Howdy 👋 I’m assuming you got here through the about page, which (at the time of writing) serves as an intro to yours truly and some various Omori-related factoids. Also at the time of writing, I’ve been working on this site for about a week and a half, launched it a couple days ago, and it’s about time I start using it for its originally-intended purpose: compiling the boatloads of meta I’ve accumulated over the last few weeks of being obsessed with this game!
Some things to know, going in:
playthrough notes
- I’ve played through the entire game once, mostly blind, and “liveblogged” a majority by sharing it in Discord direct messages with my good friend Weeb. He gave me a few small pointers, mostly pertaining to missable content (that Recycultist sidequest, man) but it was by no means a 100% run. For instance, I was nudged towards watering Basil’s flowers daily, but apparently missed it somewhere because I didn’t get that bonus scene at the end.
- Reviewing that “liveblog” is going to be my primary meta-project here, putting various observations/thoughts/opinions/etc. together in a more digestible format.
Occasionally I may see it fit to share snippets directly from Discord; they’ll be quoted like this. This may include screenshots, linked directly without reupload; Discord can be finicky about image-linking, so in case they don’t load for whatever reason, alt text is provided.
- Immediately after finishing the first playthrough, I threw the spoiler blinds to the wind. That said, I’m waiting to play the other routes (namely “Hikikomori” (not answering Kel)), and generally go through the game on a 100% achievement hunt, until after I finish this liveblog-compilation.
Prior to playing, I knew basically fuckall about Omori; about a year earlier, Weeb had recommended it and an artist I follow had made fanart, but neither told me much of anything about what it was about. I bought the game for myself on Steam as a birthday gift, played daily for like six days straight, and then on-and-off as my and Weeb’s schedules aligned. Took about a month in all, with over 70 hours logged on my last save file, and I don’t remember if there was an exact point I went from indifferent to head-over-heels “oh, this is going to consume my every waking thought now” adoration, but it happened early.
bias, inevitably
- My favorite characters are Aubrey and Kel, because I think they are fun and they cause me emotional pain. Objectively, though, I think Sunny is the most well-developed character, and I try not to let my character preferences skew my analysis.
- From what I’ve discerned, the game takes place in the late 90s/early aughts, and I’m old enough to be vaguely familiar with the latter part of that timeframe. Vaguely.
- I am fascinated by the narrative/storytelling approach that develops everything around a certain idea or arc, prioritizing symbol over realism. I don’t know if there’s a name for this, storytelling is not a “realistic vs figurative” binary, but here’s some formative influnces on my thinking:
- “Psychological Storytelling” by mmmmalo on Archive of Our Own—Homestuck meta, but the driving ideas apply: “thoughts, feelings, and desires may find expression in the environment, in the medium of the story itself, and in the form of other characters.” (I mean. Headspace? Hello??) mmmmalo knows a hell of a lot more about Freudian psychology than I strictly care to, but I’ve taken a few pointers from these trains of thought, especially concerning visual parallels & the idea of a character’s neuroses being manifested in how the story is built.
- “Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor” by Folding Ideas on YouTube (linked via Piped)—Fun fact, I have not actually watched this movie! I read the book and it’s not terribly similar (but very good in its own right). That said, this is perfectly digestible to someone unfamiliar with the source material (the analysis above, probably less so); A+ exploration of how metaphor points at theme, with much less talk of the subconsciousness.
- How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster—This is an actual book; PDFs are not hard to find (;V). Where the video uses a specific movie to make its point, this book uses a wide assortment of sources to make its points; it’s an introduction to dissecting novels with an eye for common symbology, with most chapters dedicated towards a particular motif. While it acknowledges that, say, winter need not always mean death, it’s still nice to have a roadmap of sorts.
- All that established, I love me a good in-universe analysis (why did character do that? what’s their favorite color, where’d they go to school), but I increasingly find my thoughts on Omori skewing Doylist. Why was the decision made to tell the story like this, and not that? Why this design choice? Wouldn’t it have been easier to do XYZ instead of ZYX? Character-level meta and storybuilding-level meta approaches can and probably will flip on a dime.
Yes, sometimes the squint-between-the-lines lenses lead me to absolutely batshit places (I spent a good chunk of the early game thinking Mari was Omori’s mother; I still think Sunny saw her as something of a mother-figure). But sometimes it pointed me in potentially-fruitful directions (ah, Something and the noose motifs). And most importantly, it’s fucking fun to feel like the guy in the Pepe Silvia meme, actually.
The non-looping version of a conspiracy board that currently appears on the page linked from the homepage tissue box. I have actually noticed a handful of additional connections since making it….
why tho
Again: Because it’s fun, next question.
Less flippantly: Idk, I just like dissecting stories! I like it even more when they’re rewarding. Prior to Omori my previous fixations have either been #NotThatDeep, or I just didn’t know how or want to pick at them so closely, not like this. But I feel like every other thread I’ve chased with this game has led me somewhere, and by and large it’s been absurdly rewarding.
I also felt the need to make a site for it because novellas of meta are absolutely obliterating my note-to-self solo-DMs, and I would like to organize them Somewhere Else. IDEK, man. There’s A Lot.
