#omori black space title

[tumbleweedmemethemes]

Omori Titles:

[lilac-gold]

Presumed dead

AI-less Whumptober: Day 9 Scar reveal | Interrogation | Presumed dead @ailesswhumptober

Fandom: OMORI Rating: Teen Word Count: 1731 Summary: In Black Space, he gets constantly ripped apart, and Omori doesn't seem to care. Basil can't help but wonder if his friends have given up on him completely AO3 LINK

Black Space was the worst place Basil had ever been. Granted, that wasn’t saying much considering the only places he’d ever been were Vast Forest, his house and Neighbour’s Room, but still! Black Space was dark, and scary, and full of monsters and fear. And worst of all, Basil was alone. He’d never enjoyed isolation, much preferring the quiet company of a kindred spirit, but in Black Space, there was nobody else around.

Nobody but his shadow, though even that was unnatural here. It came and went, two bright white lights where eyes would usually be, boring into him despite their lack of pupils. After what felt like an eternity of waiting for his friends to rescue him, Basil needed a way out, whatever that was. So, he found himself in a rather ridiculous position, yelling at his own shadow to save him. To any onlookers, he would have looked insane.

But there were no onlookers. Basil was alone. And he had been for so, so long.

Then, Omori arrived, and he regained hope. The spark that had begun dimming inside of him alighted once more, Basil joyful to reunite with his friend. Omori said nothing, so he didn’t either. This needed concentration! They wandered through the darkness, Basil trusting Omori wholeheartedly to navigate them through it. Omori always seemed to know the way.

Melons surrounded them, a ripe shade of green. Basil tilted his head at one, though, and it seemed rotten for a second, wrong in a way he couldn’t place. Basil shook it off. He was just… Tired, from being here for so long. That had to be it. He took a deep breath, and kept following Omori. He had his friend now, Basil reminded himself. He wasn’t alone anymore.

Omori liked to squish the melons, either stepping on them or slicing clean through with his knife. The moves were violent, deliberate. Basil hoped he was okay. He had a lot to catch up on. He left Omori be, watching silently as each melon was methodically destroyed.

As they walked through a pitch black tunnel, Basil’s skin began to feel increasingly painful and dry, and he tentatively reached a finger to touch his face. It hurt, sensitive and flaky, and Basil swallowed nervously, staring out into the endless darkness. This– everything was going to be okay. They would make it out of here. They had to!

The only spots of colour around were the melons and their sticky pink juices, leaving stains across the floor. Basil looked distinctly out of place in Black Space, vibrant attire and delicate flowers sticking out like a sore thumb. He tried not to look after a while, each slash of Omori’s knife putting him more and more on edge. He didn’t know why. He trusted Omori. He–

Pain.

Blinding pain, all across his body, a little colder than lukewarm while sending a flood of agony through his nerves. His skin cracked open, blood pouring out as his mouth opened in a soundless scream. What must have only been seconds felt like an eternity, Basil’s body ripping itself apart until he looked no different to the melons he’d seen destroyed. They were all rotten now.

He awoke with a start, feeling a sticky substance across his skin. He was tangled in a spider’s web, tightly bound with no way to escape. Basil’s heart sank. That must have been a dream. He really was alone here. 

His shears weren’t in his pocket, much to Basil’s dismay, so was well and truly stuck. He liked spiders and appreciated their efforts in his garden, but he hardly wanted to come face-to-face with the owner of a web this large. He shuddered, fine fibres tickling the back of his neck as he writhed uselessly. 

Then, Omori appeared, and he’d been overjoyed as he was cut loose.

Then, Omori ignored his every word, not a flash of care or recognition in his eyes.

Then, the spiders began to crawl across him.

Their legs were spindly and thin, a light, scuttling pressure across him. He couldn’t see the arachnids, but he could feel them running around atop his head, across his arms, down his back. Basil liked spiders, really, he did. He greeted them warmly with a beating smile, doing his best to stay on the bright side even when they begun biting him, razor-sharp teeth like needles into him, sucking out his blood and making him wince in pain.

Eventually, there were far, far too many. They were in his hair, in his eyes, in his shirt, in his mouth, everywhere. They were fuzzy and black, and often trailed a thin string of silk alongside them as they found the next bit of exposed skin to devour. Basil could feel blood well up, hot and sticky, and he screamed, flailing wildly, body shaking, crimson starting to trickle down his arms and his legs and his back and his face and–

He awoke with a start, the desperate thrum of his heart in his ears the only noise around. He was alone again. Basil exhaled shakily, every inch of him trembling as he stared uncomprehendingly at his unblemished skin. Somehow, he felt like he’d been here before.

He took a second to just breathe, attempting to slow his rapid pulse and put an end to the steady pour of cold sweat that had begun to prickle at the back of his neck, feeling far too much like spider’s legs. Basil shuddered, a full-body judder that left him feeling weaker than ever. Something was very, very wrong here.

Omori arrived again, but this time, all Basil could feel was dread. With a simple beckon of his ghostly white finger, Omori had Basil trailing along behind him once again. Omori began to pace the elevator as it rose, Basil following worriedly behind as they trod into the plain carpet below their feet. He had to say something, that pit of wrongness in his stomach getting more potent by the second. He could trust Omori. Omori was his best friend. Everything was going to be okay.

“A-actually…” Basil began, flinching a little as his voice resounded in the otherwise silent room, only accompanied by the rumbling rise of the elevator. There was no response. “While we’re in here… Can I share something with you?”

Still nothing. All Basil could see was the back of Omori’s head. How was he supposed to know that this even was Omori, and not just another nightmarish horror of Black Space like his creepy shadow self?

“Omori?” He asked, forcing the panic out of his tone as best he could. Omori had ignored him last time, with the spiders. But now, he turned around, and Basil felt his hope feebly begin to rise once again. Always look on the bright side. At least he was listening. 

There was something… Odd, in Omori’s eyes. A flash of red, complete apathy, no recognition. Omori looked empty. Basil had to stop himself from gasping, the small squeak he let out obscured by the loud, high ding of the elevator just after Omori turned around again. They’d stopped. It was like Omori already knew what was going to happen.

It was like they’d been here before.

Omori stepped out of the elevator, so Basil moved to follow him, shuffling uncertainty forwards and peering out to see where they were. No melons, or spiders, or–

The doors slammed shut, colliding painfully with his neck. The pressure was immense, Basil’s throat straining as he yelped, caught off-guard. This wasn’t good. This was very, very not good.

He wriggled, trying to get out. “Hold on, Omori… I… I think I’m stuck.” He refused to meet Omori’s eyes as he spoke, knowing how cold and unfeeling they would be. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t normal. A torturous sense of deja vu washed over him.

He could feel Omori’s stare even though he couldn’t see it, the sensation sending icy waves through his blood. Basil squirmed again.

“Could you help me out?” He requested anxiously, feeling the doors start to tighten further around his neck as his lungs constricted with alarm. Those doors were strong, and Basil was suddenly engulfed by the fear that they’d snap his head clean off.

Omori did nothing as the coldness continued to creep across him, every nerve alight with the feeling that something was going to happen. Basil’s hair stood on edge, every inch of him hyper-aware as the doors pushed steadily at his neck.

There was a hopscotch on the floor, like there was in Vast Forest. He missed Vast Forest. He missed his friends. He missed hopscotch. They had such fun playing games and running around with Berly and Van! Despite Omori’s clear distaste, Basil had managed to convince everyone to have a game of jumpro–

With one clean slice, the doors cut through his neck. Basil didn’t even have time to twitch his fingers.

He awoke with a start, hands immediately flying to his neck. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. He hyperventilated, every inch of him on fire as he panicked. It felt like white-hot agony was flooding through him, Basil still overcome by the feeling he was about to die.

He already had, he realised, jolting as everything came to a halt. For a moment, his heart stopped beating, his lungs stopped respiring, his mind stopped whirring. Basil had died.

Did that mean he was still dead now?! Could he even die? What about becoming toast? A million terrified questions flooded his mind, and he sunk against the floor. The room around him was completely monochrome, a mocking facsimile of Neighbour’s Room. He hated it. He wanted to go home.

He supposed his friends must think he was dead, too. This Omori wasn’t real, he couldn’t be. His Omori would never watch him die like it was nothing! Basil’s incoherent, mindless mumbling of his mantra became choked with tears as he buried his face in his arms. They’d probably given up on him by this point. Basil wept harder.

Distantly, footsteps began to approach, and he froze. Hastily, Basil wiped his tears, preparing as best he could for any oncoming threat. His hands were clammy, his face pale and eyes bloodshot and huge. Omori was coming. He couldn’t trust Omori. Omori had let him die.

Somehow, he felt like he’d been here before.

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[biocrafthero]

Why Sunny’s Halloween costume is a mummy instead of a vampire

Okay strap in guys this is a long one

(Under a read more because I have lost my mind)

(Also for some stuff I’m using Wikipedia as a source this isn’t a professional essay or anything)

Something I have noticed with Omori fans is that, much like with other fandoms, people like to assign fun Halloween monsters to their favorite characters. For a character like Sunny, I have noticed that many people opt to make him a vampire, which is a choice that seems quite understandable. The idea of the modern vampire can be traced back to many different authors, the most popular one in the minds of most being Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which was published in 1897. Some of the visual and behavioral trademarks of a vampire has to do with things such as aversion to sunlight, pale skin, fangs, and the need to feast on the literal blood of others to stay alive. Vampires have always been considered undead, which aligns with their history throughout folklore; there were several instances where corpses were staked after being accused of vampirism.

Reading this, its easy to see why fans would assign a character like Sunny to the idea of vampires based on all of the common traits of vampirism. However, while I do enjoy AUs and such of a vampiric Sunny, I disagree with this common interpretation and instead propose the idea of Sunny being associated with a different kind of undead monster: the zombie.

(“But Kaun, didn’t you say in the title of this post that Sunny is associated with mummies?” Yes, but we’ll get there.)

The origin of the zombie can be traced back to several different sources throughout the world, the most well-known one being Haitian folklore during the 19th century. Regarding modern depictions, popularized by the film Night of the Living Dead, zombies tend to be slow, rotting, human undead (while it must be noted that undead animals isn’t particularly uncommon either). Much like vampires, zombies need to consume humans to survive, but the difference is that, while vampires only need blood in most depictions, zombies tend to eat all parts of the body. The idea of the brain being the specific target is something that’s only come up within the last fifty years throughout pop culture; adding to these newer additions, it was only within the last twenty or thirty years that the idea of the running zombie was introduced and subsequently popularized.

So what does any of this have to do with Sunny?

Well, thought Omori, we are shown clear evidence of why the idea of the zombie resonates with his character. The most obvious example is with Hellsunny, who can be found throughout the entire truth sequence, in some parts of Black Space, and in a very particular cutscene in the Hikikomori Route.

Now, while its easy for us to assume things from the POV of Sunny himself, sometimes its important to take into account the intent of the creator in order to interpret things such as this. So, once again, why a zombie?

Well, the choice of the zombie is quite obvious to me: the fact it is commonly referred to as the living dead. Now what does this allude to regarding Sunny? It most likely correlates with his emotions in the wake of Mari��s death, especially considering he’s the one who killed her in the first place. It is commonly said by people who have experienced the loss of a loved one feel as if they’re just drifting through life after their passing, and the same can definitely be said for Sunny. At the time the real world sections of the game take place, its been four whole years since the incident had occurred, and Sunny has both figuratively and literally wasted away in his own home. Characters comment on how he seems very skinny and/or frail, and how he clearly hasn’t been taking care of himself. In a way, its like a part of him died alongside Mari.

This is where we get to what some would consider to be an extension of the zombie archetype: the mummy.

Regarding its depiction in horror since the history of real mummies is an entirely separate conversation, the modern depiction of the (male) mummy can be found dating back to the 1932 film The Mummy. While most historical, real life mummies had their organs removed before burial, the mummy from the film (named Imhotep) was deduced to have been buried alive after it is discovered that its organs had not been removed at all. Now while the rest of the film’s plot isn’t quite as relevant to our analysis, I believe these details are important to note. The idea of the mummy being something sealed away, only later to be awoken again as some kind of living dead, is very interesting considering the parts of Omori that make this comparison to Sunny. The allusions to the idea of Sunny’s own home being some kind of coffin or tomb adds to these ideas.

This is why I think the vampire comparisons simply do not fit. The idea of the vampire inherently implies that the afflicted needs to take something from others in order to survive, and while the same can be said about zombies it must be noted that within recent years the idea of a kind zombie has been slowly making itself known. Additionally with mummies, aside from the blatantly orientalist bullshit regarding its history in pop culture, don’t tend to be depicted with having to consume any physical part of the human body (but physical violence in general is still on the table for them. They tend to be depicted as more on the level of vampires in terms of their intelligence).

In contrast, the living dead (referring to both zombies and mummies) tend to be much more passive. Most don't go out of their way completely to hunt humans, only hunting if one crosses their path—mummies even more so, with them not even needing human flesh to maintain themselves. When not hunting, these monsters tend to just... exist, not doing much of anything at all. They don't expend energy on actively looking for what they need to survive, instead opting for what they need to find them, wasting away all the while. And the thing is with zombies: they rot. They decay, bound by more realistic things than mummies are (which tend to be sustained my more magical elements in pop culture).

While the idea of having to actively go out and hurt others to sustain yourself is very interesting, when specifically regarding Omori’s canon, it doesn’t quite fit in line with Sunny’s character and his arc. In contrast, him neglecting his own needs and wasting away is more in-line with all of that, which is why he’s more commonly depicted as being a zombie or a mummy by official material.

I know this post is extremely long-winded, but I think this kind of analysis is very fun. Additionally, you don’t have to take my word as gospel, either. I enjoy AUs where Sunny is a vampire, since he’s in a position where he has to violate his own morals in order to sustain himself. I think it acts as a very interesting way to deconstruct his character, and to push him to his limits (including the brink of death if he refuses to hunt).

[humornaut]

Sunny and Daisies

Hey everyone! I think this post will be a bit shorter, but recently, I've been thinking about some of the flowers that appear in Omori that we are never really given an explicit meaning for, and I wanted to talk about something that has come up. Omori spoilers ahead!

So! Obviously, based on the title, you know that the thing I want to talk about here is the use of the daisy in-game. We see it a couple of times in Sunny's dreams, and it's clear that they are associated with Basil. One appears in the Rain Area of Black Space, next to Stranger, where he talks about how Sunny was always someone that he could depend on.

And then, when you get to Neighbor's Bedroom in the Omori route, you will have a daisy, rather than a sunflower, in the lineup of all the friend's flowers.

Finally, Home for Flowers (Daisy) is the version of Basil's theme that plays just prior to the truth segment.

So, where does this association come from?

The first thing to note is that when Basil talks about sunflowers, he never says that he is a sunflower, only that he wants to be like a sunflower. The second thing to note is that in the game itself, there is no indication in the real world at any point that Basil ever assigned the daisy to himself. Some people say that the flower he wears in his hair is a pink daisy, but Basil's flower clip does not match up with how daisies are depicted in-game or in art, mostly due to the number of petals.

There isn't really any evidence for this one way or the other, but I personally believe that this is an association that Sunny himself made at some point, and that Basil doesn't even know about it. Like sunflowers, daisies can represent loyalty, and they have other meanings as well, such as innocence or purity.

However, the most relevant meaning, in my opinion, is its Victorian meaning representing the "ability to keep a secret".

Now, there is one big reason that Sunny would associate Basil with keeping a secret in the modern day, and I assume that that isn't something that I have to mention here. However, Sunny already notes Basil as someone that enjoys keeping secrets. Take a look at Memory Lane:

In the Treehouse Memory, Basil revels in his winning hand, and teases the others with his secret.

In the Beach Memory, we are given an example of Basil taking a picture of Aubrey without her knowledge, which is something that he prefers overall, as mentioned a couple times in the game.

In the Picnic Memory, we see Basil planning to hide a flaw with one of his photos (Hector's poop in the background) so that he can still include it in the photo album.

In the Rainy Day Memory, he of course promises to keep Sunny's crush on Aubrey a secret.

In the Birthday Memory, he teases the others by refusing to tell them what his wish is for.

And finally, in the Christmas Memory, we find out that Sunny's violin was actually Basil's idea in the first place, and that he successfully kept this a secret from Sunny even as the entire group was working the entire Summer to save up for it.

I'm not sure that Basil would ever assign a flower to himself based on his love of secrets, but Sunny's repeated memories of it make it likely that he would assign it to him, especially since Basil seemingly refused to assign a flower to himself.

This has all been pretty straightforward, but I want to hop into some possible connections that I've never seen discussed. Bear with me, because this link is going to sound tenuous at first.

First, take a look at the way the daisy in the Rain Area is referred to:

If we hop into the sorting minigame in the Omori route, one of the things we find this:

I promise this isn't as insane as it sounds I hope

So, most of the things that we go through in the sorting minigame have a direct link in Headspace. The similar wording is interesting, but my attention would not have been drawn to it if there weren't something more.

Let's rewind way back to the beginning of the game, during the prologue.

One of the first quests that the player is able to access (and I believe the only quest that the player can start while Basil is still in the party during the prologue) is entitled "Daisy's Dilemma". It can be and usually is completed during the prologue. Daisy is looking for some help in finding a gift that she can gift to her crush. When you get to Otherworld, you will find the "Flower Puzzle", which you can then give to her to pass on to Neb, her crush.

Ignoring the obvious implications of having such a quest so early on in the game with what we will later learn about daisies, I want to take a look at the puzzle itself.

The description of the puzzle in your inventory calls it "A perfect combination of flower and puzzle". The word "perfect" is of note here, with the very specific use of it throughout the game, especially as it pertains to Basil. But more than that: take a look at the icon for it:

The puzzle piece on the right, to me, pretty clearly shows a daisy, which leaves us with little triangle of evidence including a flower puzzle depicting a daisy given to a crush in Headspace by someone that loves flowers named Daisy, a single daisy depicted next to Stranger in Black Space (along with other evidence in the game linking Basil to Daisies), and a single puzzle piece that can be found among Sunny's belongings during the Omori route.

I realize that this may be a stretch to some, but I absolutely see this triangle of daisies and puzzles to be intentional.

So, is there anything else going on here that we should take note of?

Well, Daisy doesn't appear to have a direct analogue in the real world. You might be able to say she represents Bebe, who is said to have bad taste in men, and we see develop a crush on the Maverick throughout the real world sections of the game. I do find this a little unlikely, as Bebe seems unaware who the Maverick is at all, and doesn't seem to have any connection to Angel, who is represented by Neb.

Now Neb is very interesting. He clearly is representative of Angel, but it's kind of hard to tell due to their differences in personalities. To my knowledge, Angel is never really associated with puzzles in the real world, though he is pretty immature overall, and spends time at Hobbeez and enjoys games. The fact that his name is "Neb" is something that I find interesting, though, as this makes him the only one on the playground, based on a real person from Sunny's life, who's name seems irrelevant to his namesake.

I've wondered for awhile what the reason for this was. Recently, I discovered that one of the definitions for neb refers to a snout or nose. As luck would have it, there is another playground kid that is named Nose!

So Nose is one of only three of the playground kids that do not appear to be based off of a real person, including her best friend Bun, and the aforementioned Daisy. Like some of the others, she is based off of one of Sunny's plushies, though her and Bun do not appear to also be influenced by the younger tutoring kids in the same way Brows, Bangs, and Happy are. If you take a look at the photo album, you will find Nose in one of the pictures, being cuddled by both Aubrey and Basil.

And let's also take a look at some of the few lines of dialogue for Nose and Bun:

The term "best friend" has some pretty specific usage throughout the game. While Sunny himself appears to apply the term generally to his friend group, the real Basil is only ever shown to use it when referring to Sunny. Not to mention, the way that Bun is talking here is very reminiscent of the first few pictures of the photo album, in which Basil refers to Sunny as his best friend, as well as shy.

After playing hide and seek, Bun and Nose will play patty cake together.

The reason this is so interesting is due to the implications later on that Sunny himself was involved in the making of Basil's birthday cake, or at least learned the recipe for it at some point.

And there are some surface level similarities between Sunny and Angel that could've resulted in Angel being the one to play this role in Headspace. Both are the youngest in their respective friend groups, and Angel is seemingly raised by an overbearing older sister, with his parents nowhere in sight. He even has a "Foe Factx!" journal in his room that you can find, similar to the one that Sunny has in his dreams.

None of these characters really have a whole lot to say other than what we've gone over, but I also want to bring up the item that you get for completing this quest.

She gives you a Daisy charm, which allows the wearer to start the battle happy. I'm not sure it means much, but the two other charms that make the wearer happy are the Heart String and the Wedding Ring, which both use some fairly romantic imagery, and are easily missed by most players. The Heart String is available in the room in Humphrey in which you are chased by the cat monster thing. This is also the same room where you can get the blender item for Hero (relevant due to the smoothies being organized by Basil's tastes). This probably isn't an intentional connection, but it is also soon after the Branch Coral, which includes the line about Basil and Sunny being "tied by a string of fate". The Wedding Ring is of course given to the player by Spaceboy at the end of the Omori route.

Now, you might find a lot of this to be a little bit out there, especially with the connection to the puzzle piece that Sunny has in his belongings. However, I hope that this has at least shown that there is likely a connection between this first side quest that you can take and Basil.

Finally, while real world Basil is never depicted with daisies in-game, he is shown with one in some post-release official art.

The birthday pictures, and especially this last one for Basil's birthday, are notable for including pink daisies rather than white ones. Relying too much on flower meanings is kind of rough because most flowers have a lot of different possible meanings, and I don't like using art from outside of the game, since it really shouldn't be taken as canon, but I have seen that pink daisies can be given to someone to confess your feelings, and I believe that this birthday picture was the 143rd post to the Omori Instagram page, though don't quote me on that.

[applestorms]

i just binge-played off over the course of a couple days so let's relate that back to homestuck now

exactly what the title says. WARNING for spoilers of off, undertale, & omori (and homestuck. obviously), all fairly minor but involving some of talk about endings, as well as warning for canon-typical suicide talk (distri moment)

TLDR: off & undertale both use meta elements in a neat way, especially for their more horrific/fucked up parts, ult. dirk is definitely being puppetted by something (lord english, it's lord english).

so just as the title says, i've recently spent the last few days playing through the game off (also yume nikki but i haven't found a homestuck connection there so i guess you all will have to wait for that essay), and after poking around a bit for other interpretations of the themes & story i stumbled across this video that's given me some ideas about the post-canon content again, since i apparently can't stop relating everything back to that. specifically, the conclusion that he comes to near the end about the "real" story of off being a kind of parody of other rpgs where you mindlessly follow a protagonist's divine mission while actually just brutally exterminating/destroying an entire world of beings reminded me a lot of a criticism i heard of the epilogues that said it felt like the creators just watched the hbomberguy undertale video and decided to do that, but badly.

i talked about this a bit in my last essay about the post-canon stuff (don't be surprised if you missed that one btw, i got nervous and buried it under a mountain of reblogs ;v;), but one of the things that really fucking gets my goat about the epilogues & hs^2 is the fact that the creators both 1. talk down to the audience so goddamn much, and 2. are actively antagonistic to the audience, in a way that even homestuck proper never really felt, which, just to say, is also weird as hell to me because homestuck wasn't exactly nice to its audience either?? there has always been this back and forth between audience & creator in this fandom that is a prominent underlying dynamic in both the story itself & responding fanworks (a notable example being theater of coolty, which i personally interpret to be more of a character study of hussie rather than dirk), but even ignoring the history of twitter battles & literal petitions to get creators off the team, post-canon homestuck wants to make you fucking hurt and it refuses to be subtle about that fact.

anyways, here's a couple sections working through my thoughts on all that into something slightly more coherent.

1. off & purification (ft. undertale, omori, & yume nikki)

one of the things that really stood out to me throughout my playthrough of off these last couple days is the ways in which "purification," as a concept is associated with the mission of the batter, and, more broadly, all of the heavily religious connotations associated with his extermination of/destruction of the world.

a cool feature of the games that i've been playing recently (e.g. off & yume nikki) is seeing retroactively how they influenced other wildly popular games that i've played before that came out after (namely, undertale & omori). in particular, this more recent generation seems to take huge inspiration from the previous specifically in some of their most fucked up/horror-related elements, largely through the use of similar imagery/ideas that are then incorporated into the context of a new, clearer storyline. a good example of this is how black space in omori takes a lot from the imagery/mechanics of yume nikki (sleeping, doors, fucked up rooms with weird floors, etc.) but re-contextualizes it within the storyline of sunny's trauma/mental state as presented through the earlier sections of the game.

undertale does this too, taking both from yume nikki and, for what i'm focusing on here, off. from what i can tell, undertale seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from off in the creation of both its genocide route and the more meta elements of the game in general, which is interesting to me specifically in the interpretation of off it gives back retrospectively.

if you haven't watched it (though you really should it's only like ten minutes long) the key point that the hbomberguy video about undertale revolves around is the idea that at some point the game actively wants you to stop playing it and let the story & characters go. this is most obvious throughout the genocide route where characters in the game repeatedly & explicitly tell the player to give up, go back, and leave them the fuck alone, but notably also at the end of a true pacifist run where upon reopening up the game flowey pops up to tell the player to leave everyone be & let them enjoy their happy ending.

the divine quest of purification that the batter goes on throughout off (as is implied through his own words) is a lot less overt about the fact that its just murder & destruction but that element is definitely there, especially when revisiting the zones post-purification. the batter, bluntly speaking, gives no shits about the fact that he destroying everything in his path, even when enemies start switching from ghostly specters to "burned" people (or coughing children). if anything, destruction of the world is his outright goal as evidenced by the ending w/ the titular flipping of the switch "off," and he seems more surprised to come across people that claim to be happy when running through the area of cannibalism sugar drugs in zone 3 than all of the typical misery elsewhere. the repeated use of the word "purification," & heavy religious symbolism found throughout the game give this path of destruction a very different connotation to undertale's genocide route, however.

this ties into the use of meta elements in both games, which are also quite different: where undertale explicitly appeals to the player in quite a few instances when it's trying to get players to stop playing/taunting them about saves & whatnot, off only breaks the fourth wall in a few notable places, primarily through the judge & batter's dialogue at the start & end of the game as well as the character zacharie, all of whom directly refer to the player as a separate entity in control of the batter, slightly different to how undertale distinguishes the player character both as frisk vs. chara but also as powerful player/human vs. npc/monster* (since flowey is also equated w/ the player through his ability to utilize saves).

*deltarune also hammers this shit in even more w/ the opening character creation sequence & the fact that you have to enter two names, for creation & creator.

so- how does all of this relate to homestuck's post-canon? one word: puppets. (and dirk. it's always dirk)

2. homestuck^2 hates you & wants you to know it (dirk & puppets)

the epilogues begin with a nightmare wherein john watches the entirety of paradox space, reality as he knows it, begin to fall into a crack in the void. the meaning of this dream is made very clear over the course of a conversation with rose soon after: the story is in danger of becoming "non-canon," after too many years without an official continuation, and if john wants to stop that from happening he's going to have to make a big decision. meat or candy: either john directly tries to deal with the leftover major plotholes of the original story, enacting the previously foreseen events of the masterpiece in order to stop lord english, or he can choose to stay on earth-c and continue with the rest of his life as is.

one thing that only gets more and more overt the more i read through the post-canon content, whether that be the actual material released or authors notes from the patreon archive, is the fact that these two timelines were built from the start to be nightmares of slightly different flavors. i've talked about this many times, and there's honestly so many things pointing to this that i think it'd be more helpful if i just wrote it out as an actual list by this point, so here you fuckin go:

calliope compares the decision between meat & candy to a coin flip, invoking the image of terezi's coin flip that led to the killing of vriska & thus the game over timeline (HS^2:406)

in the smut drawing conversation, caliborn strikes down the idea of a dirkjake drawing specifically because the colors green & orange invoke the image of pumpkins which he doesn't like, instead preferring meat & candy (A6A3:4971), thus tying the epilogues to the whims of homestuck's biggest endgame villain

another connection to caliborn: despite having 43 & 40 chapters for meat & candy respectively, each route of the epilogues is split into 8 sections, reflecting the fact that LE gets 8-ball eyes midway through act 7

meat & candy also reflect the kind of content that caliborn (as a stand-in for the kinds of annoying fanboys hussie hates) loves, w/ brutal violence, death, & a power-struggle involving alt. calliope in the meat route, and the horrors of heterosexual marriage & reproduction in candy

ult. dirk in particular seems to take a lot of influence from the more LE/caliborn-connected splinters of himself- the fact that there seems to be more of a focus on dirk & jake's relationship in particular in the post-canon content also points to more of caliborn's underlying influence since they're very connected to him (both thematically through their struggles w/ masculinity & their literal connections in the lore as the boys that caliborn is the closest to as he literally looks up to them as inspiration e.g. LE's outfit matching jake's, etc. etc.)

also when it comes to narrators, note that in meat the fight is between ult. dirk & alt. calliope for control over the story while in candy (as the archived patreon commentary notes very pointedly) it is unclear who the narrator actually is

the routes are also just. fucking bad, to an extreme that is both phrased initially like a joke through the numerous ao3 tags & very carefully, thoroughly executed. we begin with a timeskip and every character is just spontaneously the absolute worst version of themself w/ quite minimal explanation as to how they got that way other than "adulthood is just Like That". even ignoring Absolute Horrors like the dirk suicide chapter & the gamzee/jane breast milk thing, you don't tag and execute the concept of gerrymandering for no reason

anyway, there are two main ways that this connects to the undertale genocide/off discussion from before: meta elements & nightmarish world destruction. but first, speaking of meta elements:

2.1 the post-canon creators don't understand the concept of what "canon" means and they ain't gonna let us forget that

homestuck is really fucking good at making up the weirdest shit imaginable but presenting it in such a natural, meticulously careful way that by the time you're saying sentences like, "He took the hammer which had been captchalogued into his sylladex and made it his strife specibus," you barely even realize you're doing it. the singular exception to this is the use of the word "post-canon" in all content created after the run of the original comic, which fails so incredibly to establish itself as a new term that it's honestly kind of embarrassing. every single time i have to write the term "post-canon" in relation to homestuck i cringe a little bit inside at just how unnatural it feels and frustrating it is to type. imo there are a few distinct reasons why the attempt to call the epilogues/homestuck^2 post-canon fails so badly:

"canon" as a term already has a very strongly established practical use within fandom: namely, to distinguish between original ("canon") works & fan-made creations like fanfiction, fan art, etc. this is to the point that an alternative, related term, "fanon," is also used to distinguish creations on the other side of the line.

the use of "canon" in fandom is thus typically quite intuitive, in that a creation is either "official," (created by the same person & set within the same universe, created by a person closely related to the original creator & clearly established to be connected to the original work, etc.) or not. there is no in-between of canon vs. fanon, it is simply a clear line distinguishing between what is considered official and what isn't.

in the cases where it isn't necessarily as clear if something is canonical, whether that be due to the work being done by a different creator, long after the work is over, etc. (e.g. the yume nikki comic, jk rowling's dumb baseless twitter ramblings, etc.) the word "canon" is often dropped entirely with the context of the new works instead being invoked to clarify the distinction

people tend to only feel the need to distinguish between the original/"canonical" run of a story & its new content/additions when they fucking hate the new additions. nobody says that deltarune is not canonical just because it doesn't connect to the original undertale universe, they just say its in a different universe & take note of the implications. on the other side of things, even ignoring rowling's stupid ass tweets, people have been ignoring the epilogue to the final book of harry potter for ages simply because it sucks & many people hate the kind of future it presents

"post-canon" does not make any goddamn sense. no amount of ao3 formatting or desperate pleas from the creators can take away from the fact that the epilogues & hs^2 show up on the official website, were in part outlined by the original creator, & pick up the story right from where the comic ends. i can turn around in my seat right this second & look to my right to see a shelf where the words "THE HOMESTUCK EPILOGUES" is printed twice on the spine of the official goddamn book (don't ask why i bought that thing. i was in a distraught mental state in 2019 okay) printed by viz fucking media, come the fuck on you guys.

this is all to say that the meta elements of the epilogues & hs^2 (okay i'm gonna start saying post-canon again but remember. remember) is pretty fucking weird to begin with, and that's not even accounting for the direct antagonism that the continuations take when addressing the audience.

a key quality of the epilogues that make them come across as particularly nightmarish comes from the fact that so many aspects seem to be specifically designed to hurt the audience as much as physically possible. characters like jane & dirk fall into villainy and become the worst versions of themselves and more with very little regard for the reasons why they might've been sympathetic originally. even outside of those two obvious examples, there are a lot of elements that seem to only exist to make the audience hurt. the most overtly edgy example of this is the chapter in candy where dirk very graphically commits suicide (which comes entirely out of nowhere with basically no warning- the trigger warning wasn't added until later), but there are a shitton of minor examples that slowly build up to make even just reading through the epilogues an agonizing experience if you ever bothered to care about any of the characters involved. imo even characters like dave, karkat, & vriska, all of whom are generally considered to have gotten through alright by the greater fandom, suffer when it comes to characterization, dave & karkat from how much it feels like they've backtracked on character development when it comes to self awareness, and vriska because the creators are frankly unable to face any of the major character flaws that made her actually interesting, instead preferring to depict her as this tired hero above everyone else come back to earth to save everyone from the horrific versions of themselves the authors twisted them into to create plot.

what really stands out throughout all of this though, and is the reason why that connection between the epilogues & the hbomberguy undertale video was originally made, is the fact that the epilogues contextualize all of this suffering as a punishment for the audience wanting more out of the story- a point which especially stands out since, as far as i can remember, end of comic homestuck fans really didn't give that much of a shit about a continuation? while the response to act 7 & homestuck's ending was fairly disappointed, and there was some talk about a continuation after it got teased by some elevated fans with a closer connection to hussie, the consensus that i remember was that the epilogues were the snapchat update and that was it. lasting homestuck fans from 2016-2019 seemed to have come to understand that the ending was unsatisfying due to being planned far in advance and/or executed quickly so that hussie could get the story fuckin finished already after the last few years of long breaks & legal disputes surrounding what would be hiveswap, and many of the people who stuck with the fandom after the comic ended were late fans that were already well-acquainted with archive reading & thus cared much less about the original ravenous upd8 culture. the epilogues coming right out the gate trying to punish readers for wanting more therefore not only felt cruel, but confusing considering the more recent vibe of what the fandom felt like.

so, to link this all back together- between these three stories (off, undertale, & homestuck's post-canon) we end up with three different takes on how to incorporate meta elements w/ horror:

for off, meta elements are largely incorporated through the separation of the player & the batter, with certain notable characters referring directly to the player (or even referring to the game itself, as in the case of zacharie). the destruction of the world is given the connotations of a religious crusade through the batter's talk of "purification," with the supposed "official" ending of the game leaving the world entirely destroyed and gone, and the "special" bonus ending (where you pick the judge) leaving it desaturated and depopulated. a potential interpretation of this can thus be that the game acts as a meta commentary on other games of the same genre, twisting the typical routine of, "play as a dude going a something something vague mission for justice while destroying/murdering everything in your path," into something more explicitly horrifying. the path of divine destruction that the batter goes on w/ little to no regard for the suffering of the world is something that typically makes players quite uncomfortable, many people choosing to side with the judge by the end of the game despite siding with the batter being the "official" default ending.

for undertale, meta elements are utilized through characters like flowey & sans, most obviously in the genocide route where characters actively ask you to stop playing but also in true pacifist where flowey asks you to let them keep their happy ending. the horror of the game comes from the fact that the player has power unmatched by any of the characters in-game through the use of saves, clarified within the lore as a distinction between humans (players) & monsters (npcs) with some timeline fuckery thrown in for flavor. "punishment" of the player is introduced through sans & his genocide-run boss battle following the judgement of the player, which notably only happens when someone explicitly goes through and grinds out the killing of every single major & minor fight in every area of the game.

for homestuck's post-canon, meta elements are utilized through characters directly engaging with the concept of what it means to be "canon," and narration fuckery, as seen most notably through the character of ult. dirk taking over the narration in the meat timeline. nightmarish elements are present throughout the structure & content of each timeline largely through how they relate to LE, homestuck's main villain. "punishment" of the reader is introduced by contextualizing the inclusion of the most terrible elements as a way of punishing audiences for wanting more, enacted by the continuation's creators.

SO. puppets fuck i forgot about the puppets

3. what kind of villain is dirk trying to be, actually (okay we're actually talking about the puppet thing now)

at the end of off, the separation between the batter & the player is again emphasized through the final decision where you choose between siding with the batter (the "official" ending) or the judge (the "special" ending). no matter what you choose, the battle ends up fairly easy, affirming the fact that it is up to your choice as the player to decide who wins the fight. the player is fairly explicitly denoted as the puppeteer, and if the batter succeeds in his mission to destroy the world, the blame is placed on the player for going through with playing the game.

in undertale, the identity of the human moving through the underground is different depending on which route you take: frisk in the pacifist route, and chara/the player-entered name in genocide. at the end of the genocide route, chara takes over entirely, stopping the player from even being able to get the final hit in to kill the final boss before killing the player themself.

there is a pretty distinct difference between how off & undertale are able to tell their story in the context of a game vs. how homestuck tells its story as a mostly set-in-stone comic (at least now), but the key theme continuing throughout all of these stories as far as i see it comes down to one thing: puppets. WHICH is especially significant considering the fact that dirk, The Puppet Guy, is now one of the big post-canon villains, in part taking on the role of LE in parallel to jane taking on the role of HIC.

this post has been fucking long enough so i'll get to the point already: the whole path of destruction and quest to purify the world that the batter goes through in off feels very reminiscent of some of dirk's actions in the post-canon content, and that seems significant when considering who dirk is likely being puppetted by, LE (homestuck has a reader, but no player, so who is controlling who is marginally less obvious).

that's probably not too big of a surprise, especially considering that long ass list i wrote out a couple sections ago, but i think it could be notable in trying to contextualize dirk's actions throughout the story. in particular, it stands out to me that dirk's first big action within the meat timeline before going totally batshit is helping jane with her political campaign against karkat, which as we can see in the candy timeline is a terrible fucking idea considering she seems to be going right down the same path of fascism & troll eugenics in meat.

dirk isn't stupid, but here especially it's weird that he would be so down for jane getting political power, considering 1. he knows jane very well (very well, if we consider his heart aspect & ability to read people due to that), and 2. he knows the condesce very well. dirk is a fucking historian combing through documentation of the end of humanity, he's aware of what a global dictatorship looks like. he's smart, but as i said in my plato intelligence post, he's not necessarily on the same level as other omniscient narrators. it's the same problem as before, dirk is pretending to be the puppeteer but really has very little control over the actual situation. the idea that his "ascent to power" in the epilogues is actually just him becoming everyone's brain ghost has a lot of merit to me because of this.

in a similar vein, i've been thinking about this post a lot in terms of how ultimate dirk has taken on a lot of the traits of dave's bro (who also could fit in w/ the "who's the puppet/really in control" theme w/ how he is potentially being puppetted by a literal puppet. god there's too many fucking puppets). that leads me to a pretty major & interesting question to consider too: does ultimate dirk even have a soul? lots of implications depending on how you answer that. i made a joke not long ago about ult. dirk being just another dirk splinter that he created while attempting to deal with all the dirk splinters, but that idea might have more weight to it along these lines.

counterpoint though, i have to question if ult. dirk's goals really fall along the same lines of "purification" as the batter. his goal of creating a new sburb session (? iirc)/world creation is pretty much the direct opposite of the batter's world destruction, but i think we all know the prince's relationship with destruction by now. conclusion: the baby is 2 was the correct timeline all along. babies are the true ultimate creation, let's make this shit text already. (sorry, i've been watching a lot of evangelion lately.)

anyways. this post has been a WIP for a couple days and i'm starting to seriously lose the thread of the original thought, so i guess i'll just cut this off here with a couple minor sidenotes. this all came to kind of a simple, somewhat obvious point, but i think the exploration itself was decently interesting so. yeah!

sidenote1: sugar & lollipops

what is it with sweets being the most fucked up drugs imaginable in these stories. actually no, i get it, sugar is the closest you can get to the idea of drugs as a child, that kinda works. homestuck does have a surprising lack of cannibalism though, like even the trolls-eating-grubs thing is pretty weak. sad.

sidenote2: jake & religion

just thought it was interesting that the batter's purification quest has so many religious undertones (the add-ons having the roles of "father, son, & holy spirit," the names of other characters, etc.), though i don't have much of a connection here other than that jake (& karkat, really) also have a lot of the same thematic associations. not that big of a deal considering, but kinda interesting to note nonetheless (maybe w/ some interesting implications for ult. jake???)

sidenote3: davesprite & namco high

absolutely could not find a place to shove this in but the davesprite route in namco high is so fucking meta, has anyone still in this fandom even played that thing? the justification there is that davesprite gained meta awareness as a sprite & game guide, which i guess carries over to namco high too. feels very reminiscent of a lot of ideas to show up more prominently later, at the very least. hm.

[strixcattus]

Just for the purposes of getting my thoughts together I may as well try to compile a list of all the fics with at least a chance of getting written.

Currently Posting:

Colliding Trains of Plot (Demon Slayer AU/canon divergence), AKA that one weird role-reversal fic. Covers the Mugen Train arc and has a lot more to it that's planned, but not yet written.

Currently Writing:

I Lied When I Said I Would See You Again (Demon Slayer AU), an AU set in the Puella Magi Madoka Magica setting. It's fluff, I swear! It's had a set number of chapters from the start, and there are only a couple chapters left to go before I can get on the edit-and-post train. I also want to draw designs for the main characters of the AU, so you'll know when I'm close to posting the fic because I'll post a bunch of spoiler-censored designs on tumblr.

Sequels to Posted Fics:

The Definition of Family (Demon Slayer AU) is not a stand-alone oneshot! I've got plans in the works for a few other oneshots set in the same universe, each one focusing on different characters. Hard to say exactly which ones will be written and posted when, but once I'm free to work on more projects I feel like these might end up high on my list.

What Could Have Been (Demon Slayer AU), the sequel to CToP. This one covers the Entertainment District arc alongside an equivalent but very different arc from the alternate universe. I'm not as stoked for this one as I am for some of the others, but I am excited for what'll come after it.

Partially Written, Cut Off, On the Back-Burner:

A Hollow's Guide to Vampire Slaying (Bleach canon divergence): A canon-diverging retelling of the Bount arc in a world where Ichigo goes AWOL inside his own inner world and leaves his hollow to fill in. Cares not for any later-revealed canon.

Confronting the Impostor (SpyxFamily): On a mission, Loid ends up needing to impersonate an SSS officer and, perhaps thinking it would be easiest to disguise himself as someone he knows, takes on the persona of his brother-in-law. It doesn't seem like such a great idea after they meet.

Welcome Back to White Space (We've Missed You, Dreamer) (OMORI post-canon) has been living in my untouched tabs since last year and is easily the longest unfinished fic I've got. A world that's existed for four years, with inhabitants that are real enough to have minds of their own, does not go quietly—or indeed at all, if there is someone willing to sustain it. And Omori is very much willing to sustain his world in order to keep his friends alive, even if he needs to enlist Sunny's help in order to return them from Black Space.

Pride Cometh Before a Fall (Fullmetal Alchemist canon divergence) is set in a timeline where Edward Elric is in reality the homunculus Pride. Fortunately, his time living with (spying on) Hohenheim's family has warmed him up to humanity, and he's very willing to turn on his father in order to preserve it.

Completely Unwritten, but Interesting:

The Eight Wonders of Kimetsu Academy (Demon Slayer AU, title not final) is, in a similar vein to ILWISIWSYA, a shorter long-fic with a set number of chapters. Also similar to my current project, it's focused on familial fluff, in a sort of "the real treasure was the family bonds we found along the way" way. Loosely inspired by Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun. Loosely.

On Second Thought, Do Panic (Bleach AU) is, essentially, Bleach IN SPACE!. Crash-landed galactic peacekeeper Rukia Kuchiki strong-arms ordinary human Ichigo Kurosaki into helping her repair her spaceship, fight back against the alien hordes invading Earth, and return to her home on the Seireitei space station—until they crash along the way and Rukia is taken home for imprisonment while Ichigo is left to die (or be rescued by an acquaintance who's not quite an Earthling himself, but that part comes later).

Three May Be a Crowd, but Four is Just Ridiculous (Bleach canon divergence): This is the story of what happens when Uryu dies post-Winter War. Don't worry, this is a happy story. This is a story of Uryu being found in the Rukon by a clone of himself and promptly invited on a zany road trip with the goal of killing Kurotsuchi. It's also the story of far too many people deciding to clone Uryu. I'm sure nothing bad will come of that.

It's Simple, It's Easy, and It's Free (Bleach post-"canon") won't be written any time soon. This is because it's going to be posted in comic form, and I have to learn a lot more about art before committing to anything of the sort (to say nothing of the fact that I'd need to have seen a lot more of TYBW to actually write it). Included here for completeness.

Not Pictured:

This isn't a complete list—I have a couple of partially-written fics that I'm just not interested in working on at this point in time, and a whole lot more of ideas that won't come to light until I've cleared up more of the fics I'm most interested in (including time-travel fics for Demon Slayer, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Bleach; a couple of OMORI fics; a Fullmetal Alchemist haunted house AU; and a fic for Angel Beats, of all things, that I won't be picking up again until I have somewhere I can watch the anime)

[sudoscience]

Thanks for the tag, @prodigaldaughteralice!

Favorite color: I've always liked black and red, but purple's been growing on me, lately. TBH, I really like the ace pride flag (black, gray, white, and purple), which is fortunate for me, an asexual. Like, I could easily put together an outfit with all of those colors, look damn good in it, and I feel like most people wouldn't suspect anything.

Currently reading: Tragically, I haven't read any books in a long time. I own several that I at one point intended to read, but never got around to. It's gotten to the point that I've pretty much stopped asking for books for Christmas/my birthday because I know they'll just take up space and go unread. I should change this.

Last song: "Who Can It Be Now?" by Men at Work. This is also the song I currently use as my alarm, so I'll probably hear it again in a few hours if I don't sleep through it. Not enough songs with sax solos these days.

Last series: I'm currently watching the second season of Amphibia. I just finished the episode with Kermit Crumpet the Frog and Stan Pines Ponds. I love it, but it still hasn't gotten to the point where I'm binge watching it because I absolutely must know what happens next. I've also been watching Westworld and Better Call Saul, but I'm caught up on those.

Last movie: I'm pretty sure the last movie I watched was They/Them. It wasn't very good. I think the last movie I watched in theaters was On The Count Of Three (TW for suicide if you decide to look that up), which probably tells you how often I go to the movies since it came out in May. I enjoyed that one, but the trailer led me to believe it was going to be funnier than it actually was. I'm not saying it was unfunny, but it's more of a dramedy than a pure comedy. I guess there's a limit to how funny a movie about two guys who want to kill themselves can be. No, iPhone, I did not want to write "Jill themselves". Why would anyone want to write that?

Sweet/spicy/savory: In order of preference, sweet, savory, then spicy. I tend to gravitate towards sweet foods, but if I ever have cravings for something, it's usually for savory foods. I feel like I used to do better with spice, but lately I'll see spicy food and just think, "That doesn't sound very good." I'm sure if I ate it, I'd enjoy it, but it's always like this mental block. I feel like part of it is that it tends to give me acid reflux now when it didn't use to, so I have to know in advance so I can take a Prevacid or something.

Currently working on: I've got a song, but I don't have a good title for it yet. Working title is "Village at Night" or "Peaceful Theme". My overarching goal is to create an album that could plausibly be a video game soundtrack, and the idea for this one was to be the main menu theme. I'd include a clip, but I don't want to bother with turning on my computer right now, so I'll just say it reminds me of "Home" from Undertale and "See You Tomorrow" from OMORI, neither of which is the main menu theme for their respective games, but that doesn't really mean my song couldn't be the hypothetical main menu theme of its nonexistent game. I also always feel like my songs are too short and/or don't have conclusive endings, forgetting that the main feature of video game music is that it (usually) loops indefinitely.

Other things I'm working on include getting to bed earlier. Since it's currently 4am, you can see how well that's going. (I went to bed at 5am last night, so I guess technically I am moving in the right direction, but my goal was to be in bed closer to 2am.)

I'll tag @sukifoof, @asgore-agenda, @sleebyjam, and @momxu, but no pressure. Anyone else who wants to do this can, too.

[aria0fgold]

was just chilling in youtube listening to project sekai songs until i clicked on venom sang by ena and mizuki. my brain jumped from kitsunemori to lost au orz...

i dont have much planned for it except for the dream team, headspace segments, and i dont even got an ending i wanna get to so its very incomplete but i do know i got a certain character for it. he fits the songs vibes.

i dont got a name for him just yet (placeholder title is alter) i just thought of how in black space, theres a stranger roaming bout that speaks of another form sunny had, one thats destructive, a form he had before omori. thatll be the character!

he alrdy got a certain role to lost au’s story. maybe lil sneak peak... cuz like itll be a LONG time before i can write for lost au. anyway alter is going to be the reason why omori went missing.

[project-omori2]

Just found this blog. Idea seems cool and I like what you've come up with so far and I wanna throw some thoughts out! One aspect of Omori that instantly drew me in was the horror and its contrast with the cheery dream world's tone. While it's pretty in your face at the start of the game to hook you in (a lot more so than it's major inspiration, Yume Nikki, which was a lot more subtly unsettling), the small aspects of unsettling glimpses at the truth that build up to the full-throttle madness of Black Space and the dawning horror of the "truth reveal" segment is really well done in how slowly it lets dread seep in. I also like how Omori interacts with the fourth wall on occasion, mainly how the main menu changes over the course of the Sunny Route to reflect the state of the story.

AS for OMORI 2, I have a few ideas as to how these concepts could live on in a spiritual successor or indirect sequel. For one, you mentioned this:

"I also had the idea of their little pomeranian friend acting like a save point, much like the picnic baskets in the first game. Pomeranians are also save points in the real-world areas, though in some locations (such as in Hail's apartment), it's a plush pomeranian instead."

Great horror titles in the past have played with safe areas and specifically SAVE areas in great ways. Some survival horror titles like Resident Evil force you to ration the ability to save the game, allowing the player to risk losing more progress to heighten the stakes. Silent Hill 4 famously creates a safe haven the player returns to often, only to corrupt and haunt this haven halfway through the game and rob the player of that safety. Heck, even Undertale, in its darkest hours, threatens to smash your save files to bits just to scare you. Now, obviously, forcing the player to replay content can be quite irritating, especially in a text-heavy turn-based RPG that's naturally going to play slower. But threatening not just the characters and their safety, but the safety of the player's progress can be quite effective- even if it's an empty threat.

Omori had a brief segment on route to Daddy Longlegs with the spiders that mimicked Mewo, and I think doing something similar here could be very powerful. What if your little save dog that you're used to being a full heal and a brief pause from whatever the story's throwing at you was suddenly gone? What if your dog was in trouble? What if the save points that you trusted up to this point in the game suddenly seemed not so friendly and kind anymore, all foaming mouths or sharp teeth or other horrible distorted features? What if you were hoping for an escape and a full heal and the game turned around and said "Nope, actually, you're not escaping the horrors just yet!" and dragged you further into the darkness? Lots of fun potential. I haven't scrolled through the full blog so I don't know how the themes of repression, horror, and loss of control play into the story. But if you're looking to explore what new horrors one can do with a place like Black Space, this might be an interesting direction.

Thanks for the ask!

"One aspect of OMORI that instantly drew me in was the horror and its contrast with the cheery dream world's tone."

"I also like how OMORI interacts with the fourth wall on occasion, mainly how the main menu changes over the course of the Sunny Route to reflect the state of the story."

Yes to both of these. It's that contrast between Headspace and the elements of sadness and horror that either keeps the player on their toes or lures them into letting their guard down. As well, a lot of other games, including OMORI, use the whole "changing the title screen" thing very effectively.

As for your ideas about tricking players with a false save point, I would definitely incorporate it if OMORI 2 was a real game.

[theseagullking]

Ayo funny pinned post with more info about myself less goooooo

Also there's commission information at the end that you should look at

--[Basic Info]--

Seagull | 20 | They/Them | Biromantic Asexual | Aries

I have no clue what I'm doing here, so I apologize if something weird or wacky

I don't know a good way to put info so this'll probably change a lot

--[Main things I do]--

Draw my ocs!

Draw fanart sometimes!

Stream!

Edit videos!

Scream!

--[My Art]--

Most of my art is in some way related to my ocs. I don't have an official comic or anything like that, just drawings and short comic here and there. Also the story my characters exist in doesn't really have a name, but my twitch chat have titles it the TSKCU (The Seagull King Cinematic Universe.) Comic would make more sense, but they really wanted it to be cinematic.

Also, all my ocs have a hashtag here so if you wanna look at a specific guy you can. All of them are basically the same format

seagullsocs (insert character name)

Dnd characters are in the format

seagullsdnd (insert character name)

--[Media I Like]--

Music:

AJJ

Lemon Demon

NateWantsToBattle

Tally Hall

Nickelback (no that's not a joke. I am sorry)

Rare Americans

Jack Stauber

And there's a lot more, but there's the main folks I stick with

Games:

Minecraft

Night in the Woods

Hollow Knight

Fire Watch

Omori

Legend of Zelda

Splatoon

Overwatch

Movies/Shows/Anime:

Batman Dark Knight Triology

Agents of Shield

Darker than Black

Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood

Soul Eater

Trigun

Blue Exorcist

--[Other Things I Like That I Didn't Know Where To Put]--

Space (stars, planets, etc. It's so cool)

Shirmp

Seagulls

Deer

Stingrays

Uncooked Ramen

Dnd

Basically anything glowy

Plants

Snowboarding

About anything I can squish in my grubby claws

--[Art Hardware and Software]--

Programs:

Fire Alpaca (art)

Krita (Animation)

DaVinci Resolve (Editing)

Tablet:

Huion Pro 13

--[Links To Other Places]--

ArtFight

Carrd

DeviantArt

Discord Server

Fandom Wiki

Fiverr

Instagram

My Anime List

Pronouns Page

Red Bubble

Refsheet

Spotify

TikTok

Twitch

Twitter

Webtoon

Which oc are you quiz

YouTube

--[Commission Info]--

[the-mighty-mittens]

Two days left (I'm just gonna keep talking until I finish the game I'm sorry XD)

(Omori spoilers)

The piano's Mari's ;-;

I heard the title screen theme ooh

This says "Welcome to Black Space" doesn't it

They're forgetting about Basil, aren't they ;-;

Humphrey reminds me of Randall from Infinity Train XD

They're really losing their memories, jeez

[mwahkazu]

˚⊱🎻⊰˚ 𝑺𝑨𝑪𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑬 𝑴𝑬𝑳𝑶𝑫𝑰𝑬𝑺

⌕ while the soft tune of piano keys is meant to put one at ease, it becomes a blood curdling sound to the ears of kunikuzushi. how each time he picks up his precious violin, his fingers can’t help but tremble as they graze the thin strings that emit a ghostly hum. kunikuzushi has vowed ever since to never again play what was once dear to him or stand beneath the spectacle of the stage. meanwhile, you’re desperately in search of a violin accompanist to perform with for an upcoming recital and word on the street is that kunikuzushi’s talent is unparalleled to even the finest of melodies. though, such accolade in regards to the young prodigy appears to end there . . .

character: kunikuzushi x reader

content tags: modern au, high school setting, mentions of character death, swearing, gn reader, referred to using they/them pronouns, strangers to lovers, fluff, lots of angst, hurt with comfort. kunikuzushi plays the violin and reader the piano

additional info: a mini smau inspired by the soundtrack and indie game, omori. but will not contain any heavy dark content, just lots of angst. majority of the chapters will contain a mix of both media and written parts so there is no guide planned.

official playlist: click here !

welcome to black space. ⸝⸝⸝ welcome to white space.

status: on-going ( random updates )

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐔𝐌 ( chapters )

01 — pale spring.

“you don’t always have to stop by for me y’know,” kuni mutters out, and though he expresses such a statement in a peeved manner, there’s a tinge of lightness carried within his voice, “i’m not going to lock myself away again…”

unprepared at his sudden willingness to speak so soon, kazuha looks over to kunikuzushi with a confounded gaze. his best friend though, refuses to elaborate any further, much less spare him a glance in return. but as the meaning of his words start to settle in, kazuha breaks out into a warm smile. he then faces back forward with a hum, the corner of his eyes wrinkling as he does so. “i know.”

02 — lovely-eyed and death touched

[ preview tba soon… ]

taglist (open): — if you are interested in being added to the taglist for this series, you can either comment or send to my inbox! same goes if you wish to be removed. bold means i cannot tag!

@sl-vega , @sunny-star-space , @aruatsu , @veekoko , @chemiru , @thystarsshine , @kiyiiaarchived , @raineyun , @coquettemaiden , @twilightclouds , @sketcheeee , @kiekole , @mizumetamorphosis , @fisbred , @cobraz , @scaraenthusiast1 , @inferisk0 , @loserkize

( title header made by yours truly ! )

[theworstzangooseever]

Daily VGM #76: Alone..?

Gonna take a break from Kirby to talk about Omori again. It's gonna be a big departure from the usual happy vibes that Kirby gave us so I apologize in advance for the mood whiplash.

Numbers is a track I associate with what's likely my favorite part of Omori. It plays first within Deeper Well, and a couple times within Black Space if my memory serves me correctly. The track feels incredibly echo-y, like you're in a cave with water up to your waist. Each note echoes multiple times before fading to silence, before a heavily distorted voice breaks out into reciting numbers. 1 through 10 in German is what the fandom has established it as. It's seemingly audio taken from a video titled "Achtung! Swedish Rhapsody Number Station," which I will link but with a fair warning that it IS creepy as hell, and that you'll see a creepy young girl with empty eyes.

In case you don't know, number stations are used on very remote radio waves that are meant to communicate with sleeper agents, giving them coordinates and other heavily encoded information. Sleeper agents are spies sent to other countries to act as a backup if action ever DOES need to be taken, but aren't there to just straight up cause trouble.

But, by the end of the track it almost sounds like wind is blowing through, with some small shrieks of some unidentified person, before the numbers resume..

I'd like to think this comes from a place of Sunny staying up way too late on his computer, looking way too deep into the depths of Wikipedia and on pure accident traumatizing himself with videos like that one. Deeper Well in general contains a lot of imagery that seems almost scarring, the apple included, which gave me heavy Adam and Eve vibes. It's just the beginning of the journey of digging just a bit too deep into his own psyche.

Honestly, as creepy as this track is, I have a hard time stopping listening to it. It's comforting almost, as much as it's trying to send chills down my spine.

[reineydraws]

@kakashibingo prompt: stars ✨✨

it's kid kakashi in omori style! based off the part in in the game that happens in space 🌌 (jpg under the cut) // more omori style kakashi!

[belongsinthetrash]

... Fuck it, Beta Characters time.

Let me tell y'all about the minorest of characters that I've lost my mind over. These bastards are only discoverable to the most curious of players and are mysterious as all sin when you do find them. Most people have passed them off as Easter Eggs for the old fans to be fulfilled, and while I believe that on a game standpoint, I'm more interested in a story standpoint for how they are important.

So, if you will humor me for a bit, let me tell you all my theory about how these three, Tako, Uni, and Meido, are Omori's plan to REPLACE the three great beings of Headspace.

Now, I will start this out by saying that I am not the first to theorize about this trio. I've seen multiple Reddit posts talking about them being related to the great beings while doing research, and Tako being Abbi is a widely considered headcanon among many. But those theories are based on the three PREDATING the current Oldest, Wisest, and Favorite, and I was never really satisfied with that being the case (except for Tako, but chalk that up to Abbi being speculation palooza.)

The question on my mind with the predation theory was, "Why would Sunny think up these things firsts when he already had media he could pull from? He certainly isn't against using real life mascots in his dreams right now." And an easy answer would be that he was in a too bad enough place to come up with that idea first and went with nebulous characters to placehold, but then this post would end too short, and we wouldn't want that, right? =)

So, instead of rational thinking, let's do some ✨SPECULATION✨, because boy howdy, there's gonna be a lot in this post.

The first hoop I'll need y'all to jump through is that Tako =/ Abbi physically, which is hard for even me to do. What I mean with this is that Tako was not Abbi's past identity, and Abbi is her actual un-somethingified name or had a different title before she was banished. Either way works as long as she and Tako are removed from relation.

And now, we'll be looking through Omori's POV for a bit to understand where this theory is going. Your pseudo-advisor has went against your most important rule and is paying her sentence for it. That unruly strand has been straightened out, but with it comes a terrifying revelation. If one of your closest allies has turned against you, despite your near-omnipotent rule... who's to say the others won't follow suit later on? Sure, BYC seems to follow your command to the dot and Humphrey couldn't care less as long as his gluttony is kept in reasonable check, but paranoia is one hell of a feeling.

It makes you irrational. Vulnerable.

...Weak.

So, you have got to come up with a solution to this to not only make sure that you aren't collectively mutinied against, but so you feel like you have control again. And what better way to solve your problems

Than to just create a new, comforting thing to replace the old, unnerving thing.

And that leads us into another hoop and personal headcanon of mine: Black Space doubles a prison and a factory. Let me explain this. Black Space is known to be one of the first realms created in Sunny's mind after the incident and that Headspace was built to cover the horrors underneath. It can be thought that the elements of Headspace suddenly and slowly poofed into existence to fit in the world, but remember, we're doing ✨SPECULATION✨ and I find the previous answer a bit droll.

So, let's say that Black Space is actively making these elements with every new cycle while Omori ventures down there to save Basil. It's an unconscious process of the land to do, and it makes sense considering that Black Space is kinda that, a realm where random thoughts cross Sunny's mind and lie down in. While some of the ideas are sensible to leave behind, it wouldn't be too crazy to think that Sunny has thought something up that he felt was worth thinking more about and bringing it into Headspace. In fact, some parts of Black Space are designated creation zones, namely the Faceless Area and Glitch Room.

This room is evidence to me that Black Space is given the task of creating entities for the next cycle to happen, namely the characters that reside within the world. The Faceless are just soulless vessels of Omori's friends, waiting for their chance to be intergrated with Headspace and become "real" in a sense.

With that tangent out of the way, let's get back to the original topic.

Omori is setting up replacements for his tenuous allies within Black Space and letting them stay down there to maybe shape themselves further or to keep them secret until he decides to enact his plan. And while he's at it, he also decides to alter the appearances of his new creations, to further make sure that they will not trigger an early Rememberance.

Humphrey is a full-on hazard, being a one-to-one recreation of the book Mari read to Sunny as a child, so he has to go for his direct reference to her, but the large mouth and grin will be kept on Meido to stay in line with the hunger motif.

BYC isn't fully connected to Mari and is more connected to Sunny's childhood, but those same memories can still lead to a breakdown for The Dreamer, so Uni's ever-staring visage will be a fine substitute.

And finally, Abbi, whose appearance is identical to the one sight that forever haunts Sunny's dreams, has been made into Tako's more laid-back and unkempt form to distance from the original figure that was almost opposite that. He even rids of that god-forsaken eye on her to have all his bases cleared.

(If you are wondering why he doesn't do the same for Uni, good question.)

At that point, Omori finally felt useful again. With that back-up plan stored away, he could rest easy knowing that The Dreamer would be safe from the knowledge of the incident coming from his remaining guardians. Omori couldn't suddenly rid the two obsolete beings because they held more importance to the cycle than Abbi, quite frankly, but it shouldn't matter because the day will come when the changing of the guards will happen.

And if you believe the Omoriboy comics to be the continuation of the game after the Hikikomori Route,

it's safe to say it has happened.

[white-tulips]

Hey, as far as I remember there is no mention of Daisies in omori's flower language. I don't think basil ever mentions daisies at all. Yet in the OST, there's a track titled A Home for Flowers (Daisy). The only two flowers associated to the titles of that piece and its variants are Sunflower and Tulip. This means it could relate to the sunny and basil special relationship? Daisy apparently means Pure and Innocent Love in flower language so hmm

Basil never mentioned daisies, but they are specifically pointed out in Black Space! -

taking the flower language into account with the fact that the daisy pops up right after Stranger's whole "I miss you, Sunny" dialogue... much to think about!