DreamShipWrecked posted:

I personally agree that act one is a much heavier hitter than act two, but it's probably largely because I've gone through/am actively going through the same kind of poo poo that Sayori dealt with and seeing it laid down so well hit me like a sledgehammer.

Aside from that, I've been doing a lot of thinking about why the game had to be the way that it was. Why did Monika need to make the girls kill themselves? If she had control over the world then she should have been able to make an excuse plot about the girls moving away suddenly and not traumatizing the player so much. An uncharitable person would say that spook sells better, but I'd like to give it more credit than that. What I've come up with is that Monika is, by either her nature or her programming, forced to get you to choose her, rather than just removing all other options. She can't just force you to do that, or it wouldn't be "love", it would just be hostage taking. Instead she acts like an old school faerie, drastically changing things so that there is no real choice, but not *technically* making the choice for you. At least until she drops the masquerade and just wipes the whole thing clean. It's been bothering me a bit because by all measures Monika is not a bad person, just someone who is in the worst possible situation she could be in, and the idea that she is some sort of sadist doesn't really gel with her character in my head.