Our Reality (Doki Doki Literature Club!)

A Sudden Perspective: My Brother and I

3rd grade is about to start soon. I've been in the neighborhood for about a year now, so the just moved in and new school feeling are both completely gone. I was actually pretty excited to start the school year this time around, especially if I work hard and get praise from Mom and Dad like last year. Still I needed to do something to keep me from the anticipation from driving me crazy. Fortunately, I knew exactly what that something was; plus, it would let me finally check off something I've been wanting to do ever since I figured out what Spider-Man Shujinkou was always referring to at first.

Sayori was busy today, so that meant the possibility that Shujinkou was free was a bit higher than usual.

Oh yeah... I can't believe I didn't mention this before but a few days ago, Sayori and I came up with a nickname for him. We weren't even trying when we did.

You see, the three of us were playing a game where you take someone's name and try to make words with the letters or just messing around with them in general. I was trying to make an anagram name from Shujinkou's name and Sayori was messing with the letters. That's when something caught my eye and I helped her with it. Somehow, after removing a few letters we ended up with "Shiko."

Sayori instantly liked the name and, with his permission, started calling him that ever since. I think she just likes having a special name she can call him. Then again, she tried to call me "Hiko" but I shut that down right away.

Moving on, it was duty as a superhero enthusiast to introduce Shujinkou to the original Amazing Spider-Man. I was tempted to start him with Ultimate Spider-Man but I knew that he should start with the original. So with my signed Amazing Fantasy #15 in hand (yes, I am proud to own it) I went to Shujinkou's room.

He was playing Kingdom Hearts II and was near the end of the prologue. I was kinda lost for a moment as I watched it. Seeing Roxas pull out two Keyblades was really cool no matter how many times I see it. I wonder why I never found Ventus to be as cool as Roxas. They both have the same cool look, but there's something about Roxas that I like more.

I had to shake myself out of the strange trance that I was in and asked Shujinkou if he wanted to read the origin story of Peter Parker. He agreed and started reading. What made me laugh was him pointing out that the radioactive experiment that gave Peter his powers makes more sense than the one that gave Yu his.

You see, Peter Parker was bitten by an irradiated spider that got irradiated from an experiment during an exhibition. It's the same with Yu except that the machine is open for anyone to use. It was mentioned that the experiment "may not even be on the test" meaning that the school was somehow cleared to use radiation. I don't know how other schools are nor do I know what the standards of the 70s were, but I can't really see any normal high school having "radioactivity harnessing equipment" around where anyone can get to it. That just raises too many exclamation points over people's heads.

After he finished reading it and asked for the next issue of Amazing Fantasy. It was at that moment that I realized what I was getting him into. I'll say the one thing the manga has over the original is that all the stories take place in one series. Going from Amazing Fantasy to Amazing Spider-Man is one thing, but stopping in the middle of a story when a note made you realize that you missed a previous one in an annual issue is another. That's not even getting into the advent of another series, crossovers, guest appearances and team-ups.

Then again, he's been following Kingdom Hearts and that series has been bouncing around multiple game devices, so I thought maybe he could handle it.

Still I had to make it easier for him, so I ended up making a track list of when to break from the individual issues and switch to annual issues. I got no complaints, so I guess my theory about Kingdom Hearts unintentionally preparing him for this may hold some weight.

Anyway, he was actually enjoying the first few issues and didn't even complain about how the characters talked or the clear fact that it's shaped by the decade it was made in.

I just want to set the record straight; I'm not trying to push the manga out of his mind and replace it with Amazing, but I figured he should know what the original is like and that Yu is one of the alternate Spider-Men.

I got to say though, him questioning if all Spider-Men having bad luck made me wonder if Peter and Yu both had depressing stories. So, I picked up the manga and started reading.

At the end of the day I was fully confident to say that Yu's life was definitively more depressing. Peter may have a lot of traumatic experiences, but at least he has happy endings too. Yu just keeps figuring out how humanity sucks and all his endings are pretty sad. His stories always end with him sad, angry or just not caring or encouraging an invisible tiger to kill.

...I still don't get that last one.

But despite spending a few hours reading something so depressing, I still enjoyed reading Spider-Man with Shujinkou. He's the only one in the house that I can talk about these things with. I could talk to Mom, but then I would have to start completely at the beginning.

Overall, a pretty fun day.