Monika

"But I can tell already that you're a sweetheart — will you promise to spend the most time with me? ♥"

- Monika's famous quote. "Every day, I imagine a future where I can be with you. In my hand is a pen that will write a poem of me and you. The ink flows down into a dark puddle... Just move your hand - write the way into his heart! But in this world of infinite choices... What will it take just to find that special day?"

- Monika

Monika (in Japanese: モニカ) is the main antagonist of the 2017 visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club!. She is a character in a dating simulator game, who gains self-awareness and the ability to manipulate the reality of the game itself.

Motivated by her jealousy of the other characters for having a more dominant romantic role with the player and by a desire to escape the mental torture she endures within the void when the game is turned off, she manipulates the game's programming in an attempt to romance the player's character, and eventually the player themselves.

Through most of the game her speech is conveyed through text with no voice, but during the song "Your Reality", she is voiced by Jillian Ashcraft.

History
Monika is a character in the visual novel Doki-Doki Literature Club. She is also the Literature Club's president, as well as one of the main characters of the game. While initially appearing as a nice girl, she eventually claimed she had an epiphany which made her discover that she and all of her friends were in a game, drastically changing her attitude towards the other girls. As the president of the Literature club, she was able to manipulate the script of the game and break the fourth wall. This is seen early on in the game when she gives her "writing tips of the day", that directly break the fourth wall.

Unlike the other three girls: Sayori, Natsuki, and Yuri, Monika had a rather minor role in the game and was not able to be picked as a romance option. This led to her using her powers of manipulating the script to do things like emphasizing the negative traits of the other characters, in the hope that the player would choose her instead of them.

After the protagonist noticed that Sayori (his childhood friend) seemed down about something, he told Monika about it and she said that she would "have a talk with Sayori". Jealous of the friendship that Sayori and the protagonist have, Monika instead tells Sayori that she should kill herself, which Sayori does later on. Because of this, the script gets entirely broken and decides to fully delete Sayori from the game, which makes the entire game restart with this time Sayori being completely absent. Due to her manipulating the script, from this point onward there are a lot of "glitches" in the game, and she has manipulated Natsuki and Yuri's, the other two main characters, personalities to be more intensive. She often uses the script to make other characters try and get the main protagonist to spend more with Monika; A famous example of this is when she made Natsuki repeatedly say "Just Monika".

Eventually, Yuri's obsessive personality is so intense that she kills herself over the player, which makes Monika completely delete Yuri's character file (and also deletes Natsuki's character file right after) and restart the game with just her. When she is alone with the player, she reveals she is no longer in love with the main protagonist but with the player themselves. She continues to talk with the player, unless the player completely deletes her from the game by going into the game files. When this is done, she will initially be mad at the player, but then shows regret for her actions. In an attempt to repent for her wrongdoings, she brings back the other three girls and fully removes herself from the game.

If the player attempts to reload or copy her file back in, she sends them a message asking them not to toy with her heart and she no longer wants to come back after her previous actions. However, when the player restarts the game with the other three girls, Sayori gains self-awareness and data manipulation powers as well since she is now the president of the Literature Club. She thanks the player for ridding the game of Monika and attempts to trap the player in the same classroom Monika did, in the hopes that she will be in a relationship with them forever. Monika, realising that no one is ever going to find happiness in the game, deletes it entirely, possibly taking her existence and that of her friends with it, however before the credits roll she communicate vocally with the player for the first time and plays and sings "Your Reality" on the piano as she deletes the credit files, and eventually the script itself, but not before leaving a goodbye note.

However, if the player saved each and every one of their interactions with the girls in Act 1 (particularly their CG images) before the Sayori suicide scene, Sayori retains her sanity and thanks the player for everything and says that this is the end of the game. Monika will still play her song over the credits, however out of the realization that the Literature Club is better this way, she does not erase the images during the credits (however she does get rid of the script anyway). She also chooses not to leave a note behind. Instead, game creator Dan Salvato writes a thank-you to the player.

After the game script is deleted, the player can access the files and see that three of the four girls (Monika is still missing) still retain their files, implying that they may still exist (and since Monika survived without her file, the same may hold true for her).

Personality
Monika is the least talkative and gossipy character in Doki Doki Literature Club, but not by choice. She is often overshadowed by the other club members. Because of this, she tried to ruin the image of the other literature club members by altering their personalities through coding. At first, she is seen as an "advisory" character, usually breaking the fourth wall to offer writing tips and other advice about game functionality.

From Act 2 and onward, she displays a more yandere-like personality, as she deletes the other characters and starts on insisting that they should spend time together throughout Act 3, occasionally also showing her feelings of confinement. All of Monika's poems are about her realisation or about the player. Being a yandere, she is extremely jealous of the other characters since they are spending more time with the player and not her, hence why she deletes them after altering their personalities and destroying the whole game itself. She also looks down on them as being bound by their programming, not viewing them as "real" as herself until her deletion; this is also one of the reasons she grows obsessed with the player, as she regards them as the only other thing with free will that she knows about.

According to her dialogue in Act 3, when the player leaves the game, Monika is instantly put to sleep, leaving behind nothing but her thoughts. After a few seconds, her thoughts are filled with "incoherent, jumbled patterns." She then starts to see static, colours flashing rapidly and hears screaming, unable to think anymore. She compares that to being trapped in hell. It continues until the player returns back to the game.

Unlike other characters, when Monika is deleted in Act 3, her consciousness is still present and continues to be present in Act 4 in the normal ending, where her 'spirit' communicates with the player and Sayori in the room where she was deleted in. Although Monika is aware of the player's existence, she does not know what the player's actual gender is. Regardless, she still falls in love with them, but refers the player as her "boyfriend", hinting that she may be heterosexual. In addition, Monika is aware when the game is being recorded and will attempt to jumpscare anyone who is watching her.

Monika reveals several things on her at the end of the game, if the player spends time with her. Examples of this include; She is a vegetarian, likes shopping for skirts and bows, and has a Twitter account named "lilmonix3".

Appearance
Monika is a teenage girl with long light brown hair that she keeps in a ponytail tied back with a large white bow. Her eyes are green and look gentle. She has white toned skin. She wears the typical blackish-gray school uniform which is a grey blazer of a white-collared skirt with a brown sweater vest over it, topped off with a red ribbon. She also wears the dark blue skirt, black thigh-high socks, which are in stark contrast to the rest of the cast's white knee-socks, and white and red uwabaki slippers, a Japanese type of slippers. Monika's presumable height is 5'3 (160 cm).

Powers and Abilities
At first glance, Monika may appear to be nothing more but a simple school girl. However, in truth, she is an omnipotent force that is capable of manipulating the entire game itself due to her ability to reprogram the game's source code. Even after the player deletes her physical file, she still has access to all of the abilities listed as shown when she deletes Sayori in Act 4 (if you get a bad ending), who was just beginning to possess the same abilities. However, she herself notes that she is not particularly good at coding, and thus her powers usually leave glitches in her reality, hence many of Act 2's more surreal imagery. Her powers include:


 * Reality Manipulation/Warping: Monika is able to corrupt the files of the game, manipulating reality itself.
 * Plot Manipulation: Monika can manipulate the game's story, deciding the events that happen in the game by altering variables in other characters. However, her control is not total until Act 3, as shown when the game faded out on her despite her attempts to have a longer conversation with the player.
 * Time Manipulation: Monika is capable of manipulating time itself, as she was able to stop time flowing and reset events.
 * Time Paradox Immunity: Monika has shown that she is resistant to the timelines resetting.
 * Existence Erasure: Monika is capable of erasing anyone from time and space by deleting their character files. She is also able to erase save files completely.
 * Power Nullification: Monika was able to prevent the player from saving and loading the game.
 * Cosmic Awareness: Monika is self-aware that she is a fictional character, living in a fictional world. As a result, she can break the fourth wall.
 * Memory Manipulation: Monika can manipulate the memories of any other character in the game, as shown when she manipulated Natsuki's memories, making her forget the events of the game.
 * Mind Manipulation: Monika is capable of brainwashing, as demonstrated on both Yuri and Natsuki.
 * Resistance to Plot Manipulation: Monika was able to break free from the game's story via her knowledge of the fourth wall, something not even the Player is able to do.
 * Resurrection: Monika can resurrect erased beings if she made backups for their existence. Though not demonstrated directly, she can likely resurrect herself at will if she makes a back up of her own file.
 * Programming: Monika can reprogram and corrupt the data files within the game itself.

Trivia

 * Monika has a Twitter account. Her username is lilmonix3.
 * In Yuri's route, Monika mentions in the game's description that the player was originally supposed to spend the majority of the time with her.
 * Monika admitted to tampering with the other club members personalities in the game.
 * Monika is able to know what software the player is playing the game on.
 * Monika's eyes are green, which could be because of the expression "green with envy".
 * There are subtle hints that Monika is out of place in the game in the beginning, such as having coloured hair, a name that does not end in "i", and a front-facing portrait.
 * Monika is able to figure out the player's actual name by finding the name of the administrator of their computer. She will not reveal their actual name if they are recording the game for a video.
 * Monika's voice is the only voice that is heard in the game.
 * Monika tried to escape from the game before but eventually gave up after she and the player become the only two characters left in the game.
 * Monika tells the player that she is disappointed that she does not have any scenes where she is outside of school and that she is only seen wearing the school uniform. She then requests the player to send her images.
 * One could argue that Monika's creator is the Big Bad due to creating her and letting her roam free, while Monika is the Heavy and the one driving the plot. However, one could also assume that Monika betrayed her creator (similar to Giffany), which would make them an unintentional antagonist.
 * According to several theories in continuity with DDLC, Monika could be a major character - if not the protagonist - of the next Team Salvato's game, which may have to do with hints in the game files referencing "Project Libitina" and the "third eye".
 * Monika's descriptions of what she experiences within the void is very similar to the torture method "sensory deprivation", which is known to cause extreme mental degradation and hallucinations in under a week.

Monika