Our Reality (Doki Doki Literature Club!)

Afterword #4

Afterword #4

Okay, I promise I won't change the name of the story anymore (maybe?). Anyway, I wasn't planning to do another afterword until further down the story, but considering that I just finished the 100th chapter celebration arc and the 3rd anniversary is here, I figured why not. Funny enough, another afterword was one of the many potential Chapter 100s I had in mind but I'll get into that later.

Anyway, let's get to it.

Prelude

To be completely transparent, I was really excited to dive into Act 2 while I was working on the last few summer vacation chapters. I had finally achieved the status quo that I was working towards since the beginning and I couldn't wait to tell more stories after the fact. But the moment I finished Afterword #3, I was bummed to figure out that there were no ideas to back up that excitement. All I had were two goals: Avert the "Friends who never hang" trope and get the Literature Club a clubroom but, other than that, utterly nothing.

So for an entire month, I couldn't think of a single thing to write until I decided to use that to my advantage. The thought of what the story would be like going forward and how the future was unknown; I translated those feelings to the story with some of the characters wondering what they were going to do from now on.

Something else that made starting Act 2 hard was that I just obtained the status quo I just obtained and I was wary of doing anything to jeopardize that. But at the same time, I knew that the story would be boring if I just continued to do the same thing over and over.

I eventually compromised with myself and evolved to a mindset of worldbuilding and naturally pushing the characters story forward with the world which first led to...

Maliza/Mali

Before I completely evolved in that mindset and was still in "I may have to completely jeopardize the status quo right away" phase, I came to conclusion that a new character would do that.

At first, I was apprehensive to the idea because I already had three other main OCs other than Shujinkou and I already felt like I was starting to make too many with Rei. I do remember distinctly saying, "This is the last one."

So, I got to work working on a new character, but Mali was not the first result. The first result was to be a sort of rival debate team member for Monika that tried to "steal" Shujinkou away from her. Though her attempts wouldn't work because Shujinkou had absolutely no interest in her, less so because he knew what she was trying to do. She would have eventually fallen for him for real, but she would have had no chance.

But I didn't go with that concept. I wanted someone a lot more distinct from the other characters. That's when I got to thinking, "You know... a lot of the characters are relatively nice. I need someone who's the complete opposite of that!"

That's was the origin of Mali's conception, but I didn't want to stop there. I wanted her to be even more different so I decided to make her a year younger than the others. Along with that, I decided she would have the face of an innocent school girl, but even that couldn't hide her maliciousness. She's aware of that, and instead uses her fake innocence to compliment her malicious words.

Now originally, I planned on having Shujinkou and Mali having a heart-to-heart that would put an end to her malicious ways, but I didn't go that route. I said that she needed to be the complete opposite of the others and I felt like that would be redundant at this point so instead I had her stop terrorizing the school because she found something else to put her focus on.

Overall, Mali is an observant and clever 1st year student under Shujinkou's care who also serves as a malicious wild card to everyone around her.

Her Senpai/Kōhai relationship with Shujinkou was also coincidence in regards when I was creating, especially in regards to referring to him as the former. Really, it wasn't until I was writing the last few sentences of her first meeting with Shujinkou that I realized that she could call him that. But instead of using it in a loving, respectful or... a certain obsessive manner, her use to it is akin to nicknaming a pet.