Posting Tiny Snippets Of Fanfic Until People Find It Interesting But Remember This Is Just A Segment

posting tiny snippets of fanfic until people find it interesting but remember this is just a segment of a wider multiverse, part 6

content warning: description designed to remind reader of an in-game jumpscare

[MARI - 25]

“I’m going out,” Mari’s mother yelled from the living room. Mari made no effort to reply.

Her mother leaving meant the knocking would start up again, like someone was watching her house just to target Mari. 

It scared her. 

The Puppeteer whispered things that the person might do. 

It didn’t help.

Mari sighed, and leaned back on her bed. The knocking started up again.

“Open the door.”

It was Sunny’s voice. He looked at her forcefully. She turned away from him, staring at the wall. 

He is with Basil.

“Open the door,” he repeated.

Mari lay down. Maybe she could will the knocking away. 

He isn’t supposed to be here.

“Open the door.”

She covered her head with a pillow. She knew what was going to happen.

Sunny angrily threw his halo on the ground.

Suddenly, Sunny’s voice distorted, and he let out a piercing shriek. Mari froze, burying herself more, squeezing her eyes shut. Sunny kept shrieking, screaming, like he was a child throwing a tantrum, he wouldn’t shut up, he wouldn’t shut up, he wouldn’t shut up. Mari could see his snapped neck and twisted features, mouth gaping open to eat her, eyes empty, empty, empty, begging, wailing…

Sunny went dead silent.

Mari opened her eyes. She was in front of the door, and it was open.

I didn’t do that.

“Oh-oh-oh my gosh! M-Mari! It’s me! Aubrey? Do you remember me?” 

A short, brown-haired girl beamed. She was wearing a pink shirt and a long, beige skirt, clutching her fingers together. Her eyes were shining, like she’d seen a present or a shiny toy. She looked simple.

This isn’t Aubrey, Mari thought. Aubrey was shorter, and carried a stuffed toy. Aubrey…

Aubrey’s real features had escaped her mind. But this wasn’t Aubrey.

“I didn’t expect you to open the door!”

I didn’t open it.

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

I MISSED A THEME???????? rereads whole fanfic

hey, "pretty accurate" is a compliment. (?)

the relevance of arcs in the DreamScape AU, or trying my best to make predictions

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE OMORI DREAMSCAPE AU - THIS ANALYSIS ASSUMES YOU HAVE READ UP TO THE CURRENT LATEST CHAPTER (14) PLEASE READ IT!!! ITS GOOD!!

CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS OF SUICIDE.

READING-THIS WARNING: I'M STUPID AND MISINTERPRET THINGS SOMETIMES, ITS ALL MY ANALYSIS AND DO REMEMBER THAT IT CAN BE WRONG/BAD/STUPID SOMETIMES

*cracks knuckles*

Let's do this.

Determining the Goal of Each Arc

If a story is formatted in a particular way, typically it has a specific goal for that. You learn this back in the years of High School English, when you start to understand the point of plays being separated into acts. They have somewhat different stories, but ultimately link to the same final goal, or final climax of the story.

In DreamScape's instance, it is split into three arcs. An arc (in other contexts) typically refers to the development and eventual resolution of a particular theme or aspect - such as a character arc, which portrays character development over a period of time. I tend to use arc when referring to characters, so I'll capitalise when referring to the actual in-text arcs.

I believe that it is possible to use our understandings of the current Arcs to determine where loose ends might be tied up in Arc 3. We know for certain the ending is "bittersweet" - somewhat good, somewhat bad, not unlike the original game.

Arc 1

The first Arc provides us with the most understanding, since it's complete, but it's relatively easy to miss the goal of the Arc, considering how much is going on. We gain understanding of DreamScape as a location and a plot device, and begin to understand the characters centered around it, which is a lot to process.

The importance of the events that occur is obvious. Sunny fucks with the program, revives Mari, and causes a shit ton of problems, including seriously injuring Basil. Basil knows the truth of Mari's weird online activity, and Sunny is trying to fix the problem he made, causing more problems on the way. In the meantime, Kel and Hero wrestle a dysfunctional relationship, and Aubrey and Basil aren't on good terms.

Despite all this, the finale of the Arc is focused on Aubrey's relationship with Sunny, and it deliberately doesn't end with the creation of the Mari virus - that's the beginning. Having it as an ending would be a relatively reasonable ending for a beginning arc, so why wasn't it?

I believe the goal of the first Arc revolves around Aubrey/Kim/Kel discovering what Sunny has done, and also reader discovering the "truth" about Mari's death, as well as the way Sunny's life rotates around it. Rather than a journey of creation, it is a journey of discovery.

Mari's suicide is first directly described in Chapter 10, and so is Sunny's suicide attempt (mimicking his sister's). We also see Sunny's direct involvement in Mari's death - while her legs breaking was already mentioned, here we see Sunny curled up in the corner, sitting with Mari's dead body, when Aubrey finds him. We see Sunny mimic Mari's suicide, and we get one of the most key lines of this arc-

From this, we learn more about Sunny as a character before the events of her death, and the nature of the destruction of Aubrey and Sunny's relationship, indirectly destroying Aubrey and Basil's relationship at the same time. Similar to the original game (except actually explicit), we watch how the friendship group broke up. This is the goal of the first Arc - much like the Truth Segment of the original game, we are understanding what happened in the past.

The first Arc also introduces Kel and Hero's clashing personalities, and also introduces Kim, to act as "Aubrey's Hero" (at least for this section). Kim and Hero are third-parties who don't like and rarely interact with DreamScape, although they are later required to. I believe setting up these characters makes them more relevant later.

Arc 2

As of current writing, this Arc is incomplete, which makes it difficult to determine its main goal. However, we can look at the current state of events and determine a potential conclusion from there.

Arc 2 has us understand more about the Mari virus, and its interaction and storage of memory. It also introduces Sweetheart, as well as Hero's bargain with her, and it foreshadows/demonstrates severe destruction of DreamScape.

The sequences wherein Sunny enters Mari's memories are very reminiscent of several Truth sequences in the original game. Even the images reflect this, depicting Sunny falling through a red sea; or the hospital. It depicts a continuum of Mari's memory, which also foreshadows the destruction of the way Sunny perceives time.

Despite the horrific nature of it, we know Sunny enjoys being with Mari or acting as her, in her memories - his obsession with his sister has driven him to insane lengths to see and feel her again, punishing himself . In this way, Sunny now acts as an antagonist, where his goals are somewhat beyond reader empathisation and understanding, pivoting them to want him to get help. It may be that we rarely see Sunny as the main perspective onward, but it's perfectly possible for that to not happen as well.

It is likely the game will be immensely broken from here on, or at least somewhat changed. I also predict Sunny will break free from Sweetheart's weird little lab to cause further destruction, because it would ultimately lead to a more interesting future climax.

Considering Loose Ends for Arc 3

The Potential Ending of DreamScape (as a game): Considering the best possibility for a bittersweet ending, the destruction/abandonment of DreamScape as a game would tie up Sunny's grieving and acceptance character arc. Though Hero's focuses on the use of DreamScape to heal grief, Sunny is more relevant and requires more support. Either the virus itself will ruin the game, or Sunny will choose to leave it.

Understanding the Mari Virus: At the present moment, Sunny (and everyone else) has a very limited understanding of the virus - we understand why it is there, and somewhat understand what it can do, but nothing of its extent. Surprisingly, we also understand little about its creation. Either another character will introduce a better understanding of it and its potential, or we learn from Sunny's experience.

A Possible Sunny Final Boss Fight?: Could be an interesting avenue to go down as complete corruption threatens the game, but also threatens Sunny's safety. Aubrey has already fought Sunny before, so it's not impossible. However, that fight also didn't achieve any goals of the other parts of the main cast.

Kel and Hero's relationship: I feel absolutely confident it won't stay this way forever, and we can already see slight change. This also goes for Aubrey and Basil. Whether or not the entire friendship group is revived is debatable, and potentially unlikely, considering Sunny's apparent differences.

Kim as a Character: Putting this here because she's apparently going to get more relevant. This may be because she knows something we do not, or perhaps to understand Aubrey more.

Sweetheart and her Crew: These characters definitely know more about DreamScape than the reader, as is evident by their relevance in the second Arc, as such I believe they might be beneficial to keep around for the next Arc.

Sunny's Eviction/Expulsion Threat: While stated to be five months away, time has been slipping from Sunny's grasp recently, meaning that this is definitely going to become relevant again soon.

Sunny's Physical and Mental Wellbeing: Need I say more?

Basil and Unrequited Love: The pining is probably going to get worse from here, especially considering Sunny's current state. It is possible Basil will have an internal strife between his desire to see Sunny happy and what is best for him.

There's definitely more. It's like, insanely early. I stopped having a train of thought twenty minutes ago. But I hope you enjoyed this!

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.

I think an Omori 2 staring Basil would fall into the same trap as Subnautica (2) below zero.

Subnautica Below Zero is an awesome game! IF it would have been the first. It is literally smaller in map size and less scarier in nearly every way.

An Omori 2 might find itself in the shadow of the Original, in many aspects.

Omori 2, if it even comes to exist (hope not), might honestly ruin the franchise as a whole. Although the team seems to be milking what they can, with merch and the manga, so it's still relatively popular.

I can see, what, a few functional (?) possibilies:

Your Basil idea could work. I wouldn't trust it unless all assets were completely rewritten, and everything was entirely changed, because if not, it demonstrates a very poor understanding of trauma. I can't really stand people who try to give Basil or anyone else a White Space, it just misses the point of representing dissociation and repression. Different characters value different things, and their trauma manifests differently. Even as minor things as people assuming Basil can actually see Sunny's Something and isn't viewing a different hallucination are incredibly and dangerously damaging.

A potential Mari AU might work, but it would have the same problem. It would also need to have better twists or other convoluted, since the original game's twist was so central to its current fandom.

I really hope that Omori 2 never exists, genuinely. As much as I love the original game, its irreplaceability is key to its charm.

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.