#Sayori's death was an accident. it was a result of Monika messing with her file yes but she didn't actually like. physically kill her

[anothermonikan]

Monika being normal when she doesn't have the power of gods is a large sense-make.

It is!! I think, a lot of the ddlc fandom has a problem where they've flanderised the characters down to their most extreme states and forgot what they actually are like. in the actual game. So there are people out there who write and characterise Monika as if she's always some yandere who's obsessed with the player character who has no morality and will kill anyone who gets in her way. yknow she's not even like that in the actual game either, people just saw that act 3 Monika was kind of yandere-tropey and forgot everything about her actual character and made her yandere girl 300. Monika could have done worse. sorry I'm being a Monika apologist I do have monikan in my blog name. Monika is literally just some dorky high-school girl who was given god powers and told her world wasn't real and that part of her character doesn't go away when she has the revelation, why would it not be present when she doesn't have god powers? I have lots to say about Monika. Thanks for the ask!

[jvstmc-archive-blog]

Headcanon/Theory 001: Traceback

DO NOT REBLOG THIS!!!

This is sort of a mixture of a headcanon and theory, so assume this is both headcanon 001 and theory 001! (It’ll be presented as more of a theory tho at first. headcanon will come after)

I didn’t give the traceback file much thought before, but thinking on it after I beat the game, and watching certain parts again, made me realize that it was more important than just a hint that Monika was behind everything.

So think about the order of events between Sayori’s confession and Act 2 starting. During the day shift after the confession, the ‘hxppythxughts’ file appears -- which I think means she drew it the night before. When the MC wakes up, she’s likely already committed the deed. But the game still runs fine until the MC actually finds Sayori dead, where it starts going crazy in the background. This is also when the traceback file appears. Repeating what it said here for ease of reference:

Oh jeez...I didn't break anything, did I? Hold on a sec, I can probably fix this...I think... Actually, you know what? This would probably be a lot easier if I just deleted her. She's the one who's making this so difficult. Ahaha! Well, here's goes nothing.

And that’s when Sayori’s file is deleted. So Sayori’s file is definitely still there when the MC finds her. But finding her dead messes with the script so much that the game doesn’t know how to handle it, which results in Monika frantically trying to fix it, before deleting Sayori’s file and forcing two resets of the game (the second being when the game breaks trying to load Sayori). This also tells us that Monika didn’t actually make Sayori kill herself --- not directly. She didn’t code in some line that made Sayori hang herself. But she was still directly responsible for Sayori’s death, since her messing with the code is what ultimately caused her to commit suicide. Yes, she was depressed before, and had given suicide some thought --- but given what happens in the game, it wasn’t going to be a thing until Monika meddled with things.

Now let’s move onto the headcanon portion of this.

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Traceback.txt was the final point for Monika before she had to commit to her plan. She had steadily, slowly escalated things to this point before Sayori’s suicide, hoping to nudge the player in her direction, even though a part of her knew the game wasn’t going to allow that. Sayori’s suicide was an accident, something Monika did not want to have happen. But once it did (and in her own desperation Monika deleted her file), she realized she was bound to her path. If she had to push her former friends out of the way by deleting them, so be it --- so long as she eventually got what she desired: a way to talk to the player directly, without the game interfering with its meddling script. But she couldn’t bring herself to delete their files outright --- so she archived them. No matter how deep into her plan she was, the programmed part of her personality and even some of the personality she had as a self-aware character would not allow her to completely erase the friends she once had. The one anchor she still had to the game.

In a way, Monika was deluding herself that, by removing the other characters from where the game could access them, she would ultimately succeed in getting the player’s attention. It was only when her own file was deleted that she gave in and realized how much she had been deluding herself and what she had done to those she loved, even if they were coded to be her friends, and she, theirs. Her desperation was her downfall from the outset.