GIRLS' MONACHOPSIS developer ramblings

(Content warning: this writeup contains a discussion of sexual assault, both in game and as it relates to real life)

Wow…it’s been three months since I released this. And about two weeks since I found out we were one of the winners!! Neither feels real to me. It feels conceited for me to say, but I can’t be grateful enough that so many people enjoyed it.  

Thank you to everyone who read the game and felt something, and thank you so much to the Menhera VN Jam team for all your hard work (and also money. I can’t lie I have to thank you for the whole paying us thing too).

Prior to this, I’d only ever written Red Red Tarmac, which was half the length with only two characters, as simple as I could make it. And prior to that I hadn’t written creatively since school, so I’m pretty happy with how Girls’ Monachopsis ended up, all things considered.

I had a lot of support and advice from people that ended up helping. Tessa in particular was immensely helpful. Not only did she immediately understand what I wanted for the soundtrack and ended up slaying with it, but was able to pinpoint all the areas of writing that needed the most improvement when I was struggling a lot. This game wouldn’t have been half as good without her. I can’t thank her enough (go check out her music it’s good https://spinalfluidreserve.carrd.co/ )

I guess I have a few thoughts about the game that have become a little more clear with time. I really had trouble articulating what the game was about even as it neared its final stages. I guess partially because one of the main themes I was going for was being in a hopeless or trapped situation and not knowing what to do about that. So maybe that feeling was baked in.


Someone in my comments likened the tone of the game to discord conversations, which was funny but honestly captured a lot of it. I think for someone like me, and probably a lot of other people, Discord serves a disproportionately large role in all social interactions. It is definitely immensely helpful to be able to share deep feelings with people online, but you can only do so much through only that, and it can end up feeling cyclical. It was kind of an accident that the game ended up feeling similar (I guess I can’t avoid sounding like Discord chat if those are almost all my interactions, huh?), but by coincidence, I do feel like it adds to what I was going for.


To actually summarize the game, I would say Girls’ Monachopsis is an attempt at a statement that we can still grow and find a place in the world even if that world demonstrably wants to hurt us. That even damaged people can find kinship and help each other even if they can’t solve each other’s problems on their own. I don’t know how well this comes across. I’ve seen people describe it as hastily wrapping up heavy topics, and I honestly can’t fault that perception (even if it was made in a month by me, who isn’t good at writing). 

This criticism is also part of what I wanted to get at with the game though. It’s also about not knowing what to do about anything. And about how while we’re in that state of not knowing, we want to heal and we want closeness, but these things inevitably lead us to hurt each other. One of my inspirations for the ero scene with Thistle and Olivia was from Disco Elysium; to avoid spoilers, in that game there’s a scene where you’re interviewing a character about an intimate relationship they had, and they say something along the lines of  “I’m 90% sure I wasn’t raped. You know how it is…. Or maybe you don’t”. It’s a minor line, but it spoke to me in terms of how people sometimes actually experience this kind of thing. It spoke to my own experiences of abuse at least.


I think what I wanted to get at most here is that you don’t need to be an evil cartoon monster to assault someone. I think that a big cause of these kinds of things can be miscommunication. That doesn’t relieve people of their responsibility to care for people they’re intimate with, or absolve them of any wrongdoing, but I think it’s important to recognise that any of us could hurt each other in the same way that ends up happening between Thistle and Olivia in Girls’ Monachopsis. Especially if you’re an isolated trans person trying to work through all your issues and pain at once. When we think of sexual assault as something only evil monsters do, we lessen our understanding of how that happens and what we can do to prevent it.

That said there’s a lot I would change if I had the time. I do want to one day have a better answer than just clinging together. Once I get past the part of my life where all I do is cling, I’ll let you know how that goes.


I do also feel like I didn’t accomplish everything I wanted to with the character of Dahlia. She has a very limited role in the story, partially because it is a story about letting go of things that were once important to us, but I do feel like I could have made the conflict between Dahlia and Fennel in terms of their life outlook work a little better. I’m not someone who’s navigated a lot of conflict. In my experience, they don’t tend to have satisfying resolutions like in stories. Sometimes, mostly, they just end. But maybe that’s not so bad. I also hope that Dahlia doesn’t come across as antagonistic. I think there’s a big difference between people who can function in the world and those who really struggle to, at all. This doesn’t make either kind of person bad, sometimes people just leave and that’s ok.

I don’t know if this will connect with everyone and that’s fine. If you struggle with the same kind of hopelessness portrayed here I hope this was able to make you feel something.

Also Kiwi deserved more screen time. I’m sorry Kiwi I couldn’t make it work in the time I had. Rip to a real one.

With that said let me show you some character bios…