Doki Doki Literature Club

Day 0

Day 1
* Yuri
* Sayori
* Natsuki
* Monika

Day 2
* Yuri
- Literally: She perceives that the raccoon gets excited whenever she brandishes her cutting knife, since it indicates that the raccoon will be fed with more of the sliced bread.
- The raccoon possibly represents her craving for "sliced bread". Her window is probably her perspective of normal "eating" habits. She started slicing bread when she became aware of her raccoon. She knew that once she gave in to the craving, she would continue for more. And now she experiences the craving more and more frequently. She became accustomed to it, so it probably starts to feel normal now.
- Sliced Bread
- Cutting Knife
- She's addicted to something which is NOT food

* Sayori
- Literally: She digs into her scalp and plucks out her happy thoughts (from her dreams) to put into a bottle. These bottles help her get along with her friends, helping them when they're down. She gets more dreams, fills more bottles. She runs out of bottles and replaces them. Her friends are in front of her locked door. She lets them in, and they rush in. She tries to hold out the bottles but they all fall and shatter between her feet. Her friends aren't smiling, they're shouting and pleading, while all she hears are echoes.
- The bottles probably represent the happy thoughts that she tries to express, while covering up her true emotions. Regardless of how she's feeling, she tries to manifest happy thoughts. It ends up working pretty well, as her cheerful outward personality seems to get her close to "friends", and helps comfort them when they're feeling down. She keeps trying harder and harder, but it seems she doesn't feel like she accomplishes much progress. The locked front door represents how she locks up her true feelings, even from her friends. But she fears that if her friends do come in and see her true self, things would go wrong. Her friends wouldn't be accepting of her, and even if she tries her usual action of projecting happy thoughts, it wouldn't work anymore. All she hears are the echoes of her failure in betraying her friends.

* Monika
- Literally: Lots of colors and noise
- Her "senses" (perceptions/experiences) seem to be overwhelmed. No matter how hard she tries to ignore it or look away, it keeps bothering her endlessly and she can't stand it. She finds these disturbances to be meaningless, but they won't go away.


Day 3
* Yuri
- Blue-green light represents "ghosts", likely referring to something she's describing based on her perception while she's unsure of its reality. In this case, it refers to her love for Protato. He comes closer and closer to her heart (the amber glow). The umbrella indicates her attempt to distance herself from him, but she ends up lowering her guard and ends up falling for him. The feeling was so strong that it felt like time stopped. She considers this love as a "forbidden emotion", implying that she doesn't consider herself as being worthy of this experience. She describes herself as a ghost again, which suggests she might have felt doubts about whether she is a normal person. But she decides to embrace this feeling nonetheless, instead of trying to understand it. "The flickering stops" suggests that she might be more calmer about it once she accepted it.

* Monika
- The Lady Who Knows Everything represents her projection of an unreachable purpose and meaning to life. She's been seeking to find meaning to her life, but has always been living like a "feather", following the currents of the wind with no clear sense of purpose or direction. This might be why she's been involved in many different clubs, hoping that she may find herself in one of them. She's been losing hope, but still pursued such answers nonetheless. Eventually, possibly due to a specific event ("until one day") or due to gradual natural progression of her perspectives, she lost all hope in finding any meaning to her life. This might have been preceded by an event that revived her hope ("catches me between the thumb and forefinger") before it flung her deeper into despair. She now continues floating adrift, no longer seeking any purpose or reason, but continuing to flow with the wind.

Day 2-1
* Natsuki
Same

* Monika
- "he" wasn't looking at her. She can't see color anymore, and the people around her seem like poems on paper. The room closes on her, and she seeks an escape. He's right there.
- "He" probably represents poetic inspiration. She tries to look around her surroundings for ideas, but her physical perceptions don't seem to help. She feels trapped, like the world is crushing her, but then she finds "him". And then she takes out her pen and writes her poem.
- Another possibility is that "he" represents some specific topic or entity (possibly related to her troubling past). She tries to look around, maybe trying to forget about "him" and find a different topic to focus on, but is unable to properly process anything else. But then she eventually decides to accept that "he" is looking at her, i.e. that topic is significant to her. Brandishing her pen probably indicates her acceptance of this topic as she starts to feel comfortable with it.

Day 2-2
* Yuri
- Increasing rates: Linear -> Parabolic -> Exponential -> Breathing. Breathing is the final state where her feelings surround her with every breath she takes. References to time indicate how each period of time feels so long, e.g. a second being like a year (rotating of the planet).
- References to blood and stakes and snakes might indicate that she feels guilty or impure or unworthy of having such feelings. References to God might indicate a feeling of significance and meaning. "God disproving the existence of God" might suggest that her awareness of these strong feelings, which she now considers as embodying her significance and purpose, is also what emphasizes that she's not worthy of such feelings.
- Kaleidoscope of blood written in clocks. "Kaleidoscope" - Seeing into the distance, possibly her vision of the future. "Blood" - Sacrifices, probably, or maybe just violent painful experiences. "Written" - Documented, acknowledging the significance or presence. "Clocks" - measurement of time.

* Monika
- Same poem as before with small differences:
-- A bunch of vowels are missing. They're all vowels, so I don't think they spell any hidden messages.
-- Several words are capitalized: CACOPHONY, STOP, SINE, COSINE, TANGENT, KNIFE, BREATHING RIBCAGE
-- The last "Load Me" is replaced by "Delete Her"
-- "Like playing a KNIFE on a BREATHING RIBCAGE" probably wasn't there before; I don't remember what was there before.
- Knife on a breathing ribcage obviously indicates stabbing to death, possibly symbolizing murderous intent or maybe just literal murder.
- CACOPHONY emphasizes the endless noise. STOP represents her desperate plea for everything to stop.
- SINE, COSINE, TANGENT: Might represent a triangle of sorts. Every periodic waveform is formed from sine and cosine. Tangent = Sine/Cosine. The periodicity might indicate how the events would repeat, possibly the continuous noise, or on a broader scale like the events in the story.
- Delete Her: Possibly referring to Sayori's deletion, or maybe somebody else being deleted this time (Yuri?).





============================================
Random Thoughts
- Yuri has no self-esteem. Maybe she had an unfortunate experience in the past where her efforts were rejected.
- Monika feels like Yuri's poems are the most... romantic.
- Death flag
- She eats by herself all the time, reading books. She feels alienated by real people, who scold her for spacing out and call her a "know-it-all". But she's very comfortable with the fictional characters in her books (which probably makes her creepier in other people's eyes). This is probably why she has no self-esteem regarding her interactions with other people.
- Yuri doesn't seem to want me to come to her place.
- Yuri is fascinated with knives, especially her personal pocket knife.

- Natsuki is impressed by the things around her and is motivated to try harder?
- Natsuki is embarrassed to recite a poem to her friends, but feels more comfortable with doing so to other strangers.

- Monika might be traumatized by an experience in the past
- Or it seems to be a continuous experience of suffering from her everyday life. Her perspective causes her to feel uncomfortable about what she encounters (probably some specific things, or more broader observations), but she doesn't feel like she can do anything about it, but to keep enduring it.

- Sayori feels guilty about something she did in her past, and is trying to move on from it
- She probably feels that her attempts to hide her true self and display a happy facade is a kind of betrayal towards her friends. This is probably what accumulates the feelings of guilt and shame as well.
- Sayori marked out November on her calendar.
- Sayori admits to having depression for her entire life, but I suspect that her attachment to Protato helped her deal with it all this time.
- She finished her poem.
- I killed her.

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* A Dream
Trapped in a warehouse, floor disappears, falling on warm water, swimming up to the surface, lungs tired

Yuri please get out of my life

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Yuri's hand is filled with cuts; has she been playing with her personal pocket knife too much?

<1-2 Yuri>
Yuri is probably a physical masochist. Her raccoon poem described her more "unusual" hobbies. Perhaps it did start off innocently cutting sliced bread with a knife. But she ended up cutting herself... and enjoyed it. And she started cutting herself more and more. It became an obsession.

Yuri also seems to reach yandere levels, wanting to erase everyone else Protato talks to. The only reason she is not killing herself is because she wouldn't be able to talk to me.

Natsuki's obsession might be to "drown herself in comfort food". I am suspecting cannibalism.

The player (i.e. me, not Protato) might be involved as a character as well, since they are the only one experiencing all the distortions that Protato does not seem to perceive.

Monika seems to know that I saw Yuri with her cuts. She is the Lady Who Knows Everything, and probably rewound time as well.

I seem to have lost my voice once I started showing poems to everyone. I literally had 0 dialogues.

I do not want to click OK here.

I SPOKE (just an "Ah...").

Monika might be aware of her role in a VN, but she has no control over how the events of this universe. She may have been trapped as well, with no hope of escaping. But once I (player, not Protato) arrived, she may have felt a ray of hope, possibly because I was also aware of the VN setup. However, the universe did not allow me to select Monika when choosing words for poems, or for other decisions (except for festival preparations), so she realized I couldn't help her either, which pushed her back into despair. At the end of 2-2, she wanted to speak to me more, but the universe blacked out despite her resistance.

<1-3 Monika>
The hole in the wall probably represents the only connection to the outside world (irl), where the walled boundary indicates the virtual VN world. She talked about "him", which is likely Protato, the connection to the player (me). Her 1-3 poem, however, indicates that "he" wasn't looking at her, likely because my decisions were chosen to favor Yuri (and the universe would not have allowed me to write poems for Monika, since her sticker did not appear in the word selection). She started losing hope, but she still chose to convey her situation through her poems (brandishing her pen).

Monika Best Character <3