This video spoils Doki-Doki Literature Club and Undertale. If you haven't played these games already, please do.
They're amazing, they don't take long to complete and Doki-Doki Literature Club is totally free.
So yeah, Doki-Doki Literature Club. Undertale. Games about games where the mechanics are the story.
There's just something about these video game meta-narratives
that's really grabbed the gaming public's attention in the last few years.
Maybe it's the inherent mind-blowing nature of the twist that these stories allow for; something that you've taken
for granted as part of the game's structure has become a key part of the plot.
Moments like this have been exciting from the days of Chrono Trigger's infamous
Trial all the way up to 999's *spoilers redacted*.
Or maybe it's just seeing artistic commentary directed at our hobby of choice.
It's easier for the average gamer to wrap their head around the
philosophical ideas of Spec Ops: The Line than say, Apocalypse Now; simply because we're
more familiar with the medium and subject matter.
Looking specifically at the success of Doki-Doki and Undertale though,
I think it runs deeper than the inherent appeal of that little narrative hook.
When you look at the subreddits for these fandoms, the most popular posts by a wide margin
are pieces of fan art and fan fiction that depict the characters just doing stuff.
Being goofy, getting buff, going about their daily lives. It's ultimately the characters that the fans fall in love
with over the course of these games and keep them coming back and I don't think that that's a pure coincidence.
The way that these game stories are written around the actions that you perform as the player
inherently break some of the barriers between the game world and our own
which means that if these games are well-written enough, you end up feeling a more
personal connection to the characters than you would in a more conventional story
They don't feel like friends of your avatar, they feel like your friends.
You are the one helping them through their troubles, setting their world straight and getting to know them.
You're just doing it through your computer screen.
I commented on this in the Undertale review I made (gosh, has it really been that long?) two years ago! Damn.
I talked about this in my Undertale review way back then but I think it also applies to Doki-Doki.
By poking at and directly acknowledging the otherwise immersion breaking boundaries
and quirks of their games' engines, characters like Sans, Flowey, Asgore, Monica and Sayori
get a bit of a head start on feeling real and believable
by throwing away any reliance on your suspension of disbelief
instead of having to build that up over time. And by using that little cheat, they're able to
bring the rest of the games' respective casts with them into that realm of believability by association.
Even the non-sentient Doki's have the potential to become self-aware as shown
when Sayori becomes club president and their existence as game characters takes on a certain tragic
pathos, when they aren't self-aware. In the case of Undertale, the constant nods to in-game mechanics
from save files to shop screens work to create the impression that you're not so much playing a
video game set in a fictional world as you are visiting a real other world that just happens to exist within the
bounds of a video game if that makes any sense at all and I mean, I know that it doesn't but bear with me.
Games like this are very good at getting us attached to their casts but there's something inherently tragic about this.
No matter how well-written and believable characters like Flowey and Monica are, no matter how many
clever tricks they use to fuck with us as players, they're not real. They have no free will.
Any appearance thereof is the product of meticulous coding, writing and graphic design.
They can't do anything that their creators don't intend for them to do. There's also something
specifically tragic about the fact that Monica chooses to use her self-awareness
and free will to pursue a pre-programmed romantic interest in you as the player but that's a separate topic of
discussion that was given excellent coverage by Explanation Point in his recent video about the game
and I will link to that in the doobly-doo (description) and also in the corner.
I'm speaking in a broader sense here though.
When you really think about it, no matter what state you leave the worlds of these games in, when you reach the
end, when you're done with them, it's over for these characters because they are inherently not real.
Nothing else can happen to them unless the games' designers write and code a sequel for it to happen in
and if that happens, chances are that these characters will end up suffering more because good stories need
conflict to drive them forward. You can't just make a game about the "happily ever after". For all these games
talk about breaking free of your constraints and going against the grain and making meaningful decisions that
impact your life in the world around you, they can never allow their characters to do anything outside of their
creator's own vision and that's kind of sad. I mean, it's sad if you're the type to get sentimental about
cartoon characters but I'm going to assume that if you're on this channel and you've clicked on a video about
these games that you're at least a bit inclined to feel that way. If you're not and you think that it's stupid,
that's fine but I warn you that the comments of this video are a NO BULLY zone! >:(
Well, okay, you can bully me for parroting that Doki-Doki meme because I deserve it but leave the other guys alone, okay?
On the subject of memes though, I think that those are kind of the solution to this problem.
Yeah, really. Memes give these characters their happy endings and lives far beyond them.
I'm going to get abstract here (well, more abstract than I already have).
When you break it down, the Doki's and all other characters are really just thought constructs.
No, not "thots" like Yuri and Monica. Thoughts like ideas.
Their personas comprised of traits, constructed memories of fictional events
goals and aspirations and little quirks that were dreamed up by
their creators and live in their heads. The games are just expressions of those ideas designed to
take those characters from the minds they were born in and put them in the minds of us, the audience.
Whenever we think about these characters, dream up how they might react to a certain situation or, I dunno,
draw them with huge rippling muscles, they are in a sense alive in our brains; at least to the same extent
they are when Dan Salvato and Toby Fox initially dreamed them up. And when we put those images or
shitposts or fanfiction chapters or fan theories or what-have-you out into the world, then the versions of these characters that
existed only in our minds start living inside the minds of everyone who sees them
contributing to the general concept of what a Natsuki or a Monica or a Sans is.
So while obviously this fan content doesn't actually change the core source material,
I would argue that it can alter how we as individuals and as an audience in general perceive it
and doesn't that mean, at least in some sense, that this content allows
these characters to break the bonds imposed on them by that source material. I mean obviously
Sayori, Natsuki, Yuri and Monica and Protag-kun can never say, make the decision to take a day
off school and go to the beach in the base game of Doki-Doki Literature Club. But when a fan of the game looks
at this seriously gorgeous fan art of the characters in swimsuits at the beach, they can
at least imagine what that event could be like in their minds and maybe
seeing this, a writer is inspired to concoct and share a short fan-fic
about this non-existent Doki-Doki beach episode or even code up the scene in Ren'Py with original music.
I know that sounds excessive but fans can get pretty nuts with this stuff.
Toby Fox started his whole gamedev career creating a playable Earthbound AU.
Anyway, now all of a sudden there is, for all intents and purposes, a full Doki-Doki Literature Club
beach episode that exists for all fans to enjoy. Just like there are countless stories and comics depicting say,
Alphys and Undyne going on dates or Frisk living in the human world with Toriel and Asgore
as they try to reconcile their differences or Toriel and Sans as they start a new relationship.
Stories where Flowey is living in their garden or back to being Asriel somehow.
Heck, there are whole alternative universes where the events of the game never happened
and everyone lived totally different lives. The Undertale fandom creates a lot of amazing
stuff when they're not busy harassing people for playing the game wrong.
And also fucking. There are so many pictures of all these characters fucking. Way, WAY too many.
Putting those aside though, we're talking hundreds upon thousands of possible eventualities that could
result from decisions made by these characters. Decisions their initial creators never allowed for
or even dreamed up. Possibilities made real by the talented artists and writers who are fans of the property,
when they're not busy harassing people for playing Undertale wrong.
And these moments and alternate realities and fan costumes have the potential to stick with at least a portion of the fanbase
living in their minds just like the original material does, giving these characters life beyond what they were
originally made to do. Of course, this brings up the argument of canonicity. A lot of people would say that
anything not created or approved by the original artist isn't legitimate, whatever that means.
But even in well-established series, canon has always been fluid and iffy.
I mean, look at Star Wars. There used to be endless arguments about
which "Lucas-approved" novels and comics actually count and fans even rejected some of George Lucas's
own additions to the story. Like, the idea that Greedo managed to get a shot off before Han killed him.
That was a big one but let's ignore messy debates like that because I'm not really talking
about what the official set-in-stone, on-the-wiki stories for each of these characters say.
I'm talking about the impressions they leave on the audience
and ultimately a good fanfiction chapter or piece of fan art or even not-safe-for-work
comic can have a strong impact on the fan base of any property;
becoming as ingrained a part of the public image of a character or world as
anything in their official bio. And sure, there are going to be some versions of these characters that exist
in the minds of some fans that are so wildly different from their actual personalities
that they're not even the same character anymore. But these depictions naturally get filtered out
by the audience hive mind, at least to some extent. What the audience at large
accepts and latches on to takes root and is allowed to grow while bad or overly
weird ideas are left to wither and die, never getting the chance to be part of the fanon, let's call it.
Of course, this is true of literally any fictional work but I feel like this idea
has special importance for these meta-fictional characters because their stories are, in many ways,
about struggling to escape the bounds of their original programmed purposes, their original mediums.
And fan creations in a sense allow them to do so.
What do you guys think? Have I just been watching too much Re:Creators or do you agree that fan creations
give characters life beyond their original works and allow meta characters
some semblance of the freedom that they strive for. Let me know in the comments below
and also tell me if you want to see more of these abstract, vaguely philosophical videos about how
games and anime affect us and vice-versa.
Well actually, please stick around for another few seconds so I can tell you about my Patreon where you
can go to support me in making videos like this and get your name featured in the credits at the end of videos;
not to mention exclusive access to my Discord and other perks. If this has you interested in seeing me do a
fanfiction-esque take on an established story, check out this video where I fix the worst part of SAO or
click here for my recent rant about how I wish card game anime could be better.
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I'm Geoff Thew, professional shitbag, signing out from my Mother's Basement.