Plenty of people want to leave Possum Springs. But what about the people who are happy to stay? “You’re Not Lost, You’re Here!” is a linked trio of short stories about a day in the life of the strange little town of Possum Springs. Mae’s aunt Molly reflects on the eeriness of depopulation, Mae’s father Stan fantasizes about breaking corporate windows, and Mae’s mother Candy wonders what her daughter will see when she returns home with nightmare eyes.  

Something Night in the Woods does really well, I think, is to offer the player an opportunity to glimpse into the lives of people whose perspectives might be difficult to understand out of context. To give an example, Mae hates the police and teases her Aunt “Mall Cop” Molly with more than touch of hostility, but why would Molly have wanted to become a police officer in the first place? Why would Mae’s father, a former factory technician, embrace worker solidarity but still distrust unions? And why would Mae’s mother, who doesn’t necessarily believe in God, feel such a strong connection to the Possum Springs church that she runs its business office?

It’s easy enough to sympathize with Mae and Bea and Gregg and Angus, whose attitudes of progressive Millennial cosmopolitanism presumably reflect the player’s own, but I think the older characters in Night in the Woods are just as interesting and compelling. I come from a working-class background myself, and I wanted to try to make these secondary characters more relatable as the heroes of their own stories.

You can read this trio of vignettes on AO3 here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/49029619

I wrote this piece for At the End of Everything, a Night in the Woods fanzine. Their website on Carrd is (here), and you can check out everyone’s artwork on Twitter (here) and on Tumblr (here). If you’re interested in ordering a copy of the zine, leftover sales are open throughout August.

I had the pleasure of working on an illustration with the brilliant and multitalented Wolf Godwin. You can find his art and photography on Instagram (here), his animations on YouTube (here), and his music on Soundcloud (here). Wolf has written lovely piano versions of several songs from the Night in the Woods OST, so please check out his work if you’d like to indulge in some fun and eerie autumn vibes.