Thinking Too Much: The Tragedy of Monika
Nov. 30th, 2017 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leeshajoyWarning: the following contains big ol' honkin' SPOILERS for the end of Doki Doki Literature Club. It is recommended that you play the game to the end before proceeding.
I was listening to the ending theme for Doki Doki Literature Club for the umpteenth time when I had an epiphany of sorts. Monika does all these things to try to win the player's affections--she manipulates two people into committing suicide and sraight-up murders another (and that's just in the playthroughs I've seen; still not sure what she does if you beat her to the punch of deleting Yuri), and destroys her entire reality, all in the name of her love for you. Her justification is that none of them were real people to begin with; only she is "real" because she's aware of the fact that it's all a game.
The thing is? Monika's love for you isn't real either. It can't be. How can you love someone you don't know? She admits herself that she doesn't know your real name or even your gender, but it goes beyond that. She's never seen your face. She's never had a conversation with you that wasn't a part of the game's script. Your interests, your personality, your actual self are all a complete mystery to her.
So why does she claim to love you?
Because she's programmed to.
Monika, like everyone else in the game, was made to be a potential love interest for the faceless, nameless entity who is the game's player character. Any history she may have with that entity is just as fictional as any other aspect of the game. She loves you for the same reason the other girls do: because that is literally her purpose for existence. Because she was written to love whoever is playing the game. That's the one aspect of the game Monika doesn't comprehend--that she is just as much at the mercy of her programming as any of the other girls. She knows the world isn't real, but she thinks that she is the exception to that, and that is her tragedy.
I was listening to the ending theme for Doki Doki Literature Club for the umpteenth time when I had an epiphany of sorts. Monika does all these things to try to win the player's affections--she manipulates two people into committing suicide and sraight-up murders another (and that's just in the playthroughs I've seen; still not sure what she does if you beat her to the punch of deleting Yuri), and destroys her entire reality, all in the name of her love for you. Her justification is that none of them were real people to begin with; only she is "real" because she's aware of the fact that it's all a game.
The thing is? Monika's love for you isn't real either. It can't be. How can you love someone you don't know? She admits herself that she doesn't know your real name or even your gender, but it goes beyond that. She's never seen your face. She's never had a conversation with you that wasn't a part of the game's script. Your interests, your personality, your actual self are all a complete mystery to her.
So why does she claim to love you?
Because she's programmed to.
Monika, like everyone else in the game, was made to be a potential love interest for the faceless, nameless entity who is the game's player character. Any history she may have with that entity is just as fictional as any other aspect of the game. She loves you for the same reason the other girls do: because that is literally her purpose for existence. Because she was written to love whoever is playing the game. That's the one aspect of the game Monika doesn't comprehend--that she is just as much at the mercy of her programming as any of the other girls. She knows the world isn't real, but she thinks that she is the exception to that, and that is her tragedy.
