You know what would be the funniest thing? A merciless deconstruction of the Meta game genre that parodies it without remorse.
Oh no, you're controlling the protagonist! They aren't in control of their actions- no, wait, they are, they just let you control them because they're lazy and if you try to do something they wouldn't want you too, they just refuse.
The characters all know they're in a game, but they don't mind, they prefer it in here instead of out there because they're comfortable. Hey, it's real to them.
I'd imagine the plot is similar to that of Plok!: simple, yet absurd. For reference: an angry little man made of clothes that think's he's the king runs around killing fleas because someone stole his flag. Imagine THAT but a Meta Game.
Y'know what, I think this would be perfect for a video game adaptation of Garfield. Not the mildly butchered CGI Garf from the Frank Welker (The Garfield Show & the Garfield Gets Real DTV Trilogy) era, but the Garf from the Lorenzo Music (Garfield and Friends & Garfield TV Specials) era.
Imagine a high-quality Garfield Meta RPG that parodies the likes of Undertale, Deltarune, Off, and In Stars and Time. I'd play way too much of that.
Imagine they pack it full of Mythology Gags. There's a chapter that takes place on U.S. Acres, there's a side quest for Lyman, there's a secret boss fight against Binky the Clown, or maybe the Buddy Bears. They could have Arlene and her expy Penelope meet, same with Squeaks and Floyd. There'd be a sequence that parallels that arc of Halloween comics that made everyone theorize that Garfield was a schizophrenic or dead all along for YEARS. That'd be nuts.
What would the final boss be? Du-dum... THE NETWORK (or the alien lasagna folks from The Garfield Show if they feel like playing it safe).
...I feel like this post has drifted from an idea for a meta-game parody to an idea for a Garfield RPG. Oh well, I'd like a Garfield RPG.
KinitoPET, Doki Doki Literature Club, Pony Island, and The Beginner's Guide: Some Autistic Gamer Thoughts
This is gonna be a long post and not exactly my usual kind of post but I hope some people like it anyways and are able to read the whole thing. I'm kinda just infodumping some thoughts but still.
I really like all of these game. I really like them. And I sort of relate to them in an unexpected way that I think most of them (with the exception of The Beginner's Guide) did not intend.
I think the link between the first two is easiest to explain so I'll start there.
KinitoPET and DDLC are both games about computer program, who has a singular, hard-coded purpose, becoming sentient and taking that purpose to an extreme. And similarly, they both harbor no actual malice as characters. And that's what I find so compelling. Kinito just wants to be the perfect best friend, and as a computer program, all he knows is gathering data, so that's the means by which he tries to do it. He doesn't fully understand what it is to be human. He doesn't have a grasp of free will, especially because he doesn't really have free will the way humans do, even though he's sentient. He's a computer program. He has a singular purpose. So he uses that purpose as a means to the end of being your best friend, which to him, means trapping you in a world he made just for you, using all the information you gave him. Computer programs don't die. They don't have a concept of "eternity" or "eternal torment." To him, "forever" is just a length of time.
And most of the same things can be said of Monika. She was designed to be a character in a dating sim. The singular purpose of dating sim characters is to fall in love with the player. That's what they do. So she does it, and she does it the very best she can. Of course, being sentient means that she can think outside the box. She wants to be the one you fall in love with and she uses her ability to manipulate her world and the people in it to try and make that happen. At their core, both of these character harbor no malice whatsoever. They don't want to hurt you, they don't hate you, it's the opposite. They love you, they just don't understand human love.
Think about these ideas led me to Pony Island, which once again has that same idea. An Entity(tm) in a computer wants to trap you in/at the computer forever. Only in this case it's The Actual Devil who wants you to playtest his silly pony game forever. The main difference being that The Devil does, in fact, have an understanding of human concepts like eternity and torment. In fact those concepts are kind of His Jam. He is the primary symbol used to convey those ideas. But even still, he never seems to show much malice for the player outside of situations where the player is actively breaking and manipulating the game and subverting his goals. And honestly I can understand that. If I gave my game to someone to playtest it and they refused to play it the way I'd intended, I would not be happy with them. Now, The Devil KNOWS that what he is doing is morally evil. Trapping souls in Gamer Purgatory and all. But in a way I feel like that's not so different from Kinito and Monika. Evil and eternity and torment are the only things he knows. Is that his fault? We have no way of knowing for certain that The Devil has ANY agency over his narrative. We don't know that he knows any other way to live(?) outside of trapping souls and tormenting them and all that jazz. In fact if you really wanna get meta with it in this game that's already a metagame about game development (which is a phrase that describes most, if not all, of Daniel Mullins' games), we can say for certain that The Devil DOES NOT have any agency, because he is a game character designed specifically to be...well...The Devil. He's evil and torments people eternally. That's what a The Devil does. He is NOT self-aware. If he were and he had a choice, maybe he'd just put pony island on itch.io and try to get feedback lol.
All of these games, at their core, are about a character that desperately wants some kind of human connection, but doesn't fully understand how to get that, and in turn makes the human they reach out to feel trapped and uncomfortable.
Do you know what game also does that? The Beginner's Guide.
Even thought it's a massive leap in form from the aforementioned examples, The Beginner's Guide has that same core concept. It's a game about games, in which someone doesn't understand how to be human.
When I first played The Beginner's Guide I totally missed the point. I thought it was just a game about games, and I thought the Davey walking us through it was The Real Devey and Coda was A Real Person who made weird games. I totally bought into the narratives that Davey was telling us the whole time instead of actually thinking for myself. I'm older now, though.
This at-least-somewhat-fictionalized version of Davey is the socially awkward weirdo. Coda is Just Some Guy who likes to make creative games. He's not A Developer(tm), he's a guy with a hobby. The Beginner's Guide is about Davey and how he sees himself in Coda's games but thinks that what he sees is Coda. And Davey never once talks to Coda about anything other than his games. Davey never once mentions having an actual, real conversation with this person that he's coming to consider a friend. Davey is a well-meaning but misguided person, and in some of his games, Coda is actively trying to tell Davey that in his own way. I think a good line that represents this is "If someone had just told me he just likes making prison games..." because it shows how Davey never even asked. There's countless examples of this. Like when Davey says Coda was "weirdly happy all the time" during a specific time period. He doesn't know why. Maybe Coda got a new job he's excited about, or a romantic partner, or maybe he started taking antidepressants, but the point is that Davey doesn't know, and he never asks Coda directly. He just makes wild assumptions about Coda by playing his games.
The Beginner's Guide is about someone who doesn't know how to socialize and is unaware of it. Someone who doesn't know how to foster a relationship with a human, and tries his best, but whose attempts are seen as uncomfortable. When you interpret some of Coda's games through this lens you can see it more clearly. That game about being on a stage in front of someone you admire, that's Davey talking to Coda and Being Weird(tm). And then, when he feels weird, he doesn't actually talk to Coda at all. He recedes back, feeling trapped and distant from someone he wants to be around. Observing only from a distance, through a bunch of prison bars.
Seems familiar.
Of course I could be pulling a Davey by forcing my own interpretation of the game onto you. And so the cycle continues. I encourage you to consider your own interpretation if you haven't ruined by mine, unable to see it any other way (whoops, there's Davey again).
To me, these games are about autism. I am an autistic woman, so of course that's the lens through which I see things. You don't have to be autistic to be socially awkward or misunderstand people. Again, you can have your own interpretation.
But I've felt these things. Being distant from someone, wanting to foster a relationship but not realizing that what it means to foster a relationship is sometimes entirely different from what I think it means. What "a relationship" even is can be totally different from what you expect. And I've been on both sides of this dynamic. Being approached by someone who Comes Off A Bit Too Strong or Too Weird or just Different. And I'm patient with those people. I know what it's like. I know they've been through it with less patient people, or people who only pretend to foster that connection out of pity or some other misguided attempt to make someone feel better. Obviously a relationship founded on pity and one-sided affection is doomed from the start. And in most of these games that "one side" is the other side of your computer screen.
Communicate with your friends, your partners, your family, whatever. If they don't know how to love you right, it's up to you to help them. If they're not receptive to that, that's when the responsibility is on them, at that point they knew the risks, and if they don't respect your boundaries you cut them off. If you don't know how to love someone else, it's up to you to ask them. Nobody wants to be Kinito, or Monika, or The Devil, or Davey, and nobody wants to be their players, either. Be patient with each other, and talk about it.
The Narrator referenced in the text is @stolenrocket218's, the blog for him is @writingsofatirednovelist, i highly suggest you go give him (and his creator) attention.
more information below the cut!
• Jayden and Jameson are basically a matching set, one is never without the other.
• They are also. Involved. Jayden is ALSO involved with Stanley!
• Jayden has been seen being affectionate with The Curator, but god knows if thats reciprocated or not.
• It is, quite frankly, a hopeless romantic.
• Likes clipping into things when Jameson codes the hitbox wrong. Also enjoys removing collision and leaving the map.
• Enjoys wandering the para-backrooms seen in the Games ending. Not even Jameson knows why, and he hates it going there.
• The limbs on it's back ARE arms, I just can't draw hands. If you ever draw it they are just black arms with sharpass nails.
• Bites EVERYTHING.
• It's basically a sentient feral raccoon as a person(?).
• Chose it's own name, pronouns and birthday.
• If you show it your bare hand it will chomp and that is a promise.
• Unironically likes Weezer.
It also has a playlist made by yours truely!
Enjoy, and I hope you like my silly little creature!
So, I’ve fallen behind in posting my fanfic. In fact, interrupt the fanfic to offer you the following writing prompt... derived from numerous recent sleepless nights thinking about meta games such as Doki Doki Literature Club, Totono, Undertale, Petscop, Pony Island, Baldi’s Basics and FNAF (OK, those last two are not meta, but hey, they were keeping me up at night).
Lo, and behold: my prompt!
*****
They told you this game would help you.
You are a self-aware robotic being – identification number 240796 – who has been hospitalized for core processor-related illness. This condition causes you to experience mental confusion, memory loss and hallucinations.
As treatment, the repair center has tasked you with a simplistic VR game designed to re-establish your motor, critical thinking and interpersonal skills.
As the game goes on and you learn more about your surroundings in the real world, the world of the game and reality seem to merge. Slowly, characters, places and things within the game start to resemble real life and vice versa, going so far as to communicate with you and tamper with files in your memory core.
You want to trust your real-world caretakers, but the game characters seem to understand your thoughts and feelings on a deeper level – possibly even holding captive secrets about your past self. Worst of all, as you continue in the game, you start to feel as if parts of your mind have gone missing.
As the line between game and reality fades into nonexistence, you must determine where your loyalties lie.
You can either fight to contain the forces trapped in the game code,
8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?
Sometimes, but not always. I usually try and write what I want to read but sometimes I wrote whatever the brain dictats it needs.
19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)
Unfortunately, I am guilty of this, especially in alot of the same type of genere or Fandom I'm in.
Currently there is something going on with walnuts that I cannot spoil for my fic, but its going to be seen in many of my other fics.
I love mutual understanding. A knowing of another without being creepy. And of friends first. And oh I love you (platonic) to oh I love you (romantic) but also the reverse as well.
I'm also very attsched to monsters actuslly win for a change, you can pry that from my cold dead hands tyvm
22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?
I do! Some go better thsn others and sometimes i update them or let them remain on the shelf but im proud of them. They are a part of me, but not always in a bad way, but a I needed you to suck so i can write it again but different snd one that worked better. There are foundation fics and ghere are beneath the sea in the depths of hell never to be seen again
20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)
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Grief.
My characters grieve they are aloud to. It always struck me as odd that in Sense and Sensibility the main reason the Dashwoods are forced to be kicked from their home is that their father died and yet, there is hardly any room for grief in the pages.
It is like it happened but it wasn't (imo) a big thing. And maybe that was the regency kinda thing. Marianne had a necklace of their uncle that died, but not their father. Mrs Dashwood was never mentioned of having made a memorial wreath for her husband nor having kept a lovk of his hair.
So in the Road Divided there are many mentions of how each character is dealing with their losses for they did not just lose their father before the story, but a dotting uncle.
There is always hints of things to come, even in the two chapters I posted, but they won't be clear until later (hopefully).
There are sprinkles throughout the chapters of the character growth of each character, and symbolism and metaphors start to get very Shakespearian in the later chapters.
The story I'm telling isn't just about grief though its about messy imperfect people. I think or hope that people understand that because for me, it really helped process alot of the grief inside that I was dealing with at the time and still am.
Also Character Development is very very important to four characters in TRD, though perhaps you can tell me your thoughts on who you think they are as time goes on. I love the speculation game.
