Originally published on my Goodreads author blog here. Mind you, see the next post as well.
Last August, I announced that I was getting so inspired by something that I was considering creating a fan webcomic.
Well, my current status: I’m really hoping to start publishing it next week.
The name of the webcomic is still what I said was my working title then: Less Bittersweet. And now that I’m announcing it, it’s time to reveal what it’s actually based on. Unfortunately, I’m immediately going to have to say it might not make sense to read the comic without having played the game. Maybe you should just play it? I loved that game for a reason, you know. And it’s available free and quite short.
The game in question is the visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club! (DDLC for short). The name sounds so silly I wouldn’t want to mention it without going ahead to explain what the game is actually about, but that’s just what I was going to do next anyway.
DDLC starts out looking like a light-hearted anime style thing, the kind of game whose object is literally just to date cute high school girls. Although, if you pay attention, you may already notice early on that there’s something more going on… And of course, there’s that content warning. Well, eventually the game takes a total turn and becomes very dark and anything but generic. It seems most often to be classified as psychological horror, although there’s a lot more going on.
Honestly, I’d recommend it to almost anyone. It can be downloaded for free on Steam or ddlc.moe. (There’s an expanded paid version, DDLC Plus. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to start with that – the original works better as it is, although Plus is okay for added content afterwards.) It also takes only about four hours to finish normally. And it’s absolutely brilliant.
The one caveat is that people who are too sensitive one way or other might not want to play it. It’s not necessarily the scariest game in the regular sense of horror – though your mileage may vary – but it features horrible things happening and may not be safe for people with issues with anxiety or depression. It’s written with lots of empathy and emotional intelligence, though… which probably causes it to be all the more shocking, but shocking in a way that makes you think and feel.
So, enough about DDLC, and back to Less Bittersweet. (So, what do I say about it anyway?)
I was inspired by the characters of DDLC, their tragic fates, and the thought-provoking ideas in the game’s premise. As such, my comic is going to be set after the ending of the comic (the special one, not the normal one, which is even darker), and trying to make it, well, [points at the comic title], while still following the logic of the original story in one possible interpretation. The comic is not going to be nearly as dark, although it will still have the same themes, even the dark ones. I guess it’s mainly drama-comedy, besides being vaguely anime-related, speculative fiction, and metafiction.
One of my motivations for actually doing this was and is how many things there are to learn that I can only sort of do now, or only have a clue about, that I all need for making and publishing a webcomic. I stepped in pretty deep in that respect. It’s going to be a learning process throughout, and it’s going to show. But, well, I can write already, and draw somewhat, so none of it should be awful even at the start.
It’s pretty clear that my intended audience are established fans of the game. The comic works best if you know the game and get the references. But, well, it only takes four hours to become one…
I will post a link to the comic when it’s actually online.
Thoughts on X 