This page contains spoilers for Doki Doki Literature Club, a game that contains potentially disturbing themes.
If you don't want to see this, then try a different page.
This page is an opinionpiece on a work of fiction, and isn't 100% serious in nature.
Monika is one of four main characters from the hit horror visual novel Doki Doki Literatue Club, created by Dan Salvato and released in 2017. I won't go into details on the actual gameplay here, as this page is about Monika.
Monika is the president of the titular Literature Club, directing club members to write poems until the club festival. She's described in-game as being "intelligent, confident, and athletic," and is apparently popular. She seems to be a nice and considerate person, helping and praising her friends in the literature club.
"What's the debate here? She's obviously good" The root problem Monika presents is that... she's aware that she's in a video game, and she's pissed that she doesn't have her own ending. She also has the ability to mess with the game's variables. This leads her to do some questionable things, which we'll get into on this shrine, that ultimately leads to some people's dislike of this character.
Remember how I mentioned that Monika knows she's in a video game? This also extends to her friends; even though she still cares about them on some level, at the end of the day they're just characters in a video game. Her realization also causes her to latch onto the player (you), because you're the only real person left. This presents a problem when the other 3 Dokis start spending time with you; now not only does she see them as NPCs, but also competition.
Her first course of action is to make the other Dokis more unlikable, excaberating their negative traits, as to render her the most attractive one. The first club member she goes after is Sayori, the main character's childhood best friend. This backfires horribly though, as it leads to Sayori confessing her love to MC, and ultimately to the infamous "I gently opened the door" scene.
The next girl affected is Yuri, who, in summary, also ends up self-deleting. Essentially, Yuri is "kind of into knives" (her words, this is important), and she also has a crush on MC. In Act 2 of the game, Yuri becomes stalkerishly obsessed with MC, which leads to her stabbing herself in front of the player. Finally, Monika chooses to simply "delete" the last remaining Doki, Natsuki.
In Act 3, you find yourself in an empty room, with nobody in it but you and Monika. If you've ever heard the catchphrase "Just Monika," this is what that refers to; it's literally "Just Monika." She confesses to her crimes, then proceeds to talk heart-to-heart with you until you delete her character file.
You might be thinking, "that's fucked up. are you really defending someone who killed her friends for a crush?" to which I say:
Yes.
"Monika isn't taking the awful things (she does) seriously because she thinks it's just a game, much like how people would kill people in the SIMS in awful ways."
Sun Tzu, probably Dan Salvato, the guy who made the game
dictionary.com defines Mens Rea as "a criminal intention or knowledge that an act is wrong."
Monika is ignorant to the wrongness of her actions, since as Salvato himself has established, she thinks the other Dokis are a mere simulation. She didn't just wake up one morning and say "hmm yes today I'll drive my friends to suicide"; that obviously doesn't mean her intentions are pure by any means, but at the end of the day modding a video game simply does not constitute mens rea.
If anything, this argument would actually render you a murderer for deleting her character file at the end of Act 3. Monika is a video game character; there's no moral obligation not to delete her, as a .chr file isn't even close to being a real person.
None of the girls are sentient, including Monika. This is a work of fiction.
I could easily run around saying Eric Cartman sucks and try to take a moral high ground over Cartman fans because of it. There's no question that if you knew Cartman in real life that he would suck. However Cartman, being a cartoon character, is not a sentient being. Even though Cartman has actually killed people, and worse, I understand that having genuine hatred for a drawing is just plain silly.
Even if they act sentient (i.e. Natsuki's letter), the illusion of sentience honestly isn't too far fetched with today's technology. Even when DDLC was created there were chat bots that you could talk to almost like it's another person.
Only a few years later, we have things like ChatGPT, Replika, and similar programs, that actively try to feign sentience, and are quite good at it in some cases. If this technology can exist in our real lives, there's no reason not to theorize it exists in-universe for the other Dokis.
It has been confirmed by Salvato himself that Monika can mess with variables, not necessarily the script itself. Even if she could, it's been shown that Monika isn't even very good at that, for example what happened to the other Dokis. It's safe to assume that even if she tried to create her own route it would be a buggy mess.
I don't have much new to add regarding this particular quote, I just thought I'd touch on it as it was actually pretty fucked of her to say this. However, going back to a quote from Salvato himself:
"...the whole point of Monika saying these things is it's a complete roll-reversal where Monika is not taking the game seriously because it's just a game. She's making fun of all the horrible things that are going on in the way that oftentimes the player of a game would."
As established in the previous points, Monika is under the impression that Sayori was never real in the first place, hence she finds this acceptable. Going back to my Cartman point, when you watch South Park you're probably not thinking "holy SHIT that was a horrible thing for Cartman to do"*, you just laugh at his antics because you know in your head that it's just an episode of South Park.
*This does not apply to "The Death of Eric Cartman," what he did in that episode was absolutely unforgivable
This boils down to personal opinion.
Just because Monika is my favorite Doki doesn't mean Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki aren't also good characters, or that they aren't equally valid contenders for "best girl."
My goal with this shrine isn't necessarily to convert you into a Monika stan; if you read through this whole thing and you still hate her and love Sayori then that's awesome! /gen This is simply me liking Monika, and wanting to share what I know/believe about her character
