when I first read it. At first I read it as a quiet kind of frustration, but now I read it as an impending explosion. 

"When I'm awake at night, I listen to Angus snore and I stare at the ceiling and I think about how I'm a complete waste of shit and and and and."

His emotions are on full blast and he refuses to put any of that blame onto Angus, so he places it all on himself. "He needs a Gregg," he said, but maybe not this Gregg, this stupid, useless, reckless Gregg. 

At this point on my first playthrough, I realized I had heard this dialogue through a fan animation that I might still have saved in my Youtube Favorites. Seeing Gregg's struggles reminded me of my own bouts with undiagnosed depression and suicide ideation. Even now years later, my brain gets spicy and I quickly fall into panic attacks. I repeated Mae's next lines more times than was written because I needed to give myself time to calm down. 

"Gregg, calm down, dude. You're good. And Angus is good." Something in those lines snaps Gregg out of his spiral and he bounces almost a one-eighty. He talks about how Angus is a nice, smart, cool dude. And he's got a great ass. He and Mae build on that idea and talk about how fantastic his ass his. Then something flips in Gregg's brain and the adult in him wrangles in the situation. 

"I have really up up days and really down down days and I don't know which it is until it's over sometimes." 

He acknowledges his chaotic behaviors, which is a good place to start, but he needs to act on them in a productive way. Mae replies that she has been the opposite - she has been coasting on a stable but blase mood. He laughs. 

My God, that laugh. That laugh symbolizes so much about Gregg. He wants stability but he can't seem to hold onto it. For him, Angus is his stability, his rock. Even so, things have been shaky at home and now everything feels like it is out of control. The worst part is that he feels he's bound to break that balance and be left with nothing. 

His focus and attention shifts again. He notices some birds a few feet away. "Do they fly south," Gregg asks Mae. Neither of them know, but Gregg instructs her to make something up. She says that, yes, they do fly south, and Gregg is very happy at that prospect. This reiterates Gregg's ideas that he does not brings stability to anything, but that he is the one who ruins. He desperately wants that feeling of control, in his own life, in his emotions, in his relationship, but it never feels like something he has an active part in. 

I loved this scene. In my first playthrough, this was one of those scenes that legitimately made me cry. Not only did I connect with Angus, but with another friend and his then-wife. I know she has had her episodes but she did her best to control them. No clue how's she's doing now.