#also changed the background color cuz white feels bland

[cannibalmapleshade]

girl i would be pissy too if crowfeather was my husband and the father of my kid💀

[dokidokiliteraturegirls]

 Hello everyone! Yui here, with today’s special feature, DDLitG Behind the Scenes: What’s the deal with Ako?

In this special update we’ll talk about her character in general, design, her place in the story, and more! So get comfortable in your seat, get yourself some good snacks, and let’s delve into the background of DDLitG’s 1st-ish original character~

Who is Ako?

Ako, formerly known as “female student”, was originally one of the many NPCs used by the game’s engine to fill its world with nondescript background characters, so as to make it feel less empty. However, Sayori took a special interest in her, and decided to befriend her, following the steps of a young MC who befriended Sayori in a similar situation and ended up saving her life. This would in turn allow Ako to grow as a character beyond her 1 line of coding and get her own sprites, as well as being able to interact with the world. She would later go on to fall in love with Sayori and shenanigans ensue.

Ako was created with the purpose of telling the story of the Friendship arc.

Designing Ako.

Let me make one thing clear: I’m not a character designer. I don’t know jack about it besides the very basics. But I did try to make someone who looked mildly original and, most importantly, different from the other girls.

Originally, she was going to be the image of a shy, fragile girl who Sayori befriended out of pity, more than anything. Based on this initial idea, I made this beta Ako design on one of my copybooks when I should’ve been working:

As you can see, her very first sprite was the one where she’s shyly looking away to avoid eye contact (and to seem annoying, but more on that later). I was happy with the pose but not with her face, as it looked super unoriginal. She resembled Ochako Uraraka from My Hero Academia a bit too much, so I tried to change her hair to make her stand out more. Here is her second iteration:

This time, I felt like I cranked it up too much to the other side. Now she stood out TOO much. Her hair felt like it came more from a protagonist than someone who’s supposed to be a background character. I adopted a new philosophy after seeing this result: she had to look as bland as possible. She had to be the kind of character you see all the time in the background of an anime - those simple, unassuming designs you’d never look twice at because you’re too focused on the protagonists with candy-coloured hair. In DDLitG’s canon she’s a filler NPC brought to the forefront, and her design had to reflect that more than my desire to make her look “cool”.

With this in mind, we come to Ako v0.3

As you can see, this is much closer to her current design. But this was still a sketch (even the drawing above is very much unfinished). As you can see, I got closer to her 0.1 version with the hair, but changed the eyes to make them look more unique, giving her that more neutral, “nothing” expression. Having finally found some ground I was comfortable with, I redefined her design a little further, gave her some more details around the hair and clothes, adjusted the proportions of her body (because apparently I draw heads huge), and made her finalized design.

I was happy.

What’s with this sassy... monochrome child?

If there’s one constant to be found in the pictures above, is that she was always meant to be black and white. There are plenty of reasons, which I’ll list because, honestly, there are a lot.

1. I didn’t want to look her like the rest of the cast at fucking all. She is an OC introduced in a story with already established characters made by a much more talented writer. She’s an outsider, someone who doesn’t belong with this cast of colorful characters, and I wanted readers to be able to tell that at first glance. No, she’s not like the other girls. They don’t belong in the same place. She is not a member of the original DDLC cast, and it shows.

2. I know I can’t draw as well as Satchely, so trying to copy DDLC’s art style would just end up looking awkward and wrong. I had no choice but to do my own thing. And if I’m doing my own thing, why not take it all the way? I already gave myself artistic freedom, I might as well go crazy with it~

3. I just adore characters in a fictional universe that look different from the rest of the cast or have some strange design choice for literally no reason. Like Krillin from Dragonball, with his eyes that make him look like he belongs in an entirely different manga...

...or even Jotaro Kujo, whose hat merges with his hair because why not!

I live for dumb crap like that.

4. A huuuuuge inspiration for me while writing (besides my own uninteresting life) is music. Many times I listen to a specific track or imagine situations with specific background music to make them seem more real, and be able to better portray the feelings of a scene when writing [For example, I listened to My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade a lot while writing Monika’s Death].

Ako’s creation was no exception. Her appearance was partially based on the cover for not only one of my favorite Vocaloid albums of all time, but one of my favorite albums period: Wowaka’s glorious Unhappy Refrain.

I’ve been writing stuff based on this album alone for years because it’s just so damn striking to me. The picture of the faceless schoolgirl falling into the unseen abyss, the background uninterested characters that imply they are used to seeing fellow girls suffer, the distorted world they live in, the album’s way to explore teenage depression, the freaking name of the album, EVERYTHING! IT’S SUCH A GOOD EXPLORATION OF THE DIFFICULT LIFE TEENS FACE THAT OFTEN GOES UNNOTICED!! AAAAAAHHHH IT’S SO GOOD.

5. Ako was also based on a previous design I made for another character meant for an original visual novel I was writing and I’m probably never going to finish, who was also going to be monochromatic to reference this album (in that context it made more sense though cuz every character was a musical reference).

This character, in turn, was based on Monoko from Yume Nikki, which is more obvious because of her crying eye and extra arm.

So basically at this point it would’ve been weird if I hadn’t made her monochromatic.

Naming Ako

This was one of the most difficult parts, ngl.

As I mentioned, Ako was originally going to be a fragile, shy girl. Based on this, her original name during the design face was Moromi, which is one more letter than “Moroi”, which Google translate promises me means “Brittle” or “Fragile” in Japanese.

However, after the philosophy change that happened during her conceptual stage, “Fragility” was no longer at the core of her character, as it was now “Nothingness/Blandness”. Because of this, I changed her name to “Ako”.

Many people have submitted their interpretations of the name, ranging from its meaning “To teach/to learn”, and “To yearn for”, which all fit better than the original tbh.

The intended meaning is for “Ako” to be read as “A-Ko”, which is a way by which Japenese media often refers to filler characters, as it translates to “Girl A”.

Examples of this can be seen in Super Danganronpa 2, where a character in a videogame is called “A-Ko” to hide their identity...

...and in a movie called “Project A-ko”, which was a parody of the anime tropes from the time, so they gave the protagonist the most generic name ever. The antagonist and side character, by the way, are called “B-Ko” and “C-Ko” respectively. This movie is fucking awesome.

This name also made sense in the context of the story, because we already had a character named “Student A”, so this goes to show that the game just gave Ako the default name it had stored for female NPCs.

Blinded Ako, or How I Learned to Convey Emotion Through Ahegao

When I came up with Ako, she was meant to have most of her character revolving around her infatuation with Sayori. She was, after all, written in the story with the purpose of falling in love with her, and nothing else. Her character, personality, likes/dislikes, and hobbies came afterwards. As the story progressed, however, I decided that she should have a personality separate from just being in love with another character. So to separate the actions she committed under the influence of her passion, I did a little design change in the middle of the arc: Blinded Ako.

In this version, Ako has been literally blinded by love and stops being rational. This is represented by the hearts covering her eyes, and clouding her judgement. This was done not only with the purpose of representing she was past her breaking point, but also to differentiate the Ako that makes mistakes with the Ako that was introduced in the beginning of the arc. Almost so as to make them two different characters, so when she is reintroduced as a regular character after Friendship, readers could think “oh, she’s not going to do dumb stuff again, she’s not blinded by love anymore.”

Many people compared the above panel with “ahegao”, a trope in hentai manga where a character does a silly face to represent them breaking from enjoying themselves so much. This was done partially on purpose. The main idea was to represent Ako being blinded by her infatuation for Sayori, not to equate her sate of being with anything sexual. It DID end up looking more hentai-esque than I expected though, as, well, Ako is in black and white, and the heart eyes are also a trope in ahegao. And she’s sweating. And she’s saying that she’s about to break....

.....

....well at least I drove my point home.

Ako’s musical influences

Above I mentioned how music was a big part of my inspiration, and how I listened to Welcome to the Black Parade while writing Monika’s Death, so the question in no one’s mind is: what music did Yui use as inspiration for Ako’s character and the arc? 🤔

Well, hypothetical reader, the answer is that since Ako was meant to be bland and flavour-free, her original depiction is not based on a song or anything. Her desperation towards Sayori and Blinded Ako, though, are based on TRONICBOX’s 80′s style remix of Ariana Grande’s Into You. And yes, this 80′s remix in specific. Not the original song. I highly encourage you to give it a listen and pay attention to the lyrics if you want an insight into how Ako was feeling during her breaking point.

Also, as a side note, no one has asked me this, but I imagine Ako’s voice to sound like the vocals of Panty and Stocking’s ending, Fallen Angel. It’s a truly beautiful song, and once again, I highly encourage you to give it a listen and pay attention tot he lyrics if you want an insight in Ako’s current feelings towards Sayori.

Ako’s reception

This is more something personal than an explanation of the character, but it’s something I want to share nonetheless.

Remember when I said Ako was meant to be annoying? Yeah... xD

When I decided to add a new character I did so under the idea that everyone was going to hate her, because it’s a purposefully boring OC made by some insane person with the sole purpose of being added to an already interesting and loved cast of characters just to fuck everything up.

The first scene I ever wrote for Ako was the part where Monika asked if she had hurt Sayori, and she said “Not intentionally...” while looking away, which is why her first sprite ever was in that position. She was meant to make people feel frustrated over this girl just looking away from her problems and avoiding responsibility, while also telling Monika to her face that she had done something bad to Sayori. Readers were expected to hate her. That’s why in the beginning she says she doesn’t like literature, to assure you that she’s not joining the literature club. That’s why there’s a scene where she gets punched in the face. That’s why she looks so extremely out of place.

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DISLIKE HER!! omg I’m still surprised at how warm the reception was, you guys are just too nice for me~ ❤️

Because of the unexpected reception I had to change some parts of the arc, which were originally going to be much crueler towards her [I even questioned adding the punch at all, but it was an important part of Monika’s development so I felt it]. I also established her as a recurring character in spite of her dislike of literature, and did my best to make her less hate-able than she was originally going to be, even cutting some planned lines of dialogue that made her pretty irredeemable. Looking back, I am glad I did those changes, we ended up with a well-liked and pretty nice girl because of it~

Final thoughts

The introduction of Ako and writing Friendship in general was a very intense experience for me. It was very difficult to balance Ako as being both relevant to the story and moving the plot forward, but not make her the sole focus of everything and have her obscure everyone else, because OCs in established pieces of media tend to do that.

This arc also got a LOT of mixed reviews, some people liking it, some hating everything I did. This made me really question what I was doing and at many points even regret I was writing Friendship at all. At a certain point I lost almost 50 followers in a single update.

I also had trouble writing some parts because they were too sad. And that’s not my style! I like writing happy people being good friends, damn it, not everyone crying and hating each other.

But when all is said and done, I’m happy I wrote both Friendship and Ako into the story. I’ve received many wonderful, supportive messages telling me how much readers enjoyed it. Even some people saying they had been in a similar situation to the one depicted in the story, and were glad to see a story that showed a positive outcome.

Will I write more OCs into DDLitG?

Meh, who knows. I love writing more original stuff and expanding the world of DDLitG, but I also feel like if I introduce yet another OC, people will crucify me and hate me for flooding the story with too much stuff that’s irrelevant to the DDLC they’re used to. That being said, writing this blog is my first, and very possibly last chance to expose my stories to such a large audience. And seeing people like what you do not only because you’re riding the coattails of a recognizable brand, but because they like what you do with it, makes me pretty darn happy. Being completely honest, I’d like to add another character. But just one. And only if it’s something that will push both the story and the girls’ character arcs forward. Not just adding OCs for the sake of it.

Thanks for sticking until the end of this BTS, and I hope you found it an enjoyable read, or at the very least I made you a little bit less bored~ ❤️

Next time, in DDLitG Behind the scenes: What’s the deal with The Perfect Yuri?