Hello, World!

Hello, CHARLOTTE!

TIME SINCE THE TRAJECTORY OF MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER

Days : Hours : Minutes : Seconds

Welcome to my Hello Charlotte shrine, which is basically a love letter to the series and its characters. Whew. Where do I even begin with this game? I am thoroughly convinced that playing through the Hello Charlotte series in its entirety will change the wiring of your brain, or at the very least you'll finish with a new outlook on things. Hello Charlotte is such an important game to me..I love everything about it and while it's noncensical at times I embrace and accept those flaws. This game truly left a huge impact on me and my life. I feel so incredibly seen when I play at and it's such a joy to replay it at times and notice all the little details and callbacks and references from previous to future games.I love each and every character so much. This game is so so real and raw in how it presents its themes and its characters. Ever since playing it back in 2019 I've been a huge fan of etherane's works. Maybe they'll get their own shrines, but for now let's focus on Hello Charlotte.

Hello Charlotte is an RPG Maker game series made by etherane, an artist and game developer from Estonia. There are 5 titles, but only 3 of them make up the main storyline. An additional spin-off and remake of another spin-off is planned for release. The series follows Charlotte Wiltshire and the circumstances surrounding her. I honestly don't even remember how I came across Hello Charlotte. I have a bad memory when it comes to these types of things. However I WILL say that when I first played the first episode I was like..Woah. That's..really fucking cool. I'll try not to get to spoilerly when talking about this but the ending. Man. The worlds, the characters, the questions I had at the end was just. Woah. I adore the art style of the first game, and the classic RPGMaker Horror stuff is still so charming no matter how many times I replay it. It's a wonderful setup and prologue to the future installments. The columns below will detail my thoughts on the next two main games, as well as some more personal thoughts. SPOILER WARNING if you decide to read past this point. If you intend or are considering playing/watching this game then you can stop here and know that this game means a lot to me. Heart Emoji.

I honestly think that at some point that whatever God or higher being that's out there looked down at my pathetic self and said "I am going to torture you with visions" or something. Anyways, like I mentioned earlier I came across this game in early November of 2019. 2019 wasn't particularly kind to me, a 16 year old with undiagnosed autism and BPD. I wouldn't come to terms with these disorders until I was almost an adult, so for a while I honestly thought I was just..so severely broken. I thought I was a freak! When I finished Hello Charlotte in its entirety, I felt so.. understood. It was almost cathartic. How did this series of little RPGMaker games manage to evoke such a profound emotion in me? How could this game make me feel so seen? I had finished the series around three or four days after purchasing the second episode. Those few days I spent playing are a blur now, but I still feel so so strongly about the emotions I felt on that day. It isn't an exaggeration to say this game changed the trajectory of my life. Whenever I have a depressive episode, whenever I feel so utterly shitty, I open the game up and play. If I can't play, I watch a playthrough! This game brings me such an incredible amount of comfort and sense of belonging or understanding. Of all of etherane's works, Hello Charlotte has affected me the most. In the words of a friend, It's genuinely such a life changing game Etherane needs a Nobel prize. I love the Hello Charlotte series, and will always always be grateful that I stumbled across this game.

im replaying episode one DON'T LOOK AT ME. GO LOOK AT THE OTHER TABS

EPISODE TWO

Requiem Aeternam Deo

I really enjoy the themes in episode 2. Death of Ego and false gods/idolization. Whew. Hits pretty close to home already. Charlotte serving as an unreliable narrator (something sort of established at the end of episode one) is taken to a new level here, with her believing that everyone is her friend and that everything is fine. Spoiler alert: everything is NOT fine. Charlotte is decaying from the inside-out due to her absorbing the oracle! Due to their merging, we get a familiar face: Frei, also known as The Oracle.

Frei is probably my second favorite character in this episode (the first being Charlotte of course) due to their realism and the way they press against the fourth wall to the puppeteer like "Hey! Guess who's been feeding you a false narrative! This girl! (pointing to Charlotte)" The way their personality goes against Charlotte's at time is so wonderful. I love you Frei you will always be famous to me.

This episode also introduces a few other characters. Henrietta 'Anri' Warhol and C, also known as Vincent. These two are also some of my favorites, though not ranked as high as Charlotte and Frei (atleast for this episode. wink).

Anri is a good character here, and I adore how contradicting she is. It sets up her liar liar theme for episode three very well! The way she initially befriends Charlotte because she wanted to have someone worse than her to make her seem better and then eventually grows to genuinely care for and love her...Oh my goodness gracious. Her manipulative streak is also great too, along with the little special skill details in the random turn-based battles. Blackmail, huh? Talk about foreshadowing amirite. Speaking of foreshadowing, the way her outfit is similar to Charlotte's (darker blouse with a white cardigan + ribbon) makes me so. Ohhhhh. Ohhhhhh the misery everyone wants to be my enemy. Anyways, it goes without saying that I adore Anri and everything she stands for, from her personality to her design...Mwah.

Onto C..Oh C you poor meow meow my little blorbo my son that was born in a wet cardboard box. You are so delusional it's insane but you know what. I am too. I understand you. Without the context of episode three, I really resonate with C and his belief that he's a God trying to find a way back. For a while, I thought like that too! But guess what! C is just some normal ass guy named Vincent! And I love that. I love that so fucking much. His insistence that he's an all important god only for that illusion to break as he's about to pass on..Wonderful. Exquisite. He becomes a false idol (literally and figuratively) for Charlotte to project onto and i LOVE it. His reactions in every ending scratch my brain so well because he..He knows. He knows he can't do anything to save Charlotte. He ends up confessing he's a false, loser god that can't do anything. I love it so much. His little story that he gives to Charlotte is also soo. Ohhhhh Vincent. I have much to say about that story, but for now just know. I love Vincent. XOXO.

EPISODE THREE

CHILDhood's End

The characters this time around are much more edgy and dark (specificallY Q84) but..I love it. I love it so so much. While the retcons can be annoying at first it all clicks into place by the time you finish the game all the way through, and it left me DEVASTATED. I will NEVER recover. I love it, even if others don't. I replay this episode so much, and it's such a joy seeing all the little details and foreshadowing and callbacks to everything ever. And again, the characters. Ohhh the characters, OH THE MISERY. The themes surrounding them all, the nihilism, the unrequited feelings, the insanity and delusion hit so so close to home for me.

Childhood's end isn't as interactive as the previous episodes due to the ending of Requiem Aeternam Deo, leaving you subjected to Q84's whims and antagonism. You can do nothing but progress the game, your decisions limited as you watch the story play out. You are only an Observer in this world, and can do nothing about it. Nothing that I can say about this game can even scratch the surface of how deep this game goes and how much it means to me, I really can't! It's just..such an incredible experience, and I wish I could experience it all over again. Anyways, remember Anri? Let's go back to her and another character.

Oh Henrietta, my poor poor meow meow. I love you so much, but also oh the misery. Anri is the most intelligent and well adjusted character in this game. I feel for her and her endeavors to appear normal as well as her unrequited love for Charles. She's so real and wonderful, and I absolutely adore her character in this episode the most out of any of her appearances. Her liar persona that was hinted at in episode 2 is greatly expanded in Childhood's End, and I absolutely love it. Her words are contradictory to her actions and true feelings, and it's so gut wrenching to see. She teases and makes fun of Charles and his stories while still being a fan of his writings, and when it hits her that Charles intended on dying, she cried. She cries for him while his eyes are dry. She's able to stay optimistic despite the circumstances, while still being a painful realist. She's just..such a good character. She really does deserve a cute girlfriend.. I don't have anymore to say. I love Anri, what more to say?

As revealed by the end of Childhood's End, Charles Eyler is the God of the Hello Charlotte universe, which turns out to be a product of his mind exploding after his suicide. He's canonically genderfluid, as well as implied to be autistic. Charles' entire character is so..It's so hard to describe him, I feel like nothing I say can even scratch the surface of him. Let me preface the following by saying I have psychotic episodes and an extremely unstable sense of self (see: Borderline Personality Disorder). To me, Charles Eyler is the character that I relate to on an unholy, insane level. His entire arc and story is something that feels..so real to me. It's like I was THERE. When I played Childhood's End, it felt like I was staring into a mirror. I felt like I was staring at myself as I progressed through and learned more about Charles and his struggles, his story, his ending. It's so incredibly hard to talk about Charles without talking about myself. His story is so incredibly tragic, and yet by the end of the game it's a bit cathartic. He told his story to someone willing to listen, he had a conversation with the player, and it's so..Amazing. I could go on and on like the gif of the guy and the whiteboard but it all boils down to this: Charles Eyler is a tragic character that is so painfully real to me, and he makes me feel so incredibly seen.

Time for some extra thoughts outside of the last two episodes. In particular, I'll be talking about Heavens Gate, a short visual novel taking place in an alternate universe, a few images and official arts, and a little rant on some themes I really enjoyed in the game.

You're hidden behind the lines. / I reach out, deafened by silence. / As we mourn the Grasshopper's passing, / Heaven's gate opens.

The parallels it draws to Childhood's End are so good as well, like..Look at this.

Heaven's Gate is set in a parallel universe with a focus on the True Realm characters from the Hello Charlotte series. The visual novel is telled from Charles' perspective as he navigates life, starting from childhood. Vincent and Henrietta appear as well as main characters. It's basically a "dude, what would happen if Charles WASN'T super mentally ill?" put into form. It's pretty short, around 30-40 minutes of reading and has a few interludes featuring other characters like Charlotte, Bennett, Felix, and Frei. I really enjoyed Heaven's Gate, and I'm a big fan of how Charles' developed with the character. Vincent also comes back, though not as Vincent Wordsworth but as Vincent Fennell. Anri is also notably different, lacking her black dyed hair and much more relaxed without the stress of worrying about Charles' mental state bearing down on her. I really adore this visual novel, I don't really have much more to say! It gives a pleasant insight on who Vincent might've been and what kind of person he would have been if circumstances had been different.

My favorite Hello Charlotte art by Etherane ^_^