hikikomori notes 2

Kući Basila (House of Basil), Ostatak Sana (Rest of the Dream)

• in all my musings re:lake shit it just dawned on me that Basil’s house is… surrounded by a lake? moat boy.
• Say cheese! staged. staged as fuck!!!!! Basil’s first line is even more of a blatant lie now, even relative entirely to his Headspace characterization!!!!!
• when the gang’s crowding to look at the photo, Omori moves behind Basil, and Basil turning around to face him puts his (Basil’s) back to Kel. shunned x2 (or x3, counting the cactus comment) combo
• Basil’s lil motions with the photos reminds me, there’s an unused sprite sheet of real-Basil doing that dramatic “hold high, then slam down” motion that Sunny does with the comic book. it’s good
• anyway huh yeah no wonder Kel was so pushy about getting a view, RIP. after Basil gets pushed over Aubrey apologizes and Kel,, doesn’t, to him, directly. only to Hero. also please don’t tell Mari, huh…
• y’know you never do go to the area behind his house, huh? not that it matters too much, only that one pail and shovel stand out, but it does look vaguely like that would be a possible thing. oh well! (same applies to the Fix-It garden center, actually…)
• let us take a moment to appreciate that Basil does not watch you as you walk around the room here
• funny enough even though there’s the obligatory video game “are you ready to advance the plot?” question, you actually can’t leave the house once you walk in.
• huh, it is Impossible to get the photo order wrong. (this came up last time, iirc; wasn’t paying much attention and felt like I was guessing.) I forget if this applies to the real-world version too? also if you try to quit midway Kel talks, implying that Omori looks up at him like “?” and it’s great

• maybe-noteworthy is that the dislodged photos are all group shots (the blurry photo Basil just took outside, Mari’s picnic selfie, her and Aubrey with Basil’s flower crown, and everyone (minus Basil) taking a nap on the blanket). were it not for the blurry one they’d all be photos with Mari….
• Kel: Yeah, I promise to never fight with Aubrey ever again! Unless she starts it first… lol lmao
• the little high-pitched noise (more of a… ring? like when your ears are ringing after a loud sound) and the music stopping… Atmosphere Good. Sound Design Good. (the fireplace crackle stays, interestingly.)
• maaaan, the photo that pops up is the one of her at the bottom of the stairs, isn’t it? knew that was coming but it still got me a lil
• second appearance of Something now, in the last page of Omori’s sketchbook—which is also missable, interestingly
• Mewo’s parenthetical dialogue changes too, which is fun; it’s every line on this page, from Not much to do around here, is there? to There is always one… [notable pause] but…; I don’t remember when, if ever, the Mom one comes up
• man, I remember being scared shitless around this part, and everything right up to the first -phobia Did Not Help… it’s not nighttime atm, granted, but also familiarity is a concept. idk, something something you can only play unspoiled/for the first time once
• but yeah, Unwanted Memory creeps in specifically of Mari’s death, and it brings back so much terror and guilt we’re right back to suicide being the only way out. ofc this wakes him up, there’s apparently no other way to wake up (over the course of the game anyway, don’t think it’s clear whether Omori could phase out for Sunny to wake up on less stressful days)… no particular conclusions here, just, RIP.
• hey okay, ok, at the cutscene right. where Basil and Sunny reviewed the scattered photographs, presumably before or after The Scribblening, and… These are all of our memories together…? All???? Basil, bruh, you had that camera for a year. One (1) singular year. There are way more photos shown in the cutscene than in the album, I think (though take with salt I have not counted), but still!!
  • the scribble effect ends the cutscene, so maybe this was before Sunny did the thing? but like… who knows, that could also just be him figuratively scribbling out this particular memory, right now. I’m not sure why the photos would be scattered otherwise, tbh 🤔

timeline tangent

So ^that brought up the idea that, maybe Basil specifically only knew the group for a year? and so the album is of all his memories with them? But this is disproven by his very first photo being Sunny and the Violin of Death, which the gang worked together to save for for an entire year prior.

The Duet sequence is a bit inconclusive here; everyone looks p young (far as this style can indicate ages) in the parts where Basil is introduced, I’d wager around Headspace age (though I also don’t think Headspace is tied to a particular age, as indicated by the kids getting closer over time)… There are a couple shots of just plants, first after Basil’s introduction (mere sprouts in pots) and, after a montage of Group Activities (and particulary Sunny and Aubrey on the swing, huh), well-grown flowers on a shelf; symbolism, presumably, for the six bonding.

Also, there’s a picnic after that—not necessarily at the lake, but it cuts right to Sunny underwater. Based on the real album captions, they discovered the lake within that last year! And, entirely unwritten, ditched it on account of Sunny almost drowning! Swell!!

In conclusion I don’t fuckin know why Basil refers to the scattered photos as “all of our memories.” It’d be one thing if they were all of his and he was just being short-sighted, but… no?? dude??? hello?????

ok right tho back to game.

• You see a boy sleeping in his room. What’s his name? when Sunny (or, insert player-given name here, you know who I mean) wakes up, or starts to, he sees himself in third-person. this might be the only time the game narration seems to address the player directly?
• Steam sucks on many levels (why must it take like ten minutes to update and log in and load a bunch of crap I don’t need or want, just to open Omori while “online” (for achievement purposes, for the record)) but anyway, apparently you can lock in the name “Omocat” for Sunny. that’s a thing you can do.
  • returning to the prompt, it also auto-resets the name to Sunny
  • also, it’s funny that you can use symbols and lowercase here?? idk if that’s a development oversight but you’d think it’d be easier to restrict capital A-Z, in keeping with every other Important Noun in the entire game, here
  • but yeah okay fiiiine we’ll refrain from giving him some goofy name. even in his worse moments he is still very much Sunny, we are not pulling a Basil on the route separation here
• so a note from Mommy on Mom’s sticky note is an immediate sign that she regards Sunny as a lot younger than ~16 (no offense to anyone who calls their mother “mommy,” it just tends to sound younger, and clearly Sunny doesn’t use it from what he calls the note anyway). despite, y’know, leaving him on his own for three days and all that.
• y’know, considering that Sunny can’t even get back to bed because he’s so hungry, and the message says the movers will be around in a few days, not 3… how long has Sunny been sleeping this round?? he cannot possibly enjoy getting up in the middle of the night to microwave an old steak. dude’s probably been starving himself for a bit….
  • the voicemail goes on to mention the lights might cut out tonight, but that doesn’t necessarily mean This Very Night In Which The Message Is Listened To, y’feel
• Kel has been trying really hard to get a hold of you ever since we put our house up for sale. He’s been calling us every week for the past few months! … :,)))
• no Mari mirror jumpscare yet… maybe that only kicks in after going back upstairs
• Are you sure you want to go downstairs? is such a good fuckign,, idk if it’s even foreshadowing, it comes across as Typical Point-Of-No-Return Prompt (and unlike Basil earlier, you actually can go back and save), but You Know.
• once you hit Yes on that prompt Sunny takes the first step down on his own, will not return, and… oh wait you can’t even do more he just u-turns on his own. still no mirror-Mari, though…
• ah, there we go—after the second attempt to sleep fails, then we get the hallucinatory blue (with ominous red window) house! dilapidated walls and all! the background ambiance even sounds vaguely… underwater-y, I think? it’s muffled.
• detail I missed: there’s a set of three portraits on the wall left of Ominous Red Window, and trying to examine it makes one drop with a glass-breaking sound effect; Sunny moves back (no movement-sprite, just clips from one tile to the next) automatically. examining it again is this flavor text: Some family photos.
  • . . . man god fucking damn it this foreshadows having lost a family member long before Mari’s death is revealed, what the fuck. (actually, I wonder if Mari’s death even is revealed outright in this route, since in the true one I think it first comes up explicitly through Who cares what Mari thinks? Mari’s dead”….)
• huh, I missed the whispering in this part the first time too; very much evokes Off’s “Silencio.” there’s a bit in the church scene (coincidentally enough, considering the above note) that also has whispering people, but that’s diegetic and I don’t think it’s the exact same audio…? or if it is then this one’s probably more distorted
  • the longer I listen to it though it is absofuckinlutely a “Silencio” echo (sound pun not intended), the sounds are so very word-like but Not Quite (or at least not in English)
• the atmosphere here is actually kinda nice now that I’m not scared shitless ngl. but alas, Sunny Must Eat
• aww, the part where he turns around, shakes, turns back down… huh, I wonder if that’s approximately where the stairs would’ve actually ended. definitely gets darker after that, and then there’s the knife…
• the irl hand jumping down is still the worst thing thank you! …I think that’s the same image that pops up in the Truth sequence, with fingers chopped off one by one
• the Actual grab-shove-Down-Motion immediately preceding the fight still made me jump, gratuitious side-note-typing and all. Got Damn
• the little sound effect, too, when Something attacks Sunny… sounds almost like a voice…. (or well something squeaky but still.) damnb…..
• it is fucking wild that Sunny simultaneously hallucinates the Something, in a form that doesn’t resemble his sister at all (and so probably isn’t “her” as much as the more trademark shape in the sketchbook; iirc the later encounters with these motherfuckers actually calls them “Fear of [thing]” straight-up?)—anyway, that, and at the same time the reassuring voice of his sister. (I mean you can argue that’s the ~real Mari~ but either way.) juxtaposition!!!
• hypothetical ghost Mari, watching as I intentionally do not have Sunny calm down just to see what happens if you throw this battle:
  • I won’t do this with every mandatory fight or I’d be here all year (didn’t try it back in Headspace, for instance, if only because I’m pretty sure there’s nothing) but eh, I wanna see if the Something stops doing damage or locks you at 1HP…
  • Remember, Sunny, all you need to do is calm down… —but oh, damn, you actually can black out there. you’ll see Sunny’s normal palette for the K-O, too, which is a little jarring
  • (meanwhile, Mari: bruh. One Job)
• aw damn you gotta retry from the start (no Calm Down option), won’t be doing that again ig >:V
• ah, the faint piano note after Calm Down… :,)
• more fun with subtle ??foreshadowing: of course there’s Nothing Here for that one part of the ground, but the other clear wall (by the piano room) has no flavor text whatsoever! …I’m guessing Sunny will not be touching either of these rooms, this route!
• microwave sound effect gives me the vaguest of Yume Nikki vibes but hell if I remember which room
• shame Sunny can’t just take the steak back to his room as-is and tear into it with his teeth like god intended. you just Gotta have the knife
• the wavy nausea effect is Actually the most disorienting shit ever it’s like looking at something underwa—oh. ohhhhhhhhh of Course it would be, and so was the Descending Hand btw (as in, same effect applied)
  • made an offhand joke about Sea of Steak and oh yeah, meat-water is literally an Off thing. I don’t thiiiink that’s an intentional correlation (here, specifically; probably is later with Humphrey and raft) but fun/ny coincidence!
• whoops, meant to check other rooms before the bathroom but once you enter there you ain’t leavin’ either
• aksdhgskdjfs the mirror gets warped too, don’t remember that
• post-vomit, still no Mari… hellmari wherefore art thou. the LPer mentions that not letting her in when she knocks will take out a bunch of jumpscares;^[1] I will not be doing that because I love to Suffer x2 Do-over Combo, but ig she doesn’t show up in the mirror until then either?
• oh speak of the sister, I forgot you immediately get greeted by that sound effect upon leaving the bathroom. seems you can indeed also go to bed right after, ignoring it! but again. Nah
• There she—dammit I didn’t realize the hellmari in Mom’s bed disappeared so fast. Well She Was There, which was not news to me (read it on some spoiler-binge, not sure if I got it first playthrough), fun fun! (she’s in the mirror, too!)
• …at some point Sunny also lost 5HP! I’m not sure if that’s from the steak or something else!

zzz

• Press Q to open the Hangman Menu Instructions Which I Immediately Forgot Upon Reading
• also on the note of forgetfulness, I forget exactly what you have to grab here before heading back to Headspace!
• NVM found the map! this one’s ~northwest of the door; makes sense, same general direction as Headspace itself
• ahh, there’s the Ominous Dark Fear Overlays that I remember!
  • drowning overlay lingers the whole time you’re on the pier, and abruptly goes away soon as Omori’s back on dry land
  • no height overlay, you can’t even get close (Hero stops you)
  • arachnophobia overlay lasts until… hm, when you’re close to the nearest lamppost 🤔 fear of spiders ~= fear of dark?
• okay look i Know that the Headspace kids aren’t truly characters in their own rights, but Hero reports that the last he remembers was sorting photos with Basil and then all three woke up in Neighbor’s Room. which is interesting on multiple accounts; 1) “Neighbor’s Room” is a name they use in-world, and 2) they do have some degree of memory continuity when shit gets weird. not the part where Basil freaked out, apparently, but it’s something (pun not intended)
• Mari (to Kel, when discussing worry over Basil): It’s at times like these that we gotta stay positive! gee wonder where he got that trait from
• no more flower picnic :,) just the regular gang, no dialogue
• Hero also stops you from veering into the forest before revisiting Basil’s house
• you haven’t been introduced explicitly to the watering mechanic yet, but you can water that one dead sunflower! …yes, I will be doing that even though there’s no apparent reward on this route (afaik…?), what of it
• obligatory “:,^)” with the whole picnic scene of Aubrey getting upset over Basil, and the group being like “oh no where is he” but simultaneously “well, no use freaking out…” in general. this was funny at first, But Watch Out
• aaand there, first mandated Something(-in-that-shape) encounter is in Basil’s house. Omori still runs in first, huh. (it seems like a faster entry than normal, at least…)
• [Running off with no warning] doesn’t sound like him. He’s usually so considerate about these things. oh yeah, that reminds me, noticed recently that Basil has a long-standing habit of running off to “use the bathroom” (read: probably have an anxiety attack). jury’s still out over whether the others (well, besides Sunny, probably) are privvy to this or if they just think he has mad gastrointestinal issues
• The fireplace is burning, just as Basil left it. …huh. wonder if that’s related to the Burning Man at all; iirc, fire is not a generally big theme here…. oh and there’s the Daddy Longlegs guy who walks into the flame in that Lost Forest area. besides them, though….
  • the dark not-quite-Something figures with the formal vocab have a tenuous link to Basil via Stranger; they all seem to manifest Sunny’s conscience. …Sunny, sun -> hot fire -> Essence of Him? maybe related, Aubrey’s portait on the emotion chart being on fire, which is really weird otherwise because she doesn’t have that association elsewhere?? could be related to the broader theme of light and truth, as in “bringing something to light” and clarity and all that… hmmm.
    • “yeah but ‘cartoon character is so mad they spontaneously combust’ is a classic symbol” if you’re here for easy answers you are Wrong. hey, relatedly, it’s raining around Hero and it’s not like water is a hella pertinent visual; Kel’s is more generically cartoony if anything
      • and speaking of the water, while I’m looking at this chart again, fun fact! “juice” used to be indicated by an orange circle!

Vast Forest onward

• anyway, entering Vast Forest for real this time! commence bunny-slaughter! (I will try not to overlevel this time but we’ll see!!) Aubrey Smacks Kel For No Reason Count: 1
• “oh yeah I have the emotion chart basically memorized by now—” accidentally gives Kel a disadvantage
• something something whole talk about “using your head” (the Berly sidequest) is not Just a smartness joke but A Metaphors (Headspace), ball (A Circle) potentially lost forever in the forest… but cba to dissect that
  • Just don’t get in my way when I show off my totally awesome Headbutt skills! [Berly Proceeds To Do Fuckall In Every Battle]
• huh, I was forgetting about these lil bird dudes who act as signposts… birds don’t really show up otherwise iirc (other than ig the Orange Oasis chicken), wonder if Sunny had a pet bird?
• jeez, I knew Kel was a glass cannon (I. I think??? imagine paying attention to non-attack stats) but he keeps dying getting toasted >:(
• don’t get lost in Vast Forest challenge (impossible)
• every time someone walks flagrantly off the picnic basket despite my prior assumption they were kinda locked to it, take a shot. you will probably be mildly buzzed. (Mari steps off to comment on Omori getting stronger, when you return to the Playground after passing the docks)
• lmao “we can’t all have memory like Omori’s.” I wonder if Sunny did (maybe still does, in general) have a good memory, it just got suppressed to shit… actually yeah that’d make sense, he remembers it too well
• Berly simply phasing out of/into Omori when the ball is found foreshadows everyone here being a figment of “his” imagination, discuss
• No ~hard~ feelings (after volunteering Aubrey for Headbutt-learning) Kel is a pun menace good for him
• I missed this sidequest but isn’t the guitar guy irl moving? that’s kinda sweet, that his Headspace version is Completely Stationary(TM)—irl guy’s moving on with his life! (and if I am wrong I will eat my words)
  • later edit: ayoooo
• ohhh, the fear of heights overlay is hands. not sure if they’re the same hands as the arachnophobia sequence, but they sure are hands!
• ok so. vs Pluto, everyone at level 4 (Kel slightly behind the rest); one turn takes one arm down half, Kel fuckign dies first again oh my god blease
  • good news, gang. not overleveled. got both arms down but Pluto Expanded pummeled the rest!!
  • update it took three tries. Omori was nearly dead on the last turn but moved first. Kel was a bro when he didn’t get K-O’d early (Hero went down first on that last try instead), sorry about the continued EXP lag buddy
• …huh, I noticed this earlier but only just validated: having a picnic with your friends also heals the whole party, even though there’s no sound effect :o

but yeah. jesus. okay yeah jesus christ done for today

+p.s. ok comparing a screenshot of this attempt to previous, there’s a 2-level difference (6 last round). je,,Sus,,,,,