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

