Though forgetful of this peril the DREAMER may be, a peril never forgets to be.
I'm not QUITE done with the Hikikomori route anyways but also if I wait any longer to post another entry I'll end up like Zarla with far too many thoughts that I end up never writing anything lol
OMORI SPOILERS UNDER CUT. And don't spoil anything in the comments, either. If I don't explicitly say I know something assume I don't.
Seeing as it's going to be a long one, it's difficult to know where to start. So, I'm going to start from my drawings in order.
This one is related to the idea I had last post. I was thinking a lot about Headspace post-good ending in my universe, and this comic was one of the results of that.
Post good ending, Headspace is still... There. It's part of him. He can't erase it. The fun dreamworld is pretty much gone, as he is no longer trying to bury Black Space. The truth is out. It's no longer festering, growing unspeakable and unfacable. He conqured it. The secret is out, him and Basil are free, and they can now start to recover.
But that's just... the first step, really. He's recovering, but not healed. He's still traumatized. Something and Omori still linger in his headspace. They disappear- sure, sometimes for a while, but they're still there. It's part of him now.
Out of the blue I had the thought "but what if the dreamworld did come back? How would Sunny feel about it? Would he be scared?" and as any good artist should, I decided to follow my impulses.
In this specific scenario, dreamworld is small. In the game it was specified this particular dreamworld is large because it's multiple of his fantasies all clumsily stitched together. The new one isn't big and sprawling- it's like a small section of the vast forest with a little cottage for Basil to live in. It's just the house, trees, and if you walk long enough you end up on the other side. There's a well the water supposidly comes from. Going into the well leads you to Black Space. Accessible, easy to go to. No longer locked.
I started thinking more. Sunny has a lot of guilt. When I played the game that was a primary emotion I was feeling, learning that the dreamworld is a cover for the truth, keeping it hidden is hurting Sunny, keeping it hidden is hurting Basil, that it needs to be braved in order to start to fix things (no matter horrible it may be).
This feeling wasn’t always a good thing, however. It’s the same thinking that almost made me to kill Mewo.
Now that the truth is out there, now that Sunny is taking care of himself and Basil, what point is there in tormenting himself on purpose? There isn’t any, really. Remembering the darkness may be good, not trying to hide it, but going to often because he “deserves it” Is just self harm.
Just because hurting yourself has no point doesn't mean he wouldn't keep doing it. There's no reason to force himself to be in Black Space anymore, and yet, all he does is sleep- White Space- The Well- Black Space.
This Black Space is a lot less narratively driven, because it has no point! Imagine it a lot more similar to Yume Nikki. Sprawling landscapes, confusing, unsettling, dark and unexplained. Representations of his trauma and awful things appear over and over again out in these never ending doors. He gains nothing by doing it- nothing useful, really. The items in Yume Nikki fit the idea well. He could leave at any time, stay in the cottage with Basil, but instead he wanders down here.
Dreamworld Basil feels hurt by this! There are a lot of reasons why- I mean the simple face value ones of "he's being ignored by his friend", but also more complex metaphorical ones. Sunny hurting himself makes him miserable, and there are people around him that love him, including the real Basil, that are getting hurt by him continuing to do this to himself. He knows this but it's hard for him to accept, and so the events play out in dreamworld.
ALSO THESE PICTURES ARE REALLY CUTE
Dreamworld Basil is always a pleasure to draw, cutest littlest guy around. Sunny (or "Dreamer" as I call him sometimes out here, it just makes things clearer every once in a while) has his missing eye, and it's not covered in the dreamworld, but I felt like drawing it would sort of take away from what the actual focus is supposed to be so instead he's got these styalized anime hair bangs haha. LET HIM HAVE SUBTLE EMO HAIR HE LOST AN EYE HE'S EARNED IT
I haven't posted this one because it will make next to no sense without context so I'd rather wait until I have a few more drawings behind this idea that clarify it a little, then put it out there.
MUST HUG TINY FRIENDS
I love Kel lol HE'S SO MUCH BIGGER THAN THEM or he could be. Kel is bigg stronk boy and Sunny is this malnourished thing. YET, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, despite all of Sunny's stunted growth Basil is STILL shorter than him. He's just a litol lmao. I looked at so many official drawings and Basil is shorter in ALL of them XD I didn't know that at the time of drawing this but if I did it would've been represented lol. Sunny just flop
I said in the tags ppl could tag it as whatever ships Idc and someone was super estatic about there being ship art of these three lol people are so joyful out here
You know what on the topic of shipnames I'm sidetangenting THE SHIPNAMES IN THIS FANDOM ARE INCREDIBLE I was a little doubtful at first because, like, "Sunflower? Not even gonna add two "N"s? That's terrible for searchability even if it is both deep and adorable" but I have accepted it now. Here's a list of a bunch I found
Sunny/Basil - Sunflower (I like to think this name was thought up and it was so good that every shipname after had to follow)
Hero/Mari - Lilyrose (Adorable sounding, nice we’re using Basil’s flowers for this)
Aubrey/Sunny - Sunburn (Sun + that one cute library book + Ow)
Kel/Sunny - Suntan (thumbs up following the theme)
Kel/Basil - Cactiflower (again just cute and straightforward)
Sunny/Kel/Basil - Sunkissed (Sounds like it)
Kel/Aubrey - Baseball (bc sportsball and bat. Lmao)
Basil/Aubrey - Photobomb (I laughed at this one out loud upon discovery. Perfect job)
Aubrey/Sunny/Basil - Bunny (Aubrey likes bunnies, Basil is bunny coded, B(asil)(S)unny) (This one might be like my second favorite of the shipnames bc of how much is going on with it I couldn't have done better if I tried)
And then on accident I discovered “Nightshade”, which is Omori/Stranger. "Night" obvious, "shade" because Stranger looks like a shadow, nightshade is a flower, most varieties of it are poisonous. Fantastic job guys. Round of applause. I want no hate in these comments we are just here to appreciate the names and nothing else.
WHO HERE HAS FINISHED THE HIKIKOMORI ROUTE I HAVEN'T
At the time, I said "Part of me is. Sad. Because you never get a reunion scene. There's never any "We found Basil!" the world just resets. And it makes sense! This is the cycle, this is how it works, of course you weren't ever going to find Basil. Things weren't ever going to be normal. They just act like he was never missing. Like everything was always fine. Like they always do."
I think this absolutely rings true. The friends are... incapable of seeing any of the dark oddities you do. If they do, it's still barely acknowledged. This makes the game feel lonely. No one is there to hold your hand, to say "That was so scary! What was that!?" because then you'd feel seen. Instead you feel isolated. Which is perfect for what the game is going for. There's always more to dig at and analyze! There are reasons behind everything!
Shortly after I also wrote about Omori the character, since you learn a lot about his nature doing both routes!
"“This form is evil” This is true, but he’s not necessarily malevolent?
Omori was created when Sunny could no longer face the outside world. He became so inwardly drawn, so depressed, so unable to engage with reality, so hateful of himself he didn’t even think he deserved to go out there, that he escaped entirely into a reality where he could… be nothing.
"Welcome to White Space. You have been living here as long as you can remember."
Omori is not usually aware of what he is, I think. He’s just a boy, who lives in White Space, who gets to hang out in cool places with his friends. This is the entire world for him. He comes from somewhere strange, he struggles to show emotion, but his friends still love him and he’s happy to be here.
It’s when the darkness grows, when holes through reality come into focus, he starts remembering it all. That this reality is fragile. That a darkness threatens it.
He just wants to protect this place where he’s happy, and he slowly remembers how to do that is to cast the darkness away. Keep it at bay. Reduce it to shadow. It is a threat and he’s just doing what he has to.
When he remembers more, he gains more of what Sunny is. Remembers why this reality exists at all. Because they’re bad, they don’t deserve to leave, they can’t leave, this is all there is for them.
He gets violent and awful in the good ending because there’s no curtain anymore. Because they’ve faced the truth and all of the buried self hatred is able to be spoken out loud, when before it couldn’t even be thought because it was so buried and forgotten. To say “You killed her” they need to acknowledge that he killed her.
"This form is evil. You will not see that unless you fight it."
OMORI IS MANY THINGS. Him being terrible shows Sunny’s growth! Omori only says that because he has no other choice but to stop ignoring it!
But in the Hikikomori route… He doesn’t. There is no truth. You manage to peacefully subdue your thoughts to this fantasy, to live here to the end of your days. The truth doesn’t matter anymore, because you’ll be dead. You are nothing. Forget yourself. You have been living here for as long as you can remember."
And immedietely after I found this adorable comic by Omocat!
Then soon after the lagging emotions finally kicked me and I became depressed
Forever isn’t a long time~ the end of everything draws near~ we can spend the rest of our lives together~
Gahhggckz so I GOT to Black Space. I went through some doors, saw some horrors, my boyfriend brutally dies again, all stuff I am used to at this point. I went through the red door early because Black Space was the same so I'd already seen it, and then I got to the church and got Basil and left Stranger and Sunny and went to sleep in my little cat bed to wake up and have Basil safe on the picnic basket with Mari give me a flower crown.
Honestly at the time I was feeling very little. It's difficult to control when I do or don't have emotions. Part of it I think is chronic dehydration mixed with migraines. But I also wanted to play the game, so sometimes I play it when I'm not really capable of fully engaging.
I did not. Really. Feel a lot. When I went through Black Space again, abandoned Stranger, and took Basil back. I did care, of course, I thought about it, I understood in logical terms why it was meaningful and was certainly intregued by it, I did feel some things, but not very much.
It was only a few hours LATER when I thought about it and had my feelings. Sitting in bed... Imagining how it felt for him. And like I actually cried. I genuinely got like depressed (not in a dangerous way) for at least a day about it. It hurt. I ended up just like, not playing the game for a little and just having myself think about it for a while.
Sunny's only got a few more hours left to live. The rest of the night. It's lights out after this. Basil says "I'll cherish you forever", and it's tainted with grief. Forever isn't a long time.
Yet at the same time... I found catharsis in knowing it would be over soon.
There's a part of me that cannot stand the idea of continuing to live after moving. After failing to say goodbye, after potentially killing Basil by not seeing him, by not giving friends the truth. It's like. We failed and there's nothing left in this world for us. Thinking about it from a detached point of view, an outsider judging a peace of art, it really reminds me of how suicidal people often seem their best in years right before killing themselves. They know it will be over soon, so people around them notice they seem like they're a lot happier than normal and "seem to be making a recovery" right before dying. And I thinkkkk it's CRAZY and INCREDIBLE this video game could make me feel that way!
I've never empathized with a video game protaganist more than Sunny and I think that's just part of the beauty of this game. Like I'm rewatching a lot of my early recordings while editing them and even then it's just... Like... Scary how many of the things I say could just be Sunny's thoughts.
SO AS A DISTRACTION yet still part of my hyperfixation I went to Omocat's tumblr and started looking at every single Omori post from the past thirteen ears in reverse chronological order. Now I'm going to send a TON of art which is not mine you'll all have to deal lol it's my post!
Before playing Omori I knew a lot about it, and more specifically, I knew a lot about how it was created! Most of the real world development details yet little of the actual game. I found it a facinating story.
What I knew is that OMORI started out as an idea for a "webcomic" in 2013 or so, and the creator decided it would be better suited to a game and made a Kickstarter for it. Then spent eight years developing the game. Six of those years were spent just making assets. They only put them into the game in the last 2 years and after 6 years they had about only the first two hours of the game (which was the first eight hours for me so SFJKND). By the time they were finished they were pretty much out of money and were trying to get it out as soon as possible, OMOCAT stepping into the programmer role when she previously hadn't.
The hardship when it came with making the game influenced the game itself, Omocat says. A lot of the emotional hardship that came with creating it is represented in the story, and the game wouldn't be the same without it. The game became incredibly successful and now I'm playing it!!!
As I scrolled through the Tumblr there was a lot posted in the last four years, lots of comics and promotional material and cute art- and when I got to before the game released I found tons of facinating development posts, test sprites, old trailers, concept art, things that made it into the final game, all sorts of stuff. Then, the absolute oldest stuff from 2011-2012, I found the boy.
me at the time: Gives another connotation to "It may be time to admit you are human, DREAMER"
I am enamored with these old posts. I hesitate to call them comics, because they're never more than one image. They're all formatted the same way; Omori, the computer, the tissue box, the black light bulb, occassionally Mewo, and a couple other misc objects depending on the image, such as the handheld or a window.
2011 Omori was pretty different. Of course, you would already know this because the story took 13 years to develop and changed as the game was created. There are some major differences, but I don't feel like that takes away from them at all. It's genuinely facinating to see such old versions of the story, and especially to see White Space in a way that feels... Lived in.
In the game, you start out in White Space, look around a bit, then leave. You get impressions of it being a home- "You have been living here as long as you can remember", the friend's room next to yours is called "NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE", you always return here, it's a reflection of Omori, you see the log on the computer that often says "Today I hung out in White Space. Everything was okay" but you don't... experience it. You don't need to engage with it in any meaningful manner. You may, conceptually, understand the depressive meaning behind the symbols. A tissue box to wipe away your tears. A hanging black light bulb, whatever it is.
A computer screen with an opressive wall texture background- claustraphobic, boxed in, trapped. It evokes the same feelings as doomscrolling without any scrolling. Nothing needs to be on the computer becase you've already gotten the point.
sometimes while playing OMORI I'd think "I'm curious what things were like before I was here, what were the previous loops like, what is just existing in white space like" and these drawings while not canon and limited give me a pretty good idea.
sometimes in these drawings it seems as if he's talking to Mewo. Really just himself, musings, ideas, things that come across his mind. But there's no animosity towards her like there are other people.
It doesn't feel like there's a story, just self hatred, emptiness, guilt, but not over anything that can be pointed to. He feels fine in white space, there's enough here and he doesn't want anymore because he's lost his ability to desire. He's convinced himself this is the better state of existance.
White Space is really deep in these comics when in the games it moreso just gives hints to this kind of thing. When reading these, it's hard not think about Omocat. For Omocat, this is where it started. How different does White Space feel when Omocat played her game? It's existed for her far longer than the minutes we spend with it. There's a lot more depth, thinking of it as a place you've spent pondering for ten years than just... the artful room where nothing happens.
I like this one. Sunnomori are pretty silent characters in the actual game (which I think works perfectly- as I said earlier, I found myself empathizing with him more than any other character while playing this game and I think if he spoke frequently my immersian would've been broken), but in these comics him talking is nothing if not engaging. He's judgemental, of other people, of himself- he's opinionated, yet eloquent and poetic. He's depressed, he's hikikomori, he's alone and he's living in White Space.
I really enjoy he's not just nonstop "sad" in these drawings, because that's not what being depressed is. It's a state of being nothing, being miserable but unable to feel miserable. Sometimes you're sad, but mostly you won't cry about it. It's usually just this.... frustrating maddening inability to feel. You drive it away with games and hobbies and drawings, but it's everpresent.
Mewo also has an interesting role in these. She's pretty ever-present in White Space, often sitting by or being pet by him. Sometimes it even seems like Omoriboy is talking to her! She's such an old character, the oldest right next to Omori himself...
...So I found myself just thinking about her role in the game. She's so important and such an old character that you saw throughout Omori art so frequently before the game was released, all the time, and in the game itself you can kill her.
it's just. cat. innofensive. cute. a rare friend out here...
revealed to just be a cope after nine years?
that's sad it's not even a let down it's just like oh ok nothing matters. that's what I thought
You and me both buddy
Anyways there's a lot of these that I really like but I don't think I have a lot more to say generally outside of like specific comics at specific images, so we're finally going to move on now! This detour wasn't entirely irrelavent to my art though because when drawing I was thinking a lot about the way this old "beta" version of Omori talked and copied some of that into my drawings. The Hikikomori route was living in my mind and I was Sad
Yeah no wonder he's suffering he's barely eaten a thing
Zarla thinks he might have some candy or lunchables under the bed which I find pretty reasonable, but I also have NO ISSUES taking the idea of him starving himself entirely literally. Uhhhgggggggh
closing eyes,
my room is full of
spiders ants
that want my rotted meat
it's humid,
i am full of spiders,
bite me until its painful
i sit lonely,
its dark and useless
will my body still be useful?
I'm ashamed of all that I am now,
make me cry until it's painful
you smell of dead flowers
I smell of the sewer i rot in.
I'm ashamed of all that I am
and all i am now
is painful
Basil thinks I’m a good person. I think he’s delusional, but I also love him so I can’t tell him he’s wrong.
The Omoriboy characterization rubbed off on me as I said, I wrote something in the good route with Basil thinking of the way that he used to speak.
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The response I got to these drawings on tumblr brings a tear to my eye, honestly. They came from a real place of emotion during the night I felt about hikikomori and read the old comics, so seeing other people really getting it makes me happy
Go to sleep.
I really enjoy how this one looks. It's funny because I think I was really starting to master some specific skills back in late 2023 and was super excited to use them when I previously hadn't been that happy with my art, and that's when my hand got injured. But now I can finally draw again!!!! Sickly thin boy with the arms~
I didn't stick exlusively to thinking of the Hikikomori route. There's really only so many things to think about there- what the ending could be, what the next day is, the idea of a sickly starving boy dying in his bed (it's the ending times)- but despite all that cheerful stuff my mind started drifting to my post good ending I've been writing.
more of a silly drawing of Sunny dissing Omori. Shortly after sending this drawing to people I started thinking "Well, Stranger" then started thinking about Stranger because OH YEAH HE WAS SUPER WEIRD IN THIS ROUTE TOO WHAT WAS UP WITH HIM GOD I NEED TO THINK ABOUT THAT leading
I spent the entire WEEK after making this drawing thinking about Stranger and only just a few hours ago do I think I finally understand him. And I do love him.
"Stranger is so weird. He wants to help you find the truth, he's hopeful things can get better, he wants nothing more than you help you. The fact he's entirely fabricated from Sunny's own mind is a really interesting aspect to him, because it's like, this ENTIRE *REALITY* was worlds he created time and time again stitched together to hind the darkness, the form he takes is one so forgetful he doesn't even know he's dreaming most of the time, everything is created just to subdue and destroy himself. He's suicidal and feels like it would be better to die than take up space.
Yet there's one small part of him that thinks there's a way out. A character who's silenced, destroyed, whisked away, hidden, over and over and over, but always finds his way out when the loop resets.
The small small struggling part of him that believes in hope
...and you've finally broken his heart.
The only part of Sunny that wanted to keep living and he's given up on you. And you've given up on him. Abandoning Basil again, like you always do. Which is why Sunny got abandoned there with him,"
Then, I wrote a few days later:
"man the more I think about him the more I love Stranger
The one small part of Sunny's subconsious that still wants to cling to life, believe in hope, love himself??? Barely visible cast in shadow and called "Stranger" because Sunny struggles recognize that part of himself? His fucking self-made guardian angel that takes the form of his best friend to try to get him to listen to him? That gives up on him symbolically when Sunny becomes too suicidal to continue by reenacting him abandoning Basil all over again???"
I gotta include him in future headspace comics he's so perfect lol"
While daydreaming my thoughts gravitated to this scenario where post good ending Sunny goes through a horrible depressive episode for a few days. This was being used to project my Hikikomori feelings so you KNOW it's bad.
He has all these obligations that keep him from regressing too far normally. He has a tutor that comes to his house that he has to interact with, he has a part time job that he has to go to and is rewarded for, he has Basil to look out for and who cries if he doesn't take care of himself. It doesn't mean he's not still ill though, he just has a lot more going for him.
It can genuinely be rather annoying how many emotions are tied to how you are physically. I just complained about chronic dehydration normal, but it's truly "Feeling upset? Eat something. Hate everyone? Take a nap. Hate yourself? Try showering." and I imagine Sunny would go through these frustrations quite often (as also shown in this older drawing)
This scenario was deeeensssseee and I barely drew any of it. I have written some of it down, though!
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"Partly I've been contemplating this because recently due to feeling HORRIBLE about the omori route I was thinking of Sunny in the good ending just having like a really bad depressive episode for a week. It goes away but the week is really bad for him.
At some point in the scenario when he's not really thinking clearly he sent super unfiltered emails to Kel and Hero (which the second he wakes up and realizes what he did he IMMEDIETELY sends apologetic emails like "please ignore the last email pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease"). I'd need to think a little more before explaining parts of it but just some lines I thought of in it were really interesting
Kel just waits until the next day to respond with soft encouragement lol “Are you okay after yesterday???? If you don’t wanna talk about it that’s a-ok! I’m great at forgetting things. I don’t hold none of it against you. But, if you do want to talk about it, I’m here!! We can talk, I don’t bite! Just let me know!”
Meanwhile Hero sees it more promptly before the follow up “pls ignore” was sent and so he sends like the nicest email to Basil ever just “Hello, how have you been? We should catch up! How’s Sunny doing? You live together so maybe you can check up on him! Thanks! Love you!”
Then writes a much more formulated thoughtful email to Sunny once he knows he calmed down
They all get him they’re here for him 💞"
When I said "unfiltered emails" I should probably explain a little bit more about it (especially since original me TEASED about the contents). In my head I had the vague idea of him getting into the wine drawer (inspired by old omoriboy post) then sending long poorly thought out venting? Hero especially I had thoughts on
"You act like you're trying to make up for something horrible you did by dedicating your life to doing nothing but listening to others you bend over backwards for other people's wishes instead of being yourself because you can't stand yourself. you don't think you deserve happiness because you failed Mari but it's not true none of that is true you don't need to be in fucking doctor school because Mari's death wasn't your fault it was mine. Every single bit of hatred you've felt towards yourself you should feel towards ME because IT'S MY FAULT and it's MY FAULT YOU FELT THAT WAY I've fucked up your entire fucking life. hate me. hate basil hate us we're the ones that ruined everything for you the only reason you don;'t have any more self respect left in you to choose to hate us is because we've wounded you so much you can't heal", things along those lines I guess. My phrasing was better in my head because I was able to be more frantic yet eloquent because I was in The Zone to imagine.
Then I went ahead and played some more OMORI
Ohhhhh DEAREST BLACK SPACE. This run I was really prepared for it. I was totally over it now, Yeah You Can't Surprise Me Anymore I know alllll your tricks there's nothing more you could do to me. No trauma this time.
But no. It snuck up on me this time. I've finally gotten back to playing OMORI after a few days of being depressed about it. I run around a bit, check out some of the new stuff, run around finding fun places to see Basil. I go to the Last Resort and check out Mr.Jawesome's office where he gives Hero the big check and ownership of the resort. I noticed one of the two elevator doors in the background was a little bit open, shuddering, struggling to close!
Once I regain control of my character, I interact with the elevator. I appear inside of the elevator room, alone, and a prompt appears asking "Do you want to go to Black Space?", and before I could choose I'd accidentally already accidentally started the elevator. Omori leaves the elevator, appearing here, and then it went away without me, leaving us behind here.
There is no Basil. There is no elevator. There are no red hands. It's just you and the Black Space room.
It seemed out of character for OMORI, but I started to wonder if I was softlocked. Out of options I checked my menu, and there I saw my exit.
I was able to STAB myself out, and appeared back in Mr.Jawesome's office as though nothing had happened.
This was BEAUTIFULLY effective. I fucking love this game and how deeply it makes the player feel.
Then I started thinking about Basil again as I often do
I then said "omocat wrote this insufferable depressed otaku who can only stand his cat and imaginary friends then was like "what if I gave him a best friend who's the sweetest shy little flower boy that he loved so much that the fabrication of this world is built upon his guilt over abandoning him"" and I started contemplating Basil from a writing perspective, what the story would be like without him, he's genuinely one of the most facinating characters I've ever thought about I'll be honest!
Drew some art that I censored on purpose bc while writing Sunny speaking like omoriboy is fun, mixing that with ME leads to some dark things being written
During my playthrough where I went to Black Space again on accident I ran into quite a few other things, mostly revisiting places I'd already been but seeing Basil in them for fun. I got another artwork from Rokoko, I commissioned the Gator Guys to built another statue, I found a key or two traveling around. Also the MAIN QUEST NOW of finding the batteries and unlocking the new area.
But I didn't stay. I left and ran to look around more, finding out Humphrey was alive and giving him the big check and exploring a little bit in there before quitting.
"I didn't give the full story behind why I left the mountains. I thought I'd be able to feel excited to see the new exclusive content in this route, be able to push the guilt I inherited from the main character aside just because "It's just another bad ending", "another aspect of this game I love I'll be able to appriciate". Yet as I wandered through the game I noticed that Basil doesn't have a lot of dialogue, unlike Mari. He sits and looks pretty. The picnics you've already been to don't have dialogue, becasue of course they wouldn't. He sits there, safe and special, quiet because it'd be ridiculous to assume they'd rewrite every basket for him.
Then at the snow zone, it's a new exlusive area. And he talks. I realized, this might be one of the last times he does that. There's only so much of this game left. What happens when i've retred all my footsteps? When I've spoken to every NPC once more? When I've finished every sidequest, any and all objectives, seen it all, there will be nothing to do but leave. There will ne nothing left. There's not a lot of *Basil* left and i can't spend that time immedietely.
Eventually the distraction will end and I'll be left with nothing, the game completed.
Which is SO COOL because it's yet another example of how Omori utilizes its status as a video game! It's art by a person, it cannot be infinite. That's impossible. There will come a time when a video game just has nothing left to offer, even if it's an "infinite game" they get stale. The postgame runs out of content. You finish everything and that's when you set it down... and instead of just accepting that fate, Omori intentionally makes me fear that state! It's using that part of the game on PURPOSE to make you feel something!
I say this with most of "One Day Left" in front of me, yet even now I am filled with dread"
"I have one problem with Undertale and that is that I feel any motivation to finish the murder routes. I just don't want to put the time into something that the game ultimately just asks you if you should be judged for, guilts you about this being your fault, to really think about narrative and the player's actions. It's very interesting, but I never felt like engaging with that because "If I can get the good ending, then I don't want to be bad to get the other endings"
Omori fixes this problem for me because it's not my fault, this is just something that was equally as likely to happen. I'm an observer, one invited to see the world through the main character's eyes, but nothing is *my* fault. It also makes me feel... A lot worse about the ending, and feel a lot more sympathetic to the main character.
I said once I often think about that ending where Basil kills himself, that happens if you just sleep in a little longer, when a good ending was so close, because it really helps us understand how dire the situation is in the good ending. How close we were to losing that. That, no, it wasn't just your paranoia, Basil would have done that. There's gameplay surrounding the alternate timeline where he does.
Hikikomori route is like that! The same idea why it feels so important. Look at what could've happened. It underlines why the good route matters. Because it could've been missed. *Easily*. The inciting incident is just not opening a door, something he's been doing for years. It's equally as likely to happen.
This route just gives me a lot of information about this character."Turning off the game" doesn't matter because fate is already decided. You wanted a glimpse into this timeline, the one where he doesn't open the door, and you are an observer. You backing out now means nothing, because this possibility is still just as open"
Then I took another break from the game this time not driven by depression but because I was literally preparing to switch rooms/move a lot of furnature so my desk settup would be off for a while and also I wanted to edit more of my recordings and was playing the game with my friend Error who's new to it!
Rewatching the early game from my recordings and also specifically Error experience everything for the first time (he had NO spoilers going in unlike me so I find his reactions facinating) and watched real world Kel again! Distant memory for me... I was able to finally formulate this rant I was promising last post lol
"ALSO WAS YELLING ABOUT A CLIP FROM MY VIDEO just ;_; GAME FEELS
I'm saving a LOT of funny clips from my third Omori video, but then I ran across this one which has SO MUCH unspoken emotion on it, and I realized I picture exactly what I was feeling here but it isn't clear to other people! Then it reminded me about an important aspect about this game.
So in Omori different characters process Mari's death differently. Sunny became a depressed shut in, Basil is anxious stressed and lonely, Hero became miserable for a year, Aubrey became an angry bully struggling to find peace after feeling abandoned, and Kel... Felt bad. But went on with his life. They're all very varied and realistic depictions of how different people grieve, I feel.
Recently I was having a conversation with Tidal about something or other Omori related, and I mentioned Kel and Tidal just didn't really seem to understand Kel's deal. and I felt kind of. like. Combative about it. Like, hey! Kel does feel really deep emotions! He just doesn't express them as obviously as others! Just because he's still able to smile doesn't mean the tragedy didn't affect him! Aubrey literally gets mad at him in the game for just that, and Kel gets upset about it because he DID miss Mari! They all did! Aubrey just doesn't feel like he ACTED sad enough
and then it hit me... the reason I was so combative about Kel... was because I AM KEL!
I understand exactly what he's going through emotionally because when it comes to grieving..... I'm like that!!!!! I act like him!!! I usually make jokes and just go "Well I need to move on anyways". Especially with more minor tragedies. It takes a lot of genuine effort on my part to try and explain my emotions to other people when something bad happens. Only when something really REALLY bad happens it's easy, but most of the time I'm just like. Internally sad. externally happy. and really struggle to convey to people "I am sad this isn't a joke"
and there are a lot of points in especially this third Omori recording that are like that. In my text posts about the game I go and explain how impactful certain scenes for me were, yet in the recording itself I seem like I'm feeling no emotion?
As I said. I am like Kel. A lot of the time I feel really deep feelings but don't sound like it. I need to put a lot of effort into actually saying "something bad happened" in a way that makes it sound like I'm upset about it
I. Just didn't want to fight her. I felt really bad about the horrible thing that happened to the past friendship. How everything disbanded. It felt too late. It felt like... she was justified in hating us, that we were enemies on opposite sides now. All I wanted was the photo album, all she wanted is for us to leave
The game lagged so the music took a while to start- and when it did it's just this tragic song that sounds like... the ending of things. I phrased it better here once, "it's so uncomfortable and tragic and angry, it felt like a representation of all the feelings I felt when I got to that point"
"Are we just shadows of our past selves destined to fall into dispair?"
so when the music itself starts I just knew there wasn't any running (meanwhile the only thing I actually say in the recording is "this sounds cool :)" followed by some jokes)
I SWEAR I HAVE DEEP FEELINGS I'M JUST KEL but you already knew I had deep feelings from my text posts lol the recordings are just DIFFERENT"
I have a little comic idea about Kel and Sunny about this idea but I haven't gotten it done yet lol
I'm really happy with how this whole thing looks to be honest, Basil looks really nice in that second picture like he's just so soft and his hair came out really nice. I've tried getting better at comics for the past.... while....... and it's a REALLY FUCKING HARD ARTFORM YOU DON'T GET IT UNLESS YOU'VE DONE IT
This one is simple compared to another comic that's in progress and you'll most likely see next post, but there's still a lot of thought that went into why I put the characters where I did. If you see more of a character it looks different than if you see less. If you put the character on the wrong side of the frame it looks weird. If you do something even a little bit imperfectly it reads worse.
It's crazy, also panel 3 is excellent I love it and I'm glad I did it so well. Sunny's pretty emo looking in this comic because I think he looks nice that way, covered eye silly extra large sweater, whatnot. The background for that one was ALL INTENTIONAL I had a visual I wanted and WENT FOR IT. I got the picture of the cat from black space and used a bunch of texture brushes to get a specific effect as well as using glow layer and inversion to make everything work hhhhh CRAZY it's like I know what I'm doing or something. Last one is also great, abruptly returning to normal colors so you can get an idea of how Basil feels here lol. WET LOOKING BOY
MEWO IS FINE GUYS NOTHING CANONICALLY CONTRIDICTS THE IDEA SHE WASN'T STAYING WITH HIS MOM I mean why would you leave your pet in an empty house anyways huhhhh it just makes sense. Oh hey the pharmacy called they just got my copium! nah but seriously I have no problem with just including her in these future comics lol she's cute and I JUST talked about her impact
This image was in my drafts for a whiiiiile. It probably could've made it into my last post but I was just struggling badly with how to color it. Thankfully I pulled it off and now I've gotten multiple comments about it! A few simple tricks go a long way ^_^
Slowly working on this other comic. Again, it's a COMIC COMIC and making comics is HARD so part of what you do for that is thumbnail it first! Don't even sketch, don't write down the text, don't try to make the characters look nice, JUST figure out where everything looks good to be. It's been really useful but I realized after drawing it that it must look hilarious to everyone else because they'd have no idea what is going on so here you go
Kel and Aubrey's dynamic is great they're very fun to write for lol
After making these I went on Tumblr and asked for outfit suggestions. MY TUMBLR HAS EXPLODED it got a ton of traction for Tumblr the moment I started posting art, which is fun! I asked my 70 LOYAL FOLLOWERS for suggestions and it ended up into these two outfits
Aubrey's outfit suggestion was "bright tank top, high waisted jeans, ribbon around ponytail", I misread as "black tank top" so now we're here. Genuinely just a simple but brilliant suggestion, it looks really good on her! I probably would've made the thanktop black anyways because the way I'm coloring this comic is it's entirely black and white except for the hair. Otherwise it would take me 10 billion years.
Kel's was "haha skirt" and "jacket with video game reference" and like the skirt suggestion was a joke but the thing is you don't see the characters under the waste this much in the comic as you can tell in the sketches do it doesn't really matter what Kel wears, and ACTUALLY I think he'd look good with a jean skirt. and not care lol.
For video game reference I was thinking of things that'd be fun, and decided I'd try to look into an Undertale reference since I feel like Kel would like that game! I started searching around the Fangamer store in case anything struck me and when I saw the shirt I was like. This is it. This is perfect. He would SO wear that lmao so I cut up the jacket and gave him the shirt. QUITE FASHIONABLE. On a whim I also gave him a sun necklace which I imagine he wears because of Sunny hehe.
Here's the first panel without any text! You'll have to wait until the next post to see the full comic, I'm taking my time with it. Part of it is that while it doesn't actually have spoilers in it, I want to wait before showing it to Error because if he gets the idea that Aubrey and Kel are friends by the end of the game canonically DAS SPOILERS lol THEN I managed to drag my feet into playing some more OMORI I LOVE HOW BEAUTIFULLY EFFECTIVE THIS GAME IS IT'S SO GOOD
SO as I went into depth earlier in this post, I have seen pretty much every single piece of art Omocat has published for this game. There was a handful of concept art that included genderswapped versions of the cast, especially Omori. I always liked girl Omori bc she has pigtails which is an obvious nod to Yume Nikki. In one of the tumblr posts, Omocat explained that the game originally was supposed to have the option to choose the gender of the main character but it got scrapped because the game was already taking long enough. So, I thought that was that. Oh well, scrapped concept, at least we have some interesting art of it. It's fun to think about! Then I recieve POTION OF TRANSGENDER and proceed to lose my mind
You should see me in the recording one day lmao my reaction was hilarious. RARE TIME I SHOWED EMOTION
Stranger is SUCH an interesting character I've already put in two different rants I had about him here but. Like. THERE IS MORE because as I said only today have I actually figured him out. Yeah you know how I said I only figured him out a few hours ago? Because I was hyperanalyzing the text for the third time breaking it down line by line well that's this part of the post now. Now that I've done the hikikomori route (mostly?) I fiiiinnnnnally get it
So I did have spoilers going into the Hikikomori route, partly from people implying "to get the good ending you have to save real Basil not the dream Basil", which therefor implies there's a way to save him, as well as someone trying to be VERY COOL AND NICE sending me epic animatics..... yet did not seem to realize they included spoilers (Dreamworld Basil in contexts I had not seen him in before). I went in basically just knowing we will find Basil. Somehow. And have a fun little sleepover. I did not know how or when but I knew that much.
Having played the Hikikomori route, now, I DISAGREE!
(Will you? It depends on the route.)
Sunny’s small part of his mind that still believes in hope is Basil. Basil is the only reason Sunny is still alive. When he dies Sunny dies with him.
Taking yet another break, I went and listened to some music!
I have NO IDEA what the song is about, Idk who this artist is in the slightest but I keep seeing their stuff and it sounds okay-to-very-nice with the most bafflingly intriguing words that stick to my brain. This is honestly the fluffiest looking Sunflower art I've drawn so far. I don't think I have any other pictures of some kissing (ASIDE FROM SOME ONES I AM NOT SHARING LOL) so this is the gayest thing you'll get from me probably XD Drawing Kel is so fun
you have no idea he's just perfect for my artstyle lol I've been thinking of making a Kel Appreciation Website but I'm stuck on how I'd want it to look. I know orangeee but hmmmm
I also made some stuff up about this AU I have. It’s like Omori except everyone is ponies like from my little pony. Mostly I make these because they’re fun design challenges, especially when it comes to cutiemarks because you have to think of a symbol that’s somehow representational of the entire character while not being too complicated. It’s fun! I’m also really good at this Pony.Town character creator, which is UNFORTUNATELY not a very useful skill XD (It just SHOWS my skill when it comes to coloring in other art already. I dunno maybe it would teach you some things) Here’s a post with a whole bunch of them I made.
Specifically this week I was thinking about Kel’s cutiemark, because I specified in the original post that Kel didn’t have one the last time Sunny saw him, and instead only got it during the four years he was gone. I never actually designed one for him in the original Pony Town creator so I made one with Morny’s input.
I thought about how yeah he's ballin' but his main thing is that he's the Bestest Friend Ever and we kept trying to figure out how to combine those and eventually settled on this ball with a heart shaped trail I still liked the idea of Kel not having a cutiemark last time Sunny saw him, but he does now.
Then thought "what if Kel got his cutiemark during Hero's depressed era", which is REALLY SAD and very likely. His parents still have a party but it's smaller, Hero is depressed so doesn't congratulate him as ecstatically as he would've, and he couldn't invite any of his friends :<
was also thinking about Sunny's potential angst as well. His kid friends would've been constantly theorizing and Mari would've been so encouraging, and then she DIES and he gets one but feels nothing about it because Mari's not around. He doesn't care to understand what it means, and pretends like he doesn't have one in the dreamworld still. I haven’t fully designed Sunny’s mark like Kel’s but I imagine it’s something like an eclipse. I just found the idea of it symbolizing dreaming really interesting, because you could integrate the sun (his name), his name’s irony (his name is Sunny which means “happy” but he’s not that, thus eclipse), the moon (important dreamworld symbol), it represents his deep imagination which is the most important part of his character, and part of unicorn lore is that their magic is always tied to whatever their talent is so his having to do with dreaming would explain his supernaturally detailed dreams.
Then I was thinking Kel would actually be empathetic about Sunny not getting what his and having angst in general bc his wasn't super happy at first either, and they BOTH missed each others, not just one way.
Moving ubruptly onto this downer of an idea “I don't normally look at Omori text posts but I saw one that said "Omori good ending but Basil kills himself anyways", I didn't read the rest of it because again I don't read text posts but like. It's sticking to me because. Just. I realized I had just totally forgotten that's an actual possibility. I've been writing so much about Sunny's depression and thinking of the idea of him still having bad days even after that I totally forgot that Basil is just as fucked up like where's BASIL'S depressive episode Quo. Quo come on AT LEAST I HAD THE GRACE TO PUT THEM IN THERAPY IN MY VERSION GEEZ” Then me and Zar went into a longer discussion over it
Zar: "basil killing himself anyway STILL A REAL POSSIBILITY
particularly depending on the fallout of the reveal"
Me: "right even if it goes well it's like
he doesn't really know why he still exists?
like ok the truth is out. why do I deserve to be alive still
I think that's subconsiously why I was so emotional about having Sunny trying to get Basil to live with him just because... like...... I don't really think anyone else could convince Basil not to kill himself
like they could all be his friends and there for him... but if he moves somewhere else they're not there, and even then it's just... like... depending on the fallout of the reveal it'd be awkward to be around him, and even if Kel for example was there for him Kel unfortunately just doesn't have the skills to pull someone out of being suicidal no matter how good a friend he is
and it's not that Sunny does either but also Basil would be hyper aware if he kills himself Sunny would too. honestly Basil's identity is so tied to the secret I imagine he'd feel really lost? Like, so much of what he's been telling himself for years is "Sunny has to be a good person, because if he's not, I'm not," and hiding and being closed off constantly trying to convince himself he deserves to live... that like.... when it's no longer that. When the truth is out so he doesn't have the need to convince himself he's good or bad anymore. because that's the judgement of other people now, not his own
like what does he even do with himself
how do you just be?? something that was your own burden for so long. Not on you anymore. So I imagine during dissasociative moments he really has this "Why am I still here?" thought. What even is he supposed to do with his life anymore! Why does he still exist!
then he wakes up in the morning and is normal and confused why he was thinking that bc midnight thoughts are like that
never trust ur thoughts after 9PM they always say,,,
"wait but my friends care about me and my family would be devistated what" just this complete disconnect from the mindset during day hours lol
that's interesting to imagine the other way around though... I mean, "interesting", still devistating. in the bad ending Sunny kills himself and then you have to wonder how Basil would react, now I'm imagining Basil killing himself in the post good ending I made up and how Sunny would react then... It's so hard to keep these two kids alive X_X
tragedies worth pondering
AND YET AGAIN I FEEL TERRIBLE FOR THE MOM because like in most endings she already has to deal with the horror of both her kids being dead to suicide, but in this one it's like. She's also taking care. of another kid. And they were both doing better. And seemed to be ok. and thennnn
she'd feel responsible for the death of THREE KIDS
I just think Sunny would be inconsolable in any timeline where Basil kills himself so soon, he's just so important to Sunny that like I caaan't even imagine
like if you wanted him to not follow after that you'd need to like. send him to a facility"
Then me and Zar talked about Hero being paranoid and reminiscing over this wonderful post ✨
So I spent overall like 9 hours on this post, it didn’t even delete itself (that much) this time it’s just 10k words long. I think making more frequent posts would fix this issue. Also I’m not going to be typing these into either LJ or DW anymore they’ve both proven far too unstable to know how to save a drafted post, I’m gonna need to figure something else out.
OMORI SPOILERS UNDER CUT. And don't spoil anything in the comments, either. If I don't explicitly say I know something assume I don't.
Seeing as it's going to be a long one, it's difficult to know where to start. So, I'm going to start from my drawings in order.
This one is related to the idea I had last post. I was thinking a lot about Headspace post-good ending in my universe, and this comic was one of the results of that.
Post good ending, Headspace is still... There. It's part of him. He can't erase it. The fun dreamworld is pretty much gone, as he is no longer trying to bury Black Space. The truth is out. It's no longer festering, growing unspeakable and unfacable. He conqured it. The secret is out, him and Basil are free, and they can now start to recover.
But that's just... the first step, really. He's recovering, but not healed. He's still traumatized. Something and Omori still linger in his headspace. They disappear- sure, sometimes for a while, but they're still there. It's part of him now.
Out of the blue I had the thought "but what if the dreamworld did come back? How would Sunny feel about it? Would he be scared?" and as any good artist should, I decided to follow my impulses.
In this specific scenario, dreamworld is small. In the game it was specified this particular dreamworld is large because it's multiple of his fantasies all clumsily stitched together. The new one isn't big and sprawling- it's like a small section of the vast forest with a little cottage for Basil to live in. It's just the house, trees, and if you walk long enough you end up on the other side. There's a well the water supposidly comes from. Going into the well leads you to Black Space. Accessible, easy to go to. No longer locked.
I started thinking more. Sunny has a lot of guilt. When I played the game that was a primary emotion I was feeling, learning that the dreamworld is a cover for the truth, keeping it hidden is hurting Sunny, keeping it hidden is hurting Basil, that it needs to be braved in order to start to fix things (no matter horrible it may be).
This feeling wasn’t always a good thing, however. It’s the same thinking that almost made me to kill Mewo.
Now that the truth is out there, now that Sunny is taking care of himself and Basil, what point is there in tormenting himself on purpose? There isn’t any, really. Remembering the darkness may be good, not trying to hide it, but going to often because he “deserves it” Is just self harm.
Just because hurting yourself has no point doesn't mean he wouldn't keep doing it. There's no reason to force himself to be in Black Space anymore, and yet, all he does is sleep- White Space- The Well- Black Space.
This Black Space is a lot less narratively driven, because it has no point! Imagine it a lot more similar to Yume Nikki. Sprawling landscapes, confusing, unsettling, dark and unexplained. Representations of his trauma and awful things appear over and over again out in these never ending doors. He gains nothing by doing it- nothing useful, really. The items in Yume Nikki fit the idea well. He could leave at any time, stay in the cottage with Basil, but instead he wanders down here.
Dreamworld Basil feels hurt by this! There are a lot of reasons why- I mean the simple face value ones of "he's being ignored by his friend", but also more complex metaphorical ones. Sunny hurting himself makes him miserable, and there are people around him that love him, including the real Basil, that are getting hurt by him continuing to do this to himself. He knows this but it's hard for him to accept, and so the events play out in dreamworld.
ALSO THESE PICTURES ARE REALLY CUTE
Dreamworld Basil is always a pleasure to draw, cutest littlest guy around. Sunny (or "Dreamer" as I call him sometimes out here, it just makes things clearer every once in a while) has his missing eye, and it's not covered in the dreamworld, but I felt like drawing it would sort of take away from what the actual focus is supposed to be so instead he's got these styalized anime hair bangs haha. LET HIM HAVE SUBTLE EMO HAIR HE LOST AN EYE HE'S EARNED IT
I haven't posted this one because it will make next to no sense without context so I'd rather wait until I have a few more drawings behind this idea that clarify it a little, then put it out there.
MUST HUG TINY FRIENDS
I love Kel lol HE'S SO MUCH BIGGER THAN THEM or he could be. Kel is bigg stronk boy and Sunny is this malnourished thing. YET, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, despite all of Sunny's stunted growth Basil is STILL shorter than him. He's just a litol lmao. I looked at so many official drawings and Basil is shorter in ALL of them XD I didn't know that at the time of drawing this but if I did it would've been represented lol. Sunny just flop
I said in the tags ppl could tag it as whatever ships Idc and someone was super estatic about there being ship art of these three lol people are so joyful out here
You know what on the topic of shipnames I'm sidetangenting THE SHIPNAMES IN THIS FANDOM ARE INCREDIBLE I was a little doubtful at first because, like, "Sunflower? Not even gonna add two "N"s? That's terrible for searchability even if it is both deep and adorable" but I have accepted it now. Here's a list of a bunch I found
Sunny/Basil - Sunflower (I like to think this name was thought up and it was so good that every shipname after had to follow)
Hero/Mari - Lilyrose (Adorable sounding, nice we’re using Basil’s flowers for this)
Aubrey/Sunny - Sunburn (Sun + that one cute library book + Ow)
Kel/Sunny - Suntan (thumbs up following the theme)
Kel/Basil - Cactiflower (again just cute and straightforward)
Sunny/Kel/Basil - Sunkissed (Sounds like it)
Kel/Aubrey - Baseball (bc sportsball and bat. Lmao)
Basil/Aubrey - Photobomb (I laughed at this one out loud upon discovery. Perfect job)
Aubrey/Sunny/Basil - Bunny (Aubrey likes bunnies, Basil is bunny coded, B(asil)(S)unny) (This one might be like my second favorite of the shipnames bc of how much is going on with it I couldn't have done better if I tried)
And then on accident I discovered “Nightshade”, which is Omori/Stranger. "Night" obvious, "shade" because Stranger looks like a shadow, nightshade is a flower, most varieties of it are poisonous. Fantastic job guys. Round of applause. I want no hate in these comments we are just here to appreciate the names and nothing else.
WHO HERE HAS FINISHED THE HIKIKOMORI ROUTE I HAVEN'T
At the time, I said "Part of me is. Sad. Because you never get a reunion scene. There's never any "We found Basil!" the world just resets. And it makes sense! This is the cycle, this is how it works, of course you weren't ever going to find Basil. Things weren't ever going to be normal. They just act like he was never missing. Like everything was always fine. Like they always do."
I think this absolutely rings true. The friends are... incapable of seeing any of the dark oddities you do. If they do, it's still barely acknowledged. This makes the game feel lonely. No one is there to hold your hand, to say "That was so scary! What was that!?" because then you'd feel seen. Instead you feel isolated. Which is perfect for what the game is going for. There's always more to dig at and analyze! There are reasons behind everything!
Shortly after I also wrote about Omori the character, since you learn a lot about his nature doing both routes!
"“This form is evil” This is true, but he’s not necessarily malevolent?
Omori was created when Sunny could no longer face the outside world. He became so inwardly drawn, so depressed, so unable to engage with reality, so hateful of himself he didn’t even think he deserved to go out there, that he escaped entirely into a reality where he could… be nothing.
"Welcome to White Space. You have been living here as long as you can remember."
Omori is not usually aware of what he is, I think. He’s just a boy, who lives in White Space, who gets to hang out in cool places with his friends. This is the entire world for him. He comes from somewhere strange, he struggles to show emotion, but his friends still love him and he’s happy to be here.
It’s when the darkness grows, when holes through reality come into focus, he starts remembering it all. That this reality is fragile. That a darkness threatens it.
He just wants to protect this place where he’s happy, and he slowly remembers how to do that is to cast the darkness away. Keep it at bay. Reduce it to shadow. It is a threat and he’s just doing what he has to.
When he remembers more, he gains more of what Sunny is. Remembers why this reality exists at all. Because they’re bad, they don’t deserve to leave, they can’t leave, this is all there is for them.
He gets violent and awful in the good ending because there’s no curtain anymore. Because they’ve faced the truth and all of the buried self hatred is able to be spoken out loud, when before it couldn’t even be thought because it was so buried and forgotten. To say “You killed her” they need to acknowledge that he killed her.
"This form is evil. You will not see that unless you fight it."
OMORI IS MANY THINGS. Him being terrible shows Sunny’s growth! Omori only says that because he has no other choice but to stop ignoring it!
But in the Hikikomori route… He doesn’t. There is no truth. You manage to peacefully subdue your thoughts to this fantasy, to live here to the end of your days. The truth doesn’t matter anymore, because you’ll be dead. You are nothing. Forget yourself. You have been living here for as long as you can remember."
And immedietely after I found this adorable comic by Omocat!
Then soon after the lagging emotions finally kicked me and I became depressed
Forever isn’t a long time~ the end of everything draws near~ we can spend the rest of our lives together~
Gahhggckz so I GOT to Black Space. I went through some doors, saw some horrors, my boyfriend brutally dies again, all stuff I am used to at this point. I went through the red door early because Black Space was the same so I'd already seen it, and then I got to the church and got Basil and left Stranger and Sunny and went to sleep in my little cat bed to wake up and have Basil safe on the picnic basket with Mari give me a flower crown.
Honestly at the time I was feeling very little. It's difficult to control when I do or don't have emotions. Part of it I think is chronic dehydration mixed with migraines. But I also wanted to play the game, so sometimes I play it when I'm not really capable of fully engaging.
I did not. Really. Feel a lot. When I went through Black Space again, abandoned Stranger, and took Basil back. I did care, of course, I thought about it, I understood in logical terms why it was meaningful and was certainly intregued by it, I did feel some things, but not very much.
It was only a few hours LATER when I thought about it and had my feelings. Sitting in bed... Imagining how it felt for him. And like I actually cried. I genuinely got like depressed (not in a dangerous way) for at least a day about it. It hurt. I ended up just like, not playing the game for a little and just having myself think about it for a while.
Sunny's only got a few more hours left to live. The rest of the night. It's lights out after this. Basil says "I'll cherish you forever", and it's tainted with grief. Forever isn't a long time.
Yet at the same time... I found catharsis in knowing it would be over soon.
There's a part of me that cannot stand the idea of continuing to live after moving. After failing to say goodbye, after potentially killing Basil by not seeing him, by not giving friends the truth. It's like. We failed and there's nothing left in this world for us. Thinking about it from a detached point of view, an outsider judging a peace of art, it really reminds me of how suicidal people often seem their best in years right before killing themselves. They know it will be over soon, so people around them notice they seem like they're a lot happier than normal and "seem to be making a recovery" right before dying. And I thinkkkk it's CRAZY and INCREDIBLE this video game could make me feel that way!
I've never empathized with a video game protaganist more than Sunny and I think that's just part of the beauty of this game. Like I'm rewatching a lot of my early recordings while editing them and even then it's just... Like... Scary how many of the things I say could just be Sunny's thoughts.
SO AS A DISTRACTION yet still part of my hyperfixation I went to Omocat's tumblr and started looking at every single Omori post from the past thirteen ears in reverse chronological order. Now I'm going to send a TON of art which is not mine you'll all have to deal lol it's my post!
Before playing Omori I knew a lot about it, and more specifically, I knew a lot about how it was created! Most of the real world development details yet little of the actual game. I found it a facinating story.
What I knew is that OMORI started out as an idea for a "webcomic" in 2013 or so, and the creator decided it would be better suited to a game and made a Kickstarter for it. Then spent eight years developing the game. Six of those years were spent just making assets. They only put them into the game in the last 2 years and after 6 years they had about only the first two hours of the game (which was the first eight hours for me so SFJKND). By the time they were finished they were pretty much out of money and were trying to get it out as soon as possible, OMOCAT stepping into the programmer role when she previously hadn't.
The hardship when it came with making the game influenced the game itself, Omocat says. A lot of the emotional hardship that came with creating it is represented in the story, and the game wouldn't be the same without it. The game became incredibly successful and now I'm playing it!!!
As I scrolled through the Tumblr there was a lot posted in the last four years, lots of comics and promotional material and cute art- and when I got to before the game released I found tons of facinating development posts, test sprites, old trailers, concept art, things that made it into the final game, all sorts of stuff. Then, the absolute oldest stuff from 2011-2012, I found the boy.
me at the time: Gives another connotation to "It may be time to admit you are human, DREAMER"
I am enamored with these old posts. I hesitate to call them comics, because they're never more than one image. They're all formatted the same way; Omori, the computer, the tissue box, the black light bulb, occassionally Mewo, and a couple other misc objects depending on the image, such as the handheld or a window.
2011 Omori was pretty different. Of course, you would already know this because the story took 13 years to develop and changed as the game was created. There are some major differences, but I don't feel like that takes away from them at all. It's genuinely facinating to see such old versions of the story, and especially to see White Space in a way that feels... Lived in.
In the game, you start out in White Space, look around a bit, then leave. You get impressions of it being a home- "You have been living here as long as you can remember", the friend's room next to yours is called "NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE", you always return here, it's a reflection of Omori, you see the log on the computer that often says "Today I hung out in White Space. Everything was okay" but you don't... experience it. You don't need to engage with it in any meaningful manner. You may, conceptually, understand the depressive meaning behind the symbols. A tissue box to wipe away your tears. A hanging black light bulb, whatever it is.
A computer screen with an opressive wall texture background- claustraphobic, boxed in, trapped. It evokes the same feelings as doomscrolling without any scrolling. Nothing needs to be on the computer becase you've already gotten the point.
sometimes while playing OMORI I'd think "I'm curious what things were like before I was here, what were the previous loops like, what is just existing in white space like" and these drawings while not canon and limited give me a pretty good idea.
sometimes in these drawings it seems as if he's talking to Mewo. Really just himself, musings, ideas, things that come across his mind. But there's no animosity towards her like there are other people.
It doesn't feel like there's a story, just self hatred, emptiness, guilt, but not over anything that can be pointed to. He feels fine in white space, there's enough here and he doesn't want anymore because he's lost his ability to desire. He's convinced himself this is the better state of existance.
White Space is really deep in these comics when in the games it moreso just gives hints to this kind of thing. When reading these, it's hard not think about Omocat. For Omocat, this is where it started. How different does White Space feel when Omocat played her game? It's existed for her far longer than the minutes we spend with it. There's a lot more depth, thinking of it as a place you've spent pondering for ten years than just... the artful room where nothing happens.
I like this one. Sunnomori are pretty silent characters in the actual game (which I think works perfectly- as I said earlier, I found myself empathizing with him more than any other character while playing this game and I think if he spoke frequently my immersian would've been broken), but in these comics him talking is nothing if not engaging. He's judgemental, of other people, of himself- he's opinionated, yet eloquent and poetic. He's depressed, he's hikikomori, he's alone and he's living in White Space.
I really enjoy he's not just nonstop "sad" in these drawings, because that's not what being depressed is. It's a state of being nothing, being miserable but unable to feel miserable. Sometimes you're sad, but mostly you won't cry about it. It's usually just this.... frustrating maddening inability to feel. You drive it away with games and hobbies and drawings, but it's everpresent.
Mewo also has an interesting role in these. She's pretty ever-present in White Space, often sitting by or being pet by him. Sometimes it even seems like Omoriboy is talking to her! She's such an old character, the oldest right next to Omori himself...
...So I found myself just thinking about her role in the game. She's so important and such an old character that you saw throughout Omori art so frequently before the game was released, all the time, and in the game itself you can kill her.
it's just. cat. innofensive. cute. a rare friend out here...
revealed to just be a cope after nine years?
that's sad it's not even a let down it's just like oh ok nothing matters. that's what I thought
You and me both buddy
Anyways there's a lot of these that I really like but I don't think I have a lot more to say generally outside of like specific comics at specific images, so we're finally going to move on now! This detour wasn't entirely irrelavent to my art though because when drawing I was thinking a lot about the way this old "beta" version of Omori talked and copied some of that into my drawings. The Hikikomori route was living in my mind and I was Sad
Yeah no wonder he's suffering he's barely eaten a thing
Zarla thinks he might have some candy or lunchables under the bed which I find pretty reasonable, but I also have NO ISSUES taking the idea of him starving himself entirely literally. Uhhhgggggggh
closing eyes,
my room is full of
spiders ants
that want my rotted meat
it's humid,
i am full of spiders,
bite me until its painful
i sit lonely,
its dark and useless
will my body still be useful?
I'm ashamed of all that I am now,
make me cry until it's painful
you smell of dead flowers
I smell of the sewer i rot in.
I'm ashamed of all that I am
and all i am now
is painful
Basil thinks I’m a good person. I think he’s delusional, but I also love him so I can’t tell him he’s wrong.
The Omoriboy characterization rubbed off on me as I said, I wrote something in the good route with Basil thinking of the way that he used to speak.
The response I got to these drawings on tumblr brings a tear to my eye, honestly. They came from a real place of emotion during the night I felt about hikikomori and read the old comics, so seeing other people really getting it makes me happy
Go to sleep.
I really enjoy how this one looks. It's funny because I think I was really starting to master some specific skills back in late 2023 and was super excited to use them when I previously hadn't been that happy with my art, and that's when my hand got injured. But now I can finally draw again!!!! Sickly thin boy with the arms~
I didn't stick exlusively to thinking of the Hikikomori route. There's really only so many things to think about there- what the ending could be, what the next day is, the idea of a sickly starving boy dying in his bed (it's the ending times)- but despite all that cheerful stuff my mind started drifting to my post good ending I've been writing.
more of a silly drawing of Sunny dissing Omori. Shortly after sending this drawing to people I started thinking "Well, Stranger" then started thinking about Stranger because OH YEAH HE WAS SUPER WEIRD IN THIS ROUTE TOO WHAT WAS UP WITH HIM GOD I NEED TO THINK ABOUT THAT leading
I spent the entire WEEK after making this drawing thinking about Stranger and only just a few hours ago do I think I finally understand him. And I do love him.
"Stranger is so weird. He wants to help you find the truth, he's hopeful things can get better, he wants nothing more than you help you. The fact he's entirely fabricated from Sunny's own mind is a really interesting aspect to him, because it's like, this ENTIRE *REALITY* was worlds he created time and time again stitched together to hind the darkness, the form he takes is one so forgetful he doesn't even know he's dreaming most of the time, everything is created just to subdue and destroy himself. He's suicidal and feels like it would be better to die than take up space.
Yet there's one small part of him that thinks there's a way out. A character who's silenced, destroyed, whisked away, hidden, over and over and over, but always finds his way out when the loop resets.
The small small struggling part of him that believes in hope
...and you've finally broken his heart.
The only part of Sunny that wanted to keep living and he's given up on you. And you've given up on him. Abandoning Basil again, like you always do. Which is why Sunny got abandoned there with him,"
Then, I wrote a few days later:
"man the more I think about him the more I love Stranger
The one small part of Sunny's subconsious that still wants to cling to life, believe in hope, love himself??? Barely visible cast in shadow and called "Stranger" because Sunny struggles recognize that part of himself? His fucking self-made guardian angel that takes the form of his best friend to try to get him to listen to him? That gives up on him symbolically when Sunny becomes too suicidal to continue by reenacting him abandoning Basil all over again???"
I gotta include him in future headspace comics he's so perfect lol"
While daydreaming my thoughts gravitated to this scenario where post good ending Sunny goes through a horrible depressive episode for a few days. This was being used to project my Hikikomori feelings so you KNOW it's bad.
He has all these obligations that keep him from regressing too far normally. He has a tutor that comes to his house that he has to interact with, he has a part time job that he has to go to and is rewarded for, he has Basil to look out for and who cries if he doesn't take care of himself. It doesn't mean he's not still ill though, he just has a lot more going for him.
It can genuinely be rather annoying how many emotions are tied to how you are physically. I just complained about chronic dehydration normal, but it's truly "Feeling upset? Eat something. Hate everyone? Take a nap. Hate yourself? Try showering." and I imagine Sunny would go through these frustrations quite often (as also shown in this older drawing)
This scenario was deeeensssseee and I barely drew any of it. I have written some of it down, though!
"Partly I've been contemplating this because recently due to feeling HORRIBLE about the omori route I was thinking of Sunny in the good ending just having like a really bad depressive episode for a week. It goes away but the week is really bad for him.
At some point in the scenario when he's not really thinking clearly he sent super unfiltered emails to Kel and Hero (which the second he wakes up and realizes what he did he IMMEDIETELY sends apologetic emails like "please ignore the last email pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease"). I'd need to think a little more before explaining parts of it but just some lines I thought of in it were really interesting
Kel just waits until the next day to respond with soft encouragement lol “Are you okay after yesterday???? If you don’t wanna talk about it that’s a-ok! I’m great at forgetting things. I don’t hold none of it against you. But, if you do want to talk about it, I’m here!! We can talk, I don’t bite! Just let me know!”
Meanwhile Hero sees it more promptly before the follow up “pls ignore” was sent and so he sends like the nicest email to Basil ever just “Hello, how have you been? We should catch up! How’s Sunny doing? You live together so maybe you can check up on him! Thanks! Love you!”
Then writes a much more formulated thoughtful email to Sunny once he knows he calmed down
They all get him they’re here for him 💞"
When I said "unfiltered emails" I should probably explain a little bit more about it (especially since original me TEASED about the contents). In my head I had the vague idea of him getting into the wine drawer (inspired by old omoriboy post) then sending long poorly thought out venting? Hero especially I had thoughts on
"You act like you're trying to make up for something horrible you did by dedicating your life to doing nothing but listening to others you bend over backwards for other people's wishes instead of being yourself because you can't stand yourself. you don't think you deserve happiness because you failed Mari but it's not true none of that is true you don't need to be in fucking doctor school because Mari's death wasn't your fault it was mine. Every single bit of hatred you've felt towards yourself you should feel towards ME because IT'S MY FAULT and it's MY FAULT YOU FELT THAT WAY I've fucked up your entire fucking life. hate me. hate basil hate us we're the ones that ruined everything for you the only reason you don;'t have any more self respect left in you to choose to hate us is because we've wounded you so much you can't heal", things along those lines I guess. My phrasing was better in my head because I was able to be more frantic yet eloquent because I was in The Zone to imagine.
Then I went ahead and played some more OMORI
Ohhhhh DEAREST BLACK SPACE. This run I was really prepared for it. I was totally over it now, Yeah You Can't Surprise Me Anymore I know alllll your tricks there's nothing more you could do to me. No trauma this time.
But no. It snuck up on me this time. I've finally gotten back to playing OMORI after a few days of being depressed about it. I run around a bit, check out some of the new stuff, run around finding fun places to see Basil. I go to the Last Resort and check out Mr.Jawesome's office where he gives Hero the big check and ownership of the resort. I noticed one of the two elevator doors in the background was a little bit open, shuddering, struggling to close!
Once I regain control of my character, I interact with the elevator. I appear inside of the elevator room, alone, and a prompt appears asking "Do you want to go to Black Space?", and before I could choose I'd accidentally already accidentally started the elevator. Omori leaves the elevator, appearing here, and then it went away without me, leaving us behind here.
There is no Basil. There is no elevator. There are no red hands. It's just you and the Black Space room.
It seemed out of character for OMORI, but I started to wonder if I was softlocked. Out of options I checked my menu, and there I saw my exit.
I was able to STAB myself out, and appeared back in Mr.Jawesome's office as though nothing had happened.
This was BEAUTIFULLY effective. I fucking love this game and how deeply it makes the player feel.
Then I started thinking about Basil again as I often do
I then said "omocat wrote this insufferable depressed otaku who can only stand his cat and imaginary friends then was like "what if I gave him a best friend who's the sweetest shy little flower boy that he loved so much that the fabrication of this world is built upon his guilt over abandoning him"" and I started contemplating Basil from a writing perspective, what the story would be like without him, he's genuinely one of the most facinating characters I've ever thought about I'll be honest!
Drew some art that I censored on purpose bc while writing Sunny speaking like omoriboy is fun, mixing that with ME leads to some dark things being written
During my playthrough where I went to Black Space again on accident I ran into quite a few other things, mostly revisiting places I'd already been but seeing Basil in them for fun. I got another artwork from Rokoko, I commissioned the Gator Guys to built another statue, I found a key or two traveling around. Also the MAIN QUEST NOW of finding the batteries and unlocking the new area.
But I didn't stay. I left and ran to look around more, finding out Humphrey was alive and giving him the big check and exploring a little bit in there before quitting.
"I didn't give the full story behind why I left the mountains. I thought I'd be able to feel excited to see the new exclusive content in this route, be able to push the guilt I inherited from the main character aside just because "It's just another bad ending", "another aspect of this game I love I'll be able to appriciate". Yet as I wandered through the game I noticed that Basil doesn't have a lot of dialogue, unlike Mari. He sits and looks pretty. The picnics you've already been to don't have dialogue, becasue of course they wouldn't. He sits there, safe and special, quiet because it'd be ridiculous to assume they'd rewrite every basket for him.
Then at the snow zone, it's a new exlusive area. And he talks. I realized, this might be one of the last times he does that. There's only so much of this game left. What happens when i've retred all my footsteps? When I've spoken to every NPC once more? When I've finished every sidequest, any and all objectives, seen it all, there will be nothing to do but leave. There will ne nothing left. There's not a lot of *Basil* left and i can't spend that time immedietely.
Eventually the distraction will end and I'll be left with nothing, the game completed.
Which is SO COOL because it's yet another example of how Omori utilizes its status as a video game! It's art by a person, it cannot be infinite. That's impossible. There will come a time when a video game just has nothing left to offer, even if it's an "infinite game" they get stale. The postgame runs out of content. You finish everything and that's when you set it down... and instead of just accepting that fate, Omori intentionally makes me fear that state! It's using that part of the game on PURPOSE to make you feel something!
I say this with most of "One Day Left" in front of me, yet even now I am filled with dread"
"I have one problem with Undertale and that is that I feel any motivation to finish the murder routes. I just don't want to put the time into something that the game ultimately just asks you if you should be judged for, guilts you about this being your fault, to really think about narrative and the player's actions. It's very interesting, but I never felt like engaging with that because "If I can get the good ending, then I don't want to be bad to get the other endings"
Omori fixes this problem for me because it's not my fault, this is just something that was equally as likely to happen. I'm an observer, one invited to see the world through the main character's eyes, but nothing is *my* fault. It also makes me feel... A lot worse about the ending, and feel a lot more sympathetic to the main character.
I said once I often think about that ending where Basil kills himself, that happens if you just sleep in a little longer, when a good ending was so close, because it really helps us understand how dire the situation is in the good ending. How close we were to losing that. That, no, it wasn't just your paranoia, Basil would have done that. There's gameplay surrounding the alternate timeline where he does.
Hikikomori route is like that! The same idea why it feels so important. Look at what could've happened. It underlines why the good route matters. Because it could've been missed. *Easily*. The inciting incident is just not opening a door, something he's been doing for years. It's equally as likely to happen.
This route just gives me a lot of information about this character."Turning off the game" doesn't matter because fate is already decided. You wanted a glimpse into this timeline, the one where he doesn't open the door, and you are an observer. You backing out now means nothing, because this possibility is still just as open"
Then I took another break from the game this time not driven by depression but because I was literally preparing to switch rooms/move a lot of furnature so my desk settup would be off for a while and also I wanted to edit more of my recordings and was playing the game with my friend Error who's new to it!
Rewatching the early game from my recordings and also specifically Error experience everything for the first time (he had NO spoilers going in unlike me so I find his reactions facinating) and watched real world Kel again! Distant memory for me... I was able to finally formulate this rant I was promising last post lol
"ALSO WAS YELLING ABOUT A CLIP FROM MY VIDEO just ;_; GAME FEELS
I'm saving a LOT of funny clips from my third Omori video, but then I ran across this one which has SO MUCH unspoken emotion on it, and I realized I picture exactly what I was feeling here but it isn't clear to other people! Then it reminded me about an important aspect about this game.
So in Omori different characters process Mari's death differently. Sunny became a depressed shut in, Basil is anxious stressed and lonely, Hero became miserable for a year, Aubrey became an angry bully struggling to find peace after feeling abandoned, and Kel... Felt bad. But went on with his life. They're all very varied and realistic depictions of how different people grieve, I feel.
Recently I was having a conversation with Tidal about something or other Omori related, and I mentioned Kel and Tidal just didn't really seem to understand Kel's deal. and I felt kind of. like. Combative about it. Like, hey! Kel does feel really deep emotions! He just doesn't express them as obviously as others! Just because he's still able to smile doesn't mean the tragedy didn't affect him! Aubrey literally gets mad at him in the game for just that, and Kel gets upset about it because he DID miss Mari! They all did! Aubrey just doesn't feel like he ACTED sad enough
and then it hit me... the reason I was so combative about Kel... was because I AM KEL!
I understand exactly what he's going through emotionally because when it comes to grieving..... I'm like that!!!!! I act like him!!! I usually make jokes and just go "Well I need to move on anyways". Especially with more minor tragedies. It takes a lot of genuine effort on my part to try and explain my emotions to other people when something bad happens. Only when something really REALLY bad happens it's easy, but most of the time I'm just like. Internally sad. externally happy. and really struggle to convey to people "I am sad this isn't a joke"
and there are a lot of points in especially this third Omori recording that are like that. In my text posts about the game I go and explain how impactful certain scenes for me were, yet in the recording itself I seem like I'm feeling no emotion?
Click to viewAs I said. I am like Kel. A lot of the time I feel really deep feelings but don't sound like it. I need to put a lot of effort into actually saying "something bad happened" in a way that makes it sound like I'm upset about it
I. Just didn't want to fight her. I felt really bad about the horrible thing that happened to the past friendship. How everything disbanded. It felt too late. It felt like... she was justified in hating us, that we were enemies on opposite sides now. All I wanted was the photo album, all she wanted is for us to leave
The game lagged so the music took a while to start- and when it did it's just this tragic song that sounds like... the ending of things. I phrased it better here once, "it's so uncomfortable and tragic and angry, it felt like a representation of all the feelings I felt when I got to that point"
"Are we just shadows of our past selves destined to fall into dispair?"
so when the music itself starts I just knew there wasn't any running (meanwhile the only thing I actually say in the recording is "this sounds cool :)" followed by some jokes)
I SWEAR I HAVE DEEP FEELINGS I'M JUST KEL but you already knew I had deep feelings from my text posts lol the recordings are just DIFFERENT"
I have a little comic idea about Kel and Sunny about this idea but I haven't gotten it done yet lol
I'm really happy with how this whole thing looks to be honest, Basil looks really nice in that second picture like he's just so soft and his hair came out really nice. I've tried getting better at comics for the past.... while....... and it's a REALLY FUCKING HARD ARTFORM YOU DON'T GET IT UNLESS YOU'VE DONE IT
This one is simple compared to another comic that's in progress and you'll most likely see next post, but there's still a lot of thought that went into why I put the characters where I did. If you see more of a character it looks different than if you see less. If you put the character on the wrong side of the frame it looks weird. If you do something even a little bit imperfectly it reads worse.
It's crazy, also panel 3 is excellent I love it and I'm glad I did it so well. Sunny's pretty emo looking in this comic because I think he looks nice that way, covered eye silly extra large sweater, whatnot. The background for that one was ALL INTENTIONAL I had a visual I wanted and WENT FOR IT. I got the picture of the cat from black space and used a bunch of texture brushes to get a specific effect as well as using glow layer and inversion to make everything work hhhhh CRAZY it's like I know what I'm doing or something. Last one is also great, abruptly returning to normal colors so you can get an idea of how Basil feels here lol. WET LOOKING BOY
MEWO IS FINE GUYS NOTHING CANONICALLY CONTRIDICTS THE IDEA SHE WASN'T STAYING WITH HIS MOM I mean why would you leave your pet in an empty house anyways huhhhh it just makes sense. Oh hey the pharmacy called they just got my copium! nah but seriously I have no problem with just including her in these future comics lol she's cute and I JUST talked about her impact
This image was in my drafts for a whiiiiile. It probably could've made it into my last post but I was just struggling badly with how to color it. Thankfully I pulled it off and now I've gotten multiple comments about it! A few simple tricks go a long way ^_^
Slowly working on this other comic. Again, it's a COMIC COMIC and making comics is HARD so part of what you do for that is thumbnail it first! Don't even sketch, don't write down the text, don't try to make the characters look nice, JUST figure out where everything looks good to be. It's been really useful but I realized after drawing it that it must look hilarious to everyone else because they'd have no idea what is going on so here you go
Kel and Aubrey's dynamic is great they're very fun to write for lol
After making these I went on Tumblr and asked for outfit suggestions. MY TUMBLR HAS EXPLODED it got a ton of traction for Tumblr the moment I started posting art, which is fun! I asked my 70 LOYAL FOLLOWERS for suggestions and it ended up into these two outfits
Aubrey's outfit suggestion was "bright tank top, high waisted jeans, ribbon around ponytail", I misread as "black tank top" so now we're here. Genuinely just a simple but brilliant suggestion, it looks really good on her! I probably would've made the thanktop black anyways because the way I'm coloring this comic is it's entirely black and white except for the hair. Otherwise it would take me 10 billion years.
Kel's was "haha skirt" and "jacket with video game reference" and like the skirt suggestion was a joke but the thing is you don't see the characters under the waste this much in the comic as you can tell in the sketches do it doesn't really matter what Kel wears, and ACTUALLY I think he'd look good with a jean skirt. and not care lol.
For video game reference I was thinking of things that'd be fun, and decided I'd try to look into an Undertale reference since I feel like Kel would like that game! I started searching around the Fangamer store in case anything struck me and when I saw the shirt I was like. This is it. This is perfect. He would SO wear that lmao so I cut up the jacket and gave him the shirt. QUITE FASHIONABLE. On a whim I also gave him a sun necklace which I imagine he wears because of Sunny hehe.
Here's the first panel without any text! You'll have to wait until the next post to see the full comic, I'm taking my time with it. Part of it is that while it doesn't actually have spoilers in it, I want to wait before showing it to Error because if he gets the idea that Aubrey and Kel are friends by the end of the game canonically DAS SPOILERS lol THEN I managed to drag my feet into playing some more OMORI I LOVE HOW BEAUTIFULLY EFFECTIVE THIS GAME IS IT'S SO GOOD
SO as I went into depth earlier in this post, I have seen pretty much every single piece of art Omocat has published for this game. There was a handful of concept art that included genderswapped versions of the cast, especially Omori. I always liked girl Omori bc she has pigtails which is an obvious nod to Yume Nikki. In one of the tumblr posts, Omocat explained that the game originally was supposed to have the option to choose the gender of the main character but it got scrapped because the game was already taking long enough. So, I thought that was that. Oh well, scrapped concept, at least we have some interesting art of it. It's fun to think about! Then I recieve POTION OF TRANSGENDER and proceed to lose my mind
You should see me in the recording one day lmao my reaction was hilarious. RARE TIME I SHOWED EMOTION
Stranger is SUCH an interesting character I've already put in two different rants I had about him here but. Like. THERE IS MORE because as I said only today have I actually figured him out. Yeah you know how I said I only figured him out a few hours ago? Because I was hyperanalyzing the text for the third time breaking it down line by line well that's this part of the post now. Now that I've done the hikikomori route (mostly?) I fiiiinnnnnally get it
So I did have spoilers going into the Hikikomori route, partly from people implying "to get the good ending you have to save real Basil not the dream Basil", which therefor implies there's a way to save him, as well as someone trying to be VERY COOL AND NICE sending me epic animatics..... yet did not seem to realize they included spoilers (Dreamworld Basil in contexts I had not seen him in before). I went in basically just knowing we will find Basil. Somehow. And have a fun little sleepover. I did not know how or when but I knew that much.
Having played the Hikikomori route, now, I DISAGREE!
(Will you? It depends on the route.)
Sunny’s small part of his mind that still believes in hope is Basil. Basil is the only reason Sunny is still alive. When he dies Sunny dies with him.
Taking yet another break, I went and listened to some music!
I have NO IDEA what the song is about, Idk who this artist is in the slightest but I keep seeing their stuff and it sounds okay-to-very-nice with the most bafflingly intriguing words that stick to my brain. This is honestly the fluffiest looking Sunflower art I've drawn so far. I don't think I have any other pictures of some kissing (ASIDE FROM SOME ONES I AM NOT SHARING LOL) so this is the gayest thing you'll get from me probably XD Drawing Kel is so fun
you have no idea he's just perfect for my artstyle lol I've been thinking of making a Kel Appreciation Website but I'm stuck on how I'd want it to look. I know orangeee but hmmmm
I also made some stuff up about this AU I have. It’s like Omori except everyone is ponies like from my little pony. Mostly I make these because they’re fun design challenges, especially when it comes to cutiemarks because you have to think of a symbol that’s somehow representational of the entire character while not being too complicated. It’s fun! I’m also really good at this Pony.Town character creator, which is UNFORTUNATELY not a very useful skill XD (It just SHOWS my skill when it comes to coloring in other art already. I dunno maybe it would teach you some things) Here’s a post with a whole bunch of them I made.
Specifically this week I was thinking about Kel’s cutiemark, because I specified in the original post that Kel didn’t have one the last time Sunny saw him, and instead only got it during the four years he was gone. I never actually designed one for him in the original Pony Town creator so I made one with Morny’s input.
I thought about how yeah he's ballin' but his main thing is that he's the Bestest Friend Ever and we kept trying to figure out how to combine those and eventually settled on this ball with a heart shaped trail I still liked the idea of Kel not having a cutiemark last time Sunny saw him, but he does now.
Then thought "what if Kel got his cutiemark during Hero's depressed era", which is REALLY SAD and very likely. His parents still have a party but it's smaller, Hero is depressed so doesn't congratulate him as ecstatically as he would've, and he couldn't invite any of his friends :<
was also thinking about Sunny's potential angst as well. His kid friends would've been constantly theorizing and Mari would've been so encouraging, and then she DIES and he gets one but feels nothing about it because Mari's not around. He doesn't care to understand what it means, and pretends like he doesn't have one in the dreamworld still. I haven’t fully designed Sunny’s mark like Kel’s but I imagine it’s something like an eclipse. I just found the idea of it symbolizing dreaming really interesting, because you could integrate the sun (his name), his name’s irony (his name is Sunny which means “happy” but he’s not that, thus eclipse), the moon (important dreamworld symbol), it represents his deep imagination which is the most important part of his character, and part of unicorn lore is that their magic is always tied to whatever their talent is so his having to do with dreaming would explain his supernaturally detailed dreams.
Then I was thinking Kel would actually be empathetic about Sunny not getting what his and having angst in general bc his wasn't super happy at first either, and they BOTH missed each others, not just one way.
Moving ubruptly onto this downer of an idea “I don't normally look at Omori text posts but I saw one that said "Omori good ending but Basil kills himself anyways", I didn't read the rest of it because again I don't read text posts but like. It's sticking to me because. Just. I realized I had just totally forgotten that's an actual possibility. I've been writing so much about Sunny's depression and thinking of the idea of him still having bad days even after that I totally forgot that Basil is just as fucked up like where's BASIL'S depressive episode Quo. Quo come on AT LEAST I HAD THE GRACE TO PUT THEM IN THERAPY IN MY VERSION GEEZ” Then me and Zar went into a longer discussion over it
Zar: "basil killing himself anyway STILL A REAL POSSIBILITY
particularly depending on the fallout of the reveal"
Me: "right even if it goes well it's like
he doesn't really know why he still exists?
like ok the truth is out. why do I deserve to be alive still
I think that's subconsiously why I was so emotional about having Sunny trying to get Basil to live with him just because... like...... I don't really think anyone else could convince Basil not to kill himself
like they could all be his friends and there for him... but if he moves somewhere else they're not there, and even then it's just... like... depending on the fallout of the reveal it'd be awkward to be around him, and even if Kel for example was there for him Kel unfortunately just doesn't have the skills to pull someone out of being suicidal no matter how good a friend he is
and it's not that Sunny does either but also Basil would be hyper aware if he kills himself Sunny would too. honestly Basil's identity is so tied to the secret I imagine he'd feel really lost? Like, so much of what he's been telling himself for years is "Sunny has to be a good person, because if he's not, I'm not," and hiding and being closed off constantly trying to convince himself he deserves to live... that like.... when it's no longer that. When the truth is out so he doesn't have the need to convince himself he's good or bad anymore. because that's the judgement of other people now, not his own
like what does he even do with himself
how do you just be?? something that was your own burden for so long. Not on you anymore. So I imagine during dissasociative moments he really has this "Why am I still here?" thought. What even is he supposed to do with his life anymore! Why does he still exist!
then he wakes up in the morning and is normal and confused why he was thinking that bc midnight thoughts are like that
never trust ur thoughts after 9PM they always say,,,
"wait but my friends care about me and my family would be devistated what" just this complete disconnect from the mindset during day hours lol
that's interesting to imagine the other way around though... I mean, "interesting", still devistating. in the bad ending Sunny kills himself and then you have to wonder how Basil would react, now I'm imagining Basil killing himself in the post good ending I made up and how Sunny would react then... It's so hard to keep these two kids alive X_X
tragedies worth pondering
AND YET AGAIN I FEEL TERRIBLE FOR THE MOM because like in most endings she already has to deal with the horror of both her kids being dead to suicide, but in this one it's like. She's also taking care. of another kid. And they were both doing better. And seemed to be ok. and thennnn
she'd feel responsible for the death of THREE KIDS
I just think Sunny would be inconsolable in any timeline where Basil kills himself so soon, he's just so important to Sunny that like I caaan't even imagine
like if you wanted him to not follow after that you'd need to like. send him to a facility"
Then me and Zar talked about Hero being paranoid and reminiscing over this wonderful post ✨
So I spent overall like 9 hours on this post, it didn’t even delete itself (that much) this time it’s just 10k words long. I think making more frequent posts would fix this issue. Also I’m not going to be typing these into either LJ or DW anymore they’ve both proven far too unstable to know how to save a drafted post, I’m gonna need to figure something else out.