#lowest point

[ben-talks-art]

Is there a better source of drama than watching a character be pushed to their breaking point?

Like, I joke about it but it really does feel like the secret to make a good story is just "Make a character -> Throw challenge after challenge at them -> See how they react."

There is something...

...just fascinating about knowing how to challenge your character without making it feel like a misery fest and actually making an exploration of how people respond when they reach their limits. How do they reach it? Why do they reach it? Can they make it back? How do they respond? Where do we draw the limit?

This is why the conflict is such a crucial part of a narrative. The walls that you make for your character to face and hopefully overcome is what will test your skill as a writer.

You can't make it too easy because then it becomes anti-climatic, and you can't make it too hard either because then it will feel like you're just torturing your character, and if the breaking point doesn't feel earned it will be like the writer is just trying to force the drama instead of journeying through it.

I've seen a few cases where a character will snap for very mundane reasons and it makes me go "You just wanted to have your cool 'I'm going Super Sayan' moment, you don't really care about this character's emotional struggle." 😑

You gotta find that right balance of what you're gonna throw at your hero and how you're going to explore it for your story.

It's tricky, but if you manage to pull it off, it can lead to some really great storytelling, character study, and theme exploration.

[yukiis-world]

which song is it for you?

[making-sense-of-oversomnia]

Theory: Junction Space, Irving’s Friends, the Serpents, and Ending 1

Buckle in, this is gonna be a long one, and probably the closest I’ll ever get to posting a 'complete' Oversomnia theory.

To begin, let’s recap what exactly happens at Junction Space. 

First, you go to the southernmost part of Outback Roads where the screen darkens. If you successfully dodge the black and white monster roaming around the area and reach a rock formation that looks like a key, you can use the skeleton key effect to unlock a door there.

Doing this brings you a monochrome blue bedroom. From here, you follow a triangular-patterned pathway to a gateway with serpentine motifs, guarded by black and white monsters on either side.

This takes you to a space with 4 doors. On the left, a red door with one dot, then an orange door with two dots, a green door with three dots and a blue door with four dots. Each door has the same serpentine decorations as the entryway. A person with black hair and a blue-gray sweatshirt vanishes after entering the green door. Irving can go through any of these doors, and doing so causes a slowed down version of a phone disconnecting sound effect to play. This takes you to an extremely staticky void space where letters appear on screen. After seeing this, Irving is returned to the nexus. 

The bestiary entry for this event reads: There was a glimpse of one of my friends in an area shrouded in an unwelcoming atmosphere. Perhaps I was no longer in my own dream.

That's a lot to unpack.

For starters, I think it’s pretty safe to say that each door represents a person here. Irving’s color is overwhelmingly green. His name literally means green water, and more importantly, his section of the Dreaming Serpents World is green. Green crystal trees, green doors, green river. 

Junction Space is obviously a space either created by, managed by, or otherwise connected to the serpents. The doors all have serpent motifs that look nearly identical to those seen in the Dreaming Serpents World. So -- the green door is his. This is also why Irving notes in the bestiary that he is, perhaps, “no longer in my own dream” if his friend went through his door. Put a pin in that for now, we’ll come back to it.

We can also determine the owner of one other door using this color-coordination method. Dreaming Serpents World only loops horizontally; you can see other colors in the far north and far south. There are blue crystal trees in the south, and red ones in the north.

You wanna know what else is in the north? In a hard to access spot near the door that sends Irving to Lowest Point is an out of reach semitransparent version of Lucky. This would make door number one -- the red door -- hers.

This also means that Irving and Lucky have opposite colors from each other -- red and green are typically opposites from each other on the color wheel. Their dominant outfit color has no bearing on their serpent door color either, which is important to note when determining the owners of the other doors. 

So, Lucky’s #1 and Irving’s #3. I made a theory earlier that the white monster outside of Junction Space is representative of Irving based on the fact that the racoon dog transforms into it when copying him. If we take this into account, there’s one other place in the game where Lucky’s #1 and Irving’s #3: their order in the bestiary.

This would make the alarmed person correspond to orange door #2, and Irving’s friend who we see at Junction Space correspond to blue door #4 (meaning the area in the south of Dreaming Serpents World is also theirs). This could also explain part of why the alarmed person is so prevalent in Irving’s dreams. Everyone else with a door is one of Irving’s friends, so maybe they’re a dream-version of a different one of his friends too, or a friend of a friend. Although, I don’t know why he wouldn’t mention that in the bestiary if so. I’ve previously speculated that the person with the beret you see at Vermillion Rooftops is perhaps closer to the “real world” form of the alarmed person since they bear quite a few design similarities (but noticeably lack alarms or other supernatural design aspects). However, that person doesn’t have a bestiary entry we can reference, so your guess is as good as mine.

I think it’s also safe to say the room we see in Junction Space belongs to friend #4. None of those decorations resemble how Lucky decorates her stall, and the computer on the desk isn’t the one we see in the Lowest Point event (which could be Lucky’s or Irving's, but we don’t see it anywhere in Irv's room). Note the stickers on the Lowest Point event computer, and the utter lack of stickers on the one on the desk.

Circling back to the actual events of Junction Space though -- the serpents tend to be heavily associated with phones. Entering any door in Dreaming Serpents World doesn’t prompt a door opening sound effect, but instead, a phone ringing. Similarly, the sound you hear after going through Junction Space is a telephone disconnect sound effect slowed down at 0.5x speed. You can hear the properly timed sound effect in one of the vents in the Ventilation Passageway, where Irving sits facing away from a black landline phone tangled up in an ominous red material.

Notably, that phone is NOT any of the ones Irving typically uses -- it's big, black, and has rounded speakers at both ends. His mobile phone is obviously small, rectangular, and blue. The one he uses to save in his bedroom is similarly small and rectangular (which you can see especially clearly in the game instructions). So, who’s hanging up on who here? It evidently doesn’t seem to be a good kind of hanging up either.

Possibility 1: The phone disconnect in Junction Space is represents a denial of letting Irving enter someone else’s dream. He’s not allowed to go into any of their spaces, even though (and possibly because) someone else is already in his. 

Possibility 2: Irving calls his friends to talk with them about his dreams, which is why you save the game with the phone (that’s him checking in with them). The serpents, on the other hand, call Irving (and his friends) because they want favors of some kind, which is what the purpose of Junction Space is, and which is why the Dreaming Serpents World doors are represented by a phone ringing. Whoever went through Irving’s door was going against some kind of plan or agreement, and Irving’s is not happy about it (see: Ventilation Space, and the monster trying to keep people out of Junction Space).

As an aside, you might see information on the Oversomnia wiki about Irving being “part of a ‘dream club’ whose members share their dreams using different methods.” This is information taken from itch.io descriptions of earlier releases, which you can still find via let’s play footage and the Wayback Machine. I’ve attached both older descriptions below here for reference, but I don’t know how much you can consider this information “canon” since the creator of the game has said to ignore versions that came before the current one and the current itch.io description mentions nothing along these lines. Regardless of whether or not there’s a club though, I think there’s still definitely in-game evidence for the fact that Irving has friends, they also happen to talk about dreams with each other, and they also happen to go onto each other's dreams sometimes (even if they maybe shouldn’t). 

Also, if they can all access each other's dreams, then friend #4 going through Irving’s door makes it hard to analyze Irving’s personality based solely on what he dreams about (not to mention any serpent influence) which is why I haven’t done a personality analysis for him yet like I did with Lucky lol

Anyways, I think Junction Space and the Dreaming Serpents World are opposite sides of the same coin. They both have doors created by the serpents and they both are spaces where Irving and his friends can see each other in their dreams. However, where Junction Space lets them hop into each other's dreams, Dreaming Serpents World actively separates them from each other with fences and castle walls. I think both spaces are set up by the serpents for some kind of endgame that benefits them at everyone else’s detriment. Serpents, in general, are NOT friendly forces in Irving’s dreams and are noted as being “harrowing” and “not good” by the bestiary. For example, seeing the embryo in the ventilation space sends Irving to Deathrow in a VERY literal way!!!

The serpent in Swamp World sends you to the Ventilation Passage, and there is NOTHING good there (besides the alarmed person chilling out with some tunes). The monster in the incomprehensible event -- who also bears a striking resemblance to the pillars in the Dreaming Serpents World -- dissolves another person there!! 

Speaking of the incomprehensible event -- despite its name, the symbols spoken there actually aren’t all that incomprehensible. There are 8 symbols total: Z, a musical coda (or possibly just a really shiny star -- more on that later), the character 无, an eyeball, Xp, a clock, å, and a sheep.

Half of these have to do with sleep: Z as in zzzz the sound when you’re sleeping, sheep as in counting sheep, and a clock as in an alarm clock (or possibly just time in general). The character 无 (which is also the final “word” the monster "says") means “nothing” or “negative,” which would make sense since it's spoken when the other figure disappears at the end of the event. The musical coda, on the other hand, aligns half with this idea of 'endings,' and half with another serpentine motif -- infinity, looping, and repetition. A coda is used in sheet music to denote where the exit from a repeated section of a song is. There are two other things associated with the serpents and looping. The first is the title screen logo, which shows a serpent in the shape of an infinity symbol. The second is the background of the Dreaming Serpents World, which depicts an ouroboros -- representative of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

From all this, I think it’s fair to say the serpents control the dream. Their symbols are all dream related, or cyclical. Maybe they even derive power from dreams somehow… 

It’s also worth noting that the serpents are just generally incomprehensible to the in-game characters anyways. That message at the end of Junction Space isn’t translatable. Take it from someone who’s run the event at least 10 times and has made multiple decoding efforts. The message is always different regardless of which door you enter. Each letter in each word is rolled from a set of 3 values not linked to any others. Each word always has the same number of letters, even if the letters themselves are different. Not to mention some of the “letters” don’t look like letters at all. The only word that stays consistent is the final four letter word at the bottom, which I always thought looked like “RANO” or something. Regardless, I don’t think there’s a message here you can translate. And if there IS a way to translate it, then I've got no clue... I'm out of ideas SOS...

Ok, so then what exactly is happening in the incomprehensible event? I personally think the event either depicts ending 1, or the serpents’ end goal (if they’re not the same thing). In the ending, Irving makes contact with the serpents, drowns in the green river, and vanishes from reality. In the incomprehensible event, someone makes contact with a serpent-headed monster, and then vanishes from reality at the serpent’s command. See the parallels? If it's true that the serpents work cyclically, then Irving jumping into the Green River at the end of the game possibly represents him giving himself over to the dream entirely (and the serpents, by extension). He vanishes from reality, but throws himself into this never ending cycle of dreaming and waking up. This is why you “wake up” after ending 1 and get a menu theme -- you’re not actually waking up in reality, you’re just waking up in a dream version of reality so you can continue the loop. Alternatively, Irving’s been stuck in that cycle, nothing was real the entire time (which is why the weather outside never changes, or maybe he just lives in Britain idk), and jumping into the Green River is a way of ending that cycle once and for all (even if it means erasing himself from reality entirely). 

Ok, so how real is reality then? Was Irving trapped from the start? How many times have We done this? At that rate, was friend #4 trying to save Irving by coming into the dream? What the HELL is going on in the abduction event too? Triggering it is so hyperspecific (get to Boiling Water World at night and then find a specific place to stand) and immediately after you wake up, there’s a face in your window. It could just be sleep paralysis, or maybe reality was a dream too.

I feel like it’s safe to say that the supernatural is probably to real in some extent in Oversomnia (there’s people vanishing from reality and connecting to each other's dreams after all), but this is the only instance of something DIRECTLY affecting reality and not just doing weird things in the dreamworld. That is, besides ending 1, which also takes place in the real version of Irving’s room (note position of the pillows, the bag in the bottom left corner, and the fact the doorways to the bathroom and kitchen are still there).

Which brings up to what the hell Lucky is doing in ending 1.

I think Lucky's the first victim of the serpents, which is also why her door is number 1. She’s their first contact. This makes the incomprehensible event both a memory AND a premonition then -- it's what they’ve done to her, and this is what they WILL do to you. That’s also why she’s semi-transparent in the Dreaming Serpents World up north; she’s not there anymore, but she used to be. It could also be that the door order in Junction Space indicates the order in which people reach their section of Dreaming Serpents World, which could also explain why the alarmed person is Like That. They’re also stuck in the dream, but are just kinda chilling. Ending 1 also seems to be “Lucky’s ending” in some capacity -- the emerald theme you get from it has clovers at its corners, the text reading “ending 1” is in her special font color, and she’s literally there during it.

This could also indicate that we’ll get 4 endings down the line? One for each friend, one for each door maybe? And I’ll be shocked if ending 1 isn’t a “bad end” in some capacity. I don’t think Lucky’s dead though -- I don’t think the serpents necessarily want people dead. I think they just want to use people for whatever weird metaphysical shit they’re doing. And if they DO want people dead, it’s to send them through the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Death is not their main endgame; you don’t trap people in an ouroboros if you just want them dead. I think the serpents want people to move into the dream dimension. Permanently. My closest guess as to why they want that is the embryo in the Ventilation Passage -- maybe they need some degree of mental energy for incubating whatever the hell that is. Or maybe they just get energy from dreams in general. I’m honestly not sure.

Speaking of Lucky, there’s one other event that prominently features her -- the Lowest Point.

I don't know for sure if the serpents are aliens, but they’re linked enough that I think you could definitely make an argument in favor of it. The event at the Lowest Point is outer-space centric: Irving sees something in the sky, and then there’s green aliens blocking him from going behind his house. But you know what you have to pass by in the elevator that takes you to Lowest Point? Dragon ship.

I think Lucky saw something on that computer that connected her with extraterrestrial life (hence why she glitches out and her face vanishes during said glitch out) and now they’re all screwed. Maybe the serpents/aliens/whatever communicate via radio waves and that’s why they’re in your phone and your computer, and that’s why electronics are such a big theme throughout Oversomnia in general. If the serpents are aliens, it could also explain why they’re so incomprehensible. Speaking of the incomprehensible event, one of the symbols the monster-headed figure speaks is an eyeball. The other most prominent eyeball in the game is the planet that stares at you during the stargazing event. The stargazing event also gives you menu theme 7, which happens to increase your chances of seeing the event at Lowest Point too… If you don’t want to interpret that one incomprehensible symbol as a sheet music coda, you could also see it as a star or planet, which would be yet another connection. It even resembles the pattern on the ground where the abduction event takes place...

The Lucky we see at Lowest Point is also definitively linked to Lucky in the Nexus. After seeing that event, Lucky will always be gone from her shop, leaving a little sign in her place (presumably reading something like “closed” or “back in a few”).

On the other hand, Lucky from the shop and Lucky from the ending don’t seem to be aware of each other. If you talk to Lucky at the shop after seeing ending 1, she asks if Irving is alright because he looks worried about something. Lucky saw him drown in ending 1. If shop Lucky was the same as ending Lucky, she wouldn’t need to ask this.

I don't know for sure which one is more “real,” but I think shop Lucky might just be Irving's imagination. The bestiary even refers to her with different terms compared to friend #4, saying that shop Lucky “looks like one of my friends” vs friend #4 who Irving catches a “glimpse of.” Not resembles, not looks like -- that friend was there.

I think shop Lucky is an accurate representation of her as a person, but I don’t think it’s one-to-one where she’s literally IN Irving's dreams. That’s also not to say shop Lucky is completely unaware of the ending though. She cuts herself off before she can ask if Irving is something, which implies that she also knows something.

I think ending Lucky is trapped in whatever serpent cycle is going, and that look over the shoulder in the ending isn’t a look of disdain or annoyance, it’s a look of “I can’t help you and you shouldn’t have done this.” At the end of the day, seeing ending 1 is a choice. You have to collect all the effects, find the right door in the Dreaming Serpents World, and then offer it all up to the serpents… that’s a lot of work for what amounts to Irving playing right into their hands. This would also be why the game continues after ending 1 AND gives you a menu theme that’s very Lucky-themed -- you’re joining her in dream hell in a sense. I also don’t think it’s the true ending. Alternatively, maybe Irving was doing all this to try and get her out of there, but uh. My man cannot swim. I guess.

If you really wanted to put Lucky in a bad light, I think you could argue that she’s doing this to trade places with him. He gets to go with the serpents and she gets to walk free since there’s someone else in the river now -- he’s trapped in the dream instead of her. I don’t think there’s much evidence for that though, and I still don’t think Lucky’s malicious. She shows genuine concern at her shop if you talk with her after the ending (and if you just talk with her with certain effects too), and regardless of how much of a connection there is between shop her and real her, she knew SOMETHING was up before cutting herself off.

Alternatively, shop Lucky IS real Lucky, but since she’s trapped in dreamland she can be anywhere at any time and you’re seeing her soul or a representation of Irving’s memory of her or something along those lines in the river. It would also explain why she’s always at the shop regardless of when you go to sleep if she’s stuck there.

This could also be why, if you show Lucky the tuning fork effect at the shop, she remarks "I used to have one of those, too. What's up?" If she had her own dream quest to reach the Dreaming Serpents World and then dropped off her effects, no wonder some of them would be gone. Tuning fork is one of the effects you need to get other effects after all, so she definitely would have had to pick it up at some point. Could also be why she’s selling temporary extras if she has some leftover from exploring and knows from experience how to get them.

Well wait, if she’s helping Irving in his quest to reach Dreaming Serpents World, then that makes it sounds like she’s working for the serpents. But also, if she can provide him with effects that won’t count towards the final total to unlock the door, maybe that’s also working against them? What does she need the money for anyways? Money looks like moons, which looks like outer space, which is serpent themed… but you only really need money to buy stuff from her or the vending machines? I have no idea.

TO SUMMARIZE:

Irving has friends! At least two (Lucky and Junction Space guy), but possibly three (alarmed person).

Irving’s friends can enter each other's dreams through Junction Space, but it’s probably not a good idea to do that.

Junction Space is managed by the serpents, who control dreams and want people to vanish from reality, which is what happens in ending 1.

Lucky is probably already a victim of that, hence her appearance in ending 1.

The serpents might also be aliens.

And that’s all I’ve got for now..!! I think this will definitely change as the game updates and we get more info, but I’m pretty confident in a decent amount of the dots connected here. Please let me know what you thought in the comments, and thanks as always for reading!!

[ineffablelunatic]

The Ghosts backstory scenes

So theory:

What if the backstory scenes shown in the show are meant to represent their lowest point? Not all of the backstory scenes we get are death scenes, and for some we don't even know about their death (CAPTAIN), so this makes more sense as to why those moments were chosen:

Robin - losing his family / friends to a bear and then getting electrocuted

Julian - always being drunk, missing time with his family and ultimately dying in the same way he lived and being unable to come to terms with it

Humphrey - realising his wife was plotting against the queen and losing his life to protect her

Thomas - being brutally "rejected", being betrayed by his cousin and losing a duel which he started over a misunderstanding

Captain - Havers leaving him to go to the front lines (AAAA It hurts that this was his lowest point and not his death </3)

Fanny - going bankrupt and being married off to a man she didn't love to save her home

Mary - this one is unusual because it takes place after her death but building up trust and love with Annie and then losing her in the most final sense possible

Pat - after living a generally very happy life, his death is therefore his lowest point, primarily because of the trauma it imposed on the kids and not getting to watch his son grow up

Kitty - even though she didn't realise it at the time, she was betrayed time and time again by her sister in this scene alone, and her father became incredibly angry at her, which she likely didn't understand. She also didn't get to go to the ball that she was clearly looking forward to, and even still didn't blame her sister

It kinda hits harder that we see their lowest points as their backstory, and that some of them only found happiness after their death :((

[matlabimahila]

Every morning I wake up and hit a new bottom

[w1ntersclub]

no matter how much better i get, not matter how much work i put in to feel better, i always end up back here

[finnsworldx]

i want to feel alive again, not this

[d1strict12-peacek33per]

No bc why do certain smells hold so much memory,

There’s this hoodie I would wear religiously late 8th grade year. It has this B&BW perfume on it. So now said hoodie gives me war flashbacks anytime I wear it—it reeks of gay yearning and anxiety. I don’t wear that perfume as much as I used to and it makes me kinda sad bc It smells nice.

[platoapproved]

louis + cruelty

[nuturalzone]

A whole year of un checked slaughter and dismantling. Just because I can set ablaze an entire bee hive because my actions caused a few to sting me bears no morality. No major power needs to flex its military prowess like this ever. It only fuels the insurgency they aim to dominate.

Source

Source

[yllonaaa]

At your lowest, you realize a lot.

1. Choose a good heart, not a good face.

2. Never force your importance in someone's life.

3. Things end to begin again.

♾️

[ozziepaused]

the song how to stop being sad by dandelion hands

[making-sense-of-oversomnia]

Analysis and Theory: Lucky's personality and her relationship to Irving

Since Lucky has dialogue and is featured in a number of events, there’s actually quite a bit we can say about her personality (or at least, what Irving thinks she acts like) based on how she reacts to everything!

1. Cautious

Whenever you show her any of the more violent or ‘risky’ effects, she offers words of warning.  Vampirism: “Don’t do anything you’ll regret”  Brimstone: “Be careful with that…”  Skeleton key: “Doors are often locked for a reason, you know.” She's also not seen wandering around in the dream world at all like most other characters, and if she IS around, it's usually in a stationary location.

2. Casual, or at least on a familiar-enough basis with Irving to cast away pretenses

Formal: “No need to be formal…” Not to mention she always looks half asleep when she’s on the job at her shop. There’s a sense of nonchalance to her dialogue in general. 

3. Sarcastic, fucks around (at least, that’s how I’m reading these lines, especially when you take into account the prior points)

Bellhop: “I’m not hiring at the moment. Anyways, what’s up?” Bed hair: “Good morning. What’s up?” Ice Sculpture (when transformed into a sculpture of her): “Oh? A true work of art… Anyways, what’s up?”

4. She cares about Irving and gets concerned for him, but also isn’t particularly proactive about any of it

Angler: “Doesn’t that hurt?” Brimstone: “Be careful with that…” After seeing Ending 1: “...Are you alright? You look like you’re worried about something, are you--” (she cuts herself off here) She's quick to ask concerned questions when things seem bad, but never actually follows them up with any actual advice or help beyond the usual "What's up?" In the case of effect dialogue, it could just be for the sake of gameplay brevity and getting you to the shop menu ASAP, but the way she cuts herself off with the post-ending dialogue is especially notable given her presence IN ending 1. "Are you--" what was she going to say there that she decided against saying? Does she not help him because she can't, won't, or doesn't know how to?

Lucky’s toeing a weird line where she’s easily the person who’s most helpful and there for Irving, but in every event besides her shop in the Nexus, she’s perpetually out of reach. She watches Irv drown in Ending 1, she’s inaccessible behind the fence in Dreaming Serpent’s World, she literally leaves him in the dark when she’s on the computer in the Lowest Point event and glitches out if you try to talk to her, and then she isn’t even at her shop if you go looking for her immediately after seeing that happen.

She’s always around, but always slightly out of reach. 

I don't think she's malicious, nor do I think she's a bad friend. Irving's bestiary is proof enough that he's perfectly capable of vibe-checking people and places (including his friends, as seen in entry #4) and if he thought something about her was REALLY bad news, I don't think she'd be allowed to just hang out in the Nexus. That said, there's definitely something weird going on. I'm personally betting that these two got accidentally themselves into a bad situation and they haven't quite figured out how to navigate it yet. Lowest Point is clearly not pleasant for either of them, and I think whatever was on that computer is probably, to some extent, at the core of their problems.

BONUS TRAIT BECAUSE THERE WASN’T ENOUGH EVIDENCE FOR ME TO SAY IT WITH CONFIDENCE: Musician and/or perfectionist. When you show her the tuning fork, she remarks “I used to have one of those.” I don’t know what the hell she would use it for beyond possibly dream exploration of her own, or if she’s a musician. Additionally, the tuning fork's description if you try to look at it in reality is "A perfectionist memory” which could just be a fun nod to the fork's function, or it could mean something. 50/50 shot on that!!

[honestlyitsjustsam]

favourite moments of bg3 -> (5/?)

[timethehobo]

Emmy being self-conscious of his age, and maybe even about how he looks. 🥺 Rook loves him anyway.

[starry-bi-sky]

Out of Context Stuff for a Danyal Al Ghul au i haven't posted - Pit Beast Danyal

Damian, 13: Look, Danyal, -- I am so sorry for everything that happened between us in the League, I hope you can forgive me.

Danny, 10 (allegedly): (has been secretly plotting to murder Damian this whole time, is still gonna do it obvs, but is going to make it significantly less painful now)

Danny: I-- of course, older brother. :]

--------

Bruce: what do you have there, Damian?

Damian:

Danny: (a hulking 10ft pit beast standing beside him, growling idly with ram horns gouging out his eyes and a second set of horns jutting into the air, spines down his back, and a long, spiked tail with an animalistic, skull-like face)

Damian, who smuggled him in (they've made amends): a smoothie, father

----------

Damian: this is my little brother Danyal, i murdered him when he was five. He festered in rage for the last half-a decade, took over a League mountain base in Switzerland, murdered everyone inside and then tried to murder me when I went to investigate with Drake.

Danny: hello!

Damian: we're cool now

----------

Damian: thoughts on resurrection

Danny, (a full ghost): i will succeed in murdering you if you try it

Damian: we'll put a pin in it then

----------

Danny (still instilled with League values): why don't we just murder him??

Damian, on patrol (Danny followed him): we don't murder people, Danyal

Danyal:,,,,are you sick, Dami?? Have you been possessed? Why not!?

(There is raucous laughing through the comms)

----------

Danny, five, pre-death: Dami! :D

Danny, dead, vengeful: Older brother (:

Danny, post-forgiveness: Dami! :]

-------

For some actual context: Danny is fully dead in this au, its a result of the classic DPxDC Demon Twins "death duel" trope but instead of Danny getting revived, he stays fully dead. Danny was five, Damian was seven. His ghost lingered though, and due to the proximity of the pits his ghost steadily absorbed the ambient energy it was letting off. The pits are not corrupted ectoplasm in this au, it's just liquid ecto.

Which means Danny's corruption from an angry and hurt little ghost boy to an unrecognizable monster is from his own doing. It's a result of him stewing in his hurt and anger for years, it physically warped him. He's very powerful. Danny can travel between League Bases but chose a small, out-of-the-way base in the Swiss mountains to fester in and then just. Never Left.

His influence steeped into the very foundations of the building, allowing him to transform and warp the rooms and hallways for his own bidding, Meaning he could turn it into a seemingly unending labyrinth if he so wished to, and block the entrance.

Eventually, blinded (both metaphorically and physically) by his own rage, Danny grew powerful enough to appear physically in the living realm and attacked everyone in the base, slaughtering them all and leaving the base abandoned. He attacks anyone who dares enter -- whether that be other league members, or the unfortunate hiker who stumbled across the base. His conscious is steeped into every nook and cranny of the building, there is nowhere you can hide where he can't find. Nobody leaves without his explicit say so. Nobody ever does.

Him appearing as ten years old before Damian in the skits above is his own physical doing. First it was to prevent Damian from being suspicious of him. Damian initially thought Danny was revived with the pits, he was too busy with his own training afterwards to notice that Danny never showed up again, and when he did notice, he assumed it was because Danny was too ashamed of his loss to face him. He'd always forget to ask about him.

Then it becomes a personal choice to appear as ten. It's how old he would've been had he been alive.

danny forgiving Damian is kinda for an offshoot branch of the main au. Whereas the main au takes the form of a ps4 first person horror game where Damian and Tim are investigating the Base for Plot Reasons. There's no sign of the rumored "monster" living inside until the end, where Danny, who was found inside the Base and has been happily "helping" them look around, manages to persuade Damian into splitting off from Tim in order to "show him something."

This something turns out to be Danny revealing that he never really forgave Damian for that fight, and he reveals through a horrifying transformation, that he was the monster the whole time. Which the game subtly hints at throughout as Danny's strange behavior becomes harder to ignore.

First from his insistence to only refer to Damian as "older brother" (when before the duel he always called him Damian or Dami), to him right off the bat denying the existence of a monster when questioned. ("There's no monster here, older brother. It's just me.") To other various things, like his knowledge of the outside world not matching up to modern times or things going on with the league outside of the base, or what happened to the other league members.

This whole idea was inspired by the song "Scylla" from Epic the Musical, with Danyal being the voice of Scylla as well as Odysseus, while Damian stands as Eurylochus. The instrumentals after Scylla says "hello" is him turning into the pit beast, and Scylla's "drown in your sorrow and fears" part is danny, as the pit beast, snarling at Damian while he attacks him.

There's a Good Ending, a Bad Ending, and a True Ending. The Bad Ending results in Damian being killed by Danny, it happens when Damian decides not to question or suspect Danny and treats him kindly. The Bad Ending is a cutscene, where Danny kills Damian quick and painlessly.

Meanwhile the Good Ending is Damian killing Danny. This is a boss fight, and it happens when Damian treats Danny coldly and suspiciously the whole time. Danny as a result, decides to make Damian's death painful as he had planned to, which is why it's a boss fight because it only causes him to double down on his anger.

The True Ending is Damian escapes with Tim. It happens when you treat Danny warmly up until the last minute, where when Danny proposes to Damian that he wants to show him something, Damian goes to talk to Tim and finally, reluctantly agrees that something is off with Danny, and that he'll be careful going in. It starts off with the boss fight until a third through, where it then changes to a cutscene where Tim manages to get the door open and Damian escapes out. It's then a chase scene down a never-ending hallway as the building actively works to keep you trapped inside. But you eventually make it to the exit so long as you avoid all the projectiles and doors.

Remember when I mentioned that Danny only lets people leave when he wants them to? That's where the treating Danny kindly throughout the game comes into play. It causes him to second guess himself and, eventually, reawaken and strengthen the love and admiration he had for Damian prior to his murder. It's why in the Bad Ending he kills Damian quickly -- because by then, he loves him enough that he doesn't want him to suffer, but is still so consumed by his rage and need for vengeance that he kills him anyways. That quiet part is what allows Damian (and Tim) to find the exit, because some part of Danny still loves Damian enough that he wants him to live.

The True Ending ends with a cutscene of Damian and Tim tumbling out into the snow/grass outside of the base. Damian looks up back to the entrance to see Danny standing there. But rather than a ten year old boy, there's a little five year old Danyal Al Ghul instead. He stares at Damian emotionlessly, blood seeping from his chest, staining his clothes, and little, bloody sword in his hands and tearstains on his cheeks, before he turns away and disappears back into the building.