![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaJust Yuri
I contend that Doki Doki Literature Club has two major flaws:
one is that the fourth wall breaking/metanarrative content is insufficiently robust (more on that in another post)
the other is that Yuri is so good as to overshadow Monika, and the metanarrative, and certainly Sayori and Natsuki, and therefore any incentive towards 100% completion
I'm drawn to introverted/shy love interests that invite the player character to draw them out of their shell; it's part power fantasy (to imagine myself as sort of supportive partner that I can't be in reality) and projection (hi, I'm a bookish introvert, love me)
but the ideal, the most desirable, outcome of this dynamic is that the shy love interest retains agency (so that the power fantasy doesn't default to boring, gross, probably heteronormative power imbalances) and turns out to be twisted as fuck, because what even is the point of coming out of a shell if there wasn't a mighty good reason to've been in the shell in the first place—the cognitive dissonance of shy and bookish evolving into a significantly more visceral exploration of cerebral and physical experiences is very good
and Yuri does this so well—her poor social skills resonate despite the nature of her larger arc, her motives remain consistent despite player influence and are only exaggerated by Monika's influence, and events and intensity are encouraged by the player but primarily dictated by her desire
(for knives, for experience, for understanding, for sincere intimacy; same, girl, same)
her death is disappointing b/c what even is the point of a yandere love interest if they don't stab you first, but that aside:
the pacing makes her death & its legacy a satisfying part of the overarching narrative, too; she's a sheer delight in and of herself and a productive part of the larger story
so for a player like me, the DDLC experience is to romance Yuri in Act 1, romance Yuri again in Act 2 without even noticing the railroading, get to Monika and the metanarrative, beat the game, and feel entirely satisfied. the game sabotages itself; I did tdo a 100% run but it wasn't worth it: nothing is as good as the default experience and Yuri's role within it
The metanarrative
I contend that DDLC's metanarrative has two major flaws:
the first is that the 100% ending is insubstantial—it's an opportunity to better develop the concept that club president = sentience/metaknowledge, but instead just reiterates it. the only really NEW content (that progresses the metanarrative) in a 100% playthrough is the hidden lore; and there's some good lore! (if inconsistently located, frex why is there some really Yuri prose in Natsuki metadata?) but too much of it depends on/hints at Project Libitina, which is a cop out: it sacrifices a better-developed narrative here to hint at a potential future narrative (and dangling ~conspiracy~ plot threads are always easier to write than a fleshed out conspiracy narrative; if Libitina ever does exist it probably won't live up to the hype encouraged here)
the second is that this isn't what fourth-wall-breaking meta game narratives should look like
DDLC does fine by the tradition of similar metanarratives, more/less successful/robust than some. but the use of not-quite-paratext, of hidden lore, of system files, is self-sabotaging: encouraging the player to explore the script in a game about going off-script reaffirms that, in reality, everything is scripted. this is what most game-breaking meta is. sometimes it draws attention to game-as-construct, sometimes it violates player expectations of game-as-construct, but the deconstruction is in itself a construction
this is what the future of fourth-wall-breaking meta game narratives should be:
Yes, Monster Factory Is a Work of Art by KyleKallgrenBHH
(I have watched this essay like .... five times. it's embarrassing. I think it's very good)
the future of breaking the perceived limits of a manufactured reality is not just to highlight that it is manufactured, not just to violate the limits we've been conditioned to receive, but to violate that reality itself
not with scripted game errors, but with the actual corruption and breakdown of game code, something more akin to glitch art, or Vinesauce, or, yes, Monster Factory
I concur with the developer letter: any attempt to push limits is a good attempt, and the onus for evolving this trope does not rely solely on DDLC; I also understand that its limitations in scope and development are part of why it doesn't entirely fulfill the potential of the trope in its current form. but DDLC most definitely highlights the trope's limitations
and that makes me really wish it had pushed past them
#'how many meat can we make him?' a question for Yuri in particular
other references that came up when talking DDLC with a friend:
Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi - End of Aoi Route (another visnovel that violates narrative structure; character has route-persistent memory and addresses player as opposed to player character)
Re:Creators ("Long story short, it was terrible, don't watch it." but on a meta-meta-level "you start to suspect that maybe it's not the writing of the show that's bad, it's that the characters were written badly by the in-universe authors and that bad writing is reflected in their actions in the in-universe real world")
The Turing Test (DDLC's other option is to make what it is more successful, but successful games about AI which confront game-as-program are hard; The Turing Test is fatally flawed (conflict between AI morality/logic and human player-protagonist morality/instinct is too easy to resolve) but challenging the Turing Test and Chinese Room thought experiments—does determining sentience really matter? is the significance of the argument more important than the fact that it's a machine making the argument?) nears the mark)
The Ring (fourth wall breaks (here, the video that kills you, which the viewer sees) are easier when the in-universe rules are more forgiving (you can't prove that it won't kill you, the viewer), because the medium is more forgiving, or because the medium is more distant—a film viewer isn't part of the narrative's construction in the way the player is in a game)
Undertale (for obvious "this is a game that breaks the fourth wall & calls into question game conventions" reasons)
Nier: Automata (as above, see also here)
The Stanley Parable (a good example of the fact that the "breakdown" of a fourth wall break in a video game is also a curated, scripted event; it can still be successful, especially in concert with a narrative that challenges player's expectations of video game limitations/conceptualizations—but it's not a "real" breakdown)
Car Boys (absolutely akin to Monster Factory (and Touch the Skyrim) re: what actual confront-the-reality-of-the-constructed-experience looks like; Car Boys in an especially good example because this is how we can (inadvertently) program games to achieve real fourth wall breaks: complex, responsive, immersive, profoundly broken and violable physics engines)
Goat Simulator (also Octodad, Human Fall Flat, Gang Beasts and various other games which) (intentionally use imprecise, fuzzy movement and physics engines as gameplay mechanics—this is how we'll develop intentionally-breakable code that is also playable)
Anamanaguchi's Capsule Silence XXIV (the game) (this plays for humor & is mostly just a marketing vehicle, but this is a prototype for intentionally broken game as surreal experience/art installation)
I contend that Doki Doki Literature Club has two major flaws:
one is that the fourth wall breaking/metanarrative content is insufficiently robust (more on that in another post)
the other is that Yuri is so good as to overshadow Monika, and the metanarrative, and certainly Sayori and Natsuki, and therefore any incentive towards 100% completion
I'm drawn to introverted/shy love interests that invite the player character to draw them out of their shell; it's part power fantasy (to imagine myself as sort of supportive partner that I can't be in reality) and projection (hi, I'm a bookish introvert, love me)
but the ideal, the most desirable, outcome of this dynamic is that the shy love interest retains agency (so that the power fantasy doesn't default to boring, gross, probably heteronormative power imbalances) and turns out to be twisted as fuck, because what even is the point of coming out of a shell if there wasn't a mighty good reason to've been in the shell in the first place—the cognitive dissonance of shy and bookish evolving into a significantly more visceral exploration of cerebral and physical experiences is very good
and Yuri does this so well—her poor social skills resonate despite the nature of her larger arc, her motives remain consistent despite player influence and are only exaggerated by Monika's influence, and events and intensity are encouraged by the player but primarily dictated by her desire
(for knives, for experience, for understanding, for sincere intimacy; same, girl, same)
her death is disappointing b/c what even is the point of a yandere love interest if they don't stab you first, but that aside:
the pacing makes her death & its legacy a satisfying part of the overarching narrative, too; she's a sheer delight in and of herself and a productive part of the larger story
so for a player like me, the DDLC experience is to romance Yuri in Act 1, romance Yuri again in Act 2 without even noticing the railroading, get to Monika and the metanarrative, beat the game, and feel entirely satisfied. the game sabotages itself; I did tdo a 100% run but it wasn't worth it: nothing is as good as the default experience and Yuri's role within it
The metanarrative
I contend that DDLC's metanarrative has two major flaws:
the first is that the 100% ending is insubstantial—it's an opportunity to better develop the concept that club president = sentience/metaknowledge, but instead just reiterates it. the only really NEW content (that progresses the metanarrative) in a 100% playthrough is the hidden lore; and there's some good lore! (if inconsistently located, frex why is there some really Yuri prose in Natsuki metadata?) but too much of it depends on/hints at Project Libitina, which is a cop out: it sacrifices a better-developed narrative here to hint at a potential future narrative (and dangling ~conspiracy~ plot threads are always easier to write than a fleshed out conspiracy narrative; if Libitina ever does exist it probably won't live up to the hype encouraged here)
the second is that this isn't what fourth-wall-breaking meta game narratives should look like
DDLC does fine by the tradition of similar metanarratives, more/less successful/robust than some. but the use of not-quite-paratext, of hidden lore, of system files, is self-sabotaging: encouraging the player to explore the script in a game about going off-script reaffirms that, in reality, everything is scripted. this is what most game-breaking meta is. sometimes it draws attention to game-as-construct, sometimes it violates player expectations of game-as-construct, but the deconstruction is in itself a construction
this is what the future of fourth-wall-breaking meta game narratives should be:
Yes, Monster Factory Is a Work of Art by KyleKallgrenBHH
(I have watched this essay like .... five times. it's embarrassing. I think it's very good)
the future of breaking the perceived limits of a manufactured reality is not just to highlight that it is manufactured, not just to violate the limits we've been conditioned to receive, but to violate that reality itself
not with scripted game errors, but with the actual corruption and breakdown of game code, something more akin to glitch art, or Vinesauce, or, yes, Monster Factory
I concur with the developer letter: any attempt to push limits is a good attempt, and the onus for evolving this trope does not rely solely on DDLC; I also understand that its limitations in scope and development are part of why it doesn't entirely fulfill the potential of the trope in its current form. but DDLC most definitely highlights the trope's limitations
and that makes me really wish it had pushed past them
#'how many meat can we make him?' a question for Yuri in particular
other references that came up when talking DDLC with a friend:
Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi - End of Aoi Route (another visnovel that violates narrative structure; character has route-persistent memory and addresses player as opposed to player character)
Re:Creators ("Long story short, it was terrible, don't watch it." but on a meta-meta-level "you start to suspect that maybe it's not the writing of the show that's bad, it's that the characters were written badly by the in-universe authors and that bad writing is reflected in their actions in the in-universe real world")
The Turing Test (DDLC's other option is to make what it is more successful, but successful games about AI which confront game-as-program are hard; The Turing Test is fatally flawed (conflict between AI morality/logic and human player-protagonist morality/instinct is too easy to resolve) but challenging the Turing Test and Chinese Room thought experiments—does determining sentience really matter? is the significance of the argument more important than the fact that it's a machine making the argument?) nears the mark)
The Ring (fourth wall breaks (here, the video that kills you, which the viewer sees) are easier when the in-universe rules are more forgiving (you can't prove that it won't kill you, the viewer), because the medium is more forgiving, or because the medium is more distant—a film viewer isn't part of the narrative's construction in the way the player is in a game)
Undertale (for obvious "this is a game that breaks the fourth wall & calls into question game conventions" reasons)
Nier: Automata (as above, see also here)
The Stanley Parable (a good example of the fact that the "breakdown" of a fourth wall break in a video game is also a curated, scripted event; it can still be successful, especially in concert with a narrative that challenges player's expectations of video game limitations/conceptualizations—but it's not a "real" breakdown)
Car Boys (absolutely akin to Monster Factory (and Touch the Skyrim) re: what actual confront-the-reality-of-the-constructed-experience looks like; Car Boys in an especially good example because this is how we can (inadvertently) program games to achieve real fourth wall breaks: complex, responsive, immersive, profoundly broken and violable physics engines)
Goat Simulator (also Octodad, Human Fall Flat, Gang Beasts and various other games which) (intentionally use imprecise, fuzzy movement and physics engines as gameplay mechanics—this is how we'll develop intentionally-breakable code that is also playable)
Anamanaguchi's Capsule Silence XXIV (the game) (this plays for humor & is mostly just a marketing vehicle, but this is a prototype for intentionally broken game as surreal experience/art installation)
