Posting Tiny Snippets Of Fanfic Until Someone Finds It Interesting And I Am Motivated To Finish It, Part

posting tiny snippets of fanfic until someone finds it interesting and i am motivated to finish it, part 1

content warning: self harm.

[KEL MULTIVERSE 1 - 332]

At least 46,656.

Oar dipped into murky, purple waters as Kel pushed himself along the river. How many times had he travelled through this exact spot, in this odd, hand-whittled canoe? He couldn't remember.

46,656 universes. Maybe more. Hopefully more.

Eerie, white light streamed in from the… ceiling? Roof? Could it be the Sun? 

He didn't think this place had a Sun.

But he supposed it didn't really matter.

He pulled himself towards the shore, which was made of an opaque salmon crystal, and pulled his dull, orange canoe onto the bank. He dragged it to one of the many coral-like plants, each brightly coloured with pastel pink, orange, green, and laid it along the plant’s pointy edges to dry. 

Kel sat down, feeling the hard, cool ground beneath him.

He turned his eyes to the fleshy, pink walls surrounding the water. They stood high above him, making him seem like a small bug tasked with climbing a mountain, beating with obscure, lifelike movement. Their ribbed texture reminded Kel of cutting slices of ham with a jagged kitchen knife. 

Ham sandwiches. 

Hero.

The walls themselves seemed to hold their breath.

Kel hesitated. He had tried not to think about this.

How many times had he watched Hero-

Kel put a hand over his mouth, his head spun around, the world began to cave in, heavy smoke filled his lungs, he couldn't breathe, he was dying, he was dying, he was-

Kel stuck his hand into his pocket and grabbed forcefully onto the edge of his knife.

He took a deep breath in as the blood dripped down his fingers. Calmness enveloped him.

Sure, it was an unhealthy way to cope, but what else was he supposed to do? Talk about his feelings to the open air? Wait for comfort no-one would give him? Waste time letting a panic attack occur?

Fast relief was far more important than worrying over his mental health. He had things to do.

Kel pulled a wrap of white bandages out of his pocket and pulled some around his bleeding hand, leaning back on the pulsating wall. He dipped his knife into the river, and pulled it out completely clean.

The light began to fade, and Kel realised he wouldn’t be able to travel to the Forest tonight. 

I'll have to set up camp.

katya and dmitry (my beloveds), or discussing mutation motifs in texts from a biological and psychological standpoint

CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS AND HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION.

READING-THIS WARNING: I MISINTERPRET STUFF A LOT, THIS IS PURELY MY INTERPRETATION OF THE SERIES. SORRY IF I'M WRONG. :(

When I first watched through Parties are for Losers and its respective songs, my brain was already whirring. Come on. I'm a Vocaloid nerd, obviously I have to look into it, and I know something is up, which means the analysis brain begins. I really enjoyed the Evillous Chronicles, and it seemed as though this was similar. Unlike it, this was actually in English (being set in Russia), and the narrative felt inherently more understandable, although that may just be because it's only 13 songs, compared to Evillous' 82.

AND it covers topics of biology and its affects on psychology. it's perfect. why have i never heard of this before??!?!?!?

There's a lot of aspects to explore within PafL, but I want to specifically focus on Katya (KT) and Dmitry, and their mutations, taking a biological and social approach to their current mental state. I will refer to Katya by her full "name" because it feels a little more humanising, and our baby girl deserves that.

Human experimentation/mutation is a fascinating topic to explore, because it questions the essence of humanity itself - how could you do that to another human being, a child, no less? End and Save is one of my favourite webtoon comics because of this. The abilities that these children gain typically have significant disadvantages, due to the inherently unethical nature of the creation. In some ways, the mutation itself explores corruption.

Biologically, genetic mutations are a natural occurrence, resultant from selection. We are nowhere near the current level needed to cause significant mutation like that of Katya and Dmitry's, and despite what most people think, there's actually no real intention to head in that direction. Therapeutic gene editing (LITERALLY MY SPECIALISED INTEREST. LIKE I WANT TO GO INTO THIS IN THE FUTURE. THIS IS PERFECT.) strays away from eugenics, and focuses on curing genetic disease. It's a fascinating topic of research, and one I hold dear to me. CRISPR my beloved

Katya's mutant ability is directly related to stress. It causes the extensive growth of tissue when she's in a stressful situation, and she has limited control over the flesh. This then has to be cut off, leaving serious wounds to heal on her skin.

art by Ferry

Taking this biologically, it would have to be mutation related to extreme cell division in tissue - in more simple terms, it's not unlike cancer, where a cell does not consider the required markers for division, and instead rapidly divides. Katya's seems far more controlled than cancer, sticking only to particular sites, and also significantly more extreme. Considering the stress required, it may actually be related to an influx of hormonal changes during stress sequences.

As a result of this, Katya is hypersensitive to the emotion of others and can tolerate a high amount of stress, with inherent optimism. She's relatively simple, and tries her best not to let her abilities weigh her down. In the end, she resigns herself to undeserving of true kindness, suggesting she has some well-hidden low self-esteem.

Dmitry's mutant ability seems more controllable, and therefore powerful, than Katya's. He has the ability to pick up anything, with vague limitations on weight, provided he knows specific location and it is within a 15 metre radius.

art by Ferry

Telekinesis from a biological standpoint? I'm not opening that can of worms. I'm not even gonna try. Make it up yourself. I'm pretty sure A Certain Scientific Railgun couldn't even really explain Kuroko's powers, and I'm one small scrawny rat.

Dmitry suffers severe physical consequences as a result of this ability, even using it regularly - severe headaches, loss of consciousness, and dizziness, which can been seen when he attempts to save Anya. Dmitry is significantly more cautious of the outside world than Katya is, and he's somewhat more hostile, threatening Yura and Sanya when he is blackmailed. However, he's practical, likely from the skills taught to him through use of telekinesis.

Dmitry and Katya were set out to have a negative relationship, due to the power dynamics between the two of them making them inherently different people. Dmitry was used for several years as an "assistant" to test Katya's abilities, and seems to hold a grudge with her over that. They have differing opinions on the outside world, particularly due to the way Dmitry's inhumanity was repeated to him often, as the lab researchers began to fear his power. He's not so pessimistic that he acts as contrast to Katya, but the clashing elements still causes them to go their separate ways in KT's Guide.

I couldn't find any specific links between the use of GUMI as KT and Fukase as Dmitry, but I'm sure there is some when considering the different Vocaloids used as a whole. I just wish I could understand what it was, but I don't quite know enough about Vocaloid as a whole for that. Alternatively, it could just be because of gender and the fact that both sound good with the style of the song.

song i wrote this listening to (after PafL, of course): sleep thru ur alarms by Lontalius

it's been a rough night, okay? i needed this as a distraction.

thanks so much to powercoreact for the suggestion! i genuinely really enjoyed this, and you hit my secret hidden love for vocaloid right in the feels. can you believe i watched this like an hour ago??? i feel like i've known it for years.

i posted like a tiny bit to ao3

considering that the majority of this fic isn't anywhere near done i can't promise regular updates but i hope this... interests people??

next update will be when i finish the mari au

ooooh yesss more VHS lore. The devices themselves quite literally need their own computers just to run, as they're constantly tasked to read sensors covering parts of the player's body _and_ run a game at the same time. The consoles went through multiple iterations before eventually being discontinued. However, just about everyone who owns one has cracked it in order to keep using it. As mentioned in a few chapters though, this hasn't been an entirely 'ethical' or 'safe'. Thing. Reports of injuries have been cropping up left and right, with Chapter 6 showing Basil to be one of them. It only gets worse from here.

the nature of unrequited love, or personal headcanons on sunny and aubrey

SPOILER WARNING: MAJOR OMORI SPOILERS

CONTENT WARNING: GRIEF, LOSS, GAME-TYPICAL CONTENT

READING-THIS WARNING: I REALLY DON'T WANT A FIGHT, THIS IS MOSTLY ME BACKING UP MY PERSONAL HEADCANONS THANKS :) also i would like to clarify that i DO NOT support shipping the older members of the squad with younger ones. that's gross. it is literally not that hard to do better. (also i believe sunburn requires a lot less therapy than sunflower, and i can totally see it post-game, so i really don't wanna fight with sunburn fans. )

Alright. The goal of this post will be to attempt to prove that Sunny's childhood crush on Aubrey is one-sided, and due to the nature of Aubrey and Mari's relationship, that there is a possibility Aubrey had a slight crush on Mari as a kid. Alternatively, I'd at least like to highlight how much of Aubrey's life revolves around Mari still, even somewhat in secret.

Again, to clarify, I don't condone Mari x Aubrey (are there not three other kids for y'all to ship Aubrey with??) , but rather we should consider the fact that many kids get small crushes on older teens or adults they look up to. I'm sure Aubrey was confident it would never happen anyway - HeroMari is basically canon, and Aubrey is far from emotionally ignorant - but I still think there's a potential that she may have had some unrequited feelings for Mari.

I'll bring in all my evidence and speculation and you can think on it :)

SUNNY'S RELATIONSHIP WITH AUBREY - COMPARING HEADSPACE AND THE REAL WORLD

(If this segment seems similar to another analysis post on here, please let me know because I'd actually like to cite it here as inspiring me, but I can't find it and it annoys me that I can't. Look at me and my great citations, good work sentience.)

Within Headspace, Aubrey's crush on Omori is prevalent and obvious. She tries to get his attention, wants to go on adventures with him alone, and defends him from the Slime Girls. Conversely, Omori rarely reciprocates, likely because at this point, his emotions are so repressed that he can't express more than the simple emotion mechanics required to fight. Aubrey, Kel and Hero all express emotion in their conversations, but Omori remains numb, the effects of repression seeping into the character himself.

We have to remember that Headspace is an extension of Sunny's mind, and while it is heavily influenced by the real world, it's still unreliable. I personally don't like it when people use Headspace evidence to support Real World theories, or vice versa - we need to be clear that these are separate, and Headspace is heavily biased.

There are two pretty key pieces of evidence in Headspace that point toward Sunny's crush on Aubrey being one-sided, and those are the Aubrey School Event and the Rainy Day memory.

The Aubrey School Event is found in Lost Forest 2 (also known as Looping Forest) in Black Space 2, but it is also found when interacting with a TV in the Otherworld using the universal remote. It is a short sequence, oddly colourful in the dark realm of Black Space, where several Aubreys fight to the toast for Omori's love. Omori is asked to choose between the last two Aubreys standing, and the event abruptly ends and Omori returns to Black Space.

The ending is particularly interesting...

We know Sunny daydreams a lot from the Lost Library excerpts...

I personally think that this fantasy and its parallels to the way Aubrey acts in Headspace suggest that the Aubrey School event is one Sunny regularly fantasised about, now present in Black Space 2 as a small remnant of the world he left behind. I also think this points to Sunny's crush being one-sided - if Aubrey's Headspace reflection is similar to Sunny's fantasy of her, then it suggests that this isn't the real Aubrey, and the real-world Aubrey may not have reciprocated feelings or Sunny may have been too shy to own up to them.

We see a big difference between their relationship in the real world and Headspace with the Rainy Day memory. Unlike Aubrey's constant expression of love for Omori, in the Rainy Day memory, the roles are reversed - Sunny is instead the one who wants to see the picture of Aubrey, and Basil even teases him about it, to which Sunny doesn't try to deny it.

Not many of the real world photos feature Aubrey and Sunny alone or conversing together, and Aubrey was asleep when her head fell onto Sunny's shoulder during the Lost Library excerpts. Aubrey is usually arguing with Kel, or hanging out with Mari, or with the group as a whole; and Sunny tends to be with Basil, or typically with the group. Obviously these photos are missing a significant amount of background as to what life was like before Mari's death (which a surprising amount of people tend to forget - those photos are by no means a reflection of the reality!!), but they provide some insight into character and relationship dynamics.

In my opinion, Headspace and the Real World just don't add up for Aubrey pre-incident. Which is why we're going to discuss...

AUBREY'S RELATIONSHIP WITH MARI - PAST AND PRESENT

Past

I believe the actions of present-day Aubrey hold some more weight, so this segment is mostly speculation.

We know that Aubrey and Mari were very close before her death. Due to the dysfunctional nature of Aubrey's household, it's likely she saw the friendship group as her family.

In a lot of the Faraway photos, we see Aubrey and Mari together, whether that be Mari reading to her, the two licking popsicles, Aubrey falling asleep on her shoulder, or the two's promise to dye their hair together, it's clear they're very close.

While we don't have a lot of information other than the album about life before the recital day, Aubrey in Headspace is also very fond of Mari, rushing excitedly to see her. Despite it being heavily influenced by Sunny, there is no real reason for him to obscure other relationship dynamics as it means nothing to Omori's goal.

Which is why I'd like to propose that Aubrey had a little childhood crush on Mari, which she was probably aware would not be reciprocated. She's 12, so she somewhat understands what love is, although considering time context, Aubrey may not have understood lesbianism and might have just assumed she was really fond of Mari, or something.

Mari would never reciprocate, as most of the rest of the group seems relatively aware that Mari and Hero are an item, so Aubrey probably pushed it all down, and was devastated when Mari died. Her friend, but someone who truly cared about her, which Aubrey didn't get a lot of as a child.

She watched the friendship group fall apart, and felt so angry, how could they betray Mari like that? Hou could they betray Aubrey like that?

Present

This post explores how much of Aubrey's current identity revolves around Mari - Aubrey continues to dye her hair regularly (as is evident by the visual absence of any roots), Aubrey spends all her time at the church and the graveyard, and she clings onto the photos of Mari that were defaced.

I find the fact that Aubrey spends her time in the church incredibly interesting. For one, considering what Sunny and Kel have to do just to know where she's gone, it seems as though Aubrey keeps her visits to the church a secret from her friends, aside from the closest. We also know that Aubrey is relentlessly judged by those at the church,...

Aubrey is a complete outcast at this place, and there is no way she's unaware of this. Despite this, Aubrey's nature is to stay true to herself, and clearly Mari means so much to her that she's willing to undergo judgement and ostracization just to feel close to Mari again.

But we can also consider the way Aubrey acts after Mari's death holistically, instead of parts of a greater whole. If she truly just looked up to and wanted to be like Mari, wouldn't she tend toward mimicking Mari's behaviour after her death? Why does Aubrey instead feel vehement anger toward others for "betraying" Mari, and spend all her time near Mari's resting place?

It is possible that Aubrey felt she couldn't be Mari, and she gave up and instead sought for her protection; or that she tried to reconcile the group, but the sheer betrayal and ignorance of Kel, Sunny, Basil and Hero broke her, and she flipped. I'm not going to deny the possibility of these.

But I think there's also a possibility that Aubrey doesn't want to be like Mari, but instead mourns her death as the loss of someone she had a crush on. As a result of this, Aubrey's life centers around Mari, and she is incredibly focused on trying to understand why Mari did it, which is why she spends her time near Mari's resting place. She does these things so she can feel close to Mari again, not so she can follow in Mari's footsteps.

Aubrey misses Mari more than she wants to be Mari. Which is a perfectly normal response to loss.

My main concern with this headcanon is it makes it significantly harder for Aubrey to forgive Sunny and Basil. If she is still much closer to Mari than those two, then I can't see her forgiving them anytime soon. and i am a massive baby and really want her to forgive them

Thanks for reading! idk what else to say. reminder that aubrey x mari is disgusting and so is shipping hero or mari with anyone else in the gang, especially during the events of the game, as hero is LITERALLY TWENTY and everyone else is LITERALLY A MINOR. omfg.

posting tiny snippets of fanfic until someone finds it interesting and i am motivated to finish it, part 2

warning: major omori spoilers, mentions of death.

[KEL MULTIVERSE 1 - 332]

Kel pulled out a small glowing tulip bud from his backpack, white, clear and crystalline, made of glass. It reflected the glow of the blue fire, but it also flickered with its own blue colour. Kel could almost see the universe held inside it, a calm sunset, four friends; then a cold graveyard, a delusional child. 

That one was a fucking disaster. Again.

At least he now knew ‘The Truth’ for that Kel. Although, really, the killing of someone else always seemed to set off the chain of death. 

Murderers, that’s what we all are, Kel thought to himself, rotating the glass.

Resisting the urge to smash it into pieces, he sighed, tossing it into the river. After all, he might have to fish all these out again sometime, so it would be worth trying to keep the functional ones around, but out of sight. He watched the glow dim as the flower sank into the acidic waves, like a lost ship taking its final breaths.

As he drifted off to sleep, Kel wondered how many crystalline flowers he had left. How much time he had left. The world closed in around his fear, where he would sleep through nightmares in numbed horror.

In these nightmares, he watched everyone die over and over, dead bodies being dragged to hiding places and graves being dug, weeping parents. He saw an echo of his past self relive the worlds again and again, a naive child who thought positivity would solve everything, banging at closed doors and crying quietly in a bathroom, breakdowns in front of five corpses. He saw only failure and husks, shells of humanity. 

Happiness doesn’t work. Happiness stopped working.

Tonight, yet again, there was a girl with dark brown hair, clutching a stuffed toy, happy and innocent… a girl with faded pink dye in her hair, clutching her hands, empty inside… a girl with bright pink hair and green coloured contacts, gripping a bat, furious… a boy with blue hair and a beanie,... many more, standing around him, enclosing him… but they all had the same golden eyes, the ones that bore into him.

My name’s Aubrey. Who are you? 

Hey. Who are you?

New kid, huh? Who are you, then?

I’m Rei. Who are you?

They repeated the questions, but he had no answer. He couldn’t speak, words failed him, so they encircled him like sharks, bats looming over his head, sky darkening, vision darkening…

Who have you become?

Kel turned in his sleep, covering his head as if to block something out.

Outside his mind, feeble glows pulsed synchronically at the bottom of the river, distress calls for dead universes.