#they're giving basil omori fr

[ziekkfreak2-0]

Pls go play "In Stars and Time".

[woodchipp]

Netflixvania's Lenore and OMORI's Sunny: Why Are They So Similar When They Shouldn't Be?

Sunny is the protagonist of the 2020 game OMORI, a hikikomori who shut himself away from the world after accidentally killing his sister.

Lenore is one of the arc villains of Netflix' Castlevania (2017), a vampire diplomat who at first is sent to manipulate Hector into complacency, but then forms a more equal bond with her slave.

On the surface, Sunny and Lenore should have nothing in common. And yet, somehow, they do.

NOTE: I'm aware those two characters' big crimes (manslaughter and rape by deception, respectively) are not comparable. The point of this post is to document the numerous similarities in their actions and the ways their respective stories frame them - nothing else.

This post mentions such topics as sexual abuse and suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

Lenore deceives Hector into having sex with her by pretending to support his desire to escape the situation he's trapped in, making him trust her on false pretenses; the support Sunny's friends give him is based on a lie he subconcsiously knows about, but doesn't divulge for the sake of covering his ass.

Hector reminds Lenore of the slave ring (a magical binding ring she used as a way to prevent him from fleeing the castle and/or rebelling against his captors), to which she only brushes him off by insinuating he was “having fun" when they had sex and Hector never brings up the subject again; Omori points out that the support Sunny uses to get through the final boss fight is based on the lie that Mari killed herself when Sunny was the one to accidentally kill her, and the game frames his point as unworthy of consideration solely because he’s Sunny’s evil mental illness.

Hector (presumably) makes peace with Lenore's abuse and then allows her to kill herself when she decides she doesn’t want to live anymore; Basil (presumably) makes peace with Sunny before the latter moves away despite Sunny’s abandonment of Basil prior to the game’s events. Both Lenore and Sunny abandon the person they're supposed to care about to the consequences of their own actions - twice, in Sunny's case.

Both Lenore and Sunny's suicides make the act look easy. The former kills herself on a whim and it's framed as romantic (with the show's director, Samuel Deats, outright confirming her death was presented as beautiful "for effect"); the latter’s fate is determined by a single "Yes/No" choice prompt after the final boss fight and the game frames him throwing himself off a roof if you select "No" as a joke by setting the cutscene to a cheery pop song.

Lenore barely shows any care about Hector's mental well-being since she's only concerned about his physical comfort; Sunny only imagines doing something nice for Basil by watering his flowers in Headspace without ever doing anything for him when he has the chance to.

Lenore seeks Hector's company only to complain about her woes; Sunny joins his friends again only because he's about to leave in 3 days.

NFCV's story wants the audience to forgive Lenore since she's sad about feeling useless even though she never does anything substantial to indicate she's changing into a better person; OMORI's story wants the audience to forgive Sunny since he's sad about killing Mari and abandoning his friends even though he never does anything substantial to indicate he's changing into a better person.

Hector's trauma is framed as irrelevant compared to Lenore's whining about how she feels useless; the grief Sunny's friends experienced in the four years before the game's events and are experiencing during said events is practically glossed over in favor of emphasizing how sad Sunny feels.

Lenore's rape by deception is trivialized into her making dick jokes with her victim, the very first scene of them together after her betrayal in the previous season, that is framed as a cute bonding moment; Sunny's manslaughter of Mari is trivialized into him having a nice picnic with his friends in front of her grave, a wholesome scene that ignores how he is sitting near the grave of the loved one he killed with his own hands, surrounded with his unaware friends, without as much as a hint of guilt (which could've been easily represented by Something)

As noted by the post's title and its introduction, the fact those two characters have this much in common is baffling and honestly disturbing. I shouldn't be able to compare a 16-year-old teenager to a 200-year-old rapist vampire that easily. That brings me back to the question posed by the title - why are they so similar when they shouldn't be?

The answer's plain and simple - shitty writing. In Lenore's case, the six-week time skip that gets the audience to the point where she and Hector are already besties may have come from NFCV's lead writer, Warren Ellis, being fired from the show following allegations that he molested women, which might've led to its last season being rushed. In Sunny's case, the reason for his failure as a character is thankfully far less horrific - Omocat has made it clear OMORI's emotional impact was their only priority, so it all boils down to them wanting to create the most tragic blorbo to have ever tragically blorbed at the expense of everything else, including the story's other characters and basic common sense.