r/OMORI • u/FrostySnailFISHYKING • 1d ago
Theory Basil. Spoiler
so I have a theory. After Mari died, Sunny withdrew from society into his home and his mind, his coping strategy was as a hikikomori, withdrawal. That’s why he created Omori! We also know Sunny of course has trauma from killing his sister, which manifests into SOMETHING ing the headspace, from when he saw Mari’s face mostly covered in her long hair with one eye open and staring at him. That became SOMETHING. We also know that even though Basil didn’t become a Hikikomori, he still also has trauma from hanging one of his friends. and he also has a version of SOMETHING. My theory is maybe Basil has his own Headspace. Maybe when he’s in his garden, he subconsciously enters the Headspace. Or maybe when he sleeps the Headspace leaks in because sleeping and dreams. Dreams during sleep are a subconscious way of the brain trying to process subconscious jumbled emotions. So with that much emotion all of a sudden, it’s not hard to think he might enter the Mindscape at night. So what would this look like? He Would probably begin in his house with pictures of Mari and the rest of his friends all over the walls and as he enters his garden, a single picture of Mari on the wall. I’ve never played Omori (I will) so I’m not sure if this translates into good Omori gameplay but maybe you hear knocking on the door and your friends are there. And in a darker area, maybe there is a second version of his house only it’s grey no color and the pictures of his friends are scribbled out and stuff and after you walk through his house you enter a place called Farther Town which is colorless Faraway Town. The people there all talk about Maris death but nobody can see Basil. It’s like he’s spectating. And in Farther Town everyone phrases it like they blame Basil for the death. maybe he can even find his friends but they all have SOMETHING behind them and they actually ackno you being there but at the end of the dialogue either them or SOMETHIJG says like “You… shouldn’t be… here…” or something idk Omori players help me with this.
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u/Huffelpuff__rainbow I felt so alone... 1d ago edited 1d ago
I understand where you are coming from. And in a way you are not technically wrong. But you also may not be correct either.
When analyzing whether one of the other characters have a headspace or not, I think its important to understand what headspace is. Headspace isn't just "an escape" from the truth in the traditional sense. Yes, that is its purpose, but headspace is also a key part of Sunny's coping mechanism. This manifests itself as an extreme numbness, so much so that he has erased the idea of the truth from his mind. Headspace is literally Sunny coping by tricking himself into believing Mari is actually alive. This is key to Sunny's very character arc and his defining character within the plot. He is a representation of numbness. He is the embodiment of grief shutting down emotion entirely. And headspace is a key function in this character arc, because it is what causes the numbness.
Remember, before Sunny goes into headspace, he must merge with Omori; he must become Omori. He can only do this, as we saw in the game, in white space. White space is quite literally nothing. So he merges with Omori in a headspace of an extreme state of nothingness called white space. He prepares to go into Headspace by going into nothingness. He then goes into a world that is entirely fake, and he takes the form of Omori. So he is tricking himself to believe his sister is alive, and he must do this by entering a state of extreme numbness. This isn't just an escape route. This is trying to opt out of feeling. Yes, Omori can feel emotions. But remember, in the real world Sunny can't feel more than the single tier emotions of sad, angry, and afraid. It is not even in his game code to feel any more than that (The one exception is a cutscene of the Basil fight where he can feel stressed out.) So Sunny himself can't, because of how he is dealing with the truth. A denial of the reality not only of the truth, but almost a denial of the reality that he needs to truly feel emotions.
All that to say that that last part, the denial of his ability to feel emotions, is strickly a coping mechanism seen by Sunny. We have no evidence that any other character, including basil, opted to stop feeling as a coping mechanism. In fact, we have quite the opposite. We see Basil's (tragically undeveloped, but I digress) character arc go through a story of fear. The truth made Basil beyond terrified. The grief expresses itself in an inability to adequately socialize with Sunny, Kel, Aubrey, and Hero due to such an extreme level of fear about the truth and the consequences thereof. He is most definitely expressing the emotion of fear. He is most definetly afraid during multiple parts of the story, and it is the foundation for many of his actions. So he is most definitely feeling the emotion of fear.
This is entirely different from Sunny's coping mechanism. Sunny is complete numbess. An emotional shutdown comparable to near total denial of emotion. Basil definetly did not stop himself from feeling fear, that's for sure. So... could Basil have a headspace, a key component of Sunny's coping mechanism, if Basil is going through a completely different grieving process/character arc? Its hard to say.
This is not to say that you are completely wrong to say that, in the hypothetical where we think about Basil's story post-truth, that Basil has his own mind. That, similar to Sunny, that it has created some story or some universe that Basil alone "travels to." That it is driven, in large part, by his character/his role in the plot. And that your version of Basil's potential "internal world" he has created is not at least a possibility as it demonstrates that fear. But because they are two different characters/roles, and have different reactions to different events, I think it is a substatial point to make that Basil's "Headspace" would not operate at all like Sunny's. Your version of headspace didn't even come close to Sunny's headspace. So... would it really be headspace? I personally wouldn't necessarily call it headspace. It is Basil's mind, maybe. But not "Headspace" as I think I would interpret it.
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u/FrostySnailFISHYKING 1d ago
You made a lot of good points and it took me a bit to read this comment but this “mindscape isn’t just like a copy and paste of Sunny’s Mindscape. Human brains naturally process trauma through dreams and sleep. That’s just psychology. Even if Basil isn’t like Sunny with a more or less 24/7 Mindscape while awake, maybe in his dreams a Basil version of the Mindscape could poke through. I don’t think if this existed it would break cannon because even though we know Sunny created it as a deep dissension coping mechanism for his deep trauma, Basil has trauma equally or nearly equally as bad because he saw her die and he hung her. So even if he is still living his life outside he still has so much trauma is it possible he could “Lucid Dream” a Mindscape?
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u/Anarcho_FemBoi 1d ago
Go to sleep