It’s not over.
We’re not done yet.
Just when you thought you knew everything about Doki Doki Literature Club..it comes
back for more.
It’s time for a tale of sorrow, protect your heart...and your mind.
Because we’re about to blow this entire game wide open!
But before I do, I wanted to let you know this video is sponsored by Amino.
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I’d highly recommend checking out the Doki doki Literature Club community!
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Now lets get jump back into Doki doki Literature Club!
You know what?
I’ve had a rough week, I could really use some R and R with a few beautiful and totally
not psycho girls.
And when we’re talking beautiful non crazies who would be better than these lovely folks.
I mean Ryan made it through a video with these four and he only predicted the end of the
world, so this analysis can’t be that bad...right?
*
Yep!
We're back with more mind altering, pants tenting, video mayhem!
This is the equivalent of mixing adderall and LSD as we venture once more into the ever
obsessive embrace of Doki Doki Literature Club.
Last time if you watched Ryan’s video, he went over the actual implication of artificial
intelligence on our lives and how we’re probably all going to die thanks to our machine
overlords.
But me, I’ve got some things to say about these ladies and..uh..I’m going to say them!
Now if you’ve played Doki Doki Literature Club you know the basics of the game.
You’re a high schooler and you join a Literature Club thanks to the constant pushing and shoving
of your best friend Sayori.
The club is comprised of three other young lasses: Yuri, Natsuki, and Monika.
And whaddya know, all of them want to spend time with you.
and I get it who wouldn’t want to spend seven minutes in heaven with the Grantsicle?
But the question becomes: who do you woo?
And how?
Well, you win the affection of the girls through your innate sense to craft poetry fit for
the gods.
Whether you go more with Edgar Allan Poe-esque prose to entice Yuri, or engage in a writing
style that resembles “See Spot, See Spot Run” while creating undertones of emotion
to impress Natsuki, you’re bound to learn some interesting things from the girls from
their poems.
And that’s where the true genius of Doki Doki Literature Club lies.
If you actually take the time to read between the lines of these poems, you can uncover
all the information you need about this game before shit hits the fan.
But it’s not just that, there’s a greater importance to these poems than just an engine
for the game to progress on, there’s a deeper meaning than what you see on the surface,
and that’s what we’re going to uncover today.
When we talk to these girls, it’s abundantly clear that there’s more going on than meets
the eye.
Yuri is a prime example for this.
Besides the few times that Yuri rolls down her sleeves as we enter a room to hide her
cuts on her arms, there’s a lot we can learn about her cutting and how it began just from
her poetry.
Her poem, The Raccoon is a perfect example of this.
It reads:
“It happened in the dead of night while I was slicing bread for a guilty snack.
My attention was caught by the scuttering of a raccoon outside my window.
That was, I believe, the first time I noticed my strange tendencies as an unordinary human.”
Now this is just the first stanza, but there’s so much to dissect from just these three lines.
First off we know that Yuri finds quote, “slicing bread for a guilty snack” to be strange
and unordinary.
It isn’t, people eat bread all gerdderm the time.
It’s like, the most popular food in the world, essentially every culture has a type
of bread.
Glorious, beautiful sandwiches are made with bread!So we can already tell that slicing
bread is a metaphor for something else, something unusual and something she feels guilty about.
And this “raccoon” is tied into this guilty, unusual act.
Otherwise it wouldn’t have been mentioned in the stanza.
But we know from the title that the raccoon is vital to the poem, so we must keep an eye
out for what this raccoon stands for.
She continues:
“I gave the raccoon a piece of bread, my subconscious well aware of the consequences.
Well aware that a raccoon that is fed will always come back for more.
The enticing beauty of my cutting knife was the symptom.
The bread, my hungry curiosity.
The raccoon, an urge.”
Here Yuri makes it much more apparent what’s happening.
That last line, “The raccoon, an urge” spells out exactly what the raccoon is.
And the previous line, “The bread, my hungry curiosity” lets us know that the bread is
a metaphor for a curiosity within her, something that she fed to her own urges.
This entire poem is a metaphor.
There is no raccoon, there is no bread, this is an internal struggle within Yuri.
All together this stanza reveals so much about Yuri’s character before we know it within
the actual story.
The enticing beauty of the knife reflects Yuri’s obsession that we see later on.
The bread, a curiosity to to slice, to cut herself.
And the raccoon, the urge to feel that pain, that feeling from the cut.
And with the last two stanzas, she’s become used to that urge within her, constantly feeding
it, desiring it, and feeding it again.
And as she says in the last lines “A rush of blood.
Classic Pavlovian conditioning.
I slice the bread.
And I feed myself again.”
There’s a rush of blood and she’s conditioned at this point to enjoy it, to want it and
she cuts herself, and she feeds her own urge but cutting.
It’s all there if you’re willing to look.
And that is just Yuri’s second poem, well before we see any real disturbance within
her.
Well before she becomes obsessive over us.
And well before she gives into the ultimate feeling of self harm.
These poems are the path to these girls true feelings, and Yuri isn’t the only one.
Natsuki’s personality heavily defines her poetry, typically by being the exact opposite
of how she acts.
Her personality is brash, assertive and blunt, but when she finally gets comfortable with
you she opens up to a more warm personality.
Her poems on the other hand have the outward appearance of being warm, simple, and cute,
but reading beneath them each holds a sad concept lingering beneath the surface.
Amy Likes Spiders is all about the harsh criticism one can get for enjoying something unusual,
something Natsuki heavily relates to regarding her love for anime.
Eagles Can Fly resembles the uncertainty about opening yourself up to anyone.
While every other species can do something, people can only try, but we may not always
succeed.
We may let each other down, we may do wrong.
People can try, but that’s about it” purposefully flops on the ending to show that idea of failure
within the poem itself because the poem failed to end correctly.
But the most telling poem we get from Natsuki is “Things I like about Papa” where we
truly see the issues Natsuki has at home.
“I like when Papa comes home early.
I like when Papa cooks me dinner.
I like when Papa gives me allowance.
I like when Papa spends time with me.
I like when Papa asks me about my friends.”
All these lines seem innocent on their own, but before even going into the rest of the
poem these lines should be a red flag that these things don’t always happen.
Sometimes her father stays out late, sometimes her father doesn’t make her dinner.
Sometimes her father isn’t around at all.
And we see even more of these issues as the poem continues:
“I like when Papa asks me about anything.”
-He doesn’t interact with Natsuki very much at all.
“I like when Papa comes home before sundown” -He stays out late, often very late into the
night
“I like when Papa cooks” -Natsuki often has to make her own food for every meal.
I like when papa keeps food in the house, comes home without waking me up, uses his
inside voice, is too tired to notice me.
I like when Papa is too tired for anything.
Her father is an abusive, angry, horrible shell of a man.
He’s a dick, argumentative, and whenever he’s around it’s generally not good for
Natsuki.
Her father stays out late, doesn’t think about Natsuki’s well being, doesn’t give
her money for food, often doesn’t have food in the house at all, and when he does interact
with Natsuki it’s generally not good for her.
This poem is a massive cry for help, and her coping mechanism is to be brash and blunt,
because she needs to fend for herself, she needs to care for herself because she isn’t
being cared for at home.
It explains so much about why she’s so defensive, quick to anger, and secretive about her hobbies,
she can’t handle anyone else trying to put her down or make her life difficult, she’s
closed off from everyone because she’s constantly on guard at home.
Sayori’s poems feel much the same way, as though they have subtle undertones that become
more and more clear with each poem.
Course, Sayori’s last poem makes it abundantly obvious that she’s having mental distress,
so there’s a pretty easy analysis there.
I think she wants me to get out of her head.
But her other poems, Dear Sunshine and Bottles give us a better look into Sayori’s mind.
Dear Sunshine feels happy at the beginning, as though she’s talking to the sun.
She’s not of course.
Sunshine is a metaphor for you, the protagonist.
It’s about how much of her happiness is entrusted to you, specifically saying that
“If it wasn’t for you, I could sleep forever.”
aka I’d die if it wasn’t for you.
This poem reveals how codependent Sayori is, but the poem, “Bottles” shows the true
horror inside her mind.
“I pop off my scalp like the lid of a cookie jar.
It's the secret place where I keep all my dreams.
Little balls of sunshine, all rubbing together like a bundle of kittens.
I reach inside with my thumb and forefinger and pluck one out.
It's warm and tingly.
But there's no time to waste!
I put it in a bottle to keep it safe.
And I put the bottle on the shelf with all of the other bottles.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts in bottles, all in a row.
My collection makes me lots of friends.
Each bottle a starlight to make amends.
Sometimes my friend feels a certain way.
Down comes a bottle to save the day.”
Aww it seems so nice so far!
Sayori has all these wonderful thoughts that feel good and she’s using this happiness
to help her friends.
But it doesn’t stay nice for long.
Night after night, more dreams.
Friend after friend, more bottles.
Deeper and deeper my fingers go.
Like exploring a dark cave, discovering the secrets hiding in the nooks and crannies.
Digging and digging.
Scraping and scraping.
She’s running out of happiness.
She feels like she’s expected to be the happy one, like everyone expects her to be
the person to cheer everyone up.
But she’s running out, she’s digging, scraping, looking for every ounce of happiness
she has..just to give it away.
They were supposed to be for my friends, my friends who aren't smiling.
They're all shouting, pleading.
Something.
But all I hear is echo, echo, echo, echo, echo
Inside my head.
She gave everything she had to her friends, every pinch of happiness she had, and yet
they want more, they demand more, but she’s empty on the inside.
All there is are echos, echos of the shouting, echos of the pleading, just an empty space
with nothing left.
This is why Sayori is so bittersweet, so depressed when her outer appearance is so perky and
happy.
She’s giving everything she has to put on that fascade, when on the inside, she feels
nothing, she has nothing, and it’s destroying her.
This is before we really start to see her exterior crack and show the depression inside,
these words were crying out for help, for someone to understand, and no one did.
And last is Monika, our sentient Yandere obsessor also has clues within her poems of her sentience.
Specifically if you look at the Save Me poem from act 1, analyzing this can help us understand
the torment she is constantly in by knowing she’s nothing but a character in a game.
The colors, they won't stop.
Bright, beautiful colors Flashing, expanding, piercing
Red, green, blue An endless
cacophany Of meaningless
noise
The noise, it won't stop.
Violent, grating waveforms Squeaking, screeching, piercing
Sine, cosine, tangent Like playing a chalkboard on a turntable
Like playing a vinyl on a pizza crust An endless
poem Of meaningless
Load Me
This poem seems abstract until you take into account that Monika knows she’s a computer
program.
The colors, red, green and blue are the primary colors used in computer imagery and are the
primary colors used in computers to make all other colors.
Sine cosine and tangent are used to create sound waves, again showing that she’s sentient
that she’s a program.
They create as she puts it “violent, grating waveforms” and the title “Save Me” combined
with the end line “Load Me” is obviously representative of a game or computer program.
This poem takes place in Act 1, long before we realize Monika is actually sentient but
again, the clues are there if you’re willing to look for them.
But why have I gone through each and every girl to show how their issues could be seen
before we ever encounter the actual problem that plagues them?
The answer is because this isn’t a game.
This isn’t something that the developers just made up for the game.
People are secretly having issues all the time.
And sometimes they’re major.
Many of us have issues that we don’t realize, that we don’t feel like we can talk about,
that our society shuns us for having.
These girls aren’t just game characters, they’re representations of the problems
we deal with everyday and never talk about.
And sometimes, like in Sayori’s case, we don’t even understand the issues plaguing
our own mind.
We can’t figure out why we aren’t happy, why we aren’t in love, why we are failing.
This is one of the lessons of Doki Doki Literature Club, writing isn’t just about creating,
it’s about processing your life, bringing out the inner emotion that you can’t seem
comprehend.
It’s a method of expression, of understanding, of sharing what we generally can’t.
Our society pushes us to shut the fuck up.
To keep our problems to ourselves.
In Doki Doki Literature Club, these girls have found a way to work around that by sharing
their grievances within their poetry.
Writing can be used as a coping mechanism, as a way to express what you can’t say out
loud, as a way to put your thoughts onto paper and out of your brain.
It’s underutilized and underappreciated, and it’s one of the hidden lessons in this
psychological horror game.
Each of these girls is coping with their issues through writing.
The poems were written for you to understand these girls, for you to see their cries for
help before shit hits the fan, but it is also meant to make you reflect on your own life.
What are you hiding from the world?
What are you scared to let people know?
What do you need to write down?
We can share our lives through our writing, even if the topic we write on isn’t ourselves.
This game is just one example, this channel and the videos on it are another.
Look deeper into what people write to you.
Look deeper into what you write yourself.
You’ll be surprised at what you find if you read between the lines, and maybe you
could avoid an unfortunate disaster because you took the time to write.
In this game you don’t have the choice to confront the girls on their issues, but in
real life, writing can help you become who you want to be, get over past trauma, and
get you through hard times.
This game is about sharing who you are and what you hide with others.
The lesson is to share your experiences, to find comradery in others.
That’s the true power of the Literature Club.
Before Monika fucked things up for everyone, this club was a safe haven for expression.
It was the one place where Natsuki could read her manga without feeling judged.
It was the place where Monika felt like she could start over and make something real.
It was the only place where Sayori was able to bring out some sadness and let it go.
It was the only place where Yuri could actually interact with others and feel part of a group.
It was a place where people could actually free themselves of the shackles society put
on them, and that is something worth looking for.
The game might take a dark turn in the end, but the idea behind the game, the things you
can find if you just search beneath the surface, is worth looking for.
And that’s my take on Doki Doki Literature Club!
Its different than Ryans but then again we are different people.
So what did you think?
You can let know on Amino!
Don’t forget to click the link in the description and check it out!
That's all for me today, i hope you all had wonderful holiday and a happy new year.
Bye for now!