The Batter

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Character
Name:	The Batter, Batter
Occupation:
Relationships:
Fandom:	OFF (video game)
Other:
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The Batter is a character from OFF. He is the main protagonist of the game, controlled in-universe by the Player.

Canon

When starting the game, the Player is assigned to The Batter and told that he has an "important mission" that the Player is asked to help him accomplish, which he later describes as a "sacred mission" to "purify the world". He is aware of the Player controlling him, acknowledging them when The Judge addresses them, but rarely speaks to them directly beyond explaining the game's basic controls after first spawning.

Throughout the course of the game, he carries out his mission by fighting spectres, Burnt Elsens, and then the guardians of each of the three Zones, whom he views as corrupt. Upon revisiting each Zone after defeating their guardians, they've lost all color and are mostly devoid of life. The Batter's actions are implicitly presented as increasingly morally dubious, with The Judge and Zacharie questioning and criticizing him, but he remains determined to finish his mission.

After "purifying" the three Zones, The Batter goes to an area called The Room, where he faces The Queen, criticizing her for her neglect of the Zones that necessitated his mission. During their proceeding fight, she berates him, his mission, and his treatment of their creator Hugo, which deals physical damage to him. It's left ambiguous in-game whether anything she says about him is true, but Mortis Ghost has gone on to refer to her dialogue as "gibberish", implying none of it is.

After defeating her, he goes on to defeat Hugo as well, then proceeds to the final room of the game to flip the world's switch to "OFF". After The Judge stops him and prompts a fight, the Player can choose to keep controlling him or take control of The Judge instead. If The Judge is chosen, The Batter takes on a monstrous appearance in-battle, and is referred to as a "Demented purificatory incarnation" if inspected. Mortis Ghost later explained that this is not a literal different form, but a metaphor for how one's perspective on a person can change. However, he also confirmed that The Batter is inhuman.

Fandom

Interpretations of The Batter's personality and motivations have varied widely over the years. Complex theories and interpretations were crafted in the early years of the fandom, but as it dwindled and shifted in focus throughout the mid-to-late 2010s, fans transitioned to portraying him in a more straight-forward way.

His appearance in the Judge ending, referred to by fans as Bad Batter, has been particularly popular, often being interpreted or portrayed as a separate form or a different character. The popularity of portraying Bad Batter as a different character may have been influenced by the fangame Continue/Stop/Rise, in which The Batter is a fusion of Bad Batter with the fan character Ghost Batter who is separated into three distinct people after the events of OFF.

Shipping

In the initial years of the English-speaking fandom, The Batter/Zacharie became the most popular pairing involving The Batter, since fans tended to interpret Zacharie's banter and general behavior towards him as flirting. Mortis Ghost commented on this pairing when prompted during his stream for the 10th anniversary of OFF in June of 2018, saying that it could potentially work in an alternate universe from canon, though the sincerity of this is uncertain.

The Batter/The Queen has been less popular, but still prominent, in part due to fans taking The Queen's dialogue at face value and a mistranslation of one line of dialogue in an early English translation, causing a misconception that the pairing is canon. This translation had her say, "I won't let you lay a finger on the son that we have brought into the world," while the intended line was "I won't let you lay a finger on the son that brought us into the world." During Mortis Ghost's previously mentioned stream, he confirmed that The Batter and The Queen are not actually married in canon, but jokingly said yes when asked if The Batter is a lesbian during a different part of the stream. Some fans found this idea sincerely interesting and decided to take it seriously, resulting in an inadvertent rise in popularity of The Batter/The Queen from a femslash angle.

Other notable ships include The Batter/The Player, who is sometimes referred to as The Puppeteer and usually portrayed as an OC or self-insert, and The Batter/Sugar.

Tropes

• Blank Slate - Even though The Batter does have canon characterization, and is distinct from other player characters in that he's treated as a separate person from the player, his lack of emotion or explicit reasoning for his actions has frequently prompted fans to treat him as a blank slate, sometimes projecting their feelings about certain parts of the game onto him in fan art.
• Muscle Kink - A notable amount of fan art of The Batter, especially NSFW fan art, portrays him as muscular, sometimes to an extreme extent. He is not portrayed as muscular in-game or in art made by Mortis Ghost.
• Trueform - Interpretations of Bad Batter as a separate form of The Batter often involve Bad Batter being his true form.

Fanworks

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Fanart

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Fanfiction

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