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I Think An Omori 2 Staring Basil Would Fall Into The Same Trap As Subnautica (2) Below Zero.
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.
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somekindofsentience liked this · 1 year ago
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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.





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.
posting tiny snippets of fanfic until someone finds it interesting enough for me to finish it and put it all on ao3, part 5
content warning: serious self-harm, references to emotional neglect and abuse.
[MARI - 25]
Mari booted up the old PC. The Puppeteer watched, warped face sneering in the reflection of the black screen, long, stringy hair covering thin shoulders; Sunny was busy with Basil today.
Trying to ignore the creature behind her, Mari looked out the window. Perhaps her vision was getting worse, some parts of the backyard looked blank, like raindrops distorting the view outside a windowpane. She could still see the forest and sky, and figure outside. He was always there too, scarf flapping in the wind. She imagined him as her father, waiting peacefully for her to come outside and play…
Come now, Mari. You know that’s not good enough. Take a break, we can do more soon.
Mari’s fingers tapped absent-mindedly along the desk. She played out some notes… right, G4, E5, …left, C4, G4 and E4, once again,... everything played mezzoforte, she hummed quietly to herself…
Yes, this one would sound good enough for Dad. This one would be perfect…
She closed her eyes. It was like it was all really there… left, A3, C#4 and E4; G3, C#4 and E4, repeat,... right, G5, D5, no, wait, E5…
Wait.
Mari froze.
What was she doing?
No, what the fuck was she doing?
No, no, no. Absolutely not. Never again
Her mother's voice echoed in her head.
Don't hurt yourself, Mari. I told you to stop. You're burdening me and everyone else.
No, no, wait, but,
Mari slammed her hands on the edge of the desk, and again. Over and over and over and over and over. She hit them harder and harder. Over and over and over and over and over. She hit them until they turned purple and throbbed, she hit them until they went numb. Then she kept hitting.
She stopped. Her fingers were shaking, bent in odd directions. The bandages must've slipped off.
She knew it was supposed to hurt, but it didn't. She looked blankly at the shattered mechanics of her hands.
Her mother burst into the room, the door flying open. Mari hadn't heard the footsteps. “God, Mari, what did I tell you? That's the third time this month.”
Mari stood up and looked at her mother's shoes, avoiding her eyes. They were navy velvet loafers, with a small rose near the top of the shoe. Perfect mom shoes for a perfect mom.
“No, we're not going to the hospital again. They're fed up with you.” Her mother grabbed Mari's wrists, pulling them harshly. She peered at the fingers.
“Go and clean them up and bandage them. I'm sick of this. I know you miss him, but this isn't appropriate.”
Mari moved to leave, slipping past her mother, avoiding touch. As she walked toward the door, her mother sighed deeply.
“You know you're fine. Don't pretend otherwise. I'm fine and you're fine. If you weren’t fine, you would talk to me.”
Mari nodded distractedly, and busied herself in the bathroom. Puppeteer loomed in the mirror, hissing the words her mother said.
You're a burden. She's sick of you. They’re fed up with you. You're fine. You're fine. You're fine. This isn’t appropriate.
Mari tried to ignore it.
through the looking glass, or understanding windows and their relation to colour theory in OMORI
WARNING: MAJOR OMORI SPOILERS. PLEASE PLAY THE GAME FOR YOURSELF IT IS BEAUTIFUL
CONTENT WARNING: REFERENCES TO SUICIDE, DEATH, LOSS, AND GRIEF
READING-THIS WARNING: ITS VERY LONG IM SORRY I AM INCAPABLE OF SHUTTING UP AND I ALSO GO IN TANGENTS ALL THE TIME
I feel as though people miss the smaller symbols in this game.
Obviously it's easy to look at, say, flowers throughout the game, or what Something and Stranger demonstrate, or maybe even mirrors and our understanding of reflection, but there's plenty of symbols that people don't look at or write about, because they feel less relevant. Symbols are easy to overlook when you're no longer studying English Lit.
But I am your certified Wet Rat, and I spend hours overthinking this game, so I'm going to talk about what windows represent in Omori, and how this relates to colour theory.
There are several colours that are designed to remind players of the truth, or at least hint toward it, and these are bright red (light), saturated blue, and monochrome. These are all somewhat relevant here, so I'll go through them, and explain their connections with windows.
Windows as a Foreshadower of Truth, but also Repression
Before we discuss the relevance of red light shining through windows in foreshadowing Truth, we have to understand why they stand out among the rest of the house.

To do this, let's discuss saturated blue.
Saturated blue is a very deliberate choice - we know this from Omocat herself - it is the colour of the Phobias, and Sunny's house during Phobia sequences, as well as Basil's boss fight. The use of saturation conveys intensity and fear, and there is a sense of impending failure - we cannot "beat" any of these boss fights by normal means, but instead are doomed to lose or wait until Mari consoles us. This blue is also deliberately not black - this somewhat disconnects these segments from the Truth, because the ultimate purpose of the Phobia bosses is to provide a comparison between Mari saving Sunny's life and Sunny ending hers. Within the Basil boss fight, more features are monochrome, which ties it more closely with the Truth. (Saturated blue is also the colour of Hellmari, but she's more relevant when I talk about Spirit Mari later down the line.) It's prevalent in the Deeper Well, but notably absent from many Black Space rooms, who choose to use solid monochrome or other colours to convey emotion. It still exists within Black Space despite this.
Red (light, specifically in windows) is symbolic of distortion, but it also foreshadows the Truth creeping into Sunny's life. I am talking about red light in particular - while red is carefully used in the final boss fight, Red Space, several areas of further Black Space and in the Red Hands, red has more complex meanings in this game, where it depends entirely on the other colours around it (red and black represents malicious intention, red and white is more closely tied to repression, and red standing out against the Dreamworld is tied to Truth).
It is designed to feel wrong, the same way the encroaching fog across vast forest feels wrong, and the deeper well's atmosphere feels wrong. This discomfort is very well-captured throughout the game, and the careful use of red contributes to this.
In several segments, red light streaming through a window is shown to represent repression of Truth. We know that the sky was not red when Mari was killed - it was late afternoon, with some light streaming through the trees - so, in some ways, the Truth has already been distorted, being shown as worse and more horrific than the actual events. This is likely a result of Sunny's repression.
There is one particular moment where this glowing red light represents repression. This occurs in the Hikikomori Route, if you wake Sunny up during the night. You see several horror sequences relevant to the truth, and the piano room lit with a red glow. Entering it reveals this...

I'll talk more about the symbolism of that particular window later, but we know that the piano is being repressed here. Instead of the pure red light, we see the combination of black and red - which we know represents malicious intent - showing how Sunny's repression of the Truth has become more powerful than Sunny himself, and Omori is now taking over his mind.
Windows as a Door to the Truth
During the Truth sequence, there are red windows in almost every room, aside from backstage-like areas. We know from the previous section that this foreshadows the Truth, and the increasing number of these windows brings it to the player's attention, standing out more than it did previously. The same glow is also found coming from the TV in the first room. Sunny is notably drawn to this glow, as is the player, and you are also required to interact with (which implies potentially entering) the window in the Hospital sequence to proceed.
To understand windows acting as doors, we need to talk about the sliding glass door.

The sliding glass door in Omori is both a window and a door - letting in the eerie red light, but also letting the player (and Sunny) access it and understand it for the first time. This makes it the ultimate foreshadower of Truth, and we must enter it in order to view the entirety of the Truth photo album.
Sunny never represses the sliding glass door, but will refuse to go outside until forced by his friends in Faraway visiting the Treehouse. In the real world, it is shaded over, making it impossible for the player to see through (save for a short Stranger encounter). This opaque nature is present in the Truth segment as well, except it is glowing red.
You can't see through it, but you can finally enter it.
This door leads us to the peak combination of our colour theory.

To the eyes, this first looks like a fade between red and purple, but the only possible relevance purple would have is its association with Mari.
This colour scheme is actually the result of a fade between red and saturated blue. Combining the colours of the Phobias, fear, as well as Mari's support and safety, and the day of the Phobias' creation; and the Truth, repression, and the fateful day of the recital. Although subtle, this is the game's big comparison, and the main purpose of mentioning the creation of the Phobias at all.
These two days are designed to compare Mari and Sunny, increasing his guilt as he remembers the way his sister generously saved his life, and remembers what he did to kill her.
Windows as a Symbol of Ascension
Monochrome is a key colour associated with Truth in Omori, and it does so in a relatively obviously. It is the colour of White Space, Black Space, Something, Stranger, and, notably, the colours of the photos that show the player the Truth. In this way, monochrome simultaneously represents repression of the Truth and the past; but also the desire to uncover it. Areas and characters that contain more black than they do white tend to represent truth, whereas the opposite tend to represent repression, save for portions of the Final Duet and the Hospital, where white represents acceptance. White also symbolises Sunny, shown in the pinwheels, and it has further meaning in the multiple flowers associated with it.
Spirit Mari is also associated with monochrome, her sprites existing in this colour. We contrast this to Hellmari, who is coloured in the saturated blue beforehand, and we can start to understand the mechanics of Headspace as a whole.
Despite Stranger's quote, Sunny, Basil and Mari are all split in halves, each half with different goals. Sunny, although he doesn't always know it, wants to seek the Truth; but Omori wants to repress it. Stranger wants to free the real world's Basil; but Headspace Basil is a representation of desire, the idea that everything is okay. In a similar way, Spirit Mari wants Sunny to seek forgiveness, and Hellmari is a hallucination of a Mari who would never forgive him.
I personally do not believe that Spirit Mari is Mari's actual spirit trying to communicate with Sunny - as much as that is a nice thought, and even though it is backed up with meaning of the White Egret Orchid, I choose to believe that Spirit Mari is Sunny's own desire for acceptance. As much as Sunny hates himself, the game is about seeking and forgiving yourself for what happened that day, and that requires this hidden desire, which is channeled through Mari.
The window above the piano room is found in several locations in Headspace. It is found in the first Black Space room, just above the first ever key you collect, and Mari is found hallucinated in front of it several times in the Real World. It is an important reminder of the real world, everything Sunny is leaving behind.
Spirit Mari also ascends through the this window during the North Lake sequence, and again during the Final Duet.


The whiteness of the area is highlighted with a light, pastel blue. Unlike the horror of saturation, pastel in-game represents peace and purity, being directly contrasted with each other. Pastel isn't symbolic of repression, although it is the main theme during the happier segments of Headspace. These particular colours - white and pastel blue - are also found in the Hospital, and in the final scene of the good ending. Pastel means acceptance, and it means there is no need to "saturate" the events of the recital day.
Here, the colour gradient, and Mari ascending through the window, are symbols of freedom. Sunny has accepted the Truth, and can now properly grieve his lost sister in peace. Simultaneously, you could argue Mari's spirit is finally free - she isn't tied down by Sunny's repression, and her ascending through the window is symbolic of finally entering the afterlife.
sorry for going so off-topic. as with most of my analyses, the idea came to me at 5am when i was half-asleep and i just had to write it out. lmaooooo.
if i had a dollar for every time there was an older sister of a brother, of whom one of his names has 'Ori' in it, called Mari in an RPGmaker indie horror game where Mari is dead, I would have two dollars.
which is actually really weird. really really weird????

