With the release of We Know the Devil on Nintendo Switch, I believe it’s time to post my full in-depth analysis and explanation of We Know the Devil. Some of you who follow me may know this was originally intended as a video, and written with that intention. However, with my new work and my love of writing still what I love most, I’ve decided to post the script to this video as a singular post. This is a long analytical essay, clocking in at around 9000 words. This is long, yes, but it’s also an essay I’m very proud of. For anyone who has played WKTD and not fully understood what a lot of the meanings are, this is for you. This is my love letter to We Know the Devil and Worst Girls Games. Thank you for this game that helped change my life.
(Note: This obviously contains spoilers for every facet of the game, so I highly recommend you play the game in its entirety before reading this.)
Introduction
I think there is nothing more frustrating than growing up in a semi-religious household and proceeding to attend religious school up through high school. Especially when it’s Catholicism. Maybe it’s because there’s so many different messages to be said about it. How people who are Catholic can so wildly differ from center-left to extremely far right.
This too was an obvious split I could see growing up, especially in high school. Religion was always overhead when I was growing up, though, mostly in in elementary and middle school. We were forced to attend church twice a week, sometimes thrice a week early in the morning each time. As I grew up and slowly discovered a different purview of the world, it often clashed with the ideas and thoughts drilled into my mind by the religious institutions I had been raised in.
I didn’t realize I was queer or trans until I was in university as a result. Things never clicked for me because I was simply raised to believe being queer was wrong, and the idea of being trans simply never even existed. What caused my break with religion? I’m not sure. Maybe it was the people I met who were genuinely terrible, but often propped up in school as the “good Catholic kids.” How could they be so good when they would bully me at length, I thought. Eventually I would define myself as myself and not by outsider opinion, but of course I was a lot older by then.Maybe that’s why one of my favorite games of all time is We Know the Devil, a Western-made visual novel developed by Worst Girls Games in 2015. This short 3-4 hour romp is somehow one of my top five favorite games of all time. How? How is this little indie visual novel developed by a no-name studio in a little more than four months so high on my list? Well that’s what I’m here to discuss.
We Know the Devil is a game whose main target audience are queer and trans people, I think that much is obvious. Aevee Bee, the writer and co-director of the game, is a transwoman so you can tell this was always gonna be a game I was going to have to check off my list at some point in my life.
Development wise there’s not much to say other than the game was developed in a little over four months, as I said earlier. Kind of amazing to see how fast something like this can be developed. It’s well put together for a simple visual novel, though there are some grammar and spelling mistakes sprinkled throughout the dialogue. It doesn’t bother me too much though.
The art direction for the game is unique and extremely pleasing to my eyes. All the backgrounds in the game are nothing more than photographs taken on a digital camera. All of them are empty and give a feeling of isolation, of areas abandoned by humanity left to be reclaimed by nature. Some might call it lazy to not just design backgrounds, but I feel it fits the nature of what this game is. It has an eerie feeling that’s hard to shake, like watching The Blair Witch Project.
The character art for the game is equally good. Black and white monochrome character sprites with what looks like the sharpness turned up as high as it could in order to make it look like it was taken on an old digital camera from the late 90s. Of course, it goes along super well with the photographic backgrounds used for the game.
The music for the game though? Sublime. Good. I’m no musician so I can’t give you an in-depth reason for why I think the music is so good, I just find it to be very pleasing to listen to. Alec Lambert, the composer, creates a mostly haunting yet sometimes peaceful soundtrack that fits the game absolutely perfectly. It reminds me of scntfc’s soundtrack for Oxenfree, another game I absolutely adore. Only this one feels a lot more distant and corrupt, which again, fits the game a lot better than anything else.
But above all else, it’s the characters, their arcs, and the overall themes of the game that sell me on why this seven dollar visual novel on Steam is not only one of my favorite games of all time, but also why it’s one of the most important to me.
Take it from me, living in the Midwest isn’t great. Even though states like Michigan or Ohio are pretty north, you’re pretty much living in a deep southern state in most places. Much of the land you’ll see is often empty fields of corn or signs telling us we’re all going to hell soon and Jesus has spoken that the rapture is upon us.
The Summer Scouts are not a great place to be. Like at all. Dressed in uniforms with white shirts with crosses stitched onto the chest pockets, it’s very familiar. They aren’t just a religious summer camp after all. This is where they send the specifically bad kids who need the extra work put in.
Every time you run through We Know the Devil, you’ll encounter the same choices to make but with different outcome choices.
We have our members of Group West as well. First there is Neptune, who is the most outspoken and sarcastic of the three. She seemed annoyed and tired with almost everything, often shutting down anyone and everyone with her sharp tongue if she’s not ignoring them while she’s on her phone. Next, there’s Venus. Venus is quiet, shy, and called the pure one of the group who doesn’t even cuss which gets him teased by the other two. Though he’s often looking for something, something that makes him feel utterly incomplete and lost, attempting to fulfill this void by pleasing others even to his own detriment. Finally, there’s Jupiter. Jupiter is the top of the class over achieving academically girl. She’s good at most of what she does, but always fails at the end. The type to blank on the final question and cannot answer for the life of her.
The three attend a bonfire led by the titular Bonfire Captain. And oddly designed character who has more in common with the Hawt Dawg Man from Life is Strange than he does anything or anyone else.
He tells the story of himself and two friends he once had when he was younger. How he liked one of these two friends and the other he dismissed as annoying. Over time the captain talks of how he attempted to be an even BETTER friend in order to help the annoying friend along. But eventually he would give up claiming:
“Some friendships you can keep up. The rest you gotta leave up to god.”
Surface level this seems like a friendship that has simply ended, vanishing off like many do. However, as I like to always think, context is key in literally any piece of media. The captain plus his two friends equals three people, just like the rest of the groups in the game. And as expected of a camp counselor in a Christian summer camp, he is extremely Christian. He mentions that some of the annoying things his friend did includes “[He] wouldn’t go along with us.” And he follows it up with: “I probably could have stopped it if I had told him to cut it out and man up instead of basically doing the opposite.”
The implications here is that the annoying friend is someone who did not follow the status quo. Someone who was outside the nice comfortable square that a white cisgendered heteronormative Christian society has made up. Something happens to the “annoying friend” that is implied to have had something bad happen to him. But the captain did nothing. He admits he could have intervened to save the person, but he chose not to for he decided it was god’s will that this person was punished.
The game has barely even started, and yet right off the bat the game is dropping some heavy hints about what is to come. The world of We Know the Devil is different from our own. There are many evils that only God can protect the people from.
After the events at the bonfire, the captain will tell Group West that it’s their turn to face the devil. The devil being within a small cabin in the woods. On their way there, they encounter Group South, the best/worst kids in camp. In that they try to suck up so much they end up being the most annoying ones in camp that Group West hates. Group South harasses the group, particularly Venus, as they attempt to repair the sirens.
The sirens and the radios make up two of the more important aspects of the world in which the game takes place. The sirens set up around the forest are designed to make public awareness that the devil is attempting to break in. The radios that the campers have are the only weapons that can fight off the devil once it shows its face. For you see, the analog channels is how God communicates with people and protects them from corruption.
The three members of Group West have a lot of great banter off of one another, and you really come to enjoy all three of them as a group. The three have very different personalities, but they all have the same types of wants and those wants allow their differing personalities to come together well.
However only two of the three can come out unscathed…
One will end up alone. Two won’t.
[BLUE – Neptune]
Neptune: sarcastic, tired, confident, and angry.
Neptune is the only one of the three who shows any sort of backbone to anyone else in camp. Neptune is also the only one who accepts who she is on the inside. But also she’s not willing to ever show it on the outside.
More than anything, she knows that there is something more that Jupiter and Venus want. They don’t know what it is and they don’t seem to want to think more about what they want. And this? This instills anger in Neptune more than anything else.
Neptune is a character who knows what she wants. But she’s not willing to go the full way in order to obtain it. She envies Venus’s kindness, but believes that kindness will never be able to let a want be obtained. Being mean and sarcastic is more truthful, and it lets he not feel bad about being unable to get what she wants. But in the moments of kindness she does show, it’s ever filled with her wants. Her wants of Venus and Jupiter.
Throughout the game, it’s often Neptune who brings to light most of their issues. She’s perceptive, but she covers this up by a facade of sarcasm and laziness. Neptune is the type of person who knows who she is deep down, but when confronted she gets defensive about it. She gets angry and denies it.
Neptune knows who she is. She knows who her friends are. She knows what they want. But she’s not gonna rob them of experiencing figuring out who they are. But the issue stems that she herself is not ready to accept herself openly and out. She’s angry at herself too for the hypocrisy, but she ignores it. Rather she lets it fester. She lets it sit there and grow exponentially often resulting in her own anger.
The intrigue that Neptune lays out is her unwillingness to tell the others who they are, but rather she pushes them to admit it themselves. After the drinking session with Venus and Neptune, the former attempts to confront Neptune about her need to be mean to everyone. Most of it slides off of her, but Neptune’s response is calm for once. Telling Venus that the wants that he has can’t be given to him by kindness. He has to figure out what he wants and admit that to himself in order to obtain it. But Neptune also remarks that she’s a bad kid too, because her own kindness is wrapped up in her own wants.
Similarly, she does drop hints throughout the game about the other two’s identities and problems. With Jupiter, she often tells her off for her self-harmful behavior. Whether it be talking down to herself or seemingly melting down over a small thing that Neptune doesn’t think matters. When it comes to truth or dare, Neptune tells Jupiter to reveal who she likes. Neptune knows the answer, but before Jupiter can even respond, Neptune says nevermind. Perhaps she, herself, is too scared as well.
During seven minutes in heaven, though, she does show off much of her own hypocrisy that makes her seem not too different from Jupiter. They are both, physically and metaphorically, in a closet making out and touching each other. But because no one else is there, it’s impossible for anyone else to ever determine what happened. It’s their words only, and only can become truth if they both say it out loud.
With Venus, she often attempts to nudge him towards figuring out what he wants. She knows he has a crush on her, seen during truth or dare. Though she playfully, though soaked with her trademark meanness, teases him about it the two have a rapport that’s equal and as meaningful as the one that she has with Jupiter. If not more so bringing out that short gentle nature that’s buried somewhere deep within Neptune.
By the end of the night, they can hear God speaking a sermon on the radio, buzzing lowly through the cabin.
“A method for the extraction of bile. Create an incision on the middle finger. All the water of the body can be thought of as a single ocean, as one drop- and extract the resulting ink. Place in a vial and explain to it the worthlessness of the treasures of earth. Break it against a mirror, the cause of vanity- each of you shall choose. It is certain the devil is coming.
Neptune becomes angry. Why? Because both Venus and Jupiter believe they are the devils. But Neptune? Neptune believes, in every sense, that she is the most likely to be the devil. Why? Because she’s the only one who knows who she really is. And the mere idea of Venus or Jupiter becoming their devils makes her believe they are simply saying it to pity her and make her not worry about being the devil, but we know they also truly believe it.
Neptune coughs. That’s her signature reaction. She coughs primarily when she’s either rejecting her own voice or when she hears Jupiter or Venus putting themselves down. When a person vomits, they often throw up the contents of their stomach. However, if you dry heave enough without anything in your stomach and cough violently enough, you’ll puke up your stomach bile. In one of the choices of a non-Neptune exclusion route, we see that Neptune needs to eventually be taken to the bathroom to deal with her cough because she fears she’s gonna vomit up said bile.
More importantly, to me, it represents something Neptune hates more than anything. She hates when Jupiter and Venus hate themselves out loud. When people say something horrible about themselves, a tertiary party who disagrees often says to “stop spouting bullshit” if it angers them enough. She hates that they won’t accept themselves, but she herself spouts the same bullshit by not admitting the truth about her sexuality out loud.
Eventually she becomes the devil when she is forced into the bathroom. She coughs. She vomits. And she sounds louder than ever, but refuses to come out of the bathroom until she eventually relents.
Neptune is forced to the bathroom during one of her coughing fits, this one the most violent yet. The coughing becomes louder and louder, each cough more violent than the last resulting in vomiting. The others want her to come out. She refuses. Come out, they ask. She refuses. They ask again. She breaks and comes out.
Neptune is leaking bile and ichor from all over her body. Her ichor will force Jupiter and Venus to admit to themselves who they are and turn them into devils. She’s so sick of the two of them not accepting themselves, something she previously wanted them to figure out on her own. But this time? No. Their refusals have annoyed and angered her so much that her devil form wants nothing more than to MAKE THEM understand themselves.
Neptune bashes Venus up against a wall, happy enough to force him to taste. Jupiter attempts to save him, but Neptune is a devil now. With much more physical power, she easily is able to knock Jupiter away. All inhibitions are gone now. She refers to Jupiter as “babe” and opens up finally about it all.
She hates how the world determines the three of them are bad. How because of their inherent queerness that they have to be “good”, but Neptune? She thinks they’re good already. So, so, so good. Neptune can now see how overwhelmingly unhappy that Venus and Jupiter are. So she simply stands there and rants at them about how obviously unhappy they are in her eyes, and how she will make them happy by forcing them to understand. She’s angry about it. Furious even. That’s why her devil form is the only one who gets the chance to speak to the others. How being one’s own queer self is “wicked.” How it’s wrong. Neptune hates that.
The idea of “good” is brought about by what social conservatism says is correct. Being good cisgendered straight Christians who obey their parents and their church. But Neptune’s idea of being good, or by extension the devil’s, is that you are who you are without shame.
“She’s a flood, of every wicked thought, and they are pouring out of her mouth.”
Neptune’s bile and ichor will stain the others. It will make them devils as well. But there is nothing to fear when there is two against the devil. It’s there because it’s a stain that is hard, or near impossible to remove. Neptune wishes to stain both of her friends, her crushes, so that they will join her. So they finally understand.
The radio contains the power of God within it. Thus, it is the only weapon powerful enough to cast the devil out from a person, erasing who they are so they fit God’s image.
And in the end? Neptune is left to dry, the ichor draining from her while Venus and Jupiter keep watch. The wicked thoughts are gone, though were they ever even really wicked in the first place? Be who you are. Don’t let anyone else tell you who to be. Of course, that’s selfish isn’t it? The treasures of the earth are not for us. We are to obey god and not become vain…
[YELLOW – Venus]
Venus: Kind, pure, and wanting.
Venus is a pushover. He doesn’t swear. He’s one of two kids that the captain likes. Venus doesn’t like that though. Without an intentionally mean bone in his body, Venus just wants to get along with people and avoid the complexities of arguing with people.
Unlike Neptune, who knows who she is and what she wants… Venus is the opposite. He is lost. He can’t figure out what he wants. The lights he sees throughout the game are analogous to that feeling of when a word is right on the tip of your tongue. You can almost feel it out, but then it’s gone again. And no matter how much you think on it, it simply never comes.
Venus is the only “male” character of the group, but it’s not that hard to guess there’s much more going on with Venus than meets the eye. We know very early on that Venus is pretty much a doormat for everyone else.
Despite his avoidance of arguments, he often finds himself envious of Jupiter and Neptune. Jupiter’s ability to not get harassed at all and Neptune’s ability to simply snark and harass right back.
Early on we can see Venus doesn’t really stand up to anyone. Group South particularly harasses him because he doesn’t stand up for himself. He’s timid, but also has a serious mean streak. He often says things that get under the skin of others, though it seems to be unintentional. He’s extremely innocent in a lot of facets, but also can feel extremely insensitive and not catch when he says something that does hit hard. Neptune mentions this to Jupiter, and how she wishes he did it on purpose and not just unintentionally do it.
Much like how Neptune coughs horribly every single time she says something she doesn’t truly believe or when she wants to angrily reply to a self-defeating Venus or Jupiter, we have a similar thing occurring for Venus. Throughout the game Venus will make note of lights. Lights that no one else can see, and these lights usually appear to Venus when he thinks about something. Something…
Just like how Neptune’s cough gets worse and worse as she progresses into a devil, Venus sees these lights more and more. Guiding him… somewhere.
The lights can easily be seen as something like the Will-o’-the-Wisps, small beings of light leading him “astray.” Something that Neptune mentions in a scene between her and him is that Venus is looking for something. Some sort of identity to grasp onto, but he can’t reach it. He doesn’t know what he wants, and thinks that the world can reward it upon him if he’s nice enough. It’s Neptune who informs him that it won’t happen. Why? Because she knows that exact same feeling of having a kindness filled with want.
When fixing the radio deep in the night he and Jupiter talk about his beliefs, and the most telling thing is that he finds life to be unfair. No matter how much a person can try, things will never turn out for them. That certain people don’t have to try hard, and they’ll come out on top. When Jupiter says that she believes the people in the normal scouts try harder than her, Venus can only quickly reply and ask if she truly believes that anyone in the normal scouts have tried harder than her.
This is the best point that Venus makes and shows his true belief for why he acts the way he does. The world isn’t fair. Reality isn’t fair. And that’s what Jupiter tells him. Life simply isn’t fair, but it’s what Venus says next that rings eerily true.
It’s a reality that someone else created.
And that’s completely right. We can remark life isn’t fair, and often or not people will reply with that is true, but that’s simply how life is. But Venus has the forethought to mark that the lives we live are set up by society. A society who has made the rules that life will be unfair for certain people. This entire conversation rings true to me. Immediately after he has another knowledge nugget to drop on us.
He asks Jupiter if it makes her mad when the game is rigged from the start, but they also tell her to “do her best!” Wouldn’t that make her angry? It makes Venus angry. It makes Venus so angry that he doesn’t even want to try because it’s rigged for him to lose from the beginning. Venus can only ask and wonder what is wrong with him… What does life want out of him?
Throughout the game, Venus obviously has very low self esteem about himself. Even within his own group, he finds himself only being useful for repairing the sirens and radios or being the one who gets teased. Despite this, he keeps on moving forward. Cranking out a smile hoping he can figure out what it is he wants.
Venus goes to extreme lengths to try and not cause a fuss. To his own chagrin, he is quite well attuned with fixing the radios and other things. Not because it’s something he wants to do or likes to do, but because people expect that of him to do. He hates it, but he sticks by and keeps doing it because that’s what he thinks he needs to do to keep goin. When outside with Jupiter making the rounds, he notes that Group South wanted him to screw up with a radio in the dining hall. He knows they’re wrong and he knows how to fix it, but he lets himself get in trouble anyway. Openly admitting to the fact that he gaslights himself because it’s easier than going down the back and forth where he’ll just believe them anyways.
But at the end of the day, Venus feels ignored and unseen. So disconnected from the world that when Jupiter naturally thinks that the two of them are friends Venus interjects to question it. As well as the idea that he simply wants to play dumb and sit away because he notices whatever is going on between Jupiter and Neptune. Jupiter finds the idea that boys have it easier with emotions because it seems so straightforward. Though Venus rejects this notion, claiming that boys seem to find it easier to get mad about a secondary thing in order to hide what they might actually be angry about.
Jupiter asks what Venus is angry about, but immediately notices he’s lying. He isn’t angry about anything. Rather, he’s jealous. And Jupiter notices he’s jealous of her and Neptune. A jealously so seething, that Jupiter can feel it. But Venus doesn’t know why. Venus is afraid he can’t change, condemning himself to that factor. He will let himself be hurt physically before he is cruel to to others.
Then hands appear around his neck and start choking him. Jupiter rushes to stop the hands, which suddenly vanish once she takes hold of him. He cries and says it’s okay. Not angry. He says it’s okay. But even Jupiter knows it’s not okay. It’s just not.
By the end of the night, they can hear God speaking a sermon on the radio, buzzing lowly through the cabin.
“Shining as Lucifer, the morning star, in the dawn, and symbolizing the arrogance of desiring a beauty that is not god’s. Venus 5:23. That which appears to be within grasp, and yet, is ever- of the vanity to be seen and to see. The human eye sees clearly by the light of god, but the devil by his own light, and thus sees only his own truth- each of you shall choose. It is certain the devil is coming.”
Do you see that? It’s the light. The fireflies are all over, but they don’t see it like he does?
The ending is nigh, isn’t it? God speaks of arrogant beauty that is not his. Neptune eventually tells the others they need to leave. But the lights are here. In mass, they have arrived towards them, now enough to be seen by Neptune and Jupiter. And the lights only want Venus.
When the lights come into the cabin, they decide to run. Though, they have to force Venus to follow. As they attempt to escape, the lights become more and more overpowering. They aim for the road, where the artificial street lights will protect them. But not all is well, but it’s off the table. Jupiter trips and falls onto Venus. Her attempts to help him up, results in her injuring herself.
Why are they there protecting Venus? They don’t need to. Venus is used to being the butt of the joke. Used to being the one who’s there to fix the radios. Venus is used to being the odd-one out. The one who sits back and seethes with envy against Jupiter and Neptune. They should leave him behind to his ultimate fate against the lights.
But now Venus can’t look away from them. They’re glowing oh so bright and oh so horribly, but it’s so beautiful at the same time. He wants the lights. He wants to see them. He wants the others to see him.
Venus? Venus wants them to see her. See her for who she truly is. She doesn’t want to be what the cruel artificial reality tells her to be. To be the pushover fix-it man, someone who’s only good for what he’s told to do. She hates fixing things. But she did it because that’s what she was supposed to do right? As a good boy?
She’s not that. She’s not a boy. She wants to cast shadows over the light and light over the shadows. The truth is that she is a woman. Venus is a woman and she wants people to see that. She so desperately wants everyone to see her for who she is. Venus shines ever so brightly, wings covering her with eyes wide open for her to look and be the center.
Venus reaches out to us. She has eyes to fly with and wings to see. As terrible as an angel, be afraid. That wing to see the truth and that eye to lay it bare. We feel the heat on our skin and recoil. It wants something from us, a lot of things, maybe everything. Every wish of the eyes belongs to it. Nothing can escape this light. But we do. We can’t feel the beat of the wings or the light of the eyes. We can’t be seen. We chose to cover our faces. But there is nothing to fear when there are two against the devil.
All of this boils down to the idea of looking away from transgender people, especially when they’re so self-hating about it. Venus allows herself to be opened back up by the devil. To finally admit that she is who she is, and not what the unfair reality says she has to be. When Neptune tells Venus that she wants something, but can’t figure out what it is it’s quite obvious what it ends up being.
She wants to transition, but may not even fully understand what being transgender is. She’s in some backwards ass place after all, perhaps that’s why she reached out for something she didn’t know she needed. She needed affirmation of what and who she was, but was unable to grasp for it until her old body was shed away into a being of light. The game does not miss a beat in changing Venus’s pronouns. Venus tries to open up about this, who she is to Neptune and Jupiter, who simply repel the devil from her body. Denial of who she is. And in the end, Venus is forced back into a body she does not want. She wanted to be seen, and now she simply hangs from a tree, knowing what she wants but not being allowed to have it…
[RED – Jupiter]
Jupiter: Afraid, tired, and untouchable.
Jupiter’s personality can be easily described as not caring. Most things seem to roll right off her back. Harassment does not give her a rise, so she is left alone. People will try to walk all over her, but she doesn’t give them the time of day.
She will always take the blame, even when something is not her fault. In her mind, she will rationalize it is her fault. Early on in the night, Neptune and Jupiter attempt to get into the cabin which has a busted lock from the other groups. While there, Jupiter discovers different types of lilies in the greenhouse area before she accidentally breaks a decrepit old cabinet. Despite it being both an accident as well as something that was bound to happen because of how unkempt and unmaintained the cabin is, Jupiter breaks down and starts crying.
She is someone who tries so hard to impress and put on this facade that she’s unaffected by everything, but in the end? She takes everything on harder than anyone else. When Jupiter is left alone in the cabin, while Venus and Neptune go outside the two converse about the fact that this is happening and that Jupiter needs to let herself get hurt and then be open about it. It becomes something that pisses Neptune off more than anything, the fact that Jupiter allows herself to be hurt over and over again but will never admit she does such a thing. It is self harm.
Self harm is a recurring element for Jupiter, symbolized by her bracelet which she constantly snaps against her wrist. She does this every time she does something she believes is wrong or when she begins to get uncomfortable with her own thoughts she will snap the bracelet harder and harder against her wrist. It’s small, but it’s a persisting theme with Jupiter’s character. It’s simply analogous to self harm in that manner. Even if it’s just a wrist band snapping against her, she does it to remind herself that she is bad. She is wrong. She shouldn’t do this. She shouldn’t be thinking this. What shouldn’t she be thinking?
If it wasn’t already obvious, Jupiter is a lesbian. A lesbian with a big old gay crush on Neptune. Unfortunately, Jupiter has a LOT of internalized homophobia.
Being a lesbian is wrong. It’s bad. It’s not good. Snap. She goes back and forth between her feelings for Neptune and her internalized homophobia about what she is doing is completely wrong.
During the Seven Minutes in Heaven scene between Jupiter and Neptune, the two we can assume are kissing and Neptune is running her hands over Jupiter’s body. Jupiter, of course, doesn’t take much of it well but is reassured by Neptune that no one will ever know simply because they’re alone. Therefore what they are doing right now? It never happened. It only happened if they both admit it happened. If only one admits it happened, it’s only one person’s word versus the other. Therefore, whatever happened in the closet? It stays in the closet forever. And no one in the Midwest will ever know or admit it either. The two could do whatever and they would be denied until admission occurs.
More often than not, it’s easy to see her own internalized homophobia through the entire game. Just like with Neptune, you find more about her when she’s in the closet with Venus. Venus, as she knows at that point, is a boy. She’s not attracted to boys like she is with girls. Not to mention, Venus doesn’t ACT like the boys she often deals with. But she has as much an emotional connection with Venus as she does with Neptune.
She buries her face in Venus’ hair, making remarks about how soft and nice it is. Jupiter tells her that she feels safe around Venus compared to everyone else, whether it be because of her inherent dislike of guys or the overwhelming feelings she gets around Neptune. Venus seems perfect to her because of that. Venus is someone who won’t hurt her, someone safe and kind who she can just bury her face into and not care about it.
Even more interesting is that Jupiter herself ignores the pain inflicted upon her by others because it’s easier. Just like Venus, it’s easier to let pain and suffering hurt you. Except with Venus, who reacts to these lashes, Jupiter doesn’t. She shrugs and moves on, angering Neptune and making Venus sigh. She let’s all the pain hurt her because not only is it easier, but somewhere deep down she thinks she deserves it. She deserves it why though?
Unlike the other two, Jupiter is the only character who we know has some concrete things occurring at home. During the drinking session, Jupiter reveals that her dad is gay but married a woman anyways. Internalized homophobia aside, Neptune asks why then, of all people, would he essentially send his definitely lesbian daughter to such a horrible place. And her answer? They did it because it was easier than dealing with her mom.
The idea being that most of how Jupiter feels about herself is internalized because of her mother. And despite her dad being the same, he finds it easier to simply hide who he is as well and passes these teachings down to her. Not because of anything inherently bad, but because in this world it seems being yourself only leads to hardships and denying yourself to appease others makes life easier. It’s easy to see that Jupiter really does live by this sort of tenant.
So she sits back and lets herself get harmed. Jupiter takes a beating from the world around her and says it’s okay. It’s not okay though. It’s self-harmful behavior, but for Jupiter she thinks it’s the right thing to do. Just so mom will chill.
By the end of the night, they can hear God speaking a sermon on the radio, buzzing lowly through the cabin.
“A hand held against the world. To be touched and to touch; touch is a language unto itself. And it too is a language of power. Thus unto Jupiter, which is also the language of gravity, according- the fist which can give takes too, and gives by taking, or takes by giving. Just as a word is honest or dishonest not by how it is spoken, but by he who speaks it, so is the honesty of touch. It is certain the devil is already here.”
Jupiter isolates herself from the others. It’s certain this time she’s the devil. No plan this time either. Jupiter sits there and snaps her band against her wrist, the room growing warmer with each passing moment.
She continues to try and hold it all in. To continue to deny it. Only a few more hours until dawn, right? No need to find out who the devil is, even if they all know who. Both Venus and Neptune can only look away.
It’s just a phase, right? No agreement. She begs them to mock her. To make fun of her. To make her feel bad. But they know her. They won’t do that.
There hands and fingers everywhere. They touch everything. They squeeze the cabin like an empty water bottle. And just like that Jupiter breaks. All of herself begins flooding out in a wave of internalized hatred.
She’s so gross. She always ruins everything. And then her hairband finally breaks. And the storm of hands breaks loose in the cabin. Jupiter tells it like she thinks. She isn’t good. Like Venus had said before, anger directed at a rigged competition that is life, Jupiter bemoans the unfairness of religious doctrine changing to fit the needs of whatever society deems correct in a certain time period.
Jupiter could do her best to be good and get into heaven on that good merit. But then they ripped it out from underneath her. They changed the rules just went she thought she had it right. Her mother told her not to touch others. Dad taught her not to let herself be touched.
What if she stopped trying to be good? Jupiter is starved. Touch starved more than any person should. And she hates every minute of it. This time, however, Venus and Neptune are here for her. But she doesn’t want them to be. They should be disgusted with her. Even when they tell her otherwise, that internalized disgust of herself rings out.
She wants to touch. She wants to be touched. She wants to hurt. She wants to be hurt.
Jupiter controls a flurry of hands able to do all that she desires. Even before this form of her came out, it was present even earlier. In the closet with Venus, she gets annoyed when Venus tells her that she simply would rather be physically hurt than to be mean. On the other hand, Jupiter wishes she could be even more mean than she already is. Jupiter absentmindedly snaps her hairband, and suddenly hands begin to choke out Venus. To hurt Venus. Her deepest desires to touch and to hurt, and Venus accidentally gave her desires an open shot.
But Venus forgives her anyways, even when they both know it was Jupiter’s hands. A moment that solidifies both of their own desires. Venus being seen as a girl and Jupiter touching Venus like how she wants to touch girls. In a moment they are who they are, before they are forced to retract from that moment.
Jupiter is a lesbian raised to never be touched or to touch. Instilled that touching and being gay is wrong and dirty, and that she needs to be punished for it. She thought denying it would make her life easier and better. After all, being good is based on merits until they decide not anymore. So what happens? She breaks down. And for a moment? Jupiter’s storm touches everything.
“Jupiter reaches out to us. She has a hand for every kind of touch; that hand is for hitting, that hand is for petting, that hand is for grabbing, that hand is for holding. We feel the pull on our skin and recoil. They want so many things from us; maybe everything. Every wish of the body belongs to it. And every wish is a hand, expressing that desire. And every hand is a storm that is bigger than the world, reaching for us. But it will not. The hands don’t touch us and the storm doesn’t break over us. We chose to be distant from her.”
Jupiter dared to be wanted. Dared to be touched. Born to only hurt. Born to think that her feelings for girls is only a phase, something queer people are told all the time. It’s only a phase. You’ll like boys soon enough, the say. Harassing you over the idea of not liking men. You hear it all the time from anyone who isn’t a lesbian. Lesbians can like men and be in relationships with them, so saying you only like women is just a phase. It’ll pass, as soon as you get the right man. Jupiter is mocked and she lets it happen. Maybe she’ll get past the phase soon.
Jupiter allowed herself to become a devil to try and get what she desperately needed. She hated herself too much, however, and told Neptune and Venus to expel the devil from her as soon as they could. They accepted her, but Jupiter could never accept herself. It was too internalized in her.
And in the end? There’s heartbreak. Jupiter lay unconscious and alone, the devil expelled from her body. And Neptune and Venus? Te two people she cares most for? Te two people she so desperately wants to touch? They sit there together with hands interlocked with one another. Held. Touched.
[TRUE END – The Worst Girls Since Eve]
Parables I:I “The devil is only the shadow of man cast from the light of god.” The meaning of this parable is that there is no devil.
What do you do then? What do you do when the answer seems desolate and meaningless? When the devil is everywhere, filling every gap of the darkness?
To break away from the analysis for a moment, in order to actually obtain every ending you have to leave one of the three characters alone and isolated. So what if you mathematically leave everyone out the same amount, thus no one is left totally alone?
By the end of the night, they can hear God speaking a sermon on the radio, buzzing lowly through the cabin. Wait no. It’s on the wrong frequency.
“Oh. Hi there. Oh, darling… I miss you. I have always missed you. I can still remember what your faces were like. I have missed them since before you were born. Please come back. I know I can’t offer much. The bodies I can give you are weak. The stores I tell are impossible. My world is even more precarious than this one. But please come back. It hurts to see you like this so much. So unhappy in those bodies of yours. Stricken by those stories. Forced to live in so much pain. I can’t even come save you. But I can promise one thing. There is room for three in my world. And only two in his.”
The sirens roar out through the night. Those in the camp are coming for Group West. They know the devil. Jupiter fears the worst will come upon them. Venus hopes it’s quick and painless. Neptune? Neptune destroys the radio.
The radios themselves represent a physical connection to religion and the religious community. You sit there, turning on the radio to listen to god and his sermons. The radios themselves are weapons capable of reducing a devil back into a human. Even just having one thrown can cause a devil to crumple over onto the ground, as if hit by a speeding bullet.
Neptune wonders why if god hates the devil so much, why does he not do it himself? Why does he send out his followers to do the work for him? Neptune is the first of the three to give into the devil. The devil fucking rules.
Venus wonders where the devil could be. But they are the devil. But again, Venus wonders where the devil is? Jupiter once more falls into her own pit of despair. All of her insecurities about being bad flowing from her mouth. But like Neptune yells at her about, she shouldn’t be good for people who hate her. More importantly, if she’s going to suffer and hurt herself to appeal to the people who make her feel like she is worthless why won’t she martyr herself for Neptune and Venus? More of a confrontation than anything else.
Venus suddenly blooms as well. She has found the devil just like Neptune has. In what can only be described as one of the most liberating things I’ve read since the book Dreadnought, Venus’s old body falls off. Literally falling off of her, shedding it off like a snake. No blood even. It’s not her body anymore and it’s one of the most affirming things I’ve read in fiction for a trans character.
There’s no pain. A moment of euphoria of accepting one’s self and casting who you used to be away. Neptune, for the first time, isn’t filled with vitriolic anger and sarcasm. Rather she asks Venus how she is. Her new arm looks to be in a rough place, and she makes sure Venus is okay. Jupiter still is in denial though. But this time, the other two are already devils. It’s not just her alone this time.
More important for Venus is outright talking about her dysphoria. All this time something had been bothering her. She would look on at her friends with jealousy, but there was never an answer there for her. And how the body peeling off, transitioning, helps her to not have to feel pain thinking about the things that are off about her body. It’s normal. She feels normal in a body that better reflects her.
Jupiter is the only hold out, still fearing for her own life. The false ideas instilled in her are staying strong. Neptune brings up a new argument. One that relates to the other three endings in the game.
In those three endings, they are achievable by leaving one of the three out and then having the other two use their radios the exorcise the “devil” out of them. And then the other two will be completely fine, at the cost of the third who was turned due to their isolation and not allowed to exist. And the worst part? Jupiter calls it gross, but Neptune says it’s normal. Because it is normal. The other endings show how normalized that kind of behavior is. To give up one of your friends in exchange for one’s own self preservation. To out them.
It’s ugly to do that to someone. To turn someone into a scapegoat. To live in a society where one’s self preservation can make you hurt someone else so badly. And the fact isn’t that there’s a scapegoat to be had, but as Venus said: “What’s ugly is we have to choose at all.”
But Jupiter’s walls are finally breaking down. She cries. She misgenders and then properly genders Venus correctly. Despite it all, despite knowing it the fear is still there. It’s an understandable type of fear. Coming out and living as yourself can be life changing, either negatively or positively. It’s scary.
But in the end, there is no more going back. To a life that they all hate. Neptune doesn’t want to go back home. To that life. Venus doesn’t want her old body back. She’ll die if she has to go back. But they promise they’re there for Jupiter. And they won’t abandon her in this time of need. And that’s what makes it different. They’re all there for each other. There is no two against one. There isn’t a scapegoat. None of them are afraid anymore since they finally do have each other supporting them.
The devil is representative of things that society forces people to repress, especially queer and trans people. As much as non-queer people want to say it is, the problems that queer and trans people faces, including teens, is still horribly relevant today. God are those who believe in a world that must be ruled by their religion. They don’t think for themselves, they follow the teachings of their church and hurt others. It’s a religion that teaches you to love your neighbor, but they hide behind their religion like a wall. They hide and harm and say its in the name of god. And if there is a god? Well he’s a shitty god. He lets people suffer in his name and kicks back watching them suffer.
But now they are the devil. They are together. They love one another. It’s best friends forever. It’s a first kiss. It’s a love story. Jupiter’s storm finally is allowed to begin, her blood mistifying around them. Neptune’s dark color ink and bile finally begins to clear up, all the toxicating elements within her finally washing out. And Venus is there to help clean her. Calm and patient. And Jupiter’s storm of hands makes sure every part of Venus knows she’s loved and seen. They’re finally content and happy.
Though despite it all, others will try to rob them of their happiness. It’s only natural. Humans are cruel to others who aren’t exactly like them. Ready ot hurt at a moment’s notice. Why? Because they’re different. Not only are they different, but they are no longer ashamed that they are different either.
And while the three dream of fixing the camp. Dream of freeing everyone from shackles that institutions have placed on them. The camp? All of them are like Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune. They just need a little coaxing to be freed. To understand like them.
They have a new apple. There is nothing to fear when there’s two against the devil. But they can’t wait to see what they’ll do against the three worst girls since Eve.
Ending Remarks
I want to thank you, personally, if you made it this far into the essay. This was one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. And going through it again personally reminded me how much I do enjoy love writing. I would love to make writing my profession one day, since it’s something I genuinely love doing and it’s the one thing I think I’m pretty decent at. I’m not GREAT at SEO, so I’m not sure how many people will come across this. But I would love to make posts more regularly, however now that I work I’ve been unable to to do so as much as I want. My ultimate goal is to make this my job. And I would be thankful if you considered tipping me on Ko-Fi. It would mean the world to me, truly. Links below to my Twitter and Ko-Fi, in addition to links to where you can buy WKTD yourself now on Switch!
Also yes I do own the glow in the dark art print. And yes, it does hang on my wall framed.
Get the game at:
- Itch.io: https://pillowfight.itch.io/we-know-the-devil
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/435300/We_Know_the_Devil/
- Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/we-know-the-devil-switch/
Follow the Creators:
- Worst Girls Games: https://twitter.com/worstgirlsgames
- Aevee Bee: https://twitter.com/MammonMachine
- Mia Schwartz: https://twitter.com/mightyatom
If you want to support this blog:
LGBTransReviews 
This is an amazing analysis of WKTD. When I played it, I struggled with taking the narrative too literally, which confused me. I especially loved the analysis on what God and the Devil are in the game.
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absolutely beautiful analysis. thank you so much for sharing!
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