#i absolutely hate the bastard bc most of the game overs in my first playthrough where in his fights (i game overed at least once

[asfdhgsdkjhgb]

imma be honest rouxls kaard my beloathed but also im kinda hyped for whenever i get to his fight in my current playthrough w friends

[mandysxmuses]

go off about DDLC

//Okayokayokay gonna put all this under a cut bc I’m gonna totally spill everything out just – just everything I can on the fly (and I’m also not gonna tag it under the game’s tag bc I am a scared muffin who fears someone will disagree with my thoughts and I don’t want to be labeled as a mental-illness-is-automatically-horror douchebag ;;;;; )

GREAT GAME GREAT GAME LET’S JUST GET THAT OUTTA THE WAY I LOVE IT (and again if you don’t that is fine your opinion is valid and I’m not tryna change anyone’s mind, I just have a different view of one of the main criticisms and I’m not trying to change your mind on that either)

I should state that I love anything cute that turns creepy. That’s just… it’s my shit. Cute stuff that goes off the wire and turns totally horrific is absolutely my thing

Or even otherwise innocent stuff slowly going horror (Unlimited Footage of a Bear - a anti-depressant booster commercial going haywire, Too Many Cooks - an 80′s.. no, parody of pretty much every show type ever going haywire, Tea Time - tea time with a granny going haywire )

So uh when I heard from my friendos that I should play this game called Doki Doki Literature Club

And it was already sounding like my thing my thing because I love anime waifus n shit

When I saw the first tag being “psychological horror” I was both like “Why?” and [Bluebeard Voice] “SHIT YES”

I was one of the ones who got to play it before there were let’s plays all over Youtube and even if there would’ve been at the time I didn’t look that shit up because I wanted the full TAKE MY BODY AND SHAKE IT experience

And I saw the anxiety and depression warning at the beginning and was like “Oh. I have both of those. … Eh” and played anyway

MY BIGGEST BUT ALSO MOST AWESOME MISTAKE (besides that fucking soda spill last night omg I don’t even think I told you guys the whole story but oh my god Sayo-nara might as well have been playing during that shit)

I, uh;; haha, disliked Sayori toward the beginning of the game. Not that i found her annoying or anything, it’s just the “ditsy childhood friend” trope was always one of my least favorite tropes so I kinda just found her meh. She was cute though (hahahahahaHAHAHA and you know what I’m pissed that this sweetheart who went through such a deep-ass development in such a short time has basically been reduced to nothing but a hanging joke

Like we get it. She hung herself and we joke about to deal with the pain bUT THERE WAS SO MUCH MORE TO SAYORI THAN THAT PLS STOP REDUCING HER TO THAT ONE POINT IN THE GAME C’MOOOON)

And perhaps this was a spoiler but I did not recognize it as one but one of said friends who recommended it to me told me to wait for Sayori to start acting off.

… My initial assumption with this game was that it was going to be one of those generic “ALL THE GIRLS WANNA MURDER EACH OTHER AND THEN YOU” things bc that shit happens all the time in anime but that’s not to say I wouldn’t love it anyway. Generic doesn’t mean bad ANYWHO I’ll stop getting off topic

Met Yuri. I liked her, but did not and do not think she was best girl, I just felt her personality was most like mine. Because I am shy af when I first meet people and feel like I have to walk on eggshells even around people I’m comfortable with (cough cough my fam) to make sure I don’t “fuck up” when really most of my fuck-ups consist of accidentally not hearing something or just putting on a song I like on the radio and then everyone else hates it and I’m like “oh.. I suck”

and then I get “Quit it with that pity-partying bullshit” (PSA: Don’t say that to someone like Yuri especially, that will not help her, in fact don’t say that to anyone unless they’re really tough and can handle that kind of .. uh.. advice??? )

Met Natsuki.

… LOVE HER lOVE HER SO MUCH I WOULD DIE FOR NATSUKI I WOULD DIE

because I love tsunderes. That’s.. that’s literally it. The moment I saw her saying she didn’t make the cupcakes for me or anything, I knew true love was meant to be between us. She would be my route, and if that route ended with her trapping me in a basement and forcefeeding me poisonous cupcakes until I died and a graphic image of my internal organs exploding showed, that would be just fine. Love is an open door with a tsundere behind it, bitches.

Met Monika. Liked her. … That’s it, I just found her nice. Before the poem game, I had already decided Natsuki was the one true best girl and I was not doing Monika’s route until another playthrough (I assumed maybe her route was special and it unlocked after you beat the game once at the time). Hahahahahaha HELP

… aND THEN THE POEM GAME CAME.

And I immediately noticed Monika wasn’t even there to be “seduced” by my sexy words. I asked why this was, and I just got “that’s the question you should be asking”

…………………………………..

immediate suspicion of Monika, slight fear of the other girls as well.

The rest of the game goes by pretty smoothly for me though. I keep gradually finding Natsuki adorable as fuckin’ shit. The more I see her, the more I picture her in a bridal costume with me skipping down the aisle – well, her more grumpily walking and saying it’s not like she WANTED to be there marrying me or anything.

And then Sayori got sad.

… Really sad.

Like, suffering from depression.

I didn’t even have to wait for her confession or anything, I could tell by the way this was going that it wasn’t sadness, it was depression.

And I was like “oh, fuck.”

And then our dumbass protagonist WAITS A WHOLE DAY to visit her and she finally explains to her that she has depression and the way she describes it? To me? Is the most fucking heartbreaking thing in the whole game, especially coming from someone who has depression herself. Everything she said was, to me at least, 10000000% accurate and it hurt. It hurt in a very personal way. I’m not afraid to say I cried.

… I’m not afraid to say I still cry when that confession part comes up in other people’s playthroughs. It’s that poignant and truthful and painful to me.

And I was like “OH FUCK. I CAME HERE TO BE TORTURED WITH FEAR, NOT SADNESS. THIS IS GETTING REAL RIGHT HERE. THIS ISN’T RANDOMLY MURDEROUS FEMALES WANTING MY ASS LIKE I EXPECTED”

Also I baked with Natsuki, which was cute as shit, but I was also pissed as shit that the protagonist, who just realized his friend is suffering from an agonizingly painful mental illness, JUST CASUALLY THREW THAT SHIT UNDER THE RUG BECAUSE HEY. NATSUKI’S AT MY HOUSE DOKI DOKI DESU~~~~~

“Is it really okay for me to stop thinking about Sayori when she might need me?” NO. EVEN IF YOU DO THIS WITH NATSUKI, YOU SHOULD BE WORRIED ABOUT SAYORI AT LEAST IN THE BACK OF YOUR MIND BECAUSE SHE’S STILL IMPORTANT, YOU LUSTFUL JACKASS.

ahem

And then me and Natsuki were about to kiss and Bluebeard throws me another SHIT YES for support

And then SURPRISE SAYORI and Bluebeard goes SHIT NO and stays there while Natsuki runs away

And Sayori goes on more about her emotions because not only does she have depression, but she likes MC for whatever asinine reason and fears that she might feel something different for him than he does for her

Which, again, is a very real fear any person can have that can be greatly intensified by things like depression or anxiety

And the game gave me two options:

“You’ll always be my dearest friend.”

“I love you.”

… Meanwhile, Bluebeard is nudging the dumbass MC’s leg and saying, “Help her seek help and find a therapist. Say you know it’s hard, Can-Opener, but – is that really not going to be an option? Is this bastard that dumb? … Can I bite?”

That said, I chose “You’ll always be my dearest friend” because, imo, saying you experience romantic and sexual feelings toward a person when you honestly don’t just because they’re depressed will only hurt them even more when they inevitably find out the truth and your relationship flops.

Turns out either option would have ended in the same thing – which, also in my opinion, is fine. When you’re a person like MC (not asininely stupid, but you just don’t know about depression), you might not know what to say or how to help and these things can end in the worst. It happens all the time.

That’s why, the way I see it, Sayori’s suicide scene was one of the most poignant, well-executed, horrific, and upsetting things I have ever seen in a horror game.

I know people say it was just for shock value, but I – I honestly have to disagree. When you’re depressed, and I don’t care how clumsy you are, hanging might be the option you go with when you become crisis-level suicidal. And knowing that Sayori has struggled with this her entire life – knowing the context of the situation – I can’t say it was just for shock. You’re damn right it WAS shocking, but it wasn’t just for shock value. 

And the whole “mental illness is horror” thing – I think this is one of the most well executed examples of it. Because whether people like it or not, mental illness can be horrific because it drives innocent people like Sayori to hate themselves completely and to do these things to themselves. It’s taking something very real, something that could potentially happen and has happened – and throwing it right in your face. The trope isn’t bad if the illness itself is treated with respect, and I think this is one of the instances where it was. It didn’t just scream “MENTAL HOSPITAL!! PATIENT!! TRIES TO KILL YOU!!!! BECAUSE THEY’RE A MENTAL HOSPITAL PATIENT!!!! ZOMG!!ONE2!!” It didn’t have Sayori hang herself straight from the get-go and leave you wondering “… why the fuck?”

Mental illness as horror can be done right. Because it can be a horrific thing. I think one of the many ways it can go wrong is that often times (unfortunately) mental illness as horror is treated in such a way that the person themselves is horrific. Not the illness they’re suffering from. They’re horrific because they’re mentally ill. That’s a no-no. But that’s not something I got from Sayori.

With Yuri in the 2nd act, on the other hand, I can kind of agree. The way she began ogling over the player way more than before, THOSE EYES, the.. the scent on the last Yuri poem – I feel that was a bit overdone, and also framing her to be a monster.

However, while this was intentional, someone in the game screwing with the actual game’s fabric of reality was behind it – and it was acknowledged as wrong because Monika herself was behind it and making Yuri act that way – which again, was acknowledged as wrong. Sorry I keep repeating that. Even if it came off a little “ehhh…”, something acknowledging that as wrong is 10000x better than just – once again – “THEY’RE MENTALLY ILL SO THEY’RE SCAAARY. AND THAT’S NOT A WRONG, STIGMATIZING, MAKING-MENTALLY-ILL-PEOPLE-LOOK-LIKE-MONSTERS PORTRAYAL OF SHIT. WE’RE NOT APOLOGIZING FOR SHIT. DEAL WITH IT. IT’S SCARY.”

Monika as the antagonist was very well-done. I had no clue about it from the beginning, even though I felt something was off after the first poem game, and I didn’t reeeeally start suspecting her of shit until Sayori said the “Monika was right, I should just–” line

Holy shit

That’s an antagonist right there, and a fucked up one

So uh yeah. Doki Doki Literature Club.

9/10.

Not enough Natsuki.