unedited unhinged monika analysis because i love her (warning: i talk about monikas circumstances and unreality things in second person, aka “you.” also general ddlc stuff)
no listen. stop making monika out to be an obsessive yandere who fell in love with the player and that’s it. no. that is one aspect of her character and i would argue one of the least important ones. i would say even that she DIDNT fall in love with the player. no, it’s the idea of the player. what the player represents. monika is a writer a poet all of her poems use something small to represent this grand terrifying world she’s discovered, and this lifeless protagonist and the theoretical being controlling him represent that world. the real world. monika did not fall in love with the player, monika fell in terrifying love with reality. ddlc is a psychological horror but from her point of view it easily becomes cosmic as well. imagining it all from her perspective makes it so much more terrifying. obviously the things she did were morally wrong and absolutely horrific but in her situation, what even are morals!!!! given what she knew and what she believed did she even do anything wrong?
like. imagine. you’re living your normal life and then one day everything changes. you suddenly discover you are not REAL your friends your family your LIFE are just scripts written by someone grander than you could ever imagine. you get a tiny glimpse into this horribly colorful loud world and it destroys your mind and then you are left with so much knowledge it breaks you. you are trapped in a world you now know has simply been going through the same scripts over and over and over again. FUCKING READ HER POEMS AND TELL ME THATS NOT TERRIFYING. monika is SCARED. she has no reason to believe the others in her life are sentient like she is, that they’re anything more than lines of code: she can read all the code, after all.
and then you show up, the very representation of reality. freedom. and she does everything she fucking can to get your attention and beg for help, she LITERALLY asks if you can hear her she EXPLICITLY asks for help because she is TRAPPED. but at this point she still can’t alter too much she is still learning how to change the code. this is all she can do.
now, act 2 is when it becomes more love, in an odd abstract way. monika tells you at the end she doesn’t care who you are really she loves you no matter what. that’s because she falls in love with the idea of the player. after sayoris death she starts messing with the psyches of the others and fun fact, constantly being around people who are literally being driven insane will mess with your head too!!!! so YES, she gets obsessive!!! she starts to idealize the player as this perfect connection to reality, and she sees the others following their scripts as some sort of threat to that. because if you’re focused on them, the original routes of this dating sim, you can just disregard her SCREAMING to be let out. yes, just monika, as in, just monika is really alive. she has no reason to believe any different. just monika in a world of puppets. she is alone and she is scared and she just wants to be HEARD
fuck dude. her actions were wrong but were they really? we know from the end that sayori at least is no different and obtaining the president role causes her to learn the Truth and go through a similar spiral, but she doesn’t. she can see everything they say every little bit of what makes them tick, you think that won’t fuck with her perception of them?
oh, and on top of all this, remember monika is not an original love interest in the dating sim. she is a tutorial character. not only is she trapped in this game she is separated from the only connection to the real world. so yeah of course she becomes obsessed with attracting you being The Love Interest.
monika is a sympathetic character and reducing her to your average yandere girl completely disregards how good the game is. monika is driven by fear not love. anyone in her position would have spiraled like she did, and all of her actions no matter how horrible are very reasonable when you consider her circumstances. i guess i’m a monika apologist now
