Dec 6, 2017
In this episode Gino and Chris "ZombiePie" -REDACTED- discuss Doki Doki Literature Club: the cutest psychological horror game around! We discuss the game's subversive structure and how it gets a rise out of people. We then have a hard discussion about the game's invocation of mental illness and self-harm. We go deep into spoiler town in this one!
Hey, Deep Listens “B Team.” After much debate, I gave Doki Doki Literature Club a try and ended up feeling many of the same emotions Gino and Chris expressed on the podcast. Do not worry as I felt it was an overall positive experience. There is one thing I would like to add. Something you briefly discussed but did not extrapolate upon was how Monika shows the pitfalls of the relationship anime and gaming audiences have with their content creators. The “safe environments” you two mentioned in the podcast could be exploited to disastrous effect. To that end, I think Monika is a partial word of caution of that relationship.
At any moment visual novel and anime creators could abuse the sway they have over their audience. Their audiences place a great deal amount of trust in their content creators to provide EXACTLY what they want, and while studios who make this content do not abuse this relationship entirely, at any point, they could become Monika. People bake cakes for anime characters to mark and celebrate the birthdays of those characters. What would happen if the creators of these shows and games abused this power?
Hey Deep Crew,
Are any of you familiar with the game Fran Bow? All of your discussions lately of psychological horror that addresses mental illness has reminded me of what a great game it is. It's one of the best point-and-click adventure games I've ever played, although I don't know if I'd recommend playing right now since you've been playing all these other games. You may want to take a break from the genre. However, if you ever want psychological horror with a dose of whimsy and a big heart, I highly recommend it.