*Digital Shrug*

I can't guarantee quality, but I can guarantee talk of dragons. (They/them btw, asks are always open) (oh I do Omori and LiS stuff mainly I guess?) (I also like Hollow Knight and DR/UT sooo) (might also just reblog shit sometimes) (and be a lil gremlin)

[white-tulips]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

you have one hobby when you’re twelve and suddenly everyone thinks it’s your entire personality (isn’t it, though?)

haven't written fic in a while. here's a short little thing that's been bouncing in my head for months

[antimonyclouds]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

your life is a story (make it a good one), chapter 1: the way of things fandom: mob psycho 100 fic summary:

The first thing Serizawa sees is that the esper is a child. His black hair is wiry, partially spiked up, like static electricity from a balloon is being actively held to it. The patches that aren’t wired up are hanging limp, glossy with grease. There is dust ran through it, and what looks like crumbling pebbles of stone, as if the boy had been smashed through a wall. There are bandages wrapped around his head, so that his bangs, matted to his forehead by sweat, half-covers them. And his eyes - his eyes are glassy. Empty. Downcast. The second thing Serizawa sees is that there is blood splattered across his t-shirt. (Or; in which Mob becomes a member of Claw, and Serizawa finds himself doubting Suzuki's vision for the first time since he was rescued.)

what if.. what if i wrote an mp100 fic.. haha.. could you guys imagine..

[antimonyclouds]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

HE'S IMPOSSIBLE NEW CHAPTER 2 YEARS LATER BAYBEEEE

YEAH THAT'S RIGHT FOOLS I SURVIVED THE INCIDENT. BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER (<- debatable)

it's a short one but i hope y'all like it!!

[sunnysviolin]

this is probably gonna be really really weird (also sorry if you dont answer questions like these) but if you havent talked about this already- what are your thoughts on sunny's and mari's parents? like, as in how they treated their children. i only saw a little bit in the tags of another post so i was wondering if you had a more in-depth explanation because it sounded interesting!

It's not weird! I answer pretty much any type of question, so feel free to send whatever you want. I have loooooots of thoughts about Sunny and Mari's parents, but I'm only going to talk about Mari's relationship with them here, because this got really long. Maybe I'll talk about Sunny and his parents if there's an interest

TW: Bad Parenting. I don't really know if it's abusive per say, but Mari is golden child, and so there's a lot that goes with that. I'm giving the bad parenting warning and putting it under read more. If there's some tag I should be adding, just send me an anon!

So I have lots of feelings about the different match ups here so I'm going to go based on each parent first, and then the things Mari never said

Mari's Mother always wanted a daughter. She had a strained relationship with her own mother, so she spent a lot of her childhood dreaming about what she would do differently when she had a daughter of her own.

She and Mari do a lot of little activities together. They do flower arrangements, sew and embroider, and sometimes scrapbooking too. Mari's mother was always happy because she was getting to live out all of the dreams that she had, and Mari is everything she ever thought her daughter would be.

Mari on the other hand sometimes feels stifled or pushed into a box by her mother. She adores her and she wants her mother to be happy, but it sometimes feels like her mother won't be happy with her unless she can make Mari exactly as she wants. Her mother never liked her playing softball, or playing pranks, or doing anything outside of what a 'good daughter' would do, but those were all parts of Mari.

The memories that always stood out to Mari was going shopping for new clothes at the start of every year. Her mother would take just her and it would be a girl's day for the two of them. They would go get new clothes, and then have dinner together at the nice restaurant in the mall. Her mother loved these days and treasured the memory after Mari was gone.

Mari hated them.

Mari didn't like going clothes shopping with her mother, because it was her mother shopping for her. Even when she got to be in her teens it was always still the same. Her mother would drag her around the mall and push her into store after store. She would pick out dress after dress, sensible skirts and dainty blouses, all with a childlike glee that Mari could never bring herself to ruin. Her mother treated her like a doll, and Mari just felt like she had to take it, because if she didn't, then there would be a space between her and her mother. She wouldn't know what to do with that space.

Mari's Father sees her as his star. He is incredibly proud of her, and he's always telling people how bright her future is. He went to every softball game, and after she couldn't play anymore, he helped her to find other interests. He never feels like he has to worry about her, because she's going to come out on top no matter what.

Their father wants Mari to succeed to her highest potential, so he pays for every extracurricular he can that she has the time for. He was the one to suggest she start taking college prep courses. He doesn't realize how damaging his perfect image of her is for Mari, because he loves her and he thinks that she thinks that love is unconditional.

He never even considered that his love might not be, but for Mari, it isn't. She's so convinced that she can't fail, and if she does, her father won't see her the same way anymore. He won't be proud of her, or tell his friends about how amazing she is. Her father just thought he was always building her up, but in reality it was more like a teetering pillar that he put her on top of that was always dangerously close to collapse.

After she's gone, the idolization of Mari only gets worse with her parents. They both know the truth, even though neither of them is willing to say a thing about it (for their own separate reasons) but in their eyes Mari can do no wrong. They both had wonderful perfect relationships with her that were stolen away. They never get the chance to see where they might have gotten some things wrong

[grot3squ3]

if you were a deity, what would you be the god of

[antimonyclouds]

Today on - things I found satisfying for literally no reason:

[sukifoof-art]

Visit Original Link

im finally done omori!! such a pretty game with such a pretty soundtrack… i dont think ive posted any of my piano covers here cuz it never really records well on my phone but i found my REALLY old phone which seems to record better for some reason?? i kinda like how this turned out :) heres the siblings

[sabrebash]

If you follow Selmers to the poetry society meeting in Night In The Woods, this is her poem. I loved it and the themes of the game, and wanted to use it as practice to see if i can control the way readers ‘hear’ the words through images.

[winters-sketches]

genuine question: fanfic writers, how much do you tend to plan out long multichapter fics?

also, how do you figure out where to leave off your chapters?

[antimonyclouds]

honestly i very rarely plan anything lol

i have a lot of Ideas but plans rarely survive contact with the story

the best method for me usually is just writing it stream of conscious and then editing it over and over and over to iron out all the flaws and get the pacing a bit better. that’s just what works for me tho - i know a lot of really great writers who plan out their fics chapter by chapter, meticulously, and it often turns out great! it’s just about finding what works for you.

as for ending chapters uhhhhh… i usually just finish on a scene break that feels semi-natural lol. i think that’s something you just get a feel for. chapter length too as people have said in replies

hope this was coherent lol

[winters-sketches]

fellow kel enjoyers will already know this, but related to the last post i wanted to talk about just how fascinating Kel is within the game and his canon cause like..

compared to everyone else? we hardly get to know anything about how everything impacted him.

We know plenty about Hero; Hero talks about how it impacted him, we get to see him grieving for Mari at her piano, we’re explicitly told that he’s not ready to see her grave, heck, KEL talks more about Hero’s emotions than his own in the scene that is about his own experience. We see pictures of Mari and Hero together, their pinwheels together, their headspace counterparts, etc. We know just how much Mari meant to him, and we know how it impacted him, too.

Similarly with Basil and Aubrey, we get to know a lot about how they felt simply because of how they act or what they’ve explicitly said. Both of them are fairly obvious with how they feel, whether it be through dialogue, actions, etc. Aubrey’s close relationship with Mari is very clear (hair dyeing plans come to mind with that one), and to an extent, so is Basil’s (Mari stealing his camera, flower crowns, etc.) (and obviously Basil is highly involved in. y’know. everything)

And Sunny’s the main character who we literally see the dreams and subconscious thoughts of, so. y’know. yeah.

Compare that all to Kel? We have scraps.

We don’t really get to see much about how he felt after everything, not from outside that happy exterior he always has. The most we get are that he’s lonely (as told by Sunny’s mom), he distracted himself by involving himself in sports, and he didn’t know how to help anyone. Of course he misses Mari a lot, but that’s about the extent of what he tells us. The most significant thing he mentions is his one-sided argument with Hero, and even then he talks more about how it affected Hero than himself.

In addition to this, we hardly know anything about his relationship with Mari. We’re never told how he feels about her, we don’t know anything about how they interacted with each other, and their Headspace versions don’t interact all that much as far as I can tell (do lmk if there’s anything of note that has happened, i’m not as familiar with the headspace portions of the game). They don’t share a single direct interaction in the photo album, either. As far as we know, maybe Kel just wasn’t as close with Mari as the others were. It’s left to the player to speculate to what extent that’s true.

As the main story presents it, Kel just seems to be the most stable person in the friend group: the one who moved on, the one who was happy-go-lucky enough to move forwards despite everything. He’s the instigator of the good ending, and the only reason why Sunny even left his house.

He’s simple. He’s funny. He’s happy, for the most part. That’s what Omocat seems to present to us, at least.

Until you look deeper into the subtle intricacies of the game, and beyond the game, and find that there’s so much more hiding within the tiny details.

Take the Comeback skill, for example. Most effective when Kel is sad, it makes him happy instead. Why is that? It seems to suggest that Kel is able to effectively bury his sad emotions with his happiness… which also implies that in real life, Kel may be doing the same.

Or the Angry Hero + Sad Kel follow-up, which if you haven’t seen the last post, basically: When Hero is angry, and Kel is sad, their follow up makes Kel become neutral. This effect is never explicitly stated in-game, not even in the Self-Help Guide. It’s secret, for unknown reasons… but it’s suspicious how much it aligns with the real world argument.

Or the bits of Kel burying his emotions in official art that Omocat has made, including both concept art and post-game art:

(both drawn by omocat)

Like, the fact that this behavior is never addressed, and only barely implied in-game?? It feels like there’s so much more to say about Kel, so many more feelings left unaddressed, and yet Kel is always just the way he is in the story. He has more depth, it’s clearly there, Omocat has shown that it’s there, and yet we never get the chance to see that.

Everything we do know about Kel’s feelings come from vague mentions in game or very subtle details that, if you weren’t already expecting a deeper meaning, you would brush off as something positive.

And maybe that’s the point. Because if he’s so good at hiding his feelings, you’d never notice. You’re not supposed to know if he’s upset. Because he’s not. He’s the happy one, remember? The happy friend of the group, the happy one who can stop being sad, the happy one on the emotions chart.Every explicit detail associates him with happiness, which makes it all the more jarring when things imply that he’s not, when the neutral ending hits and real Kel expresses sorrow for the only scene he does so in the entire game.

There’s just so much mystery and depth locked behind the cheerful exterior of Kel’s character, and the lack of content means it’s so much more fun to speculate about what’s going on behind the scenes.

-grabby hands- give us Kel lore, Omocat. tell us what’s going on with best boi.

[lastvalyrian]

Ouch, the part about not knowing what Kel and Mari's relationship even is hurt.

My opinion is that all the main characters represent different ways to react to grief:

Sunny: repression

Basil: toxic positivity and denial

Hero: depression

Aubrey: resentment and cutting ties with the past

And then we have Kel. Whose way to deal with grief is to refuse dealing with it at all. He's just moved past it. I think a lot of it is rooted in his idea of not being "deserving" of feeling grief, just like he often feels he is not deserving of praise or recognition compared to Hero. Hero lost his girlfriend, Sunny lost his sister, even Aubrey lost the friend that she looked up to like it's her own sister.

How could Kel feel as much grief as Hero when Hero has lost so much more? The idea almost feels insulting. Kel never puts himself at the center at the expense of others and least of all at this time and at the expense of his brother.

I think that is why he always deflects to Hero when the conversation gets close to his grief over Mari. And also why Sunny is the first person he opens up to that night with Hero, because he thinks Sunny is the only person with rights to be as sad as Hero. Not him.

[australet789]

It's not just that Kel thinks he doesn't deserve to feel grief compared to the rest, it's that he feels it's wrong.

The only scene we see Kel angry and expressing his feelings is when confronting Aubrey and The Hooligans at the lake. Why? Because Aubrey is bullying Basil. Because Aubrey is in the wrong, she is the antagonist, while Kel and Sunny are the heroes. Granted, the whole game is in Sunny's perspective and he is not a reliable narrator, but the hero (hah) complex is there.

So, going back to Mari's death, who is in the right to feel grief? Hero. Their parents go to console Hero and leave Kel behind. What does it mean for a young child?

That he is wrong to feel the grief. That whatever Hero said was right, it was correct, and whatever Kel was feeling was not.

It's more than just deserving to grief for Mari and rather that his feelings about the matter are morally wrong and that's why he should hide them, unless the circumstances require to do the opposite.

And it's usually because of Hero! In the lake scene, while Kel expresses his anger (justified) towards Aubrey, the moment Hero says "oh, i get it, it's just a Aubrey and Kel fight like they used to have as kids", Kel inmediately shuts himself down. If i remember the scene correctly, even when Kel tries to explain that there's more to that, he ends up accepting what Hero says.

Because Hero is in the right! Again! So Kel's anger is now wrong and he needs to comply and accept the different solution. That whole scene always bothered me because Hero sounds super condescending of the situation, but i digress.

Im not trying to put the brothers against each other, because i love them both, but i think Kel's need to hide his feelings is rooted is what Hero thinks is correct, and that's why he deflects to what his brother feels when is about Mari, and how he really feels in general.

[antimonyclouds]

oKAY THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT ABOUT THE HERO DISCOVERING KEL AND AUBREY’S RIVALRY THING BECAUSE I HAVE THOUGHTS-

because that’s the thing. Hero is wrong. it’s not just another aubrey and kel fight. it’s not. it’s years of resentment, it’s years of growing apart, it’s years of Kel being lonely and having no friends and Aubrey not reaching out, Aubrey getting new friends, and when Kel and Aubrey meet up again after Sunny leaves the house it seems like they haven’t talked at all in that entire time.

it’s not just a kel and aubrey fight.

and hero doesn’t know that.

hero’s probably been away at college since he was eighteen, right? seems likely to me anyway. maybe there’s a detail in the game about him going later, but i doubt it. he probably left right away. he’s sixteen when mari dies (i think), spends nearly an entire year in his depressive slump, and only then starts to pull himself together. but in this time he’s still grieving so bad that he has no idea how Kel and Aubrey have grown so fucking far apart.

so when he hears about this, he just goes, “oh, it’s another fight! make up, kids!!”

except they aren’t kids anymore, they’re 16-year-olds. and it’s not just another fight. it’s a gulf between them that’s lasted years.

and the game just - sweeps this under the rug. they just. become friends again, slip into their old groove. and it’s like-- what??

kel and aubrey are not friends. and they haven’t been friends for four fucking years.

and hero babying them really rubs me the wrong way. i almost want to say it seems like he’s in denial, but maybe he’s just used to kel being childish, kel being annoying younger brother, bright ball of sunshine, the kid that hero always took care of, looked after. no, he can’t be having a serious issue with aubrey - they’re friends. don’t be silly. it’s just another fight, they’re always fighting. and aubrey’s desperate to have her old friends back, so the waterworks just start up, and she hugs it out and breaks down, and now kel can’t really go sorry, we aren’t friends, it’s not just another fight, can he?

[antimonyclouds]

a- are there any good cactiflower (basil/kel) fics asking for a friend

[antimonyclouds]

some snuuy thoughts;

sunny is the ‘gifted kid.’ omori canonically has a great memory and mari is, like, ms. perfect, so i think sunny would be the smart kid. in addition to that he daydreams in class and is clearly Very Creative. this comes with a few problems.

first; when sunny gets less than straight a’s his mom is like “this is really good hun, but maybe try to aim a little higher? we don’t want your schoolwork to slip, do we?” this becomes worse after sunny drops out and moves away and re-enters school in his new town. “we don’t want this to be like last time, do we, hun?” and then she insists that sunny doesn’t HAVE to get straight a’s or anything, she’s just being careful.

sunny also hates showing anyone his art because it’s not very good. some of his sketches in headspace are really good and some of them are less good, and i think he generally sees himself as being pretty bad at drawing. he doesn’t let anyone see his notebook.

mari was very musical growing up and sunny also loved music, but he didn’t have as good an ear for it as mari and any time he tried to learn something on the piano mari would be like “oh, what are you playing, sunny?” and then replicate what he was stumbling through completely perfectly and be like “you just need to practice a little more!” and he knows she’s just trying to help but he still gets really annoyed and a little hurt. he doesn’t show it, though. it’s dumb.

he hates feeling dumb, which is a big reason he refuses to try anything new around other people. and then he visits everyone in faraway and hero is like “we’re baking cookies, sunny! want to help?” and sunny just signs “no i’d probably break something or set something on fire” and snarks it off because he hates feeling dumb and having someone look at him with that stupid condescending thing in their eyes and saying “no, no, like this,” and he would rather not stumble his way through learning a new skill, thank you.

sunny listens to vocaloid and does not attempt to hide this fact. aubrey hates it. kel just vibes to da tunes.

sunny is pan. i could kinda seem him being demi or ace but i personally headcanon both sunny and basil as Gay Disasters who think not-wholesome things semi-often.

he has book smarts but precisely zero common sense or people skills. he does his best, though.

if sunny had a crush he wouldn’t super actively try to hide it but he’d just kinda be like ‘oh. ok. that’s a thing now’ and just act like it didn’t exist.

i could probably go on forever but i’m stopping now.

[antimonyclouds]

kel: what if we kissed and we were both musicians sunny: ... kel: haha jk jk kel: unless...?

Hi yes I might be Writing Something again <.<

I know I have a lot of WIPs but consider: brianrot.

[antimonyclouds]

The Hero & Kel (and parents) rant (spoilers!)

I’m sorry, I had to do it eventually-

So. Okay.

This one’s personal.

How does Kel feel about Hero, and how does Hero feel about Kel. The best place to start with this is post-staircase, to try and figure out how they’d feel without the whole Staircase thing.

So. How do they feel post-staircase?

Boy am I glad you asked because these thoughts have been plaguing me--

So. Let’s start with Kel, because I think that’s more complicated.

Here’s the thing. Judging by the argument Kel talks about in the graveyard, he should honestly resent Hero. From how he acts when he’s younger, he was clearly hungry for attention, and didn’t get the amount he needed or deserved. Meanwhile, there’s Hero. Golden Child Extraordinaire. Totally Perfect.

The thing that concerns me is this;

Kel worships Hero.

Both post-staircase and pre-staircase, he absolutely worships his older brother. More concerningly - both pre-bedroom argument and post-bedroom argument, he worships Hero. He never has a bad word to say about his older brother, he despairs over getting him a proper gift, he clearly eagerly anticipates his visits from college, he thinks Hero is perfect. 

This becomes concerning when considering the bedroom argument.

Consider this; you’re Kel. You are at the most emotionally vulnerable you’ve ever have been. For the last year or so, your older brother, the most important person in your life, has been absolutely wrecked. Your parents are probably paying even less attention to you than usual - they have to worry about their own lives, and Hero, and are probably taking the whole thing pretty hard themselves, unsure how to function with their golden boy so completely devastated, nothing they’re doing seeming to help. You are practically friendless. Sunny, your closest friend in the whole world, has completely disappeared. Left you behind. Aubrey seems really mad at you when she passes you in the hall, and you haven’t even really tried to talk to her that much, because. What is there to say? And Basil has been acting more and more distant recently, and it’s honestly really hard to try and stay friends with everyone when they’re all drifting away. Not to mention that Mari committed suicide. And maybe you weren’t as close to her as Hero, or Sunny, or Aubrey, but you’re still young and impressionable and she was still your friend. Maybe even a role model, or a parental figure.

You’re done doing nothing about Hero. You can’t just wait around anymore.

You try to reach out.

Hero starts screaming.

We don’t know what he says. We don’t know if Kel genuinely does repress it or not. Or even if he convinces himself he repressed it, just so he doesn’t have to confront it. Hell, for all we know, Kel dealt with it healthily. Knew Hero didn’t really mean it, or accepted Hero’s apology, or was just glad it was all over and barely even absorbed what Hero said, or genuinely repressed it.

But. Come On. None of us actually think that, right?

I think Kel remembers every word Hero said in that bedroom. I think they were branded against his fucking skull, and I doubt he’s gone more than a week without thinking about them since.

Which is concerning.

Because Kel still worships Hero. He never expresses a single negative emotion due to this. And, if he didn’t repress it, and didn’t just think that Hero didn’t mean it, that leaves two options.

Either, A; he accepted Hero’s apology, and genuinely held no hard feelings or residual emotions about this at all.

Or, B;

Kel thought whatever Hero said in that bedroom was correct.

And with that horrifying thought out of the way, how Kel feels about Hero becomes a Lot more complicated, post-staircase. Because suddenly, Hero isn’t amazing older brother - Hero is the one who’s always correct. Right?

And Hero would probably agree with all the mean little voices in his head.

No. Maybe even worse than that. Hero is all the mean little voices in his head. The person he worships.

And what about Hero?

Oh, Hero. Post-staircase, Hero cares so much about Kel.

He rouses himself from his depressive state, I think, purely because he didn’t want to push Kel down the same path as Mari. Because he still blames himself for what Mari did, and doesn’t want to make Kel do the same - wants to protect the person close to him, rather than constantly worship the memory of someone already gone and push him away in the process.

Hero loves Kel. Loves, loves, loves him.

But, therein lies the problem, doesn’t it?

This is post-staircase.

So what if that never happened?

Well, dear reader, let me draw your attention to a scene in Basil’s photo album. Pre-staircase.

Kel and Hero get in an arm wrestling match. Kel loses and gets moody, and Hero leans in and gives him a smooch. “Ah, brotherly love.”

Cute, right?

Except, uhm. Here’s the thing. Kel gets moody.

And this isn’t just a ten minutes and it’s over kind of thing. Kel is still feeling sour the next day. This is something we never see from Kel, not before this and not since. Especially not towards Hero.

And why does he get so moody?

Well, consider this - Hero is... a nerd. He’s physically weak, something played for comedy many times in Headspace, and all his awards are for academic feats.

Kel, on the other hand, is very athletic. Certainly is post-staircase, anyway, with the whole basketball thing.

And now, the last thing Kel thought he was genuinely better at than Hero - pure physical strength - has been taken away from him.

Just like everything else.

And he actually gets moody over this. He doesn’t ignore it, or move on, or forget it after half an hour - he genuinely gets annoyed with Hero. For a full day. And remember, this is Kel. Not just Kel - twelve-year-old Kel. Experiencing a non-joyful, non-erratic emotion for a full day. That’s not nothing.

Without the staircase thing - without Kel being told something horrible about himself in his most vulnerable moment, and probably believing it - how would he feel about Hero? Would he still worship his perfect older brother, who takes everything from him? Who gets all the awards, and all the girls, and all the height, and all Mom and Dad’s attention? Not Hero, the figure huddled in his blankets, completely despondent, who Kel felt personally responsible for - no, Hero who gets everything he ever wants, while Kel has to fight just to have his parents look at him.

I dunno. I doubt he’d just adore Hero. And maybe he’d grow more mature about this kind of thing with age, but, well. You could argue that would just lead to another Hero is the idolized version of my own self-loathing thing, just down another path.

So, yeah. Basically, fuck your feel good everyone-lives au, everything is all depressing all the time /lh /j

I wrote this at like six in the morning so don’t crucify me if I said anything bad or wrong-

[antimonyclouds]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Hi yes I did a Hero/Mari thing for those who are interested :)

Summary: “I’m Mari,” she said.

She’s skinny, and pale. It’s the two things keeping her from being a conventional beauty - her cheeks a little too sallow, her skin a few shades too unhealthy, her eyes a little too caved-in.

Hero hardly notices, though - because her smile lights up her features, fills out her expression like sunlight breaking through the ice frosting over the surface of a lake.

“I’ve never written any poetry,” she confesses, a little self-effacing lilt to her smile. Like a silent can you believe that?

She makes one of the best first impressions Hero’s ever seen.

(Hero and Mari meet in a poetry club.)

[antimonyclouds]

Dude are you like dead

I'm sorry-

A lot of factors have gone into the long hiatus, and I don't really like getting into personal stuff, but I am still writing! And trying to finish the next chapter/s of the various fanfics I've started. Writing is just hard.

[antimonyclouds]

Some more omori thoughts while I work on fanfic ._. (spoilers!)

Something I find difficult to write/read is AUs where Mari didn’t die.

These are very common, just because. People like Mari. She’s fun to write. But there are a few events and character changes that happen entirely due to Mari’s death, and I wish we got more non-headspace looks at what exactly the group’s dynamic was becoming before her death.

Kel and Aubrey obviously had their rivalry, and Basil was a lot less anxious and just generally healthier, which is all well and good. But then there’s the sibling dynamics, which I think is one of the things Omori discusses best (as someone with siblings myself who. uh. has a complicated relationship with them lol)

Sunny and Mari is a tough one. Mari was obviously pushing Sunny to be better when it comes to the recital, but given what info we have on how Mari acted in The Staircase Argument/moment/whatever, it’s unclear how much of this was specifically focused on this particular recital and how much it was Mari genuinely resenting Sunny. Mari treats Sunny very, VERY lovingly in Headspace, and there’s a lot of cute moments in Basil’s photo album, but...

Mari was so obsessed with perfection that she pushed her own brother to. That. And Sunny doesn’t seem like a bad kid - quite the opposite, really, he seems very quiet and sweet. Remember that the creepy deadpan shit that we get in Headspace isn’t Sunny, it’s Omori. Who I think Sunny deliberately characterizes as more cold and emotionless, since that’s what HE wants to be. He wants to be neutral, to be emotionless, to not feel so awful and broken. Though it might also be how he views himself after Mari’s death - someone emotionless and remorseless. And all that is assuming that there’s no DID involved with Omori, and that he’s not literally a different person who just happens to look similar.

I dunno. Depending on how villainous you characterize Mari as, it could lean on either side of the bell curve, and the amount she pushed Sunny as opposed to how much pressure Sunny was putting on himself during the recital isn’t made very clear. It’s also unclear how much, if any, resentment Sunny was building up towards Mari as a result of the recital practice.

Either way, it’s hard to say how much of their issues were due to specifically the pressure of the recital and how much was Mari expressing feelings that she would never share with anyone else, but were forced out due to that pressure. I feel it’s also important to mention that the characterization of the parents can be used to assume elements of characterization when it comes to the children - Mom being a bit neglectful and deliberately babying Sunny after Mari’s death, and being unwilling to let go of him and thus leading to most of the issues that happen in the game (we do not stan Sunny’s Mom on this blog, sorry,) and Dad getting only sparse characterization but clearly being at least fairly strict. These two not only raised their kids with their values - elements of their characters would obviously be passed down. Which is something I don’t think you can handwave, seeing as how obviously Kim takes after her mother, how much Hero and Kel take after there mother and father, etc etc.

I dunno. On the one hand, I don’t want to villainize/victim blame Mari, but on the other, given that she arguably pushed Sunny to... that... and was obviously putting too much pressure on someone who, let me remind you, was around 11 at this point in time? Maybe 12? 

So, yeah, with all that, how exactly their relationship would look without the pressure of the recital or just without the Staircase Thing specifically happening is always really difficult for me to get a good grasp on.

And then there’s Hero and Kel, which. Oh yikes. That’s honestly its own can of worms, and. Yeah. This post is already way more than long enough.

Honestly I really wanted to get some of your opinions on this, because... well... I’m really not that good at interpreting the game lol. I’ve been trying my best but so many other people’s thought pieces/posts on elements of these characters are so much better thought-out, so I thought I’d try to gauge what you all thought about this kinda thing.

And if you want to read that rant about Hero and Kel. Do feel free to tell me. I could ramble about this game and my half-baked thoughts all day lol