LogFAQs > #962866720

65st
Game: Doki Doki Literature Club
Title: Just Monika
Composer: Dan Salvato
Nominator: @NowItsAngeTime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC0mFHN7r2c

only adding to the "majority of the music i've been listening to lately is dark ambient[and/or]glitchy stuff by someone who is named 'dan'" trend of 2022...

it's kinda funny that i associate doki doki literature club with that one iconic happy song i /really/ did not like, but also i think something like that cute simplicity needs to exist, so that the subversion when tracks like this show up is that much more striking! those detuned background pads on their own would be enough to instantly sell me on something dark; but the distortion effects in the background make this even more instinctually frightening (they're sharp and piercing, and you never know exactly when they're going to happen! instilling the BIOLOGICAL reflects to assume a tense, cautious state of being to make sure you are not pierced by SHARP OBJECTS that might STAB you). the particular way those piercing sounds are sharp is really effective too, since they completely cut their sound out at times, temporarily. It's a lot stronger a feeling than if it was just random very loud sounds that were the same loudness the whole time. it simulates things you're trained to be afraid of too: power going out, a speaker being blown out, or even the sharp dissolving of sound from your consciousness when you're knocked out. but temporarily, a flicker. it keeps you on the edge into thinking that these things could happen at any time, but they don't, but they bring you all the tension of as if you're in the middle of those experiences.

the occasional hints of something normal (i believe it's referencing the main theme at :50?) are a good contrast too. something that happy in the middle of something so dark could destroy the mood or become a contrast that becomes too cartoonish to take seriously, but this hid it well enough (while still clearly referencing it) that i actually didn't even notice it until some very recent listens. Instead it made it like a subconscious background feeling, that i'm experiencing a dark version of something once presenting itself as cute. I think because of that; even if i did not know what this game was, i would /know/ it's to something with a misleadingly colorful exterior. i said something similar on place's powerpuff girls nom. this isn't unfitting or jarring from the thing this game misleads you into thinking it is, i can tell it's to SOMETHIng pink and with a heart on it and smiling anime girls. but i don't even "notice" that i can tell, it just subtly hints at the feeling in the background and i feel it instinctively. this is a broken version of pink anime girl world, i know that without "knowing" what this game is. GOOD JOB

of course: this takes me to the same world i described i crave to be taken to on the "Super Paper Mario - World of Nothing" writeup. a dark and broken distorted reality. it's a rare thing for music to truly to successfully evoke to me, so i have a strong appreciation for whenever it can do that! thank you for this one!

i'm not sure this song makes me want to play this game, but it definitely lets me know it's the category of thing i like. i'm big into things that are unexpectedly dark for what they're initially presented as. anything from the subtle level of something like pmd to the extreme level of something more like this. and i love the feeling of when something once presenting itself as cute descends to this level of unease