Hey Matty Patty, just wanted to say I loved your last two Doki-Doki theories.
Well, uh, thanks Monika. That's really sweet, actually.
In fact, we liked them SO much that we wanted to give you a sneak preview of our new game!
The portrait of Markov, I believe you're familiar.
Wow, that's uh, that's actually really exciting!
I would love to start to find out more about your secret origin story.
Is this a download code, or...?
Well, we didn't want to make it too easy for you.
We thought it would be fun to play a little game.
Uh, huh huh huh... No knives or ropes, I hope...
Of course not, silly!
*adorable Sayori giggle*
oh...
None of that, all you have to do is win an arm wrestling match against Natsuki.
Really?! That's all? Uhh, okay...
*thump*
*ThUmP*
*oh god no*
LET'S GO, CUPCAKE!
*o no*
*glitch*
(Hello Matty Patty)
*more glitch*
(Someone tell MatPat that CatPat did something to his recording!)
*corruption overload*
Hello-o-o-o-o Internet, welcome to Game Theory,
the show that asks the hard-hitting questions you need to know the answers to, like,
Could a teenage girl actually get this swole?
That's right, today we're revisiting the indie horror darling Doki-Doki Literature Club, which in case you aren't familiar, is known for two things at this point;
Its classically kawaii schoolgirls and its memes.
Specifically today, I want to focus on the Buffsuki meme; a super-sized version of the game's smallest and most malnourished girl, Natsuki.
Even though the original art for the Buffsuki meme was posted to Twitter by Asko_V and happened to be based off of the buff Riku model from Kingdom Hearts-
-a part of me likes to think that maybe my portrayal of Natsuki during our playthrough on GTLive helped in some small way to contribute to this horrific-
-reinterpretation of the Incredible Hulk.
"It's not nice to make a lady run, you know?" (Deep voiced MatPat)
Anyway, this original art made its way through the DDLC community, inspiring a whole sub-genre of other memes, before finally being painted onto a real-world brick wall-
-as a mural, and I think all that shows you that the artistic creativity of the Doki-Doki community is ALMOST as impressive as their ability to data mine games.
Now, as a huge fan of DDLC, though, it did get my little theorist brain a-turnin'.
Is this actually possible?!
Could Natsuki-- or, any teenage girl in her position --actually buff up to those extreme of levels?
As someone whose muscles have always looked more like a Japanese manga girl than a Terry Crews type, you could say that I have a bit of a personal stake in this-
-one, too, because if it works for Natsuki, it's gonna work for me.
Macho Mat, here I come!
OOOOOH YEAAAAAAH!
To get to the root of this problem, we have to go back to what bodybuilding is made of; no, not muscles, SCIENCE!
...and muscles, honestly, yeah, muscles too.
But, to answer the question, we got to know the science of how to build muscle in the first place.
Everyone has a range of muscle that your body naturally gains based on a lot of different genetic factors;
Everything from whether you have a Y chromosome or not, to your height, to the thickness of your bones, and subtler factors too-
-like how efficiently your body metabolizes food.
That's why no two people will look the same, even when they do the exact same gym routines.
What is the same though for everyone is the actual process of how your muscles get stronger.
When you use your muscles more than they're used to, whether it's running really fast, lifting something really heavy, or clenching your buttocks during a boss run-
-it causes microscopic tears in your muscle fibers.
That's why your arms and legs end up hurting after a challenging workout, like what happens to me when I carry the four cases of Diet Coke that I need-
-to make it through the week from my car to the refrigerator.
Oh, they're so heavy!
Why can't I just get a soda fountain mainlined into my room?
Now, muscle damage may sound really bad, but that whole motto of, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" was actually written by your biceps.
Muscle tears cause your muscle to become inflamed, literally that swoll look that the jocks are going for after a workout, except that swoll is actual swelling.
You are literally swollen, just like when you hit your head or stub your toe, that is what's going on.
Again, none of that sounds like it's a good thing, but it's actually a response from your body to flood the area and repair the damage.
It does that by activating dormant muscle stem cells, called myosatellite cells, in your body.
When you exercise a lot, your body becomes really good at making these guys, and deploying them to patch you up after every workout, and they do such a good job-
-that your muscle fibers are actually bigger and stronger AFTER the repair than beforehand.
But building muscle like this takes up a lot of energy, and in the game, Natsuki is basically known for one thing: being hungry.
In the game, Monika speculates that she's so short (a pocket-sized 4'11") because Natsuki is physically malnourished, to the point that the game shows her-
-falling asleep in the classroom, accepting food from other characters just to keep on going, and even implying that her dad abuses her by not giving her food or lunch-
-money, and this is backed up by her age in the game.
At first glance, you might think that Natsuki is younger than the rest of the literature club members, but she's actually the same age as everyone else; the magic legal-
-for a visual novel number of 18, even though she's small enough to be about twelve.
So the first and most basic step for Natsuki to take in her quest to buff up is to improve her diet.
While the carbs from all those cupcakes she's bakin' may actually help her, body builders take a much more scientific approach to gettin' their gains on than just-
-eating a whole lot of junk food.
One common approach is the 40-40-20 system, which stands for 40% protein, 40% carbs, and 20% fat, where you base your diet on getting a gram of protein for every-
pound of body weight.
So, how much would that mean that Natsuke needs to actually start buffing up?
Well, the typical muscle gain workout for a 4'11" female would require a minimum of 1,200 calories per day, which is honestly nothing compared to pro body-
-builders, who typically need between 2,600 calories if you're a female, and about 3,300 calories for the guys, sometimes even maxing out at 5,000 calories per day-
-which you can guarantee is a bit more than a few cupcakes and a protein bar.
But remember when I said that there are a lot of factors that go into gaining muscle?
Well, even if you're killing it in those macros, (that's, uh, fit people speak for eating well) your body has its own internal limits for how much lean muscle you can-
-typically gain.
Because a lot of people want to know about this stuff, fitness experts have actually come up with a formula to calculate how much your body's max lean weight is.
Martin Berkhan's formula is one of the most common online, and plugging Natsuki's height into it, we get ourselves a whopping maximum lean muscle mass-
-weight oooooooooof...!
108.3lbs.
Wait, that-that-that's it?
Just over a hundred pounds?
There is NO WAY our Buffsuki meme weighs only 108.3lbs.
For comparison, here's what 5'3" body builder Debbie Laszewski looks like at 145lbs, it is definitely impressive.
(She could probably crack a walnut with those biceps.)
But she is nowhere near the size of Buffsuki, whose biceps are TWICE as big as her head!
So, uh, sorry guys, I know that we all wanted to run out there and get on the Buffsuki exercise bandwagon to show the world our hot new bods, but there is no way-
-for Natsuki to even get CLOSE to Buffsuki territory...
Naturally, but then again, she could do it with a little help, and by little help, I mean a whole heck of a lot of drugs.
One big factor in body building that we haven't even talked about yet is testosterone.
Testosterone accelerates muscle growth, increasing your body's rate of protein synthesis, decreasing the rate of protein breakdown, and activating more of your-
-muscles' satellite stem cells.
It is like the magic bullet for muscle builders, making muscles repair more quickly and deteriorate more slowly, and as long as the rate of muscle growth is higher than-
-the rate of deterioration, your muscles can theoretically keep building bigger and bigger forever.
The problem when it comes to Natsuki though is twofold.
1: Natsuki is a girl, and thus has less testosterone, meaning that she has lower muscle maximums than a guy.
And 2; even if she were a guy, the human body just doesn't make enough testosterone naturally to become the total gorilla juicehead that is Buffsuki.
Enter steroids, (Anabolic steroids, to be specific.) artificial substances that mimic the testosterone in the body.
These things can drastically increase a person's upper muscle limit, while allowing them to gain muscle much faster than normal.
How fast are we talkin'?
Faster than Yuri goes from friend to total stalker.
A study from the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science showed that men who were taking 600 milligrams of testosterone a week and doing nothing-
-gained two pounds more muscle in a 10 week period than men who were taking no drugs but exercising three times a week.
You heard that right; taking testosterone and doing NOTHING gained them two more pounds of muscle than people who were actively working out.
The group who were using testosterone AND exercising, meanwhile, gained an astonishing 13 pounds of solid muscle in that same 10 week period.
Crazy, that is the power of testosterone!
Another study performed at McLean hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts tracked 157 male athletes to determine their FFMI, or fat-free mass index, basically a-
-measurement of muscle size.
The highest FFMI recorded in natural athletes was 25, while the buffest steroid users clocked in at FFMIs of 32, and for comparison, Ronnie Coleman, widely regarded-
-as the greatest body builder of all time, managed to hit an FFMI of 38.8 in his prime.
Now, the ceiling for female bodybuilders is a bit lower than that.
Nataliya Kuznetsova, the European deadlift and benchpress champion, has an FFMI of 28.
But there are additional steps that the aspiring Buffsukis of the world can take, like taking estrogen blockers and a cocktail of other steroids to push their ceiling even higher.
Many body builders, both men and women, stack different kinds of steroids, combining their effects along with other drugs, to further increase their growth-
-potential, and studies have shown that these increased dosages correlate to increased muscle gains, so in theory, it's possible that with the right mix of highly-
-controversial, and sometimes illegal drugs, Natsuki could in fact begin to reach for her Buffsuki dreams!
In fact, it's not only possible, it's probable, because remember when I said Natsuki is 18 and 4'11"?
Well, on average, females stop growing at age 14, so Natsuki should be well out of her growth spurt territory, but as we established before, she's not the average girl.
She's malnourished, and when you're malnourished as a child, one of the most common results is delayed puberty, a condition where, basically, your body puts-
-off things like growth spurts and sexual maturity until you can get yourself ahold of some more cheeseburgers.
Natsuki is a perfect candidate for this!
She's smaller, looks younger, is less mentally mature, and we already know that her dad's been starving her for years.
Without going into puberty, your body never sends the appropriate signals to lock off your bones' growth plates and stop growing, which leaves you in this pre-puberty growth limbo-
-potentially until you're in your 20s.
What does all of this mean for Natsuki?
Well, it means with the right, um, "chemical help" she could not only gain more muscle, she could also potentially grow taller.
HGH, or human growth hormone, became a favorite stimulant for body builders who pushed the boundaries, starting back in the 1970s, because it's associated with-
-massive muscle gains, above and beyond even what you can get with anabolic steroids.
So, by taking HGH to increase her muscle mass, Natsuki could trigger a growth spurt to bring her up to a more intimidating Buffsuki-like height and also expand her-
-natural maximum muscle mass dramatically, increasing the effectiveness of her all-new eating habits and whatever other cocktail of steroids she's using, as-
-well.
Long story short, as horrific as it may sound, her malnutrition may have just worked in her favor, delaying her growth phase until now, which in turn opens her body-
-up to all sorts of crazy growth from the steroid cocktail she'd be taking.
Step 1: Start eating a ton of food in 40-40-20 ratios to build up some energy reserves.
Step 2: Load up on the HGH to dramatically expand muscle capacity and get the most out of your newly started puberty growth spurt that she missed out on-
-when she was younger, and;
Step 3: Work out like crazy while taking major doses of anabolic steroids to remove the upper limits of her muscle growth, and tada!
She'll be looking like Buffsuki in no time, ready to take down her abusive father or beat smarmy YouTube hosts at arm wrestling matches.
Ironically enough, she'll probably have more testosterone in her system than either of us will.
Oh, and she'll also be suffering from a deeper voice, blurry vision, acne, possible baldness, 'Roid rage, as well as psychosis and permanent heart, liver and kidney-
-issues, depending on how long she's visiting this wonderful world of steroids.
I didn't mention it earlier, but I wanted to finish up with it.
These things are dangerous, this is in no way an endorsement to go out to your nearest GNC load-up, and then hop over to the deep web to see what you can stab-
-into your arm.
None of that, none of that is a good idea, in no way, shape, or form.
Just keep going with normal exercise, ladies and gentlemen.
So, there you have it.
Is Buffsuki possible?
For as stupidly absurd as this image appears, theoretically yes, yes, it is possible.
It's like the perfect storm of things that have to happen, but you could do it.
If you couple Natsuki's history of malnourishment with a dangerous cocktail of human growth hormone, anabolic steroids, exercise, and a proper diet
She could, in fact, pump her body up to look a heck of a lot more like Buffsuki than you'd ever imagined.
No file tampering required, Monika.
But heeey, that's just a theory.
A GAME THEORY!
Thanks for watching!
"The portrait of Markov, I believe you're familiar."
Can you pitch it lower?
Yeah, so...
*deep huhhhhmm*
*laughter*
Summon your diaphragm Steph, can't you do that anymore?
I have no diaphragm!
Where'd your diaphragm go?
Also, having a beach ball-
*gibberish and laughter*