VN Ren'Py Being a DIK [v0.10.1] [DrPinkCake]

4.80 star(s) 1,553 Votes
Discussion Reviews (1,553)
den_tiger

den_tiger

Well-Known Member
Feb 16, 2022
1,021
999
Mormont said:
No, they weren't actually a couple they were more fuck buddies although I do think there were some feelings between the both of them.
She was just MC as a one-off for the Interlude it will be back to the normal MC in Season 3
Well yeah, she is only interested in the MC so it will be only him that she goes for.
As for the tag, I guess so you got to give the audience a bit of a heads up about what is involved. Although you could skip the Interlude and then that tag wouldn't matter.
Click to expand...
To Zoey, they were fuck buddies, but the MC considered her as his girlfriend. He mentioned having a girlfriend before.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ename144, mightybored and Meushi
T

TundraMouse

New Member
Apr 21, 2022
3
75
Arigon said:
All stories in this "Category" are implausible to impossible, so taking that critique off the table and looking at just stories, well and sometimes graphics and music where warranted.

Drifty- Leap of Faith (Compares wonderfully all around, but the story is my favorite probably. Yes some seems implausible but we took that off the table as a critique. Music and renders, Amazing! Additional Plus the story was inspired in large part by the suicide of his daughter which makes it the most gripping and gut wrenching story period. I have cried my eyes out every time I play through.)
LikesBlondes/Ptolemy-Rebirth (Story only. Graphically and musically, not on the same page. Renders are great, but no animations. Many people complain about lack of sex, but it is a vampire story, not a porn novel)
Notty-Heavy Five (Scifi on an entirely different level!! Music no. Everything else is pretty awesome)
STWAdev- Both The Author and the Unbroken (Both stories are amazing. Set in the same world/setting, and connected. Music no. The rest. Definitely.)
Motzkey- Timestamps-both stories (Time travel, hot milfs, fetishes, BACON! nuff said)
Cheeky Gimp- Where the Heart Is (Pretty amazing, but music improvements would be appreciated)
Ocean- Where it All Began (Revision- Chapter 1 models are so fucking amazing now, and beats out DPC. The original I did not think so. Leia is my new favorite over Bella and everyone who has seen me post here knows that Bella was my favorite from any game... She is now second. Story is being re-written and I am referencing the rework writing over the original thus far, but of course have to take the original into account. Music... Like almost all the other choices music would make this perfect)
PhillyGames- City of Broken Dreamers ( only thing that does not exceed DPC is the music. Depraved Awakenings also exceeds Acting Lessons by far)
StudioFOW- Subverse..... I mean..... shit.... it is amazing.
Stone Fox- Chasing Sunsets (Good story, written well so far. The renders and such, good, but not DPC quality.. music needs improving)
LewdLab- Dreams of Desire (Definitive Edition)
R.J. Rhodes- Come Home (except for music, this is pretty fucking amazing- in fairness she did just add music, but compared to BaDIK it sucks!)
Naughty Road- Light of My Life (sad but hilarious incest adventures... Models are unique, which puts some folks off, but it is amazing. Music needs help)

You asked for some good writing. Try the above out. Comparing the quality of writing, I think all of the above are better than what DPC is probably capable of on his best day. His renders and animations, as well as music is really only equaled by Leap of Faith, and render wise, Where it All Began has better renders on the revision.

Subverse was unfair I admit, but it is definitely a fun add, and the story is better. It is hilarious, and yes it is a different type of game all together. The trailer for the game all by itself is enough to show you the quality of the humor.

Not including you in this, but boy does this topic trigger the snowflakes!!

Peace
Click to expand...
I'm as impressed as anyone with BaDik, but I really appreciate this list. As an AVN noob, I sometimes find the perspectives and/or arguments here a bit baffling. However, this convo, and the pushback that this post has been getting, has gotten me thinking about why, as much as I enjoy BaDik, I don't feel much for it, especially when compared to many of the games on your list. And it has to do with DPC's writing, but I suspect that the same things that make me bounce off the writing are what make DPC's fans so loyal.

I think DPC's greatest strength lies in writing a very specific dynamic, one in which a woman needs something from the MC and is afraid to ask for it. Maybe we can call this sexual tension, but it's really a type of a relationship, and I think that most of the storylines in Badik revolve around this type of relationship. When things get serious, characters look down demurely and bite their lip and the MC is free to make their day/night/life by coming to the rescue. Whatever weird plot contrivances get the characters to this point matter less than the scene itself, which DPC is very good at writing. The plot, despite huge melodramatic contortions, is simply not the point. I think you see this in the nonsensical nature of Maya's obstacles, or the way that this huge thing that Quinn is up to never becomes a part of the actual story.

What I described above is probably what good writing is for a lot of people. It is probably what is appealing about AVNs for many, is probably what they think of as romance par excellence, hence why so many people describe BaDik as the apex of the medium. And I agree, it takes a lot of work and a lot of talent to write a character that people fall in love with. But because the falling in love follows this rhythm and this genre convention so neatly, DPCs work doesn't feel personal in the way other game can feel. There's no room to breathe, no space for him to write his estoteric interests into the story, no vulnerability.

His authorial voice is bound up in moving the characters through dramatic moments, and in the quiet moments, instead of writing, we get mini games. The morning at Bella's comes to mind. You get a taste of what a casual hang out could be, which turns into a mini game, and then the next dramatic moment comes around the corner.

Again, this is probably what good writing is to many people. Forward momentum, no bagginess, new things happening. And here, at the nexus of gaming, writing, and porn, I would also guess that BaDik is popular because it feels much more like a game than most AVNs, and an enjoyable one. And totally commendable how the gameplay elements, like the planning board, reinforce the roleplaying of the MC, which is its own kind of writing.

But I question whether college farce is really the genre best suited to DPC's strengths. Because he relies so heavily on plot contortions to get his characters where he wants them, the kind of soap opera finale of Season 2 feels inevitable, and I see more of the same down the road. If the setting were different, perhaps these plot contortions would feel more natural, but as it is, it does feel very days of our lives.

None of these things make DPC a bad writer. I have seen some bad writing in games, even some of the more lauded ones, where the voices of the characteristics are undifferentiated, where authors rely on writerly ticks or cliches just to get sentences structured. But I think he is in some ways a victim of his success. Something like Chasing Sunsets feels so fresh and specific in comparison. Philly's work also, while totally bound to genre conventions, manages to find ways for so much of his own personality to come through. And this, ultimately, even in AVNs, is what art can do. It can convey one person's inner life to an entire audience through the manipulation of that audience's mental faculties.

DPC manipulates brilliantly, though maybe a little too obviously. Maybe he's just unpretentious in his desire to get his audience to the next psycho-sexual payoff. But BaDik ends up feeling more like a product than art as a result, or maybe in the porn-game-novel trifecta it just leans more heavily on the first two. I just don't feel much pathos beating underneath all the layers of polish and control.

So thanks again for the list. I look forward to trying out the half of it that I haven't played.
 
  • Like
  • Red Heart
Reactions: Topper69, Arigon and Blursed
felicemastronzo

felicemastronzo

Devoted Member
May 17, 2020
11,549
22,422
den_tiger said:
To Zoey, they were fuck buddies, but the MC considered her as his girlfriend. He mentioned having a girlfriend before.
Click to expand...
two friends who have sex are no longer friends, one of them is okay with it but would still like a different situation

in the case of Mc and Zoey they are 2 misfits, marginalized by others, they do not choose each other, but they find each other, but before they can clarify Zoey runs to surf

AchedCroissant said:
The MC is not very smart until the player takes control of him and even then he is not smart in certain cases.
Click to expand...
if Zoey is the smart one, they are in a good situation...:oops:
 
Arigon

Arigon

Engaged Member
Aug 27, 2020
2,296
4,535
Mervolant said:
Since y’all talking about writing, I have to get rid of a theory about the Sage & Quinn lewd scene. :coffee: I’m pretty sure DPC made allegorical references to the union of Eros and Thanatos. Indeed, Freud proposed that humans are driven by two conflicting central desires : life drive and death drive. :coffee:

The life drive deals with basic survival, pleasure, and reproduction. Eros (the life drive/instinct, libido) is concerned with the preservation of life, it thus appears as basic needs for health, safety and sustenance and through sexual drives. It seeks both to preserve life and to create life. Eros is associated with positive emotions of love, and hence pro-social behavior, cooperation, collaboration and other behaviors that support harmonious societies.

On the other hand, Thanatos (the death drive/instinct) is associated with negative emotions such as fear, hate and anger, which lead to anti-social acts from bullying to murder (perhaps as projection of the death drive). Freud believed that people typically channel this death drive outward, which manifests as aggression and destructive acts toward others and themselves. He theorized that humans are driven toward death and destruction, famously declaring that "the aim of all life is death.".

In other words, Quinn is Thanatos, the embodiment of death, the dead impulse.

Firstly she’s constantly surrounded by death and skull items :

View attachment 1774166 View attachment 1774167 View attachment 1774168

Secondly, her most proeminent color is black, color of mourning, death, and sadness. Black often represents the emotions and actions of rebellion in teenagers and youth.

View attachment 1774174 View attachment 1774176 View attachment 1774178 View attachment 1774179 View attachment 1774180 View attachment 1774181

It’s even more apparent when she met her dealer. She walked amongst the ghosts, the soon to be dead junkie, like a black hooded figure. Death follows her like a shadow.

View attachment 1774183 View attachment 1774184 View attachment 1774185

Then what about her animal motifs ?

Fly : Throughout the Eastern world, flies are frequently seen as harbingers of death, bearers of pestilence. Fly are also associated with corpses because flies rapidly discover a body and their development times are predictable under particular environmental conditions, the time of death can be calculated by counting back the days from the state of development of flies living on the corpse.

View attachment 1774187

Rats : Associated with plague. Dreaming of rats often symbolizes the ugly or unwanted emotions that a person harbors beneath the surface. Feelings like jealousy, guilt, and hate may be concealed by the waking mind but revealed to us in dreams. Like Roxx mentioned “no matter how high you climb, you can’t get rid of the rats, they always find their way”. In others words, you can’t escape death and negative feelings.

View attachment 1774189

Black widow : Black spider well known for devorating their mates. Which is a perfect representation of her interaction with her preys. She’s a predatory, she’s intrusive and invades personal space, pulling manipulative strings, grabbing and trapping her preys with her claws.

View attachment 1774190 View attachment 1774191 View attachment 1774192 View attachment 1774193 View attachment 1774194 View attachment 1774196 View attachment 1774199 View attachment 1774201 View attachment 1774202

Moreover, death instinct is turned outward and expressed as aggression toward the others. Even her interactions with the MC are manly an interplay of sex & violence.

View attachment 1774204 View attachment 1774205 View attachment 1774206 View attachment 1774207 View attachment 1774208 View attachment 1774209 View attachment 1774210 View attachment 1774211 View attachment 1774212

The death drive controls aggression, risky behaviors, and death. You can say that our death instinct takes the 'born to die' approach, often making humans engage in activities that bring them closer to death. Drugs, risky behaviour, shaddy activities, illegality. The death drive explains why people are drawn to repeat painful or traumatic events.

View attachment 1774216 View attachment 1774217 View attachment 1774218 View attachment 1774219 View attachment 1774220

On the roof, she claimed to smoke because she enjoys the calm and the silence. Which is the whole point. The death drives is define by the unconscious and inherent will to die. Returning to a state of calm or ultimately a state of no-existence. All her most intimate and meaningful moments with the Mc are nothing but calm and silent scenes. Silence, be high, sleep. Like Allan Poe used to say : Sleep: Those little slices of death. In a metaphorical way, sleeping is a form a death. In other words her and the Mc are slowly finding comfort by being together in death.

View attachment 1774221 View attachment 1774222 View attachment 1774223 View attachment 1774224

Sage is Eros, the life impulse, the libido, the sex drive.

Her item is the leaf. Leaves hold symbolism in many cultures, but in general, they symbolize fertility and growth. The green leaves of spring and summer depict hope, renewal and revival. Blazing yellow, orange and red leaves of fall represent the change of season. She’s often associated with green color and nature.

View attachment 1774225 View attachment 1774226 View attachment 1774227 View attachment 1774228 View attachment 1774230 View attachment 1774231

Her animal motifs ? Cats and felines. As for symbolism, cats are symbolic of rebirth and resurrection, per their nine lives. Cats are also symbols of mystery and magic, as aforementioned, but also unpredictability and even healing.

View attachment 1774232

More than any love interest, Sage is driven by lust. Savage and passionate lust. The life drive is defined by sexually motivated behaviours not only include those with blatant erotic content but also every action aimed at receiving pleasure. Freud calls this motivational energy “libido”. The life drive exerts itself through sexual drives, motivating people to create and nurture new life.

View attachment 1774238 View attachment 1774240 View attachment 1774241 View attachment 1774242 View attachment 1774243 View attachment 1774244 View attachment 1774245 View attachment 1774246 View attachment 1774248


Like previously said, behaviors commonly associated with life instincts include love, cooperation, and other prosocial actions. These behaviors support both individual well-being and the harmonious existence of a cooperative and healthy society. And that’s what Sage is all about : cooperation, mutual support and prosocial actions.

  • The first day, they met She encouraged the MC to join a frat.
  • She offered him a deal with mutual benefit.
  • She danced with him and tried to bond with him.
  • She engaged in many activities to reaffirm their bond ( guitar, sparring ).
  • She offered him to join the movie night.
  • She tried to cheer him up.
  • She advised him about the way the DIKs should be working together as a real team.
  • She offered her friendship many times.
  • She bonded with Josy.
  • She offered to help Maya.
  • She offered to organize the Halloween Party with the Dik & the Hots. Encouraging the MC to take the lead.
  • She gave the MC advises about his study or the different profiles during the examen session.
  • She acted like Quinn mentor and tried to erase all potential tension.
In other words, Sage is defined by her will to maintain the social bond, to force the different parts to act like one. The social preservation. Her raw passion and her kink for risky sex is nothing but the will to feel more alive.

View attachment 1774255 View attachment 1774256 View attachment 1774257 View attachment 1774259 View attachment 1774260 View attachment 1774261

he threesome is way more than a sex scene. It’s a representation of the player’s psyche. Just like the MC, the player has to deal with his inner inclination towards the life & death drive. Through the interaction of Eros (Sage) and Thanatos (Quinn), we (players) ourselves become a higher unity, where Eros ( Sage) helps us handling our inherent aggressions, while Thanatos ( Quinn) helps us handling the libidinal energy that permanently aspires to overstep all boundaries. :coffee:

View attachment 1774273
Click to expand...
Epic

I am truly humbled...


Epic

Peace
 
Arigon

Arigon

Engaged Member
Aug 27, 2020
2,296
4,535
shazba said:
So spot on that it just got deleted for being off topic... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Welcome to the Big Boy's Club my friend!
Snowflakes and overly sensitive mods delete things where truth, however muffled, exposes anything deemed "negative" about ol' DPC.. Don't worry... that post will live on in my mind.. will my 4 deleted posts live on in yours?
I thought not.
Worry not, all is well!
This misery only has to continue till the conclusion of the AVN at the conclusion of episode 10, then it will be policed less strictly!
Peace
 
  • Like
Reactions: shazba
Arigon

Arigon

Engaged Member
Aug 27, 2020
2,296
4,535
Carolyn said:
Thanks guys, for sharing your opinions; although judging from the following posts, the discussion seemed to lead to another crusade. :HideThePain: I have been following or at least tried several games you guys mentioned:

Leap of Faith is very much Cece-centric (not that I would choose other LIs); and I assume the overwhelmingly positive receptions and praises were influenced by the poignant story of Cece; not by structure of the whole story, which appeared a bit linear with a few events superfluous to me; and no, (Ari) its render and animation are not at the same level of Being A DIK. Chasing Sunsets has decent storytelling with likable characters, although I cannot shake off the sentiment of the narrative being presented episodic sometimes: often the likeness or mindset and methods of sandbox game developers with their events; yes, the case is worse in Where the Heart is (which also has been flooding with options unto us and in which MC's banters with LIs have became so repetitive and predicable and it became tiring to players.) this phenomenon is not apparent in Broken Dreamers, which has its problem in dialogue: different characters often communicates in similar tone and with their same preferences for certain words and syntax, how annoying is that! and its lewd contents did not come as naturally between scenes.

Despite all I have vented, I am still investing in most of the games I mentioned above; good writing is not only about imperfections in logic (flaws our posts here had always been keen on); the story itself has to be engaging enough to keep players going, which includes creating and developing interesting characters, good writing style, coherence in storytelling and a bit more challenging structure, more polyphonic lest people get bored. Being A DIK is NOT exceptionally good, but when compared with games you deemed good written, it does not seem inferior to me with all of these aspects combined. if you include quality of render and animation, the choices of the soundtrack, it is the best.

Also, the dev of Summer's gone and where it all begin struggles with writing sentences and storytelling, although the art is top notch. :Kappa:

I will try the other games you guys mentioned.

Hmm, I am being mean today, so, Peace?


it is cruel indeed, but not as cruel as what Sage is about to face :KEK: :WutFace: and man, the reaction section is like a funeral :HideThePain:


Never fond of Cathy in the first place, especially not after I became aware that Bella dumps MC's ass for his attempt at chasing the cat.
You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.
Click to expand...
Good post.

As I had mentioned, I was more concerned with writing, but in some instances I included the other aspects.
Almost none equal the graphical magic of DPC. Only one has similar musical awesomeness-Drifty
I definitely am not his biggest fan but I give freely the praise he deserves!
I am glad you were able to get a look before the Snowflake Brigade got a Mod to delete it :D
Peace
 
D

DarkBlade12345

Member
Jan 12, 2022
135
186
I'm currently in the library doing the minigame when you put the books back on the shelf, but I wasn't paying attention to how many books I put back. Are you supposed to find out immediately if you got all the books or is there any sort of indication or dialogue signifying that it's completed??
 
C

ciberma7865

Member
Jan 13, 2020
335
359
DarkBlade12345 said:
I'm currently in the library doing the minigame when you put the books back on the shelf, but I wasn't paying attention to how many books I put back. Are you supposed to find out immediately if you got all the books or is there any sort of indication or dialogue signifying that it's completed??
Click to expand...
with the History button "that's the last one"
 
  • Like
Reactions: DarkBlade12345
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
4.80 star(s) 1,553 Votes