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sprout-mole-mika · 2 years ago

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I honestly never thought of this until now, like woah. Honestly brings up valid points I 100% agree with this

A BASIL OMORI RANT BECAUSE I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THE FREQUENT MISCHARACTERIZATION!!

TW for mentions of suicide, murder, death, and other general gorey topics + spoilers for the plot of the game OMORI!

I’d argue that the scene pictured above is one of the most well-known scenes within the Omori fandom. Basil is a very popular character, and with this comes a lot of mischaracterization in serious scenes like this. Something I’ve seen a lot, mainly on the TikTok side of the fandom, is people misinterpreting Basil’s intentions in this scene. They say that his attacks were not meant to harm Sunny, but rather “Something.” This is very far from the truth - Basil not only wanted to harm Sunny, he wanted to KILL Sunny.

(Note: Sorry if my thoughts are a little jumbled! I’m just copy and pasting the script for the Basil rant I posted on TikTok, @skyisepic if you’re curious.)

Basil believed that the only way to get rid of Something was through death. In his eyes, it was the only escape. That is the reason he commits suicide in the neutral endings — he is trying to free himself of his guilt, which of course manifests in the form of his Something hallucinations.

During the pre-battle dialogue, we see Basil insisting that he will ��save” Sunny. He wants to save Sunny of Something in the same way he will save himself — through death. Basil was going to kill himself that day no matter what, but realized upon seeing Sunny come into his room when he was about to commit that he could "save" Sunny as well the same way he'd promised to. It would pretty much end up being a double suicide — Basil planned to kill himself immediately after killing Sunny.

Basil immediately begins attacking Sunny once the battle begins. He is directly targeting Sunny, hence his battle dialogue being "BASIL reaches inside SUNNY." Again, he is directly targeting SUNNY. During the battle, we see him ask Sunny to stop struggling because he wants to make his job easier for the both of them. While yes, he likely attacked Sunny's eye because he saw Something in it, the purpose of this attack was still to be fatal.

Quickly debunking two arguments I've seen about the last paragraph:

"Taking Sunny's eye out was an accident!" This one isn't character-based or anything, it's just based on common sense. You don't ACCIDENTALLY gouge out someone's eye. Duh.

"Basil didn't realize he was hurting Sunny! He was just trying to attack Something!" Again, common sense. Basil saw Something BEHIND Sunny. Sunny's Something is referred to as "Something behind you" by Basil. All of Sunny's wounds were sustained on his face. If Basil was targeting something BEHIND Sunny, again, what would be the reason for quite literally gouging out his eye?

"Basil didn't realize he'd be saving Sunny of the guilt by killing him, though. He actually saw Something as a real thing. He was targeting SOMETHING in the fight, not Sunny." Yes, it is true that Basil saw Something as a real thing and not just a manifestation of his guilt. However, he also puts blame on Something for everything that happened with him, Sunny, and Mari. He knows this thing is here because of what happened with Mari and will never go away because he cannot undo what he's done. It will continue to torment him and Sunny until they can find a way to free themselves of the guilt, and because fessing up about what he did is completely out of the question for Basil, the only other option is death.

This wasn’t meant to be rude or say that other people are 100% wrong, sorry if it came across that way! I’m just sharing my thoughts on how I believe Basil was meant to be interpreted. Please feel free to argue against or correct me, I am by no means a psychologist or good at character analysis. Please be respectful, though!

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