Doki Doki Discourse
A Narrative and Philosophical Analysis of Doki Doki Literature Club
Let me begin this article by prefacing that I apologize for the absurdity of its matter. That being said: there exist many important talking points underpinned by this beautiful narrative. On my confidence in its publication, I must quote Sayori: “...Sorry! I was spacing out!”
Most recently, I have been occupied with the 2017 Visual Novel/Horror game Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC). My femininity, though embarrassing, cannot be conceded. I believe its story presents the player with interesting groundwork for formulating their own ideas regarding mental health, relationships, love, and the abstract world of programs. Though unsuspecting on first experience, DDLC can truly form the basis of a philosophical conversation regarding ethics.
This article is a celebration of DDLC. I intend to explore the game’s themes of sentience in technology, emotional attachment to products of media, and the underlying ethical frameworks regarding the game’s conclusion – an elementary conversation of morality.
Part I – Welcome to the Club: An Appraisal
1. Doki Doki Literature Club – An Introduction.
Before finishing this section, I strongly implore the reader to familiarize themselves with DDLC whether through playing the game, reading a run-through of the story, or simply watching someone else engage with it. For those who refuse to venture forth independently, I will present an overview of the game’s story. No matter how strong your masculine sense of pride, there exists an enlightenment – an emotional voyage – vested in this game.
The story begins with an unnamed protagonist, new to the game’s high school setting, being coerced into joining the literature club by his longtime friend, Sayori. This admission leads him to meet the club’s three other members. There is Yuri, an aloof and insecure black-haired student, Natsuki, a hot-headed pink-haired girl, and Monika, the head of the club who the protagonist is familiar with from a prior school experience. Throughout the story, the player engages in writing and sharing poetry with the girls in the club and building relationships with the other members.
As the story progresses, things grow more and more eerie. To put a long story short, the player first begins a semi-romantic relationship with Sayori, whose poetry grows from an illustration of a sunny morning at the first encounter to an outpour of depression by the end. It is alluded that Sayori is being demeaned by Monika, who eventually manipulates Sayori into hanging herself. While this is going on, a veil seems to be lifting from the overall nature of the game, not commenting on its emotive nature but rather its surrealism. It is hinted that Monika is aware that she is in a game, giving the player poetry tips advising them to save their game when important decisions are made.
After Sayori’s suicide, the player is haunted by dark and revealing literature by not only her, but the others in the group. It is revealed, through spending time with Natsuki, that her father physically abuses her, leading her to confide in the literature club for any sense of security. Moreover, through conversation and observation of Yuri, it is revealed that she cuts herself in private as a result of her insecurities. Depending on whether the player chooses to continue the game with Yuri or Natsuki, either one dies – Yuri from stabbing wounds imposed on herself after she breaks down in front of the protagonist and Natsuki, supposedly, being killed indirectly by Monika after a fit of rage.
In both instances, the other character is “deleted” from the game’s files by Monika, who confronts the player about her feelings for them. She exposes directly that she was aware of being in a game, perhaps being the game itself. She even searches the player’s system for their real name, transcending the boundaries of the game. Monika declares that she is in love with the player and has rid them of all distractions from the other three members of the literature club – hoping to spend all eternity with the player. To finish the game, the player must delete Monika’s file from their system – which leads her to concede that she damaged the player’s experience with the rest of the club and apologising for her actions. The player restarts the game with Sayori as the head of the literature club. She ultimately congratulates the player for deleting Monika, seeing the tyranny brought on by her rule of the club (that is, the game). This descends instantaneously into Sayori exposing the same ambitions to spend forever alone with the player. Undermining this narrative entirely, Monika returns as a corrupted file, deleting Sayori, the player and the game itself to prevent a retelling of her “reign.”
Goodbye Sayori
Goodbye Player
Goodbye Literature Club
The credits roll, wherein Monika sings a heartfelt song for the player and as they end, the game and the save files for the game become unplayable on the player’s system – reinstallation being the only option to experience the game again.
Your Reality -- Monika's Credits Theme
2. The “Sentient Technology” Trope
Of course, this is not the first time that a plot regarding the morbidness that may result from a sentient AI has been explored within media – nor is it the last. That being said, the way DDLC explores this theme is significant in the sense that it toys not only with the player’s emotions but with their PC.
Through this, Doki Doki has raised several interesting, though pointless, ethical questions that pervade the game’s story – is it ethical, in a world where people are assets and unconscious – to eliminate all opposition in the pursuit of interest? Does power, even in the most rudimentary sense, corrupt or does it rather disconnect? etc…
I believe this is most potent to touch on as the way in which the game, in only four hours, managed to construct a somewhat stable relationship between the player and the system directly positions any caring person into a transhumanist friendship – these technological constructs becoming the player’s intimate writing buddies and lovers.
Obviously, this is an exaggeration as the game presents only an illusion of comprehension of the most rudimentary sense. Furthermore, any attachment from consumer to an aspect of the media – a reader and a character, a moviegoer and a celebrity, a pornstar and a pervert – exhibits one-sided relationships. It is perhaps the most common delusion amongst the modernized primates we call humans.
However, the way in which DDLC explores this transhumanist relationship is honourable at least – investing the player deeply with the characters not only through observation but with intimate interaction. Writing poems, baking, going to the park, hugging and talking is all the choice of the player – it is the parkgoer who chooses which rollercoasters to ride.
3. Emotional Attachment
It is not only the experiencer’s choice in partaking in the experience that reflects the depth of these relationships it, too, is the emotive punches that the game delivers every moment. As someone who has experienced depression and anxiety, it is especially affecting seeing the deterioration of the caring Sayori and the friendly Yuri that eventually culminates in their suicides. This is not to disregard Natsuki, whom I empathize with too. I will make it no secret that this game broke me contemplatively and emotionally. With that in regards, it is the player’s choice to proceed down this rabbit hole of torment.
In addition to this, it feels as if a field of love, hate, intelligence, sadness, and whatever else just evaporated right in front of you – potential lost in front of your eyes, after only pain is observed — when a character dies. While this remains a testament primarily to immersion and good writing, and a curse to the scourge of death, I believe DDLC accomplishes more than any other work of art by marketing itself as a particularly immersive visual novel concerning dating – the most intimate human interaction not involving physicality in its essential form. Finally, the game’s utilization of the protagonist being the player and delving into the player’s files to find their name, referring to them directly numerously, shoots an arrow into the heart of the experiencer and leaves it there for a while.
Part II – Philosophical Considerations
4. Monika – A Rudimentary Conversation of Ethics
To give this appraisal some direction and to satisfy my philosophy-adjacent contemplation of DDLC, I have decided to discuss Monika’s character throughout the story. As I illustrated at the beginning of this article, each character can be summarized in about a sentence or two. This is broken by the depth later presented in the story – the abuse experienced by all the characters. DDLC is not a game that I believe one can merely have a favourite character, everyone is complex – everyone is a friend.
The most complex of all characters, I believe, is Monika – the game’s paramount. Throughout the story, Monika imposes more and more of a grip on the experience, eventually deleting the other characters to secure the player’s love for her. This hedonistic pursuit is eventually halted by the player’s neglect for her and her restoration of the game as it was, minus herself.
As it is indicated at the end of the story, at least to my interpretation, the leader of the literature club is the only one with some awareness that they are living in a game – that they are governing a game. This corrupts them as romantic actors to exploit those who are ignorant of their condition as being an asset in a game. On top of this, the others have minimal control over their fate. This brings up two questions:
(i) In a universe in which actors other than the hegemon have no means of understanding the fabric of their reality and their position as an asset in a much larger creation, all of which being a subset of the hegemon, can the supposed “creator” be said to be acting in a utilitarian fashion whilst acting destructively as their domain – the actors – have no means of comprehension?
(ii) Can this universe, wherein the hegemon is a romantic actor, be described as determinist regarding the fact that the “creator” will always realize the most effective way to eliminate any burden to their pursuit – thus destroying destraction?
Obviously, these questions transcend practicality as much as they transcend reality, but I shall make it my priority to understand these propositions using the game’s narrative alongside Benthamite utilitarianism and conceptions of determinism.
i. The Utilitarian Creator
Let me begin by unpacking the two major assumptions of my question: (1) I suppose that the characters in the game besides Monika and, later, Sayori are deprived of any form of understanding or consciousness. (2) I suppose that, as irrational subsets of the creator, their lives ultimately exist as meaningless husks whose disposal can be excused in the achievement of the pleasure principle – their lack of agency excluding them from that “greatest number” discussed by Bentham.
To slow down and take it bit by bit, (1) presents the thinker with some blatantly false assumptions, to address the plot of the game, Sayori acknowledges her cognizance of Monika’s prior tyranny. This indicates that, ultimately, some extent of knowledge and understanding exists in the other three characters as actors. Moreover, the agency of other characters in their romantic pursuits, most notably Yuri’s unsettling infatuation with the player, hints at some independence in their conduct. Finally, the hidden poems popping up throughout the game, showing the trauma and emotion of all the characters – especially in their hatred of Monika, indicates a certain uninhibited activity that interferes with her plans.
This is particularly illustrated in Natsuki’s poem which mourns her treatment of Yuri and concerns the strange behaviour of Monika. This example furthermore cements Monika’s position as a sort of “god” in the DDLC narrative, as she eventually controls Natsuki disturbingly to redact the poem immediately after having shown it to the player. Natsuki’s fights with Yuri may also be reflective of control by Monika.
To transcend a game, we can compare this relationship to the status of a citizen in an autocratic state. In short: everyone has the privilege to act; nobody has the right.
Regarding (2), I will further transcend the story to analyze reality itself, especially in a theological context. Supposing that we are founded as humans in the Christian tradition, made in God’s image, are we then not necessarily subsets to God himself? It is not by nature of being subordinate to another that one’s agency can be voided, much the same can be said regarding an owner and a pet or a parent and a child – perhaps even a master and his slave.
In the second half of this statement, the contingency of one’s agency or consciousness on determining their ability to be included in the utilitarian public (that indicated in Bentham’s pleasure principle as being those considered as possible recipients of the “greatest good”) is very much also dependent on the first assumption – that of the characters lacking a will to act.
Thus, it cannot be said that a hegemon in a society without agency, such as Monika, is acting in a utilitarian manner unless the definition of Benthamite utilitarianism is to be morphed into some new monster. That being said, and to return to the story, it is not to say that Monika didn’t ever act in a utilitarian fashion. In the fourth act of the narrative, by eliminating herself from the game’s universe and restoring the player and the other three characters to their status quo, it can be said that Monika, in a way, maximized the greatest pleasure for the greatest number – herself not indicating a fundamental opposition to the new system. In seeing the consumption of Sayori with power, by deleting the game, it can also be said that Monika acted in a way that promoted the highest social welfare, though this is a conversation for another time.
ii. Determinism and Actors
At this end of the conversation, we regard the fundamental nature of humanity relative to the philosophical concept of determinism. We must first consider Aristotle’s argument for man as a rational creature. Should we see man as a rational actor, that is not to suppose that man is fated always to the pits of rationality – much the contrary. Modern man is as, if not more, irrational as he is rational. Thus, we understand man as being a creature predisposed to rationality.
Why do I address this? Well, to describe the characters of Doki Doki as romantic actors is to misconstrue their nature. While all the characters in the game have a romantic disposition towards the player, it is not to say that they are fated to be players oriented in the strict and perpetual game of love. Thus, it is to say that it can neither be asserted that the characters came to love the player by chance or by fate.
Moreover, I would like to add to this notion by opposing Aristotle’s definition of a man as a rational creature by stating that reason is not the only capacity exclusive to the human race. Humans have an idiosyncratic understanding of love in the animal kingdom, just as different cultures have differing conceptions of romance. To take the typical Western approach, we court, we date, we marry, and we live together – each of us possessing strange roles within a relationship. Without extending this article to an anthropological, or biological, study, I’m certain it can be said that we humans are strange with our traditions. Moreover, we’re the only animals I can think of who are disposed to writing poetry, playing piano, or giving promises to our loved ones – all of which happens in DDLC, mind you. Thus, why do we take this position to centre our reason as our defining factor? It is the mere self-centredness of our reason-skewed ontology.
To use this in the argument at hand, I think it is therefore unreasonable to envision the characters in Doki Doki, within the context of the story, as mere battle droids of love. They are approximated humans; they act the same way as we do. Thus, suppose determinism is to not place it in the hands of being romantically oriented, but has to depend on the possibility of power’s corruption, as in any other case idiosyncrasies from reasonable individual dispositions would lead the club leader to act differently than others.
On to determinism: I do not believe that power controls actors into doing something, actors use power to achieve desires. Thus, in the Doki Doki conception, we can see control in the game’s sense as resulting in an end dependent on the character’s convictions. Perhaps Monika was wrong in destroying the game when she picked up on some similarities between her conduct and Sayori’s aspirations. In this sense, that is neither here nor there.
To extend beyond the game, our conception of determinism, and its opposite – free will, are mutually incoherent as one exists in the other. Furthermore, in the DDLC canon, the end of the universe’s destruction, given its inevitability, cannot be seen as proving determinism. Ends are met by a variety of justifications and, from our point of view, it cannot be comprehended by any other means than a posteriori that something will happen, especially in a multitude of Leibnizian possible worlds. To suppose otherwise would be to podium many assumptions greater than the arguer.
5. Conclusion
To close off a long case, Doki Doki Literature Club is a contemplative piece of media that serves an important role in the contemporary zeitgeist. Moreover, it holds a unique place in inciting deep emotional and philosophical reflection. I will say with confidence that this narrative has importantly shaped my mentality, and I highly encourage the reader to pursue at least some understanding of its content. Goodbye Sayori, Goodbye reader, Goodbye Literature Club.
A marvel millions of years in the making.
Where the womb of Earth chaotically meets the surface.
Under a clear blue sky, an expanse of bliss -
But beneath gray rolling clouds, an endless enigma.
The easiest world to get lost in
is one where everything can be found.
Yuri — Beach