Monika

Hold up, fellowships! This page potentially contains a lot of **spoilers** that will shatter your experience of the game associated with this article.
It is recommended that you play the game associated with this article first before reading it.

## Monika

### Relationships

* Senpai (Frenemy)
* Sayori (Best Friend)
* Yuri (Close Friend)
* Natsuki (Close Friend)
* Boyfriend (Close Friend)
* Girlfriend (Friend)
* Akiha Tohno (Keith)
* Slimegirl Minus Monika (Kith/Sister)
* Static (Hacking Goal)
* Cyrix (Hacking Goal)
* The Player (Love Interest)
* Mr. Game & Watch (Crackship)
* PAC-MAN (Close Friend)
* Rayman (Close Friend)
* Cuphead (Close Friend)
* Mugman (Close Friend)
* Ice Climbers (Close Friend)
* Popo (Best Friend)
* Nana (Close Friend)
* Ness (Best Friend)
* Lucas (Close Friend)

## Appearances

### Appears in

* Doki Doki Literature Club!
* Friday Night Funkin' (as multiple mods)
* Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (2021)

### Debut

September 22, 2017

**Monika** (モニカ) is the main antagonist of the 2017 visual novel *Doki Doki Literature Club!*, but after her reconciliation with the Ice Climbers, Monika is one of the two deuteragonists of the game (alongside Sayori), serving as the overarching antagonist of Act 1, the overarching-turned-final antagonist of Act 2, the main antagonist of Act 3 and the deuteragonist of Act 4. She is also the main protagonist of the side stories in *Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!*, alongside Mr. Game & Watch.

Monika is Popo and Mr. Game & Watch's best friend, as well as Sayori's best friend after Act 4. She is a character in a dating simulator, who gains self-awareness and the ability to manipulate the reality of the game itself. Motivated by her jealousy of the other characters for possessing 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 themselves, in which her goals in meeting her reality is successful after her reconciliation with Popo and Nana, alongside everyone else.

She is voiced by Jillian Ashcraft.

## Physical appearance

Monika is an attractive young 18-year-old girl with thigh-length coral brown hair that she retains tied up in a high ponytail that is tied back with a large white bow, curled slightly at the ends. Like the game's other female characters, she has two prominent strands of hair beside her bangs that reach slightly past her chest. Her eyes are emerald green, and she has a light-skinned tone similar to that of Ness, Lucas and Ice Climbers. She is of average height and believed to be the second-tallest character behind either Yuri or the protagonist.

She wears the standard issue female school uniform consisting of a warm gray blazer fully buttoned and untucked, brown sweater vest, white shirt fully buttoned and tucked, red ribbon, dark blue pleated skirt, black thigh-high socks and white uwabaki slippers with pink tips.

## Personality

Monika is shown to be an intelligent, athletic and confident leader, albeit a slight perfectionist. However, most of her confidence is put-on, and she often feels at a loss about what to do. Because of this, she has come to rely a great deal on her vice-president, Sayori, for helping her run the Literature Club and caring for its members. Monika is also known to have a heightened level of popularity, which makes the protagonist admire her. She is typically depicted as mature and hardworking, with a serene and compassionate expression on her face.

Initially, Monika had been a part of the Debate Club, but left due to all the inner politics and drama, highlighting a desire for order, freedom of topics and friendliness. The Literature Club, which she founded after leaving the Debate Club, has been a high means of prominence to her. She aspires for the Literature Club to be a place to showcase and grow everyone's passion for literature. She also has a passion for piano, which she practices frequently after school, like Mr. Game & Watch.

Through initial means, Monika was a considerate and kind person who was typically thinking about the requirements of other people. She displays care and concern for her clubmates, praising each member's writing techniques and even comparing them to famous authors and poets. However, it is later revealed that at some time before the start of the game, she underwent an epiphany which made her discover that she was in a game and also granted her the ability to edit the game's variables, changing her attitude towards the other girls because she knew they were not "real." She begins taking drastic measures when the other girls prevented the player from being able to spend time with her during the scene in Act 1 where the player has to choose a girl to help for the festival.

In desperation, Monika begins trying to make the other girls unlikable by altering their traits, as she only had the ability to edit variables within the game and did not want to delete/kill the other girls right away because of her lingering attachment to them. She begins with Sayori as she regarded her as the largest threat due to being MC's childhood friend. Monika's alterations backfire because Sayori's increased level of depression causes her to confess her love to MC in an attempt to find happiness, then commit suicide the next day, regardless of the choice the player made. Monika then decides to delete Sayori's character file because "she is the one who's making this so difficult."

Being a guider in the first act of *Doki Doki Literature Club*, Monika gives the protagonist pointers and hints at what the different members of the club like when writing a poem. Despite this, she is revealed to be quite jealous of her clubmates being the focus of the protagonist and elects to intervene. This leads to a series of disastrous events, such as Sayori committing suicide, Yuri and Natsuki becoming worse iterations of themselves (and the former committing suicide after her love confession) and heavy alterations made of the game itself. While hinted at, it becomes evident that Monika is self-aware, recognizing the fact she is trapped within a dating simulator. She considers the members of the Literature Club her friends, but also perceives them as nothing sans artificial intelligence, which is the reason she lacked trouble messing with and essentially killing them (indirectly causing the deaths of both Yuri and Sayori and simply deleting Natsuki from the game's files).

Monika is the least talkative character in *Doki Doki Literature Club*, but this is implied to not be through 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 manipulative yandere-like personality, as she deletes the other characters and starts on insisting that they should spend time together throughout Act 3, occasionally showing her feelings of confinement as well. All of Monika's poems are about her realization or about the player. Being somewhat of 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 perceiving 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 aside from her thoughts. After a few seconds, her thoughts are filled with "incoherent, jumbled patterns." She then starts to see static, colors 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.

Despite Monika's upbeat attitude in the Literature Club, it becomes obvious overtime that she is revealed to be sad and lonely, as a result of being aware that her whole world is just a simulation. The worst part is that she cannot even achieve what is considered "happiness," since her route can never be completed. She is fixated on obtaining the love of the player because they are the only "real" thing in her life. Monika's actions are also motivated by her desire to escape the torture she endures whenever someone quits the game, as when that happens Monika is trapped in a hellish void of noise, lights, colors, and screams, unable to move or even think. 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 might be heterosexual. In addition, Monika is aware when the game is being recorded and will attempt to jumpscare anyone who is watching her.

Despite their villainous flaws, Monika still remains a kindhearted and friendly soul who has high loyalty to her friends. Additionally, her positive personality has further been amplified in the side stories of *Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!* and after her reconciliation with the Ice Climbers. Monika reveals several things about 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, has a Twitter account named *lilmonix3*, and her favorite character in *Super Smash Bros.* is none other than Mr. Game & Watch himself. Monika is also shown to have immediate interest, as demonstrated when Popo showcases cryokinesis to her.

In *DDLC Plus*, Monika is displayed as an over-the-top perfectionist with impossible standards for herself - unlike in the original *DDLC*. This has been shown through a scene in "Trust" where Monika couldn't even write a single letter on a piece of paper due to the fact that she was too focused on beginning the writing with perfection. She was only left with a black spot of ink that she smeared on the top of the page while writing underneath that this was the result of her being a perfectionist. In the beginning, Monika found herself being quite closed-minded when it came to what her idea of what the Literature Club should be, as she discovered that she wasn't accepting all members into the club fairly. This was displayed when she wasn't keen on letting Natsuki join the Literature Club because her only literary interest was manga.

Monika often tries to be a leader and deal with conflicts between club members, although she has stated herself that dealing with conflict is not her strong suit. During one of the side stories, Monika tried to resolve a conflict between Natsuki and Yuri by having a discussion, but this proved useless and only made the situation worse. During another, she was too afraid to stand up for Natsuki when two other students were mocking her. Monika felt bad about it and was aggravated at herself because she couldn't stand up for Natsuki.

As shown throughout the timeline of Doki Doki Literature Club, Monika takes strictness in the Literature Club's atmosphere, which was part of the reason she was reluctant on letting Natsuki join the club. Monika tries her best to assist the other members through conflict, alongside Mr. Game & Watch and PAC-MAN. She comforted Sayori when she wrote the poem about depression, holding her in a friendly embrace and telling her that she didn't need to force herself to speak on the matter more. Monika also assisted Yuri write a letter in apology to Natsuki when Yuri came to her for assisted. Monika sat down and talked Yuri through it, assisting her write something meaningful and something that didn't sound blameful, alongside PAC-MAN. Furthermore, Monika tends to beat herself up in certain situations, opting to speak the phrase *"What a good leader..."* when she feels as though she has failed as the club's leader.

In "Flat Reflection," it is revealed that Monika and Yuri are Mr. Game & Watch's biggest fans, specifically by PAC-MAN. During the story, Monika and Yuri write a "love letter" for Mr. Game & Watch, in which the latter reads the poem much to his amazement and impress, with PAC-MAN assisting the two, stating that he will love it and responding "After all, you girls are his biggest fans."

## Powers and abilities

At first glance, Monika appears to be nothing more than 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 especially good at coding, and thus her powers typically leave glitches in her reality, hence multiple of Act 2's more surreal imagery and the reason the protagonist doesn't talk/react at certain moments in the same Act. 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, as she is able to remember the existence of characters that have been deleted.
* **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 and skipping dialogue.
* **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 first act.
* **Mind Manipulation**: Monika is capable of brainwashing, as demonstrated on both Yuri and Natsuki.
	+ **Character Manipulation**: In Act 3, Monika reveals that she has been tampering with the files of the other girls to increase their negative traits, which had also led Sayori and Yuri to suicide. She can also manipulate their actions and physical appearances, shown for Act 2's horror. It's also speculated that she amplified Natsuki's Father as well, from being very strict to physically abusive.
* **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 protagonist was 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 backup of her own file.
* **Programming**: Monika can reprogram and corrupt the data files within the game itself.

## Trivia

* According to **MickMick247**, Mr. Game & Watch is the president of Doki Doki Literature Club (also known as the Game & Watch Literature Club, by the aforementioned creator of it), alongside Monika. Unlike her, however, Mr. Game & Watch is devolved as the protagonist rather than an antagonist in the game.
* **MickMick247** associates Popo and Mr. Game & Watch with Monika the most in terms of friendships, due to reflecting their maturity and polite demeanor, in addition to being the ones to lead the Literature Club. In addition, while Popo has a vaguely similar characteristic design to Monika, Mr. Game & Watch features a more mature and slick figure similar to Monika's, and leads the *Super Smash Bros.* series as the game's oldest fighter, similar to Monika's nature as the club president in DDLC.
* Monika is purposefully designed to be suspiciously out of place from the very moment the menu screen is introduced:
	+ Every girl wears white knee-highs except for Monika, who wears black thigh-highs.
	+ Every girl excluding Monika wears white and blue shoes, but Monika's are white and pink.
		- Furthermore on these two points, Monika is positioned so close on the Title Screen that her legs up to the black thigh-highs don't even make it into the frame and cannot be seen at all, hiding her differences at first. This could be a form of foreshadowing.
	+ Every girl's name, excluding Monika's, ends with an "i," and is explicitly the rōmaji anglicization of transcriptions which originate in the Japanese language.
	+ All of the girl's sprites have them facing slightly sideways, but Monika's primary sprites depicts her looking directly frontward at the protagonist. Only one of Monika's sprites faces away from the fourth wall.
	+ Monika is the only one of the girls to never be shown outside of school or in a casual outfit. She later states that she knows this and is jealous of the other girls for having them, as well as wishing she could have "worn some cute clothes for you."
	+ Monika is the only person to talk to the player for a little while before reading their poem. Unlike the other girls who would immediately read the player's poem after choosing them.
	+ Monika is the only character in the game to have her voice connected explicitly to the credited individual for the vocals, Jillian Ashcraft, because of direct dialog presented before and during the credits.
	+ While every other character's illustration in the main menu has them doing a pose of some sort, Monika's illustration has her extending out her hand. This could be seen as a welcoming gesture for new players into her club, however it could also possibly be her reaching out to the player.
	+ Monika is the only girl to hold a pen in the main menu. This could symbolize her being the only girl to be able to write and alter the game's script.
	+ Monika is the only girl to have a natural hair color, coral brown, while the other girls have an unnatural hair color, with coral pink for Sayori, pastel pink for Natsuki, and dark purple for Yuri.
	+ Monika is the only girl with a white hair accessory while the others have a colored hair accessory. She is also the only girl with fully tied hair, since Sayori and Yuri's hair are loose while Natsuki's hair only has small sections tied.
	+ It has been noted that Monika has a bow accessory like Sayori, extensively long hair like Yuri, and tied hair like Natsuki.
* Monika and Sayori, the only girls who experience becoming Club President and therefore becoming sentient, are also the only two girls to smile on the Title Screen and to have a natural eye color. Monika's eyes are emerald green and Sayori's eyes are sky blue.
* Monika's version of the song "Okay, Everyone!" debuts only the piano, fitting for her character as she plays the piano.
* Monika is the one who authored the game's description on Steam. This is revealed to the player during Act 3.
* Monika's birthday is the same day *Doki Doki Literature Club!* was officially released, which is September 22, 2017.
* As early as Act 1, Monika has a tendency to "accidentally" interrupt whenever the protagonist is getting close to another one of the girls - such as when the protagonist feeds Yuri chocolate or is reading manga with Natsuki. In Act 2, Monika starts to interrupt whenever the game glitches due to her interference.
* In one of the Special Poems, specifically Special Poem 4, an unknown writer cuts themselves, saying they understand how an omitted person feels now after doing it. The writer is implied to be Monika, with the omitted other person being Yuri. Dan Salvato later confirmed this in the 1st year anniversary for DDLC, stating: "This poem was written from the perspective of Monika, because– this is around the time where Monika is really starting to experiment with mortality in her universe. And, you know, she's so casual about the whole thing, because at this point she feels so detached from [...] the universe that she's in, that it is almost like it doesn't even matter to her anymore. [...] The feeling of her [...] feeling physical pain– or doing that sort of thing to herself– she describes it as exhilarating because it's something that is allowing her to feel something in this universe that has become so incredibly meaningless to her."
* Monika exhibits some hypocrisy, besides telling on a sarcastic manner, for designating Yuri to be the stereotypical "yandere-like" character archetype despite showcasing the common actions a yandere would do, which is to remove competition by any means necessary and force the player into a situation that they cannot deny to retain them captive by Monika intentionally until the end of existence. What separates Monika from being an real yandere-like character, however, is her acceptance of being rejected and allowing the player to live life without her and with the possibility of partnering with another.
* Monika's description of what she experiences when the game is closed is due to deallocation of her memory by the operating system. When a program is no longer active, it frees the memory to be used by other programs, which will eventually overwrite parts of or all of the newly freed memory.
* Monika has an official Twitter account under the alias, lilmonix3.
* Monika's favorite color is emerald green because she feels a "special connection" to the color of her eyes serving as part of her identity, which could be a reference of the expression "green with envy."
* Monika's favorite day of the year is Valentine's Day, February 14th.
* Monika is a vegetarian because she wants to contribute to lowering the carbon footprint of the planet, which is typically caused by meat factories and other industrial markets.
* Although she can find out the device's administrator name, she will not reveal this name if the player is actively recording on certain streaming programs.
	+ This does not apply if the user is running on MacOS or Linux, as the list of programs the game checks for is hard-coded specifically for "exe" files. As these two OSs don't use "exe." files, the game doesn't detect them.
* Monika states that she does not know much about the player, including whether they are a boy or a girl. Despite that, she still calls herself their girlfriend, an inconsistency interpreted as hinting ambiguous bisexuality or pansexuality. She calls the player her "boyfriend" in the same act afterward, however, another inconsistency conflicting the previously stated and hinting more toward a preference to heterosexuals. This could mean two things:
	+ Monika has preferences, but they are second to being the player's perfect girlfriend no matter the conflicts.
	+ Monika's interest originates from the fact for what the player represents as a real-world entity with infinite choices in life, rather than an autonomous programmable capable of only a finite set. Dan Salvato hints that Monika tries to love the player as they are, and her love depends if the player loves her or not.
* Monika stated that she would have deleted herself from the game if the player had not shown up. Soon after, when talking about introverts she says she can be "anything the player needs her to be", understands people really well, and "nothing would make her happier than being the perfect girlfriend for you."
* She repeatedly mentions the phrase "Just Monika" through another character or by making the game itself omit the phrase via a text box or dialog box in an attempt to limit the player's choices or at first convince the player Monika is the better person to focus on.
* Technically, the player doesn't have to delete Monika to progress. Cutting and pasting the character file into another folder outside the game directory will have the same effect.
* If Monika's character file is backed up before the player deletes it and adds it back at any point before starting a new game in Act 4, a text box will pop up when the player starts Act 4 stating that the player is being cruel to her and that she does not want to exist anymore and will consequently delete her own file afterward.
	+ Despite being deleted, if the player attempts to load a save file from a previous act, Monika will still appear in order to prevent the player from cheating.

* As stated by Monika herself, Natsuki was the reason Monika started playing piano.
* Monika made a song for the Literature Club called "My Song, Your Note" on the piano. This song title shares initials with the four club members in the order they joined: Monika, Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki. However, Monika was too shy to tell them.
	+ Interestingly enough, the conversation between her and Natsuki in the music room during the second half of the Respect side story contained some familiar lines: "And I'm not really good at it yet. Like-at all. But...I wrote a song for the club. And I worked really, really hard on it. It doesn't have any words or anything, but...well, yeah." before she begins playing the song.
		- These same lines, despite some differences, are the same used in the conversation from Monika to the player before the credits and "Your Reality" start playing.
* Her favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla.
* She regards herself as a pushover, although the other characters do not regard her as that.
* In one of the emails that can be obtained throughout *Plus*, it is revealed that Monika's name is an acronym for "**Moni**tor **K**ernel **A**ccess."
* When checking the game's history during Yuri's death scene, 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" or "green-eyed monster."
* There are subtle hints that Monika is out of place in the game in the beginning, such as having naturally colored hair and eyes, a Western name that does not end in "i," black socks and pink shoes instead of white socks and blue shoes, a full-frontal portrait in contrast to the other girls having at least part of their portraits viewed at an angle, having fully tied back hair, and not having words and a chibi version dedicated to her when writing a poem.
* If the player writes a perfect poem for one of the girls, Monika will question them as to whether they are “cheating”, alluding to the player looking up the right words to pick for whom the poem is intended for.
* Monika is able to figure out the player's actual name by finding the name of the currently logged-in user 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 creators, Project Manager Paula Miner and her fellow developers of Metaverse Enterprise Solutions, are collectively 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 creators, which would make them an unintentional antagonist.
* According to several theories in continuity with *Doki Doki Literature Club*, Monika could be a major character, if not the protagonist, of Team Salvato's upcoming game, which might 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.
* In the universe of the SCP Foundation, when Foundation personnel put a memory stick containing the *Doki Doki Literature Club!* game inside SCP-914 on the "Very Fine" setting, it resulted in Monika becoming a real person with reality-bending powers, but was shortly killed by the personnel.

## References

1. ↑ https://imgur.com/a/hWCAX
2. ↑ https://www.deviantart.com/mickmick247/art/Reconciliation-1004859128
3. ↑ By particular recording/streaming software only, notably OBS, XSplit Broadcaster, LiveHime, YYMixer and some other Chinese streaming apps. (Source)
4. ↑ https://www.deviantart.com/mickmick247/art/Cryokinesis-1000144029
5. ↑ https://twitter.com/dansalvato/status/1611528074067312644?s=20
6. ↑ Experiment Log 914

**Monika** • Sayori • Natsuki • Yuri • MC