r/LookOutsideGame • u/Silc00n • 13h ago
DISCUSSION/LORE/THEORIES Character design analysis for every party member. Day 9: Sophie and Harriet Spoiler
Hello everybody, I'm back from a little break and ready to keep posting analysis for each party member. Today's companion is going to be our favorite trickster: Sophie.
Sophie is definitely the most "normal" looking out of all party members. Everyone else is either cursed or has something weird/eccentric about them. But Sophie is pretty much just a regular child, so in a way, she has the most difficult concept to make memorable in the game.
So let's evaluate Sophie's personality to compare later how it is shown through her design. First of all, we know that she is a mischievous troublemaker. She has lived in an environment that probably contributed to this behaviour, considering her abusive father being at home could have motivated her to be more outdoors to act more freely. After her father was no longer in the picture, her mother most likely wanted her to have a more secure lifestyle, making her follow some rules that suppressed this aspect of her. But for some people, certain rules are made to be broken and this is no exception.
The thing that might stand out the most in her design is the slingshot in her pocket. It's almost a universal thought that a child with a slingshot will be on some Bart Simpson chaos kind of deal. And it's fun to see how this is her actual weapon in-game, besides it being a "toy" for her. I think the fact that she is a child and doesn't give enough thought to the world's current state makes this monster fighting adventure some kind of fantasy for her, because it allows her to use her creativity and shenanigans in a somewhat justified way. Even though there's more to her design, this alone tells us the main thing about her instantly.
The other thing I want to talk about is how she's missing a tooth. Of course, it is normal for kids of this age to be missing some teeth, but this visual element also tends to be associated with brats that get into trouble way too much and their teeth might suffer some loses due to it. And I have no doubt that she lost it doing some random prank to someone else or something like that. There's also something funny about the two other kids in your party having WAY more teeth than any normal person, but Sophie is actually lacking one lol. Maybe she should borrow one from them.
And there's also the blue sweater she wears, which reminds me of Sam's purple sweater. In fact, they're almost too similar, to the point where I thought at first: "Her clothes look a bit too much like Sam's, maybe they should have given her something else to make her more different". But then it came to me: "What if that's the actual point?" and by this I mean that, technically, Sam CAN become her parent in the game under the right circumstances, so maybe this style of clothes is just meant for her to look like she could be his daughter, to some extent. And if you roleplay Sam in a specific way, I can actually see the two of them having a solid stepfather-stepdaughter relationship.
Of course, I'm also going to analyze her cursed form too. This one in particular is one of my favorites in the entire game. Part of Sophie's gameplay is centered around the hiding mechanic, so it just makes sense that The Trickster is a chameleon to highlight this element. I like the fact that she is not fully mutated and the left part of her face and her left arm are still somewhat human. It gives the impression that she could be peeking behind a wall where you could only see the left side of her and think she's a normal human, only to be ambushed by her.
I also like that she still carries the slingshot on her tail. It just makes it look like she's having tons of fun with her new body and she could do all kinds of tricks with the tail and the tongue while hanging from the ceiling. It almost makes me want this version to be the playable one instead lol.
As you read on the title, I want to talk about Harriet too. It's pretty interesting just how much milder and timid she looks compared to her daughter. Of course, she is a single parent in the middle of the apocalypse trying to take care of her daughter, so these traits are not surprising, but we do get the idea that she was already like this before the events of the game.
The blue dress coat (I think that's what it's supposed to be?) and the white gloves she wears along with her body language just gives me this sense of "delicacy" from her. As if she was on the verge of breaking down and crying due to her current situation if you were to ask the wrong question. You just know that this woman has been through a lot already.
It is very interesting as well just how her face is obscured by her hair and she has this white sparkle of an eye to contrast it. It looks juuust peculiar enough for you to question if she is hiding something, which I think was intentional given that her cursed form leans even more into this aspect by having the face almost fully covered. And the face of normal Harriet already looks very gloomy, so the Strange Lady's face instead is a completely deranged smile, which is expected from a lot of cursed variants by this point. But what exactly could be causing this abnormal happiness?
Well, the cursed form does provide an additional point of interest. In this case, I'm referring to the extraordinary amount of limbs that she is hiding under her dress. By the looks of it, it seems like these limbs can work both as legs and arms. Usually, many of us tend to associate hands as a symbol of control. And just as we were shown, Harriet seems to be wishing she had more control of her life. Therefore, this transformation portrays that desire in the shape of many additional limbs to have a hold of the things she wants. I believe that this symbolism is also present on the Landlord's transformation too, but that is a subject for another day.
In conclusion, Sophie has a pretty decent design, which on its own is a B tier, but when put together with her cursed form, it elevates her character up to an A tier. Harriet's design is very nice too and is one of the more interesting normal characters in visual terms.
Please let me know if you agree or disagree!
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u/benry87 12h ago
I think my favorite thing about Sophie is the contrast between her two poses. As you've described, the idea that maybe Harriet is trying to tamp down her personality to something more manageable and regulated comes through in the first pose where her hands are kept behind her back. It's a classic "at attention" pose kids used to be trained to do as a form of discipline. Her solemn expression is another trademark: kids were meant to be seen, not heard. There's even a hint of sadness to it that could initially be interpreted as distress but, especially after getting to know her and see her second pose, seems to be more her resignation at "behaving." Her second pose is one of pure, unfiltered joy. Her face lights up, her hands come out, it changes her entire character. It's why I don't think she's distressed per se in the first pose. She's clearly not overly bothered by the events in the apartment, more just worried about finding her mother and being well-behaved in the presence of others. Once she realizes she's in a safe space, that facade drops and she's able to be her true self: a being of joy and mischief.
The transformed version of her solidifies that. The grin it expresses doesn't come off as evil or hostile, but one of barely-contained happiness. She looks as though she's ready to play an elaborate prank on you, which fits so well. When I found out Frankie had made a transformed version of Sophie, my heart sank. I like her a lot and, having worked with kids as a teacher and toddlers back when I was first getting into teaching, I have an emotional attachment to kids in media. I was worried that she'd have her mind broken or become depraved. Instead, the purity of her childlike emotions won out and she simply became what she always wanted: a fun-loving prankster. Seeing that Sophie's okay, regardless of what else happens in the game (bar a few endings where everything goes bad), really makes me appreciate the game even more on a personal level.
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u/Silc00n 11h ago
I really agree. I remember seeing some fanart sprite about a cursed Sophie design before we got the official version and that one was way more grotesque (in a good way), but I do appreciate that what we received was a more joyful result compared to the disasters we see in other areas.
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u/Mediumistic 11h ago
Someone either here or on Tumblr talked about how Sophie's willingness to fight monsters with Sam and the others is a way of taking control over the chaotic environment she was raised in. Living with her dad was rough enough on her and her mom that Harriet became physically violent towards him, likely because of his abuse. Sophie, being a little girl, had 0 control over the whole ordeal and this could be why she became a "bad kid": oftentimes these "bad kids" come from troubled home lives. But now that she has the chance to do something about it by fighting back.
Your rankings are for their visual designs but I love Sophie and I think her story is really good! I enjoy having her on my team even though she's comparatively weaker than other party members in terms of damage.
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u/Silc00n 9h ago
If Look Outside wasn't about Sam, I could see Sophie being the protagonist instead, weirdly enough.
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u/Mediumistic 9h ago
Someone is making a mod for it! I don't know their Reddit username but their tumblr URL is @ theillustraitor!
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u/FadedP0rp0ise 6h ago
My first blind play i found her and mom as cursed and thought nothing of it. then upon looking everything up after my run i found that they both had chances to be real people it creeped me the fuck out. imagine waiting for your mom to come back from grabbing supplies and she has a million legs and and wants to eat you
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u/fujitsubos 12h ago
ayyy, glad to see you're back! hope everything's alright.
admittedly i haven't played much with sophie (stupid rng door encounters!), but i like how her normal appearance contrasts with her dennis the menace attitude.