(spoilers) Making sense of the plot.

[The Great Whael]

I'm just trying to string all the facts together. Please tell me if I have left anything out, or have messed up a point.

There are two axioms of the game that can not be manipulated.

1. All characters are infatuated with the player as a fundamental part of their code.

2. The president of the club (in respective priority of Monika, Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki)
a.Has a lot of meta-knowledge, such as the fact that they are in a videogame.
b.Can manipulate the game files.
c.Has to spend the least time with the player.

This logically concludes that the game will always be ruined by the president, making everyone's life miserable, and since there is always a president the game will always end terribly.

The plot consists of this being played out through Monika, who then heel-turns, and soon decides that the best outcome of the game for you, her and her friends would be to never play at all. This results in Monika breaking the game permanently.
Unless you reinstall to get the "good" ending, you monster.

[HypetheKomodo]

That's a pretty good summary.

Monika is forced into the role as a 'mentor' character, forced to guide the player into relationships with the other girls while she sits on the sidelines. This forces her to take desperate measures to try to force the game to have the player interact with her.

But! The real meat is in all the details. There's a lot of subplots going on that Monika interacts with, and even the girls who aren't President seem aware of things...Just not on the level of Monika's insight.

[The Great Whael]

Originally posted by Flustered:

That's a pretty good summary.
and even the girls who aren't President seem aware of things...Just not on the level of Monika's insight.

Really? I do not remember anyone of the character having some meta knowledge, or at least not before Monika started to mess with things.

[HypetheKomodo]

Originally posted by Tesseract:

Originally posted by Flustered:

That's a pretty good summary.
and even the girls who aren't President seem aware of things...Just not on the level of Monika's insight.

Really? I do not remember anyone of the character having some meta knowledge, or at least not before Monika started to mess with things.

I like to think Natsuki's call for help in written form, and realizing that Monika is acting suspicious is not part of the script (especially going by Monika's very swift taking over of Natsuki after) nor Yuri's understanding that she's not being herself.

Sayori's confession may also be of her free will, as Monika tried to make her depression worse to prevent that very thing.

This leaves me to believe that the characters are aware of what's going on, but only to the context of the game. Nothing on Monika's level of insight, though. They don't know the meta like she does.

This leaves me to believe that Monika's friends are more than just code.

[The Great Whael]

Originally posted by Flustered:

This leaves me to believe that Monika's friends are more than just code.

I was thinking along the same lines; however, if this is true don't you think that it's odd the game rewards you for trying to get the "good" ending?

If these characters are sapient then the idea of undoing Monika's works and putting them through all that pain and misery again would seem pretty monstrous in that context.

Then again it would technicly be a new club that would have never experienced what you did to the old club, so it would not make sense for them to be mad at you. You would still be willingly torturing the characters though.

It is a really interesting think about.

[HypetheKomodo]

Not odd in my eyes! All the girls want company. Turns out it sucks being stuck in a video game world.

All but Monika would not know what is happening, though. That is until Sayori becomes President, and realizes that you tried your hardest to find happiness in the Literature Club.

And I think she really appreciates it.

[(ᵔᴗᵔ)]

I disagree with the conclusion. A club president could change the game in a different way (if they were any good at it, that is) or simply choose not to pursue the MC despite having feelings for him.

[HypetheKomodo]

Originally posted by (ᵔᴗᵔ):

I disagree with the conclusion. A club president could change the game in a different way (if they were any good at it, that is) or simply choose not to pursue the MC despite having feelings for him.

They could. In fact, someone not as bad at coding as Monika could be a really interesting experience, I think!

However, I feel Monika was driven to her desperate ways just because she hungered some sort of interaction with real people. She knows how every route will end. She knows that she won't ever be involved.

She's starving for attention, and due to the design of the game she will always be left out. So she made her own ending in her own, twisted way.

[The Great Whael]

Im not saying that monika could not change the game at all, Im saying that all but those axioms could change. Also I only call those two things the axioms because if Monika could change them she logicly would have. Either she could have done it, but didnt know how (and if she can't, who could?), or they were too fundimental to the game to mess with.

[HypetheKomodo]

I think the most interesting detail is that she never truly deleted her friends.

She backed them up somewhere, and restored them upon seeing what she has done.

This is kinda what I mean. There's a lot of small details that really add up in the grand scheme of things! I have my own theory as to all of this pans out, and others have their own. It's fun to discuss!

[The Great Whael]

Do you think the ARG is leading to a a new game or dlc?

[HypetheKomodo]

Originally posted by Tesseract:

Do you think the arg's are leading to a squell or dlc?

Not a sequel, but they will be connnected in some way.

The Third Eye is a major factor, but we don't know to what extent.

I'm really looking forward to whatever comes next.

[rockmedved]

I'm pretty sure the president is not supposed to be self-aware by design. Monika was only able to gain meta-knowledge because of an oversight in programming.

Remember the very first poem she shows you? The way I interpret it is this:
Confines of the game are represented by the wall. A hole in the wall is the aforementioned oversight, some kind of bug by exploiting which out of curiosity she was able to look at the very fabrics of the world she's living in. Her burnt retinas signify inability to look at her own existence the same way with that newfound insight in mind.

That is the whole point of her big epiphany she's been going on about. Her game-altering powers are not something purposefully granted to her by her hypothetical creator, they are just many ingenious ways she's found to exploit "a hole in the wall". She even admits during your endless date with her, that the glitched poem she wrote was her attempt to break out of the game.

And Sayori was not supposed to have any of that knowledge either, but ended up inheriting the previous president's accumulated knowledge.

[Pinkie Pie]

As far as I understand, the president always have control of thee game

[The Great Whael]

Why do you think that monika was the only person to have such a high level of meta knowlegde as oppossed to any other character?

So far the only two characters to have that much meta knowlegde are Monika and Sayori. And both only gained that knowlegde when they were acting as president. I will admit that it is only a corilation, but its the only connection I was able to find.

[HypetheKomodo]

I want to agree that it's some sort of code loophole.

"Dan can't program games lul"

For whatever reason, the President gains infinite insight as to the nature of their state. However, going by Monika's poems and Sayori's reaction to suddenly being President on a fresh game, it's not a pleasant experience.

Something went wrong somewhere, and the game couldn't run as intended due to the President being self aware. In almost every instance.

That's the best answer I could come up with anyway.