I'm currently playing Slay the Spire, but not quite ready to do an essay or review on it. So in the meantime, enjoy some more Doki Doki Literature Club, this time in fanfic form! It's a fluff triptych, no ficlet longer than 500 words. SPOILERS as usual, though I don't promise any of this will even make sense if you haven't played the game yet!

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Only Yuri.

delete monika.chr
delete natsuki.chr
delete sayori.chr

It's the end of the school day, and I'm supposed to go looking for clubs to join. It's not something I'm especially excited about, but it's not like there's much else happening in my life. Maybe I could shake things up by finding some other people who are into anime or games or manga. Just as I'm about to scare up the motivation to get out of my seat, the door to the classroom opens and someone comes in. It's a girl, about my age and taller than I am, with long dark hair and a timid way of moving. "H-hello?"

"Hi. Uh, sorry, everybody's left for the day. Are you looking for the teacher?"

Her eyes widen. "No! No, no. I came looking for you. You're Daisuke^*, right?"

I blink, taken aback. I've never seen this girl in my life. I mean, passed her in the hall, at best. "Yeah, that's me. And you are?"

"I'm Yuri." She speaks so softly it barely comes out, but as she continues her voice gains a little bit of strength. "I was wondering if maybe... that is... are you interested in books, at all?" Even as she gets the question out, she looks aside, not making eye contact.

"Books? Well, I read manga." Way to go, Daisuke, get your loser status out in the open first thing. But I suck at lying, so it's probably for the best.

Yuri looks disappointed. "Oh, I see." She pauses, looking into space above my head. "Well... maybe you could try a novel sometime? If I--er, if someone gave you one?"

"I guess?" I'm getting more and more puzzled. "What's this about?"

"Well, you see." She fusses with the end of a long lock of hair. "I'm thinking of starting a new club. A Literature Club. And I need... well. There's really nobody else around who can join."

This is not the way I thought my afternoon would go. But it's obviously taking this girl a lot of effort to put herself out there, so it'd be hard to turn her down. "Don't you need at least four people to make a club?"

"Yeah." She looks crestfallen. "So I guess it wouldn't be official. But it's all I can do. There's really no. one. else." The emphasis she puts on those words is disconcerting. Finally her eyes meet mine, and the pleading in her look and her tone all but break my heart. "Please? I could... I could read some manga too. We can both learn from each other."

A cute girl all but asking me out, out of the blue? So I guess the anime club isn't happening. "Sure, why not." Yuri's face lights up in a visible cascade of relief.

And that's how I sold my soul for a book and some puppy-dog eyes.

President Natsuki's Doki Doki Manga Club

set_attribute ClubPresident:false monika.chr
set_attribute ClubPresident:true natsuki.chr

"Everyone, the new member is here!"

"I told you, don't call me a 'new member'--"

I glance around the room. There are four students present including Sayori, all girls. One of them, a sakura-blossom-haired gal with arms crossed, catches my attention straight off. There's something not quite right about her...

She's the first to speak. "Sayori, you brought a boy?"

Sayori waves her hands in a desperate warding gesture. "Y-yeah! But it's OK, Natsuki, he's a big manga fan! Right, Daisuke?"

"Uh, s-sure..."

The pink girl--Natsuki, apparently--rolls her eyes, but waves us over. With her arms no longer obscuring her torso, and as I get a better angle of vision on her, the reason for the strangeness I felt becomes apparent. She's the same height as Sayori if not even a bit taller, but the proportions of her body look unnatural: it's like she was several inches shorter, but then her legs got stretched out or put on stilts. And her, uh, chest? I try not to stare at breasts like a creeper, generally speaking, but in this case I can't help it. Her upper torso is smeared, warped perhaps, like someone expanded her cup size by inking a wider, rounder outline around her body and stretching the existing section of her frame to fit.

"Quit staring, you pervert!" She crosses her arms again and frowns, color rising in her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, I just--are you all right?" I can't find words.

Her pout explodes into a frustrated outburst. "I'm not good at character sprite editing yet, okay?!?!"

The Club Needs More Members

copy natsuki.chr natsuki1.chr...natsuki9.chr
copy sayori.chr sayori1.chr...sayori9.chr
copy yuri.chr yuri1.chr...yuri9.chr

"HEEEEEEEEEYYY!!"

I see a pack of annoying girls running toward me from the distance, waving their arms in the air like they're totally oblivious to the fact they're crowding the sidewalk like a swarm of chipper bees. It's the Sayoris, my neighbors and friends since we were children--all ten of them. You know, the kind of friends you'd never see yourself hanging out with today, but you have no choice, because there are so many they're everywhere?

"Hey guys--"

The first one to reach me stops short, out of breath, and the rest pile up behind her one by one. "We overslept again. We almost missed you!"

"Yeah, we'd better get moving or we'll all be late." We usually walk to school together. It looks like the gaggle of girls from that kid's book Madeline, but with blazers and skirts and no yellow hats.

So we hustle on our way. Today they seem to be babbling about joining clubs. I mostly tune it out, their words becoming a sort of white noise behind me. But by the end of the school day, there's no escaping it: the posse surrounds me as soon as my mind wanders for a moment after the final bell.

"We saw you just sitting here and spacing out, so we came in! We thought you might need some encouragement--maybe you could come to our club!"

I look around at the twenty expectant eyes trained on me. As usual, there's no way I could turn them down. If I resisted, they could just surround me and crowdsurf me on to wherever they want me to go. "OK, sure, I'll check it out. Literature Club, right?"

"YAAAAAYY!!"

So I follow them across the school and upstairs. The hall outside the club room is packed with people. Many of them are eating cupcakes shaped like cats; crumbs litter the floor. Others are chatting with one another or have their faces buried in books. They seem to belong to two strict body types: petite and genki, and tall and curvy. The tall ones mostly keep to themselves, while the short ones argue and hand out cupcakes. With the Sayoris joining the throng, it makes three templates cloned around. With some difficulty, I make it into the room, which is full of the same cookie-cutter girls--except for one.

A frazzled-looking brunette with green eyes catches sight of me. The background sounds of conversation, book pages turning, and cupcake chewing fades to static, and the scene except for the green-eyed girl herself becomes covered in blurry snow like an old TV set.

"oh god please help me," she says.

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* This is the default protagonist name in more than one VN I've seen. I think it's the most common Japanese male given name, or at least was a decade or so ago.

"Demiboy vs. Backlog" is a blog series where I play each game from my considerable backlog and share my thoughts about them here on Steemit! Doki Doki Literature Club was selected by Clyde Three. Check out the play queue and leave a comment here to point me in the direction of one of your favorites! Think my backlog still isn't large enough or is missing some must-play title? I accept gift games via Steam, and will slot any game thus received into the queue at the nearest opportunity!