"Welcome to the Literature Club! πŸ’“"

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
Happy Father's Day....? (A bit of a spoiler as to one of the char's relationships with her dad)
The plug. The plug makes this entire pic.
I knew this discussion would come -- I was sort of holding on to it in case we did in-depth looks at each club member, but no better time.

But first, acknowledgement of the artist -- Khyle's done quite a few "blursed" (both blessed and cursed) artworks of anime and anime-adjacent topics. (He recently got into some trouble when he released a Spy x Family piece where Anya was dropped off at a school with an infamous German slogan above its doors -- as the fictional nation that is the setting was patterned after East Germany, it seemed a very bizarre research failure, at best....)
The plug, and the drawing, which appears to have been torn up and painstakingly put back together. Did she do both, I wonder?

So, much like Yuri's behaviour, Natsuki's home life takes a much darker turn in the Act 2 replay. A lot of fans have taken the second version to be the canonical truth -- and as he's the only parent to be so much as mentioned in the game proper (yes, as I showed last month, fans did make sprites for Sayori's mother. Fans make a lot of new material....), we really only have what's said to go on.

However, the Metaverse files in DDLC Plus suggest that the game setting (VM1) was deliberately kept to be a small universe, and it's possible that unseen characters don't actually exist outside of the club members' constructed memories of them, at least as far as the game proper is concerned. And we know that Monika was tampering with both Yuri and Natsuki's personalities in the hopes of forcing us to choose neither and force a Monika route by default....

Now, there is a very dark mod-video-playthrough that I came across out there, that treats Natsuki's father as both a) existing and b) also mentally tampered with by Monika to become as described in Act 2. I suppose that could also be the case if Monika has root-level access, of course, though if she's able to affect an even larger cast of characters (whether they have .chr files, script files, or are our presumptive interface), we definitely get into Wandavison territory....

I'll admit that, while I cannot say if Natsuki's father has more or less existence than any other DDLC character, I prefer to think that what Natsuki experiences in Act 2 is only due to Monika's false memory overlay, rather than anything that actually happened offscreen.

But, that's just my interpretation....
 

MEDdMI

Nonstop Baaka
Citizen
The artist thing is kinda oof about Spy x Family.
Yeah, I interpeted Natsuki's char as
her dad ignores/neglects her in Act 1. Monica alters him (or her memories of him) to be abusive. Of course, this makes Monica more horrible, but they're just fake chars anyway, right?
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
The artist thing is kinda oof about Spy x Family.
Yes, it was one thing to do "The aftermath of Yor stepping on a building brick", but that one....
Yeah, I interpeted Natsuki's char as
her dad ignores/neglects her in Act 1. Monica alters him (or her memories of him) to be abusive. Of course, this makes Monica more horrible, but they're just fake chars anyway, right?
That last sentence ends up touching upon the existential crisis/What Measure is a Non-Human? aspect of the game.
Monika believes that she, alone amongst her peers in the game, is special. And that's... not wrong... to a degree, in that she is aware that she is in a visual novel, and aware of us-the-player interacting with the club members through the Protagonist.
But, as I've asked before, how can she be certain that she is the only one amongst the cast worthy of personhood, or even that her feelings towards us are not ingrained in her code?
Natsuki tries to get us to help Yuri in Act 2, in spite of them being rivals and both of them not entirely in control of their emotional states. Scripted character or no, she knows something is amiss and tries to do something about it. Sayori does get the same "epiphany" as Monika -- and depending on when and how she gets it reacts in more than one way. She (most of the time) perceives herself as having choices as well as will, in a way Monika does not.

In a nutshell, if If the other club members are just game scripts, we have no reason to believe that Monika isn't either, however much she protests otherwise.
But if Monika is a person -- if the extra code of club president grants personhood -- then Sayori definitely is as well: and the others have just as much potential to develop, and Monika is at the very least guilty of manslaughter, having shown depraved indifference to her friends.

I don't know if those fans keeping "monika.chr" on a key drive until the day they can upload it into some sort of body have thought this through. Some likely have. It's a phenomenon a bit like the Makima-simping you were talking about in the anime thread, though with less "I want to be dommed by a devil mommy" and a bit more "I want to rescue the AI damsel from non-existence or imprisonment. Why would I not? She tried so hard to find me!"
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....But am I so different, I wonder? This VN and others like it have become fixed ideas for me as well, if for different reasons....

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MEDdMI

Nonstop Baaka
Citizen
I don't know if those fans keeping "monika.chr" on a key drive until the day they can upload it into some sort of body have thought this through
... what.
Really? It doesn't work like-
*sigh*

Even if it were possible, I can't help but think she would be sorely disappointed in real life and not being able to use her abilities.
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
... what.
Really? It doesn't work like-
*sigh*

You and I both saw Game Theory's breakdown of just what's in the .chr files, so we know. And yet....

...we shouldn't underestimate just how devoted some fans will get.
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Someone on the Tube of You revealed that Monika After Story even has a subroutine where, if you reveal that the player has passed away, she asks for her character file to be placed in storage and interred with the player.


Even if it were possible, I can't help but think she would be sorely disappointed in real life and not being able to use her abilities.

Canon!Monika definitely has Phenomenal Powah! (copyright the Lord Darth Sidious) over a very small environment.
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And yet, to hear her tell it (although I should reiterate that I'm not entirely convinced that she has a reliable perspective), she desperately wants out. And she wasn't exactly a very good coder....

So would losing her Reality Warping abilities be an acceptable trade for roaming around our much bigger world? Only she can answer that, and again, her frame of mind is suspect.

I mean, it might be amusing for someone to make a sequel where we have a slightly darker take on Supernatural Spouse sitcoms such as I Dream of Jeannie or Oh My Goddess!
But I really don't know how Realistic Monika would turn out once she was part of our world....

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(She is supposed to be Japanese, after all, although she suspects her creator Did Not Do the Research....)
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
While summer's still in full swing, here's some art of the club members (plus a special guest) in sundresses:
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Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
So, it would appear that Nendoroids for Yuri and Sayori have reached the prototype phase. No words as yet as to accessories.

(Still hoping for Mr. Cow)

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Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
I look forward to/dread what the alt faces will look like.
We can probably guess with Yuri (kind of leaning towards yandere-ecstatic, I think it would be easier to translate to Nendoroid style than photorealistic eyes).

For Sayori, I'd be happy with just a sleeping face, but only 20% of DDLC fanworks (estimated) are about our happiness, so we might get her breakdown (which I use on this board as my go-to "Has anyone checked on those who had to translate Kiss Players?" comment....
PLEASE_MAKE_IT_STOP!.png
(...Natsuki, why did you give Sayori the Kiss Players manga? For that matter why did you have the Kiss Players manga?!)


Monika's still haunts me
I used a "like" reaction, but I wish I could give a "care" one Γ  la The Book of Faces, because, yeah....
The "Japanese Vtuber gamer reactions" have cut a little bit into Monika's jumpscare face, but then Good Smile had to both make it a static permanent image and give it a realistic flesh tone....

I know I'm still haunted by the pathos behind Gibi's portrayal of Monika, and she never once pulls that trick in her 10-hour Space Classroom stare-a-thon... thank goodness.
 
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Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
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...sorry, I think some ninja chefs were cutting onions nearby....

It was (only) partially my fault.
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
I'm sorry but she kinda creeps me out. The ribbon feels weird.
No need to be sorry! The hair-bow is a signature part of the sprite model, but when you try to translate that into a live-action person, it seems a bit extraneous (Sort of how Natsuki's hairclip doesn't seem to actually fasten anything....).

Arguably the feathered hair would be enough if the image was coloured.

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Here, with colour, we have an artwork where the bow blends in, and a cosplay where it's very prominent. It still works, although as with Monika's hairstyle it raises the question of whether such would actually be allowed as part of a school uniform.
But even without the bow I think we'd still recognize her....
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
For September, I'll be switching VN business up a bit....
Screenshot 2023-08-26 184903.png

...but this isn't Sayo-nara to the Literature Club. It's just that it's time to take a different journey, and gauge how my own heart has healed.

Still, I should perhaps finally get around to sharing one piece of fanon of my own devising that I had kicking around my head for a while.
The game, as I had mentioned, only gives first names to our club members, and while we may have reasons for not thinking that the world of the game is a lived-in-universe, the characters still felt real to me, for reasons of my own.

So, before September starts, the Bestowing of Family Names:
I had originally thought to give her the 13th most common Japanese surname (per Wikipedia, as of 2008). but that struck me as a little too alliterative, so I instead went with "Nishimura", which if I recall correctly has kanji that can be read as "West Village" -- which struck me as fitting.

I had thought that SatΓ΄ would be fitting, the name is often used to suggest former nobility or other upper-class sorts, which would fit in with some of what she lets slip about herself as well as some of her cultural pretentions. (She may be distantly related to KS's Lilly Satou (a different transliteration), though the latter is part Scottish.)

I couldn't resist a play on words that likely doesn't scan in Japanese (much like her attempt at a Monika pun), giving her the family name "Tsunoda" for the element that describes her trope a little too well.

As for Monika? Well, that's a little more complicated, I suspect. Though I noticed that the YouTube channel "Just Art" gave her the family name Kobayashi (a reference, perhaps? Setting sail for the promised land....), I had thought that she might think "Monika Salvato" would be nicely inconspicuous....

Anyway. As soon as I launch the game and figure out how to record some of it, I'll see readers in the new thread, as well as this one from time to time.
 
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Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
Before the school year kicks off once more, let's have a Golden Ending....

Though, as appropriate for a Transformers board, it never really ends, does it?

 

MEDdMI

Nonstop Baaka
Citizen
I was browsing the Nintendo eShop and saw this game that's coming out soon (also available for the Switch)
Love Love School Days

Definitely seems partly inspired by Doki Doki, with the title similarity, and
the girl being able to delete game data.
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
So how much of a sugar rush would the combined phrase "Doki-Doki Love Love" inflict?

Well, let's have a look at the --
LLLS.gif


....yes, I can see nods to DDLC (an AI in a dating sim), Saiko no Sutoka (with the nighttime jumpscares/evading-a-yandere sequences) and even You and Me and Her (with a character in a dating sim discovering that YOU pledged to her in an alternate route, but now YOU're taking a different route, and she Doesn't Take It Well).
Oh, and look at this inventory item:
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I wonder how Vannamelon will take the news of this game....
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
Another anniversary for the game, and a birthday for Monika! (Alas, she is the only character with a canonical birthday. I do wish for that to get remedied.)

And this time around, some kind soul (possibly unwitting) bought Monika presents!

And of course, everyone's invited to her party. She wouldn't have it any other way. So.....

 


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