fermiomoriblog

[fermiomoriblog]

i know that this is just a part of how omori's fight system operates, but i find it very interesting that we are able to make memes like the one pictured below considering all we know about hero's character throughout omori, both in the real world and in headspace

this meme is made by using hero's "smile" skill as well as a rain cloud, sad poem or anything else that inflicts a sad emotion on him. hero's skills are primarily always either food-based healing (e.g. "cook", "fast food", "homemade jam", "snack time") or some form of charisma (e.g. "captivate", "mesmerise", "enchant", "dazzle"). it's hero's job to be the support of their team, and to use his pleasant demeanor and appearance as a distraction.

no matter which emotion hero has, he can still use every one of those skills. it is of no relevance how he feels as long as he can uphold his designated role as a charmer and a healer.

now, consider real world hero's way of dealing with things, which is that he simply doesn't. when he returns to faraway, he's there for everyone else, appearing on the surface to be completely fine and content, and simply not acknowledging his own trauma. he puts on a constant facade of normalcy and perfection. because to hero, it doesn't matter which emotion he has, he can still use every one of his skills. it is of no relevance how he feels as long as he can uphold his designated role as a charmer and a healer.

hero would bend over backwards to please others. he canonically has depression, but would much rather be someone else's shoulder to cry on than admit he's not okay. everyone puts him on a pedestal, viewing him as a sort of ideal to look up to. sunny does it. kel does it. his parents do it. even hero himself does.

i think that's part of the reason why he's so often overlooked by the fandom: hero's unrealistically perfect, but that's exactly the point. he forces those expectations on himself, forces himself to earn trophies and medals even while he struggles to even get out of bed. he smiles despite wanting to do the opposite, because he's not supposed to be depressed. he's hero.

his charm-based skills in headspace alternate between a) reducing foes' attack with a bonus happy effect and b) acting first with all foes targeting him for one turn. hero either dissolves the situation a little, acting like the mediator he always has been, or takes the blunt of the damage for his friends.

he's constantly in the spotlight, in every world.

headspace hero has done a ridiculous amount to help people, from stopping a wildfire to giving up all of his organs, has made such a profound impact on so many lives through his good deeds, and that's recognised. people in headspace adore him.

the conveyor belts at the junkyard are endeared to him. sweetheart falls in love with him. mr jawsum plans to essentially keep him trapped working at the last resort forever. medusa thinks he's "too pretty to sell". hero's worth something to so many people, even when he doesn't want to be.

and that applies to the real world too. he's the only older sibling left for his friends after mari's death. he has to be strong for them, to be that ideal, because they have no-one else to fill that role. he brings kel and aubrey together, rescues sunny and basil, says that they should have a sleepover like "old times". he's trying so hard for everyone else, he can't afford to let himself crumble.

hero's a performer. and we see canonically that he has at least some stage fright from sweetheart's quest for hearts.

sweetheart's an interesting case. i find it interesting that the image above would be found mostly in the fight against her. sweetheart is one of the bosses with a uniquely heightened emotional state, hers being that of happiness in "manic". due to the way the emotion system in battle works (explained to us, funnily enough, by hero himself), it makes sense to oppose sweetheart's mania with sadness, misery, and depression.

so that's what hero does! he has the depressed effect, he'd otherwise look incredibly morose, but as soon as time calls for it, he's got a smile back on his face. we see how uncomfortable he is about her advances, but he gives her a smile that sets into motion a whole separate stream of dialogue where sweetheart proclaims her that she would like to "make [his smile] mine".

hero's the group golden boy. the charmer, the healer, the protector, the older brother, the pillar for them to lean on when things get tough. he knows that he is, and upholds that image to the best of his ability.

that is, until mari dies.

then, he falls into a deep, serious state of depression in the real world, because he's failed. he and mari have strived for perfection their whole lives, only for her to apparently deem it all pointless and leave them behind. hero feels like he wasn't enough, like he never will be, no matter how much he's tried. the faked grins disappear alongside those which were genuine, for how is he supposed to smile when he's given up on the facade?

he stops talking to people. stops going outside. stops helping. he can't do anything but reflect on his perceived failures, and without his pillar of support, the group crumbles to pieces.

hero stays like that for a whole year, until he argues with kel and remembers the reason why he needs to stay alive. this is hurting his brother as much as it is hero, and kel's depending on him to get better. so he does, in a way.

he earns medals and trophies again, helps out again, lives up to expectations then exceeds them even more. he can't bring himself to do the things he enjoys anymore, or talk to the three kids he viewed as little siblings and he failed, but he's trying. then, he leaves, off to medical school like his parents wanted. it's a fresh start. it's a chance for him to start to move on.

he's been healing, a little, by the time he comes back to faraway. he can talk about what mari would have wanted without breaking down entirely. he can make kel and sunny breakfast. he can bring the group together like old times, and reminisce on all he used to have.

but he's still not better, and it shows. it shows in the tears he spills when alone beside mari's old piano. it shows in his refusal to visit her grave. it shows in all the little ways he can try to hide, can cover up with a smile too bright to be real. depression doesn't go away that easily, no matter how much hero tries to pretend he's fine.

all in all, i think this meme essentially sums up hero's character and arc in a single, otherwise funny image. am i overcomplicating things? oh, definitely yes. was this a blast to analyse nonetheless? absolutely! there are far too few takes on hero out there, and i hope this gave a little bit of insight as to why i adore him so much.

[fermiomoriblog]

Hi

I've abandoned this blog, haven't I? If two posts counted as a blog in the first place. Just haven't had time.

So a quick, lazy post today - top 5 favourite ao3 fics, in order:

These Days Without You by Smitty - I've called this the gold standard of sunflower before, and I haven't met anyone else who disagrees. Smitty is a highly talented writer. Masterful utilisation of headspace and the descriptive writing.

Their Time by ShardOfHope - This gets #2 not because of any shade on Shard, but because 1. it is shorter, and its value kind of does lie in the fact that it is shorter, 2. it is quite a bit darker so may not be suitable for everyone (but has a good ending, dw) and 3. sorry, but you do need a proofreader. (let me be your proofreader pls)

I won't spend too much time explaining it because virtually any explanation is a spoiler. All I'll say is, if you ever feel like you want to hurt yourself, read this. (And also talk to friends and therapists, of course.) Unironically.

Deep Down, We're Still The Same Kids by witheredahlia - fluff. All the fluff, and canon compliant, and still hits hard. It is, more or less, the best immediate post good end story.

The Everyday Shenanigans of Aubrey by Practicallyunethical - me, a filthy sunflower shipper, putting a sunburn fic on here!? But the author does handle the fic really, really well, taking what I can only call a surrealist approach to life. It's a bit hard to read, like all classics, but it is one of only a handful of omori fics that I can make genuine literary comparisons to the likes of James Joyce, etc. Beautiful work.

One More Time by GalileoGalilei - Another sunburn fic? Am I even a sunflower shipper anymore? (yes.) But I think that anyone who has read it will quite agree that it is an excellent and impactful work. There's lots of angst - this is post bad end - but a glimmer of hope at the end which keeps the reader going. It does fall into the "shafting Basil aside" pitfall I mentioned in my first post, in my opinion, but that does not detract massively from the value of the fic.

[fermiomoriblog]

Headcanons

As title.

Now, there are three kinds of headcanons. There is the worldbuilding details that are nice and cute but ultimately largely cosmetic. There are the ones which fill in the explicit blanks in the game (in Omori's case, for example, Mari's personality and flaws, what Hero did in college, etc). Then there are those which change the whole premise of the game. I'm going to talk about one of mine in the latter category.

# OMORI SPOILERS BELOW #

The violin as a gift

Sunny's violin is the first photo in the photo album, and generally the thread that ties the pre-canon storyline together. So a natural question that arises is: who proposed the gift?

It's clear that all five friends worked together to get the gift for Sunny. However, someone had to decide the gift in the first place, presumably without Sunny's knowledge. This initial proposer also has to 1. know Sunny well enough and 2. be confident that Sunny will like what they choose. This leaves really just Mari and Basil.

In the Christmas scene in Memory Lane, several things are revealed about the gift:

That Sunny had previously played, and quit, the violin;

That Sunny had expressed the wish to spend more time with Mari;

That Sunny thought (or someone thought Sunny thought, or wanted Sunny to think) that playing the violin was a good way to spend more time with Mari;

That Basil had "the idea";

That Sunny felt anxious but didn't mind because of the group's confidence in him;

That Sunny did not want to disappoint the group.

This may seem to answer the question posed above quite straightforwardly, but as with many things in Omori, there is a great number of possible symbolism here.

Sunny quitting the violin

The first, immediate clue is the fact that Sunny had already tried and quit the violin. Also, while not explicitly stated, given Mari's level of musical ability it's highly likely she had already been playing the piano when Sunny was of any appreciable age. Therefore, Sunny would already have been able to play with Mari the first time round, and despite that, still quit. There are several possible explanations for this:

Sunny was forced to quit by other factors, such as schoolwork, but liked the violin.

There were better, more relaxing ways of spending time with Mari.

Sunny did not like the violin.

Sunny wanted to spend more time with his other friends (at this stage, probably just Kel and Hero).

All of these, bar the first one, is some variant of "the violin gets in the way of something more important to Sunny".

Taken alone, there's no good way to distinguish between the two categories. However, given the fact that their friends were the one gifting the violin and either Sunny or Mari would have mentioned the reason Sunny was forced to quit, it seems unlikely that whatever the external factor was would have just dissappeared because a bunch of kids bought a violin. This leads us to draw two conclusions - either:

There was some higher authority (read responsible adult) that wanted or told Sunny to pick up the violin again; and/or

Sunny, while not necessarily disliking the violin, liked other things involving the friend group more.

Spending time with Mari

That Sunny wants to spend more time with Mari implies some form of unavailability on Mari's part. This is easy to interpret - college cram classes, piano practice, schoolwork, etc are all things that can occupy Mari's time. There is one common thread to all of these though - they require parental approval or consent of some sort. Keep this in mind.

The violin as a way to spend time with Mari

If anyone could reasonably think that, it would indicate that Mari spent lots of time practicing the piano, since otherwise the violin just would not be a way to spend time with Mari.

Another important thing here is that we are never told whether Sunny actually wants to spend time with Mari by playing the piano, but that it is "noticed" that he wants to do so. This appears to imply that Sunny has never actually explicitly said that he wants to spend time with Mari via the violin, or indeed that he wanted to pick up the violin at all.

This is where we start to go from a relatively ordered process of induction into the realm of true speculation. We make the assumption that the friend group's deduction is mistaken based on the fact that we are never told otherwise; that is, Sunny (presumably) does want to spend more time with Mari, but would at minimum prefer to do something else with her. We see that in every other Memory Lane scene, Sunny is quite explicit about his feelings about spending time with his friends and siblings. I take the absence of such in this scene as a significant detail.

The question then is of course what led the friend group to this mistaken deduction. The solution which passes Occam's razor is something along the lines of Sunny venting to Basil or Aubrey about how little time he gets to spend with Mari, and one of them remembering that Sunny used to play the violin. We shall, however, assume that Mari either introduced the idea or pushed it along. This is because firstly that anyone else with the idea would need to run it by Mari anyways, and secondly that it is easier for a sibling to misread another sibling's intention than for a friend to do so.

Basil's idea

The scene explicitly says that the gift was Basil's idea. This, however, does not mean it was Basil's original idea. He may have been influenced or pushed by other factors; what it really means was that he was the one to pitch it to Aubrey and Kel.

Given that the five friends worked together to save up money for the violin, someone with significant weight would have needed to get behind the idea. As has been the subtext in this entire thing, Mari is the likely candidate. Basil may have wanted to get Sunny something (in general, or something else), but would probably defer to any suggestion Mari has. And if Mari wanted to make sure Sunny would accept a certain gift, what better way than to frame it as coming from his best friend?

Sunny's anxiety

The only direct indication we get about Sunny's true feelings on the violin is the last two lines, which are very significant. Firstly, Sunny is anxious about playing the violin. Now, if one had quit the violin for years and was told to play it in front of an audience on short notice, the nervousness is understandable. However, he is expected to have to relearn it, so it is already clear that nobody expects him to play a symphony. What other reasons could there be for being anxious, but playing it anyways because the group expected him to do well (notably, NOT relieving his anxiety)?

This leans heavily towards the theory that Sunny doesn't really like the violin, or prefer using the violin as a way to spend time with Mari, but that he acted that way as it was expected of him. He also says he doesn't want to let his friends down, but the usage of this wording indicates some conflict between Sunny's true end goal and what his friends think his end goal is, as if his friends were correct, the more significant concern would be achieving that goal itself (whether that be playing the violin, spending time with Mari, etc) rather than what others expected him to be aiming for.

The sequence of events

With this series of hints, we can now reconstruct a sequence of events within the friend group:

Mari wanted to spend time with Sunny and/or wanted Sunny to play the violin;

Someone (likely Basil) came up with the idea to get Sunny a joint Christmas present;

Basil asked Mari for advice, who then suggested the violin, and Basil pitched it to the rest of the friend group.

There is still, however, the problem of the first step. Given that most of Mari's time at this point is indirectly controlled by her parents, and that the parents were clearly involved in Sunny's initial taking up and quitting of the violin (since he would be quite young at the time), it is unlikely that Mari pursued this course of action entirely alone.

Asian parents

Which brings us to the final piece of the story - Mari's parents. Most of Mari's activity is controlled by them, and it's pretty clearly implied that they think Sunny is "not good enough" and compare him with Mari. They clearly wanted Sunny to play the violin at one point since they signed him up for it. It is possible that Sunny quit on his own, or due to other reasons, but no matter the case it is not difficult to imagine that their parents may want Sunny to play the violin again at this point. And Mari provides a quick, painless way to enforce that. Or so they think.

So, we have the full casual timeline of the story:

Sunny and Mari's parents wanted Sunny to play the violin.

Failing to convince Sunny through other means, the parents asked Mari to pressure Sunny.

Mari, not wanting to disappoint her parents or harm her relationship with Sunny, asks (or uses, depending on your level of judgement) Basil to propose the idea of a gift of a violin.

Sunny, seeing this demand to play the violin as from his friends and not his family, is a lot more receptive.

This is very significant. It changes the story from one of unlucky coincidences and accidents to one of active manipulation. Unfortunately, stories like this one (which fortunately mostly don't end in manslaughter) are all too common in the real world. I think this fact deepens the message of the game - that it could happen to anyone. In fact, you probably know someone to whom a less severe version of this timeline has already happened to. From a more pragmatic/ethos point of view, it also allows us to blame Sunny and Mari's parents completely guilt free, although I tend to think that isn't really the point (which is something we can get into much, much later).

Mari's fault?

The original version of this headcanon was inspired by Their Time by ShardOfHope (which I implore you to read. It is one of the very few works which in my opinion are not just good writing, but also therapeutic. It has unironically made a positive impact in my life.) The problem with the version in Shard's story was that Basil was not involved in the deciding of the gift, while it is canonically stated that Basil was. So I tried to incorporate Basil's perceived role in a more natural manner.

This does, however, have one major unintended consequence. It can be said to some extent that Mari used or manipulated Basil as well to achieve her own (understandable, but ultimately selfish) desires. In many AUs involving Mari communicating with Sunny post-canon, Mari usually expresses a lot of guilt over pushing Sunny too hard. There is the question of degrees of severity of course - a few mean words and locking someone in a room for twelve hours are completely different things - but usually, I feel that this is trying too hard to make Sunny "not the bad guy". (After all, if there is an important and significant exam one has to pass, one cannot expect any remotely responsible guardian to simply let you play games all day and not make progress. And pushing someone in response to being shouted at, stairs or no, is a somewhat questionable response.) With this headcanon it is a lot easier to see where Mari's guilt comes from, though. It has the added bonus of somewhat exonerating Basil. In my opinion, this combination best serves the theme of forgiveness and moving on that permeates the game. Everyone used or hurt one another, everyone's learnt their lesson, and it's time to do something else.

[fermiomoriblog]

The pitfalls of every Sunny ship

Diving straight into the hot coals with the first post. But it has been on my mind lately.

The setup in Omori is naturally quite mentally (and in some cases physically) taxing on every main cast character, and a shipper can very easily be overenthusiastic about getting a "happy ending" for their preferred pair, glossing over inconvenient problems and dynamics. I think that it really is rather contrary to the game's themes that this occurs, but it is also understandable that not everybody does a full psychoanalysis of every plot point in their story. I'll list some "common" problems I've personally encountered with people making content about sunburn, suntan and sunflower. I'm more familiar with the dynamics common on ao3 than elsewhere, so if you have any other observations or things to add, please feel free to do so.

# OMORI SPOILERS BELOW #

Sunburn

The "canon" ship. The fact that the ship is explicitly mentioned in game means that the ship is viewed as the "default", and it can lead to some lazy dynamics or lack of justification. You have to remember that no matter what headspace says (and headspace says a lot of things that aren't true), the first thing Sunny and Aubrey did after four years is beat the shit out of each other. Sunny knows nothing about the Hooligans, even though we do, and Aubrey thinks Sunny abandoned her (which is a feeling unlikely to abate after the truth). There needs to be basis for the ship as well - they aren't going to just pick up where they left off (presuming they had anything to leave off in the first place) right away. Which leads us to the first common problem:

Basing the relationship entirely on the past

This is the default reaction and requires the least writing creativity, so it is not surprising that it is common. Simply porting the HS dynamic or the swing scene to the future and copy-pasting is fun and cute and all, but it ignores the fact that both Sunny and Aubrey have changed massively. There's a lot of guilt that is going around, both with Sunny for obvious reasons and Aubrey for pushing Basil in the lake, and Aubrey has a bunch of new, closer friends whom depending on your interpretation are either theatre kids or delinquents. This is not really just going to get talked away on the swing set - they involve third parties.

I would venture to argue that this is actually a very problematic pitfall, despite it being generally not a very serious transgression in real life. Omori, as a game, is about moving on from the past. If you write a fic where the characters forget about bad things in the past but hang on like hell to the good things... that's Headspace. You've just put Sunny in a new Headspace.

Getting Basil out of the way

Even among sunburn/suntan shippers, it is pretty generally accepted that Basil was somewhat attached to Sunny even before the accident. So if you don't want to do sunflower, how do you deal with that?

You can write angst, where Aubrey and Basil end up fighting over Sunny. Weirdly, I've never seen this actually happen (probably because it's too heartbreaking). You can have Basil go to therapy, and get rid of an unhealthy attachment. You can also go the seriously angsty route of Basil hating Sunny for abandonment, Sunny hating Basil for his role in the incident, or a less intense version which just puts a barrier between the two. You can also have Sunny reject Basil. Or you can argue that the attachment was platonic, which is entirely fair.

What you cannot do is have Basil be romantically interested in Sunny, but "get out of the way" for Aubrey "so that Sunny can be happy". Or, well, you can do that, but you can't frame it as anything but serious angst from Basil's POV.

Unfortunately, many, many "pure fluff" Sunburn fics do this, because "pure fluff" fics don't want to untangle the whole thing as most methods involve some degree of emotional turnmoil. This is no ordinary infautation - Basil has waited for Sunny for four years. Nursing unrequited love like that is really, really painful. It is certainly not something that someone with Basil's character and history can do with a smile on their face. If you need any further convincing, I point you to Note to Self: Don't Be Gay in Faraway Town by witheredahlia.

A version of this which I think is a lesser sin (because it is at least framed with some nuance), but a sin regardless, is Aubrey getting annoyed at Basil for "stealing" Sunny's attention from her. This gets dangerously close to the reddit comments you see about "the friend group will be better off if Basil never joined".

Suntan

Despite sunburn being the "canon" and sunflower being the natural alternative, I actually think that this is the default. After all, Kel was the one to bring Sunny out, generally saving his life, and is his first friend, etc. Kel is also a clean slate character, with nothing anyone can particularly hold against them, and as a result suntan is the "healthiest", "least questionable" ship. This commits the customary mistake of believing Kel's parents when they say "eh, it's Kel, he'll be fine".

"Kel's fine"

No, he's not. He's spent the better part of four years trying to forget the happiest times of his childhood, and has been going around doing nothing but fixing and saving other people, putting others' needs far above his own, for the entirety of pre-canon and foreseeably for a good part of post canon as well. Suntan, especially with Sunny still in a vulnerable state post-canon, can very easily be written into Kel being Sunny's unpaid, untrained therapist, and his mood/health being Kel's only/majority source of validation. Kel's self-worth independent of his friends needs addressing and development, and without a lot of development, Sunny alone is not really equipped to provide that.

In all fairness, while I would be somewhat confident in saying that the majority of canon-compliant sunburn fics run into the problems above, suntan fics do usually handle it better. That might just be because there aren't that many suntan fics though.

Sunflower

It goes without saying that sunflower has the highest potential to be unhealthy. But precisely because of that fact, people writing sunflower are usually very careful to address it. Either the fic is written as a work exploring codependency/attachment/trauma/other general unhealthiness (which you can make your own judgement on whether it's a legitimate art form or problematic), or there is at minimum an attempt at pacing, therapy and general juggling of the various mental issues the game leaves Sunny and Basil with (for a shining example, see These Days Without You by Smitty1899, my go to answer for when anyone says "but sunflower toxic!!1!").

The issues that can make sunflower unhealthy and problematic are generally pretty obvious - shared crime, codependency and attachment, commitment and abandonment issues, and the whole "getting together before their friends forgive them" thing (which can still be done well, but from the POV of especially Hero can be kind of eh, and unlikely to be conducive to a healthy relationship given that it kind of depends on their friends' pending "approval".) As a result, there aren't a lot of works that don't address them in one manner or another. However, I do think there is one major pitfall that some fics fall into in the other direction:

Having everything in the relationship be dependent on someone else's approval.

In an attempt to make sunflower as healthy as possible, some authors make it so that Sunny and Basil effectively never make decisions on their own. There's always a third party present to psychoanalyse them, tell them what's fine and what's not, etc. and every step they make in their relationship is with the express blessing, support and help of the rest of their friends. The problem is, that's not healthy either.

I feel that the value of sunflower is greatest in the context of the themes of the game of moving on and forgiveness. Making it so that Sunny and Basil hang on to their guilt forever and robbing them of any "right" to decide for themselves what makes them happy is very much contrary to that - they're on crutches for the rest of their lives, and the point of the good ending is the hope that they won't need to be. It also is just not a good thing for any third party to intervene so extensively in a relationship.

Conclusion

Omori is emotionally deep, with many, many themes to explore. Ships in Omori have unique meanings and themes, which in a canon compliant context is quite hard to simply wipe away. Rushing into a ship with insufficient pacing and development, which works in "cute" fandoms, generally leaves lots of outstanding holes in Omori.

This post doesn't necessarily mean that I think less of any particular ship mentioned - to reiterate, every ship has unique meanings and themes which is interesting to explore and form a part of the message of the game. It is however true that some pitfalls in some ships are easier to fall in, and overlooked, than others, and the obvious problems get a lot more bashing than the non-obvious ones. (Yes, sunflower bias. Sue me.)

And of course, in a plotless or AU context, cute art is cute art.