OCD In Hello Charlotte 3, Or Why Charles Eyler Doesn't (necessarily) Have Dissociative Identity Disorder

OCD in Hello Charlotte 3, or why Charles Eyler doesn't (necessarily) have Dissociative Identity Disorder

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR HELLO CHARLOTTE 3

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of severe mental illness, including intrusive thoughts and psychosis. Please be warned if this may cause you to spiral out of control, and take care of yourself.

DISCLAIMER: A lot of this is coming from my personal experience and understanding of OCD. While I do not experience DID, I don't really focus much on it in this, more reframing Scarlett Eyler as a character. You can take Charles' experiences however you feel is accurate.

I feel like the fandom gets tripped up when Charles calls Scarlett Eyler a tulpa.

I've seen a lot of people state that this quote directly implies Charles has DID, and that's therefore canon. But I'd actually like to propose a different take, that Scarlett is a physical manifestation of Charles' intrusive thoughts.

First of all, a tulpa implies a sense of desire - it is willingly created through spiritual meditation. Scarlett is, in no way, a desired existence that haunts Charles. There is some debate as to whether or not the game was originally in Russian or English, but regardless, tulpa just may be what Charles refers to the phenomenon as. It's not as if this directly confirms anything, as we know in-game Charles is only diagnosed with autism, and takes medication for psychosis.

Charles experiences many symptoms of OCD, contamination OCD in particular. He is intensely preoccupied with purity and disease, insisting that the majority of the population has a "parasite", aside from a select few people (Vincent being one of them, and by the end, the only one).

OCD and psychosis have several unique overlaps when acting as comorbid conditions. It has a relatively high comorbidity, due to both conditions often suffering with heightened paranoia. I couldn't find any research which suggests it can cause the hallucination of intrusive thoughts, but OCD does make people more susceptible to hallucinatory disorders, and vice versa.

Many people with OCD, especially those who have experienced symptoms since being a child, start to conceptualise these thoughts as a being - appearing as imaginary friends which act and react negatively. It definitely happened to me - I genuinely thought I had DID for a year or so of my life, because I had this voice in my head that hated me, and it didn't feel like myself. As a child, it just felt like my own mind was trying to bully me, and I didn't understand why.

We know that Scarlett Eyler is the instigator of "punishment" for Charles' actions...

This sort of "punishing" is very reminiscent of OCD. The rule-breaking itself is confusing to an outsiders, and the punishments even more so. However, I find this rule-and-punishment system very relatable, and I'd argue that some people with OCD might have even more confusing rules and punishments - for example, I can't watch very specific youtube videos, I can't explain what the rules I have surrounding them are, and I have strange punishments for this (that which I will not disclose).

Scarlett also doesn't exhibit typical alter behaviour. She never takes over, Charles doesn't seem to lose time, she does little more than act as a harsh observer, and also physically threaten Charles. She seems very real to him, aside from the fact that he knows taking pills will make her "disappear".

For Charles, Scarlett is simply a being who threatens and instigates intrusive thoughts, but in a particular way. Charles still experiences other intrusive thoughts - Scarlett never discusses the parasites, even though that's a very prevalent fear of Charles'.

Scarlett is the manifestation of intrusive thought that Charles is a failure, rather than being a separate existence to Charles.

my little rat analysis lmaoooo. this was my first hello charlotte one, i've always loved charles, he's just peak gender in so many ways, incredibly relatable.

hope your little polycule goes well salutes

ooooh yesss more VHS lore. The devices themselves quite literally need their own computers just to run, as they're constantly tasked to read sensors covering parts of the player's body _and_ run a game at the same time. The consoles went through multiple iterations before eventually being discontinued. However, just about everyone who owns one has cracked it in order to keep using it. As mentioned in a few chapters though, this hasn't been an entirely 'ethical' or 'safe'. Thing. Reports of injuries have been cropping up left and right, with Chapter 6 showing Basil to be one of them. It only gets worse from here.

posting tiny snippets of fanfic until someone finds it interesting and i am motivated to finish it, part 4

content warning: gore, drowning.

[MARI - 25]

Mari plummeted through the grass, soil swallowing her up, suffocating her with darkness, she was drowning just like he did. Her hands disappeared and the Puppeteer’s gnarled fingers wrapped around her throat, yet you still did it you still did it you still did it you still did it

Mari gasped for air, choking in an inky black ocean, and the Puppeteer tightened its grip. She tried to scream out, but no words could be heard, her ears filled up with swollen water, leaking into her mind, fading out, the Puppeteer’s limbs tangled with her, pulling her down, lower and lower and lower and lower…

Mari crashed onto solid ground. The Puppeteer was gone.

She looked around, picking up her shovel. A small note was written on the handle.

A shovel for burying your sins.

A movie theatre. Everything was dark like the ocean. Rows of seats stretched on forever, down to a brightly lit stage. The stage had nothing on it.

Shh! The movie is about to start!, said No-One. The theatre was empty. 

Mari moved down the stairs, shielding her eyes from the light. Something drew her to it. Her fingers were missing. 

Shh! The movie is about to start!, repeated No-One. Shh! The movie is about to start!

Her hands were missing. She dropped the shovel, but she kept walking.

Shh! The movie is about to start! A chorus sang those words piercingly, like a choir at a church. Shh! The movie is about to start!

Her arms were missing. She reached the stage.

Shh! The movie is about to start!

Mari looked down. Her body was missing. She was missing. 

You are meant to be here.

A man with a crooked neck stared at her with harshly dyed black hair. His eyes were white scribbles. He was the movie.

You were born to be here.

The man reached into her neck and pulled out her throat.

why not put the worst thing i have ever made here too.

context: dreamscape au. may apply to the actual canon if you want. (???)

art by me. song is that one kuromi ai cover of 679. based off something i found on insta.

posting tiny snippets of fanfic until someone finds it interesting and i am motivated to finish it, part 2

warning: major omori spoilers, mentions of death.

[KEL MULTIVERSE 1 - 332]

Kel pulled out a small glowing tulip bud from his backpack, white, clear and crystalline, made of glass. It reflected the glow of the blue fire, but it also flickered with its own blue colour. Kel could almost see the universe held inside it, a calm sunset, four friends; then a cold graveyard, a delusional child. 

That one was a fucking disaster. Again.

At least he now knew ‘The Truth’ for that Kel. Although, really, the killing of someone else always seemed to set off the chain of death. 

Murderers, that’s what we all are, Kel thought to himself, rotating the glass.

Resisting the urge to smash it into pieces, he sighed, tossing it into the river. After all, he might have to fish all these out again sometime, so it would be worth trying to keep the functional ones around, but out of sight. He watched the glow dim as the flower sank into the acidic waves, like a lost ship taking its final breaths.

As he drifted off to sleep, Kel wondered how many crystalline flowers he had left. How much time he had left. The world closed in around his fear, where he would sleep through nightmares in numbed horror.

In these nightmares, he watched everyone die over and over, dead bodies being dragged to hiding places and graves being dug, weeping parents. He saw an echo of his past self relive the worlds again and again, a naive child who thought positivity would solve everything, banging at closed doors and crying quietly in a bathroom, breakdowns in front of five corpses. He saw only failure and husks, shells of humanity. 

Happiness doesn’t work. Happiness stopped working.

Tonight, yet again, there was a girl with dark brown hair, clutching a stuffed toy, happy and innocent… a girl with faded pink dye in her hair, clutching her hands, empty inside… a girl with bright pink hair and green coloured contacts, gripping a bat, furious… a boy with blue hair and a beanie,... many more, standing around him, enclosing him… but they all had the same golden eyes, the ones that bore into him.

My name’s Aubrey. Who are you? 

Hey. Who are you?

New kid, huh? Who are you, then?

I’m Rei. Who are you?

They repeated the questions, but he had no answer. He couldn’t speak, words failed him, so they encircled him like sharks, bats looming over his head, sky darkening, vision darkening…

Who have you become?

Kel turned in his sleep, covering his head as if to block something out.

Outside his mind, feeble glows pulsed synchronically at the bottom of the river, distress calls for dead universes.

Omori and its parallels with OCD, or my personal connection to this game

SPOILER WARNING: AS USUAL, MAJOR OMORI SPOILERS FOR MOST ENDINGS AND THINGS.

CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS OF SELF-HARM, SUICIDE, SEVERE MENTAL ILLNESS, DEATH, LOSS AND OMORI-TYPICAL CONTENT. I will also be referring to my own intrusive thoughts a lot, so please take caution if it might trigger you to spiral.

DISCLAIMER: I AM BY NO MEANS A MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL. I am in the process of seeking a diagnosis (we're getting there :) ), but it has been otherwise confirmed by professionals that I experience OCD. This post is about my personal experience with OCD and trauma, and the way I believe these feeling manifest in the game. I don't believe Sunny or Basil experience OCD, but I want to compare my experiences with obsession, compulsions and trauma-related OCD. Other people may have completely different experiences, and those are valid!

You could call this catharsis, some form of healing. Really I'm doing this for myself, which was kind of why I started writing Omori analysis in the first place (???). and im a nerd for this game

Guilt

Guilt has always been one of my biggest hurdles, and it's also a very relevant theme in Omori.

For the longest time, my brain and I have been actively trying to develop compulsions to cope with guilt, and it seems to consistently fail. I've tried singing songs on repeat, extreme self-harm, distraction, avoidance ect, and nothing seems to work. Sure, I've never committed recital day, but even small things can make me feel horrifically guilty, as my intrusive thoughts tell me I'm a horrible person or a liar.

I see this in Sunny, too. For the longest time, his mind has been trying to cope with the guilt, and it chose to delve deep into repression. But no matter how much he represses, the truth is still there, and so that guilt is still there.

The Fear Polaroids in the Omori Route are also a representation of guilt, as is the mirror during the Truth segment, both depicting Sunny has a hideous demon. My intrusive thoughts depict me as a demon, too, doing horrific things to myself and others. The images of mutilated, demonic Sunny capture the... inhumanity that my mind makes me feel.

I get it, Sunny. I don't feel human either.

Mewo's Death as an Intrusive Thought

Cat Dissection is an interesting area of Black Space, in that its immediate relevance to the truth is less obvious. It's also one of the more horrifying ones - on my first playthrough, I was running blind, and I figured you'd have to kill Mewo for the key. You do not. my biggest regret

Mewo is obviously linked to Mari, but at the time, we'd only ever seen this slightly mentioned in the real world photo album. At that point in Black Space, Mewo was closely tied to Sunny and Omori, being an essential part of White Space.

The player can stab themselves to get out, or cut open Mewo and suffer the regret. This room feels very reminiscent of a gruesome intrusive thought that just won't go away, those days where you see yourself murdering all your friends, or violently injuring yourself. Much of Sunny's hallucinations, or creatures like Something, also mimic this kind of thing.

That room has far deeper analysis to dive into, but this is as far as I'll go for this segment.

Compulsive Behaviour - Repetition

Basil is probably the first character that comes to mind when I think of compulsive behaviour. His most iconic line...

This sort of repetitive action is the root of a compulsion - an attempt to relieve anxiety. Whether or not Basil fits the criteria of needing repeat those words otherwise something bad might happen is unknown, but this sort of behaviour is very relatable in my experience.

I have a tendency to not be consciously aware, but others notice that I'll mumble things to myself. Typically this is me trying to talk back to my intrusive thoughts, as far as I know, and trying to confirm to myself that they're wrong. This will often end in asking someone else or doing research to confirm.

By repeating these things, Basil is trying to ward off the reality, which is that everything isn't okay at all, and likely won't be. But the specific framing is future-oriented - he isn't saying that things are okay right now, he's saying that they will be. This could link to my later point about uncertainty.

Avoidance

Not many people talk about avoidance behaviours as a compulsion, which is probably why much of my OCD went unnoticed as a child. You don't really consider mental compulsions, and avoidance can be very easily hidden, especially if you the ability to force yourself through something if you have no other options.

While it's not exactly the same, Sunny's repression of rooms in his house and the shaking head that prevents you from going to particular areas are forms of avoidance. The sliding glass door that leads to the backyard and the piano room are the most notable - it's not repressed, it's there, but Sunny shakes his head every time you interact with it. He can't go in there. He just can't. There's no explanation for the player.

I relate to that. I have strange rules that mean I can't do things. I just can't. There's no real explanation for myself, either, and sometimes I don't even get intrusive thoughts of the consequences, just some insistence that I can't do it. Perhaps this was confusing or frustrating for the player, but I found it incredibly realistic.

Uncertainty and Abandonment Issues

I've heard somewhere that OCD is, ultimately, a fear of uncertainty. As a result of this disorder, combined with trauma, I also have abandonment issues the way Basil does.

Even before the recital day, Basil's abandonment issues are prevalent. He clings to the group with the photo album, preserving his memories. He took photos of the things he didn't want to lose. After the recital day, Basil really did lose everything, and he was broken as a result of that.

I imagine this sort of thing was one of his regular worries, everyone abandoning him, Sunny in particular. And I can relate to that - one of my more common intrusive thoughts is others leaving me after they find out I've done something horrible. It makes you want to shut off from relationships, just to be safe - what if everyone leaves?

I think that 'what if' is what made Basil so attached to Sunny in the present day of the game. He wants to save Sunny, he wants to make things back to the way they were before, but at the same time, there's this uncertainty - Sunny is moving? Sunny is leaving? What will happen? What if everything gets worse?

This wasn't the easiest to write, but thank you for reading.