Wednesday, March 16, 2022 — 5
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
This was supposed to be a piece about ‘Life is Strange: True Colors’
Empathy for the emotionless: Understanding OMORI
‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’ is shelter from
the storm
Sitting with words:
poetry to inspire
empathy
Content Warning: This piece
includes
allusions
to
anti-
LGBTQ+
legislation,
suicide
and the invasion of Ukraine.
Also,
spoilers
for
“Life
is
Strange: True Colors.”
I HAD PLANNED for this
article to be about the video
game “Life is Strange: True
Colors.” Released in Septem-
ber 2021, “True Colors” cen-
ters on Alex Chen, a latchkey
kid who’s re-entering society
after finally learning to con-
trol her superpowers. Alex is
an empath — seriously, she can
read other people’s emotions
and hear their thoughts. Kinda
a neat, if useless superpower,
right? Except, Alex can also
get overwhelmed by powerful
emotions; for example, grow-
ing enraged or depressed when
someone
around
her
does.
What’s brilliant — and ter-
rifying — about Alex’s power
is that it doesn’t feel fiction-
al: Everyone claims to be an
empath, after all. And being an
empath in our modern world is
simply exhausting.
It’s hard to talk about these
imaginary exploits of Alex
within the fictitious town of
Haven, Colo. when in real-
ity, Florida has made it dan-
gerous to say the word gay.
Queer folk around the country
became targets the moment
Florida’s House of Represen-
tatives passed a law to keep
schools from talking about
LGBTQIA+ topics within the
classroom. In a time when
children are presented with
more information than ever
to help them answer difficult
questions of identity and sexu-
ality, the classroom has been
turned into a warzone. Parents
screech that they are “protect-
ing their children,” that “the
gay agenda must be stopped”
as if education and compassion
turn you queer. School, the one
place that may have been a safe
haven for students with these
identities who have unsup-
portive parents or dangerous
living situations, is now off
limits.
Where can these kids go but
back into the closet? Because
the world shows every sign
that it does not love them,
that they are an aberration.
A mistake. Who they are and
who they love does not mat-
ter to the Republican Party of
Florida. How can you be for
the children when, accord-
ing to The Trevor Project, an
LGBTQ+ youth between the
ages of 13 and 24 will attempt
suicide
every
45
seconds?
Everyone outside of the Sun-
shine State with a heart imme-
diately understood the panic,
fury, hopelessness and fear
that these children all felt, and
that’s without Alex’s empathy
superpower.
My
original
article
was
going to say that “True Col-
ors” makes it clear that Alex
Chen has not had an easy
life: Her mother died of can-
cer, her father abandoned her
and her brother Gabe and not
long after, Gabe got sent to
juvie which separating them
for good. Alex was shuffled
around the foster care system;
her powers made her too vola-
tile to stay with one family or
group home for too long. One
heartbreaking
scene
forces
Alex to relive these moments,
her
tele-empathy
allowing
her to hear every judgmental
thought from the rotating gal-
lery of people who make up her
teenage years. Alex has seen
the absolute worst in people,
and yet she still wants to live a
happy life and use her powers
to help others.
Content Warning: Discussions
of anxiety and depression
Author’s Note: Many details of
the plot of “OMORI” were with-
held for the sake of preserving
the impact of its story. Likewise,
many details of my disorders
were withheld for the sake of my
privacy. Everything I have dis-
cussed is material I’m comfort-
able publishing because I have
extensively unpacked it while
getting the professional help I
needed in therapy. If you empa-
thize with any of what has been
discussed in this piece, I would
urge you to please use whatever
resources are available to you to
get the help you need. Thank you
for reading.
VIDEO GAMES HAVE always
been an escape for me. It’s a
medium I find more engaging
than any other — the audiovisual
stimulation of videos and music
mix with an interactive story,
allowing you to insert yourself
into a narrative shaped by your
actions. As a kid, I fell into a
variety of deeply engrossing
media, but video games would
remain the most immersive. In
my somewhat lonely childhood
— a combination of overprotec-
tive immigrant parents, a some-
what childless neighborhood on
the edge of town and my cul-
tural disconnection being a Desi
student in a school of white kids
— I sought these immersions as
escapes from a duller and dis-
connected reality. Real life was
where my numerous childhood
fears sprouted: fear of the dark,
heights, bugs, open water, the
supernatural. The end result
left me as a primary schooler
refusing a solitary bedroom
until middle school. It was at
this point I found friends with
similar backgrounds & inter-
ests — video games being a focal
point.
The RPG “OMORI” opens
with the following message
upon booting up: “This game
contains depictions of depres-
sion, anxiety, suicide, and may
not be suitable for all audi-
ences.” Despite this warning,
at first glance the game seems
like a cheery, fun-filled romp.
Wholesome hand-drawn art,
pretty pixelated visuals and
facetious Photoshops all mix
together to create the won-
drous, dreamlike world you play
through. You play as Omori,
a comically stoic child as he
adventures with his much-more
expressive friends: hard-headed
Aubrey, enthusiastic Kel and his
gentle older brother, Hero. They
quest to save their bashful best
friend Basil, helped along from
the sidelines by Omori’s older
sister, Mari.
The characters’ expressive-
ness is an extension of the game
itself, the main fights operating
on a rock-paper-scissors system
of the emotions of characters
and enemies: happy beats angry,
angry beats sad, sad beats
happy. Omori can be manipu-
lated by the player to emotional
depths that his friends cannot
reach, giving him the potential
to be more powerful or more
vulnerable than any of his other
friends. Together, they fight and
befriend the most colorful of
characters. Omori’s friends are
the most engaging, the game’s
length giving you a wealth
of adorable interactions that
flesh out how much they care
for each other. There is never a
still moment in the game, with
cutscenes, sprites, backgrounds,
battles and characters in con-
stant animation. The frame-by-
frame differences breathe life
into the game, as change is a
vital part of life. It’s that truth
— and the truth of Omori’s story
— that shatters your heart and
shatters the leftover shards,
leaving your friends to pick up
the pieces but ultimately leav-
ing you to put yourself back
together.
I spent much of my second-
ary education entangled in my
emotions. Throughout middle
school I’d find myself kept up at
night due to paranoia leftover
from my childhood. Thank-
fully, they’d transition from
irrational phobias to elevated
anxieties about going into high
school and my future. This
stress built in high school as I
took on workloads so heavy I
had to constantly isolate myself
from friends — both new and
old — to manage it all. The con-
sequences of those couple years
would manifest in the spring
of my sophomore year, when
I was diagnosed with Crohn’s
disease, an autoimmune disor-
der that flares up with stress.
I had to conquer my anxiety
to put my disease into submis-
sion, and I couldn’t rely on the
aid of anti-anxiety medication
that could potentially disturb
the bodily homeostasis treat-
ing Crohn’s needs — though I
will emphasize that this was a
personal choice on the behalf
of my family and myself and
that everyone is impacted by
and treats Crohn’s differently.
In meditation, in safe spaces,
in detachment, in deep-breath-
ing techniques, in every coping
mechanism I could muster, I
fought my fears and won time
after time. But in that work was
a wish I had since my childhood
panics — a wish to stop feeling
altogether. My wish was grant-
ed when I started experiencing
depressive episodes after my
Crohn’s diagnosis.
Little things seem off at the
start of “OMORI”: an ominous
shadow lurking in the distance,
a distressing opening cutscene
with the repeating assurance
that everything is going to be
okay, sketches colored by void-
white, ink-black and blood-red.
The player learns that Omori’s
fantastical world is actually a
fantasy — a dreamworld con-
cocted by the true protagonist
Sunny, Omori’s teenage coun-
terpart. Sunny has been living
as a hikikomori, a Japanese term
for social recluse and Omori’s
etymological origin, from child-
hood into adolescence following
a traumatic experience, escap-
ing into his dreamworld when-
ever possible.
His childhood friends have
been damaged by both this
same trauma and Sunny’s aban-
donment of them. Mari is gone,
Kel smiles through the pain,
Aubrey lashes out at her former
friends and Hero struggles with
overwhelming sadness. Basil
is a nervous wreck always on
the verge of panic attacks, and
all five friends suffer in Mari’s
absence. Sunny feels it the most,
no longer having his older sister
to protect him from his fears and
the truth of his trauma, a truth
that only Basil knows. Sunny
and Omori are forced through
terrifying sequences character-
ized by horrifying hand-drawn
art, unnerving pixelated visu-
als and eerie Photoshops. More
than that, however, Sunny has
to confront the new people his
friends have become and the
truth of what split them apart.
NOVEMBER 2020. COVID-19
had just booted me out of Ann
Arbor and sent me home. As I
finished up my first semester
of college from my childhood
bedroom, I felt it — the feeling
I would come to label as “the
storm.” It was the first time I
felt my mental health truly dip,
a loneliness that seeped through
my entire body into my bones.
So I did what I always do when I
need to put my mind elsewhere:
I picked up a book. This time, it
was “The Invisible Life of Addie
LaRue” by V. E. Schwab.
Art has always been my medi-
um of escapism. Whether it be
books, television, movies or a
trip to a museum, I have been
using art to get outside my own
head from a very young age. It’s
why I spent the year between
ages eight and nine imagin-
ing myself at Hogwarts and
why now, almost 11 years later,
I undertake “Harry Potter”
movie marathons biannually.
It’s why I try to visit The Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art when
I come home to New York and
I take a trip to the University of
Michigan Museum of Art almost
every Friday at school. Since
my field of study is pure STEM,
full of straightforward and rigid
answers, I find it necessary to
have an outlet for all that goes
unexpressed.
I expected “Invisible Life”
to take me to a new world with
magic, Faustian bargains and
adventure. While those ele-
ments were present, I was more
shocked to find my own experi-
ences reflected right back at me.
A 323-year-old woman cursed
with eternal youth and health,
unable to leave a mark on the
world, and a man cursed with
a year of life in which everyone
sees only what they want in him.
Where do I fit in? Apparently,
everywhere.
Addie is a dreamer. In many
ways she’s like Belle from
“Beauty and the Beast,” dream-
ing of adventure in the “great
wide somewhere,” with a strong
connection to art and a deep
admiration of her father. Any-
one who knows me well knows
that “Beauty and the Beast” has
always been my favorite fai-
rytale, and so I was instantly
drawn in. Addie’s story, how-
ever, rips away that glimmering
facade of the Disney princess
and dives in deeper. Addie gets
her wish for freedom by literally
trading her soul, and from that
point on, her world is turned
upside down. She is unable to
be wounded, fall sick or die.
But she’s also unable to leave an
impression or a memory of her-
self. Everyone she meets forgets
her; every mark she makes dis-
appears.
“Stories are a way to preserve
oneself. To be remembered.
And to forget.” Addie’s connec-
tion with books is one I related
to right off the bat. Schwab’s
language captured the feeling
of escapism through literature
perfectly. Addie deems art as
necessary to her survival in her
infinitely long life. Her descrip-
tions of watching movies and
seeing the sea for the first time
brought out the same emotions
I felt while sitting in a theater
or standing on the shore. Addie
truly felt the beauty of the world,
and I did too. Yet despite hav-
ing access to so many beautiful
experiences, Addie felt lonely in
her life. And I did too. It was this
empathy that I carried with me
throughout the rest of the book.
Just when I thought I couldn’t
relate to a character more, Henry
burst onto the scene. Henry was
the second character in this
novel to strike a deal with the
devil, though for very different
reasons and for much less time.
As a bookseller, he had that same
level of admiration and under-
standing of good art. As a human,
he had experiences that put
everything I was feeling at the
time into words. It was because
of Henry that I labeled that peri-
od in my life as “the storm.” As
Schwab put it, “It would be years
before Henry learned to think
of those dark times as storms,
to believe that they would pass,
if he could simply hold on long
enough.” Henry’s bouts of rain
came about due to his feelings of
loneliness, those feelings of not
being enough that seem to be all
too common among people my
age. It didn’t take much for him
to start feeling that way again.
Anything could be a catalyst — a
parent’s disapproval, a profes-
sor’s admonishment, a lover’s
rejection. Henry was so tired
of battening down the hatches
that he traded his soul to just be
enough for everyone.
Henry understood too late
that you can’t make people love
you, and if you’re really enough
for everyone, then you’re doing
something wrong. People aren’t
meant for everyone — all you
need is to be enough for your-
self. As Henry spoke about talk-
ing to his family who wouldn’t
understand
because
they’ve
“never had a day of rain,” I felt
it in the pit of my stomach. I
felt it because I did understand,
because I was weathering my
own storm.
Addie
and
Henry’s
time
together was electric for both
of them. Like all good things,
however, it came to an end. Each
went their own way understand-
ing the importance of life and
living it on your own terms.
Both Henry and Addie left a
piece of themselves with the
other person, something that
gave them the strength to keep
going. Unbeknownst to them,
they also left those pieces with
me. As Addie and Henry taught
me, I needed to find the beauty
in life — in art — and understand
that being alone is not the same
as being lonely. Most of all, I had
to believe with all my heart that
at the end of the day, the storm
always passes.
I read “The Invisible Life of
Addie LaRue” for the second
time a few days before writ-
ing this. On my second read-
through, I found myself learning
just as much as I did the first
time around when I was in a
completely different headspace.
No matter how many times I
return to this book, I think the
message will always remain the
same: There is no obstacle too
large to overcome, and life’s
wonders
always
make
sur-
mounting them worth it.
POETRY
HAS
IMMENSE
reverberating power. Verse has
that ability: We keep snippets
and sections of it in our minds,
carry our favorite poem’s lines
with us like pendants, thinking
on them in our time of need.
Poetry’s elasticity, the breadth
of its expressiveness given the
sparseness of its text, is immea-
surably powerful. Poetry can
pull us from fear and ground
us in our reality, but perhaps —
most remarkably — allows us to
sit with someone, to feel their
pain, their fear, their love and
the wideness of their experi-
ence.
And poetry has always been
a space for embodiment. This is
something audaciously intrinsic
to the medium: You, the reader,
are involved in poetry’s inven-
tion and intention, transfigured
by the word and the chasms of
the page. To me, empathy in the
written word is all about this
active practice of embodiment:
When something is written so
wholly to the nature of a thing,
we get a true sense of its weight.
Empathy, after all, is not some-
thing that you are but something
you do. We can all listen, we can
all learn from one another — and
here are three collections that
will help you do just that.
“Empathy”
by
Mei-mei
Berssenbrugge
Empathy, in Mei-mei Bers-
senbrugge’s lauded collection
“Empathy,” goes beyond human
connection
and
asks:
What
does it take to become someone,
something beyond human exis-
tence? Empathy not only mani-
fests humans in understanding
and solidarity but is all-encom-
passing — bringing forth wid-
ened images of her speaker as
a natural subject, of incorpo-
real feelings and sensations. In
the book, we are asked to look
beyond humanity, to understand
what it may be like to be unex-
amined or animal. The poems
feel more like fields of energy —
Berssenbrugge so carefully cre-
ated speculative worlds in lieu
of poetry. By allowing us to sit
in the discomfort of the world,
she forces us to grapple with the
subjects, and in turn, empathize
with them.
“Words Under the Words”
by Naomi Shihab Nye
If there is one thing celebrat-
ed Palestinian-American poet
Naomi Shihab Nye is known
for, it’s her sensitive approach
to writing: Her poems are
chaste in their verbiage. Her
language is plain and simple
as her metaphors concerning
“bread,” “mountains” and “riv-
ers” brim with the kindness and
warmth of the human spirit.
In “Words Under the Words,”
Nye views the world with the
utmost humanitarian spirit. In
her work, every story, no matter
how paltry, is one worth exam-
ining. Every person she recalls
is a site of great tenderness and
love. If there is one thing Nye
loves, it’s the little things — what
she loves more is understanding
those things with the tenderness
her poetry provides to the world.
The collection’s most regarded
poem says it best: “Then it is
only kindness that makes sense
anymore / only kindness that
ties your shoes / and sends you
out into the day to gaze at bread,
/ only kindness that raises its
head / from the crowd of the
world to say / It is I you have
been looking for, / and then goes
with you everywhere / like a
shadow or a friend.”
Design by Tamara Turner
Design by Tamara Turner
M. DEITZ
Senior Arts Editor
SAARTHAK JOHRI
Daily Arts Contributor
SWARA RAMASWAMY
Daily Arts Writer
YUMNA DAGHER
Daily Arts Contributor
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com