Her Story's portrayal of mental illness

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Offworld's Laura Hudson loved Her Story, but had some interesting criticisms of the way Her Story seems to portray dissociative identity disorder:

As is often the case, the roving squads of self-appointed authenticity monitors who patrol the imaginary borders of games have deemed Her Story "not a real game" for the usual reasons: because it's cerebral, it stars a woman, and anyone can play it. To make a game like that in the current climate is something of a refreshing, rebellious act; those "criticisms" are the precise reason the game feels so fresh and enjoyable, and are best read as unintended compliments.

But there are relevant criticisms worth raising about Her Story, especially around that way it depicts mental illness, a theme that becomes apparent only after you've collected enough video fragments to see the larger picture emerge. Perhaps the biggest red herring of the game is its name; Her Story sounds singular, and implies that we're looking at one woman, the same woman, in all of the videos. As we learn over time, this is almost certainly not true.

She's initially introduced to us as Hannah, the wife of the murder victim, Simon. In her initial interrogations, she seems quiet and cooperative. Other times, she's defensive, outgoing, even aggressive. That's because at least some of the time the person we see on screen is not Hannah at all, but an identical woman named Eve who was having an affair with Simon.

There are two theories you can arrive at to explain this: Either Hannah and Eve are twin sisters separated at birth through what I would describe as a highly unlikely series of events, or Hannah has Dissociative Identity Disorder—what is more popularly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, and Eve is not a separate person but another facet of her self.

Although the game remains intentionally ambiguous on the subject, the most persuasive evidence points to Dissociative Identity Disorder, and at the very least raises the specter of mental illness as the explanation for the killing. It's a conceit that transforms Her Story into a whodunit mystery where the real question isn't who committed the murder, but who she thought she was when it happened. When Hannah's carefully constructed alibi starts to fall apart and it looks like she's facing arrest, she looks at the interrogator and smiles: "Can you arrest someone who doesn't exist?"

I can't pretend that I played Her Story with no preconceptions, or that I've always fully understood the things I'm about to criticize the game for not understanding. My reaction was deeply colored and illuminated by a conversation I had about Her Story with former game developer and producer Courtney Stanton before I even picked it up. "Basically every media depiction I've ever seen of someone with a dissociative disorder—including Hannah and Eve—are wrong," Stanton told me. "And I know this, because I have the mental illness she's portrayed as having."

It's unclear whether Hannah is supposed to have dissociative identity disorder (DID)—where the barriers between different states of the mind are more developed—or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS), the more broadly defined diagnosis that Stanton can speak to personally. Both disorders exist beneath the same umbrella of dissociation disorders, at varying levels of severity. All are widely misunderstood, both by Her Story and society at large.

On the surface, Stanton says some details about Hannah and Eve do ring true. "When we hear that Eve wears a wig—it's not uncommon for different parts to present differently. And she slips between the pronouns 'we' and 'I' really well. But when you get into the game's depiction of how they they supposedly work as a system, it feels very wrong."

Indeed, one of the primary reasons why "multiple personality disorder" was reclassified as "dissociative identity disorder" was to avoid the misconception that Her Story vigorously promotes: that alternative personalities, alters, or parts, as they are variously called, are entirely separate individuals, rather than just different manifestations of the same person. "Parts aren't fully separate people, nor are there usually only two of them, and they don't interact with each other that way," says Stanton. "It's certainly not two women trapped in one body, jealously competing over the affections of one man."

Most troublingly, Her Story is ultimately a game where an impliedly mentally ill person is portrayed as a murderer. Nor is Simon her only victim; it's also suggested that Eve poisoned and killed Hannah's parents in order to regain more control over their shared life. And it is Hannah as a whole—the woman with a dissociative disorder—who is responsible for bringing death and harm to so many of the people around her, primarily because of her mental illness.

Therein lies the biggest and most unexamined problem with what is otherwise an exceptional game. Mental illness has long been equated with violence and criminality in media and entertainment, where the "insane murderer" trope remains hugely popular. Too often, people with mental illness are the bogeymen we summon into horror stories, murder mysteries or anywhere else we need a one-dimensional bad guy wielding a knife.

The impact of these stereotypes on people with mental illness are significant. The strong social stigma means that those who disclose their diagnosis are often treated with fear, suspicion and disgust, in ways that can affect their employment, health care, relationships and safety. In a 2008 study by the Canadian Medical Association, 42 percent of respondents said they would stop socializing with a friend who was diagnosed with mental illness; 55 percent said they would not marry someone with mental illness, and 25 percent said they would be afraid simply to be around them.

The reality of mental illness is far more dangerous—not for those who happen to be around it, but those who suffer from it. Not only are people with mental illness unlikely to be perpetrators of violence; they're actually more likely to be on the receiving end. According to one government study, someone with severe mental illness is eleven times more likely to be a victim of violent crime than someone without it.

Yet again and again, mentally ill people appear in our entertainment as axe-wielding psychos whose primary reason for committing violence is quite simply that they're craaaazy. Their mental illness is designed to provoke fear or fascination; other times, as in the case of Her Story, it's the prop or device that sets up the M. Night Shyamalan-esque surprise twist ending. "The game felt like it was using Hannah's mental health to execute a pre-existing plot, instead of thinking about what a character with DID or DDNOS would actually be like and building a story from there," says Stanton.

Her Story spends a lot of time exploring what happens when two separate but inextricably connected parts of a whole come into conflict. This ends up being a far better description of the game itself, where the clever mechanics and the troubling narrative coexist inside the same creative body, and neither can truly escape the pull of the other. The reasons I loved the game—the reasons I kind of want to finish this review right now and go play it again—are tied inextricably to the reasons it left me feeling deeply uncomfortable, and the unexamined stereotypes at its core.

In all honesty, I'm not actually sure I would have noticed these failings in the game before talking to Stanton about it. It's easy not to notice problems when they're so familiar that they blend into the background, especially when they don't affect you directly. It's easy, too, to hear the small, selfish voice in your head that wonders if it wouldn't be easier not to know these things at all, to just let the pleasurable aspects of your entertainment wash over you unanalyzed.

And of course, it is easier. But this is how we get better, both as people who consume media and people who make it: We listen, we allow ourselves to feel uncomfortable, and we learn. We look the flaws of the things we enjoy directly in the eye, and know them for what they are. When I look at Her Story, I see one of the most compelling games I've played this year, and a game predicated on an idea that I find harmful, all wrapped up in one complicated package. It's still a package I'm glad I opened. But I know it for what it is: the sum of all its parts.

http://boingboing.net/2015/07/15/her-story-game.html

[Left Intentionally Blank]

This genuinely confuses me. Or perhaps I should say that it raises some rather interesting questions.

The thing is, everything that this post points out about why Her Story is an extraordinarily inaccurate and unhelpful portrayal of mental illness is exactly why I think it, well, isn't one.

Literally the *only* reason to believe that Her Story is any kind of portrayal of mental illness, good or bad, is the existence of the stereotypes that this article accuses the game of perpetuating. It isn't the game that causes people to make the link between "murder" and "woman behaving oddly" and come immediately to "specific real-world medical condition", it's our external preconceptions about mental illness.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Well, mental illness is heavily implied with lines such as "Can you arrest someone who doesn't exist?", the use of a single actress, the general implausibility of the twins theory and even the title itself. The game also does nothing to dispel or challenge preconceptions about Dissociative Identity Disorder; worse, it actively encourages the players to view it as the likeliest possibility.

[Left Intentionally Blank]

I'd argue that "can you arrest someone who doesn't exist" is a specific reference to Eve's earlier statements that she, herself, does not exist, because she spent her whole life sharing an identity with Hannah. Certainly I don't see how this one line constitutes the game "actively encouraging the players to view it as the likeliest possibility" given the *scads* of evidence the game introduces that Hannah and Eve are two distinct people who have frequently been in two places at once.

The game does nothing to dispel preconceptions about Dissociative Identity Disorder because it never mentions, suggests, or implies that Dissociative Identity Disorder is a valid or even possible interpretation of events. The very worst the game can be accused of is relying on players' preconceptions draw from other Hollywoodised portrayals of DID to provide a secondary source of misdirection. Indeed you can make the case that it *does* dispel preconceptions about Dissociative Identity Disorder by the simple mechanism of providing no in-text evidence that anybody even considers it a possibility.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Then how do you explain DID being a popular theory among fans? I was listening to the Gamespot roundtable discussion and DID also emerged as the preferred solution.

Also, Eve does claim to have stopped impersonating Hannah at some point. So if the twins theory is true, then she must legally exist, especially if she is working as a singer in a bar.

[Left Intentionally Blank]

I'd explain DID being a popular theory among fans in the following ways:

1) There is a weight of fiction in which DID *is* either the answer or a suggested answer, and fans have been exposed to it. Again, I don't disagree that Her Story was probably written with the knowledge that people would immediately *assume* DID was a viable interpretation, because cultural inertia is very, very powerful. This is the point I find most interesting, and the most problematic. I genuinely don't know how you could write a game that addressed issues of identity without people automatically projecting their preconceptions about DID onto it, and I think you can legitimately ask whether an author/designer has a responsibility to take that into account.

2) Fans like to feel clever. A major motivation for supporting the DID theory seems to be an unwillingness to accept that the game would just *tell* you what the solution was. If you see the game as a mystery to be solved, rather than as a story to be experienced, then the DID theory is the only one that will give you that experience. Its appeal lies preciesly in the fact that there *isn't* any evidence for it in the text, which means that you get to "work it out" for yourself.

3) People have inconsistent standards of realism. The single biggest argument for the DID theory is that the backstory Eve narrates in the final interview is manifestly implausible. They seem, for some reason, less bothered by the fact that the version of DID that Hannah/Eve would need to have for their interpretation of events to be true is even *less* plausible. I would attribute this partly to the fact that people are less bothered by inaccuracy in the portrayal of things that they are unfamiliar with, and partly with people just being genuinely ignorant about how DID actually works.

4) Quite simply, fans are quite often wrong about things. A lot of fans think that Lord of the Rings is an allegory for the second world war, but Tolkein was fairly adamant that it wasn't. A lot of fans thought that Dumbledore was going to turn out to be Ron from the future. People believe things that aren't true or supported by evidence all the time.

Again, I don't disagree that the game assumes that the player will jump on DID as a possible explanation. What I don't understand is what it could possibly have done differently to stop this from happening (other than actually hiring two different actresses) because there really is no evidence at all to suggest it might even be possible for it to be true.

[花火jumpscare]

It's a popular theory because people are more willing to believe that these misconceptions are true and additionally the physical evidence was faked than they are to believe that twins pulled off the switcheroo.

There are plenty of jobs and places to live for those without official identities. This is how undocumented immigrants function. It's totally plausible that a seedy bar would pay a singer under the table, or a slumlord would rent a tiny studio apartment to somebody who always paid cash and never signed a lease.

The thematic concerns with the title, the "doesn't exist" line etc, work both ways. Her Story could refer to Eve's story finally coming out, especially given how much time she spends talking about Hannah, it could refer to Eve's confession as distinct from the way that Hannah would describe it, it could be lots of things. The "doesn't exist" line could be talking about how Eve has fully assumed Hannah's identity and now Hannah is the one without documentation, it could be talking about how she killed Hannah, it could be referencing how she's undocumented and that will somehow protect her. These interpretations are interesting to discuss, but they don't really give us a lot of information to determine if they're really twins or not.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I genuinely don't know how you could write a game that addressed issues of identity without people automatically projecting their preconceptions about DID onto it, and I think you can legitimately ask whether an author/designer has a responsibility to take that into account.

I do believe the author is responsible to some extent in this case. Even if he did not intend Her Story to be about a murderess suffering from DID (which I still doubt), the game is designed in a way where such interpretation is not only allowed but implicitly encouraged, as no solution is ultimately given and as such nothing is preventing the player from perpetuating misconceptions and stereotypes about mental illness. Given how intricate Her Story's writing is, I find it very hard to believe Sam Barlow did not even consider this possibility.

I genuinely don't know how you could write a game that addressed issues of identity without people automatically projecting their preconceptions about DID onto it

I believe the main issue Laura Hudson has with the DID theory is because the illness seems used so commonly as a cheap twist in murder/horror stories. I do not think it would have been as much of a deal if there were more stories that explored the disorder without portraying those who may suffer from it as psychopaths.

4) Quite simply, fans are quite often wrong about things. A lot of fans think that Lord of the Rings is an allegory for the second world war, but Tolkein was fairly adamant that it wasn't. A lot of fans thought that Dumbledore was going to turn out to be Ron from the future. People believe things that aren't true or supported by evidence all the time.

At least, those theories were officially debunked.

I cannot see the same happening with Her Story, for obvious reasons.

[Left Intentionally Blank]

Originally posted by JohnnyTheWolf - Qc:

I do believe the author is responsible to some extent in this case. Even if he did not intend Her Story to be about a murderess suffering from DID (which I still doubt), the game is designed in a way where such interpretation is not only allowed but implicitly encouraged, as no solution is ultimately given and as such nothing is preventing the player from perpetuating misconceptions and stereotypes about mental illness. Given how intricate Her Story's writing is, I find it very hard to believe Sam Barlow did not even consider this possibility.

Like I say, I agree that he must have anticipated the interpretation, but I don't know what he can possibly have done to address it.

Again, I think part of the issue here is that I *do* think that the game provides a solution (Eve explicitly explains the backstory) and that the DID interpretation is not merely "not implicitly encouraged" but "actively contradicted."

The DID interpretation is essentially vacuous. There are only three possible interpretations of the text:

1) Eve is telling the truth, and they are two people.
2) Eve is lying, made up the details of her backstory and life history and faked physical evidence that she is fact two people in order to mislead the police.
3) Eve has DID *and is also* lying, made up the details of her backstory and life history and faked physical evidence that she is in fact two people in order to mislead the police.

Hypothesising mental illness explains nothing. It's only an attractive theory because of the cultural inertia that we both accept exists.

I believe the main issue Laura Hudson has with the DID theory is because the illness seems used so commonly as a cheap twist in murder/horror stories. I do not think it would have been as much of a deal if there were more stories that explored the disorder without portraying those who may suffer from it as psychopaths.

Again, we're approaching this from rather different premises.

If we assume that Her Story is a game about a woman with DID, then I agree it is a tacky and insensitive one, and that it would have been substantially improved had it cast her as something other than a murderer. The thing is, I don't subscribe to that interpretation.

If we assume that Her Story is a game about two twins, one of whom murders somebody, and who fairly explicitly do *not* have DID, then it is much harder to see how it could have been improved. It becomes almost a zen-like question. How can you improve the portrayal of DID in a game that does not portray DID?

At least, those theories were officially debunked.

I cannot see the same happening with Her Story, for obvious reasons.

True. And I agree that the situation would be improved if Barlow came out and said explicitly that they were actually two people (and, unlike you, I don't particularly see that he couldn't). I would agree that maintaining silence on the issue does seem to suggest that he sees more value in leaving room for the DID interpretation than in not supporting harmful stereotypes about mental illness, and that does bother me.

Like (I believe) Emily Short, my response to the game was very much to start off suspecting that it was going to be some kind of offensive, cliched multiple personalities thing and then being quite relieved that it turned out not to be. I'm genuinely surprised that anybody thinks it was one.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I just want to let you know that I appreciate this civil debate despite our disagreements. :)

Originally posted by Chastity:

Again, I think part of the issue here is that I *do* think that the game provides a solution (Eve explicitly explains the backstory) and that the DID interpretation is not merely "not implicitly encouraged" but "actively contradicted."

The DID interpretation is essentially vacuous. There are only three possible interpretations of the text:

1) Eve is telling the truth, and they are two people.
2) Eve is lying, made up the details of her backstory and life history and faked physical evidence that she is fact two people in order to mislead the police.
3) Eve has DID *and is also* lying, made up the details of her backstory and life history and facked physical evidence that she is in fact two people in order to mislead the police.

But if there is a strong possibility of it being an elaborate deception, does it not make it worse?

Mentally-ill people suffer from enough stigma as it is, so to imply a murderess has faked DID in order to avoid prosecution is rather inconsiderate. I am not saying it is impossible, but as a work of fiction, it further supports the widespread belief that mental illness is not really a thing and those who have it are just making up excuses to get away with things "normal" people would not.

If we assume that Her Story is a game about two twins, one of whom murders somebody, and who fairly explicitly do *not* have DID, then it is much harder to see how it could have been improved. It becomes almost a zen-like question. How can you improve the portrayal of DID in a game that does not portray DID?

By not making it a murder mystery, I suppose.

Or maybe by focusing more on the character's experiences with DID rather than using it as a possible plot device. Which makes me wonder if someone out there has thought of making an actual game about it. Some sort of simulation game where the player could vicariously "experience" the disorder would be very interesting and informative.

Like (I believe) Emily Short, my response to the game was very much to start off suspecting that it was going to be some kind of offensive, cliched multiple personalities thing and then being quite relieved that it turned out not to be. I'm genuinely surprised that anybody thinks it was one.

To be fair, I initially went for the twins theory myself. But then, I noticed how prevalent the DID theory seems to be and the arguments in its favor struck me as fairly convincing. Upon consideration and given the game's realistic setting, it is indeed very hard to believe the idea that one twin could have lived a secret life for so long without anybody noticing, including the parents. It comes across as so far-fetched and fairytalelike to be anything else but an invention.

[Left Intentionally Blank]

Originally posted by JohnnyTheWolf - Qc:

I just want to let you know that I appreciate this civil debate despite our disagreements. :)

Same here, thanks :)

But if there is a strong possibility of it being an elaborate deception, does it not make it worse?

Mentally-ill people suffer from enough stigma as it is, so to imply a murderess has faked DID in order to avoid prosecution is rather inconsiderate. I am not saying it is impossible, but as a work of fiction, it further supports the widespread belief that mental illness is not really a thing and those who have it are just making up excuses to get away with things "normal" people would not.

I think we're talking slightly at cross purposes. I'm not suggesting that she could have faked DID. I'm suggesting that if she isn't two physically different people then she is *definitely* faking evidence of being two physically different people, whether she has DID or not.

She has a bruise on day 2 that vanishes on day 3. Either she faked it, or covered it up, or is two different people only one of whom is bruised.

She has a tattoo on day (I think) 5, but not on previous days when her arms are uncovered. Again, either she faked it between days 4 and 5 (even a temporary tattoo wouldn't disappear overnight), or she's two different women only one of whom has a tattoo.

She was seen at a hospital in Glasgow at the time the murder took place. Now it is true that the whole watch thing was a fake (why they even bothered with this, I don't know, apparently both Eve and the police subscribe to the movie-logic that a person's watch will always stop the instant they die) but we know that Hannah's parents lived in Portsmouth, which is an *eight hour* drive from Glasgow. This means that unless the police got the time of death wrong by more than eight hours there would be no way that she could have killed Simon and then got to Glasgow in time, or left Glasgow and got back in time to kill Simon. Again, either she's two different people, or she faked the time of death so effectively (by more methods than just the watch) that it took the police in completely.

The police seem to be increasingly questioning her about her identity, and about the possibility that there might be another person who looks very much like her. Again, either this is because she really is two physically distinct people, or because she has faked being two physically distinct people so well that the police have been completely taken in.

So if you like, there are only two possibilities: she really is two different people, or the whole thing is an elaborate deception. Now if you wanted you could argue that the elaborate deception was carried out *by* a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder but this seems like a needless extra step. As the article you originally quoted points out, DID does not manifest in the sorts of behaviour that Eve and Hannah display in the game (that is, it does not generally lead to people behaving as if they are two physically different people pretending to be one person and making occasional errors, which is what the game fairly clearly portrays) so adding a diagnosis of DID to the "elaborate deception" theory only makes it less plausible.

This is what I meant when I said that the DID theory is "vacuous". All of the indicators that she was two physically different women would need to be deliberately faked, and all of her anecdotes about her past would need to be lies, whether she had DID or not, so interpreting her as having DID doesn't add anything or make anything clearer.

By not making it a murder mystery, I suppose.

Or maybe by focusing more on the character's experiences with DID rather than using it as a possible plot device. Which makes me wonder if someone out there has thought of making an actual game about it. Some sort of simulation game where the player could vicariously "experience" the disorder would be very interesting and informative.

And I agree that if your intent was to write a game *about a woman with DID* that's what you should do.

But what I'm trying to work out is what you should do if your intent is to write what I believe Her Story actually is: a non-linear murder mystery that hinges on the revelation that the suspect who you believe to be one person is in fact two physically distinct people. The game then can't contain any information about the protagonist's experiences with DID, because she doesn't have it. And you can't stop people leaping to DID as an explanation, because they always, always will.

I suspect that the only option you can really have is to put out a Word of God clarification that the game isn't portraying or attempting to portray Dissociative Identity Disorder. Which is something I would very much like to see.

To be fair, I initially went for the twins theory myself. But then, I noticed how prevalent the DID theory seems to be and the arguments in its favor struck me as fairly convincing. Upon consideration and given the game's realistic setting, it is indeed very hard to believe the idea that one twin could have lived a secret life for so long without anybody noticing, including the parents. It comes across as so far-fetched and fairytalelike to be anything else but an invention.

I understand this argument, but I find it peculiar in light of your support for the article you quote in your OP. It seems that you accept that the DID interpretation relies on the game portraying DID in a wholly unrealistic way, so I don't understand how you can still maintain that it is more believable than the (admittedly implausible) twins-in-the-attic interpretation.

I suppose you could be applying a kind of meta-level logic, that it is more likely that Barlow wrote a game that unthinkingly supported a harmful and stereotypical interpretation of a real-world medical condition than that he wrote a game with a far-fetched and fairytalelike premise, but that seems particularly odd given that the game explicitly highlights the fairytale elements. To me "twins separated at birth and hidden in an attic" fits perfectly into a world where men get murdered with hand-engraved mirrors they gave their wives as anniversary gifts and suspects are encouraged to sing folk songs in police interrogations.

Indeed the basic problem I have with the DID theory is that I feel it is only plausible if you accept the stereotypical ideas about mental illness that the article highlights. To quote you quoting Laura Hudson quoting Courtney Stanton:

"The game felt like it was using Hannah's mental health to execute a pre-existing plot, instead of thinking about what a character with DID or DDNOS would actually be like and building a story from there"

This, to me, is actually the crucial flaw in the DID theory. It only works because we are so conditioned to accept "she's mad" as a sufficient explanation for any behaviour a character might engage in. What I haven't seen from anybody who supports the DID interpretation is a clear explanation of how they think that Eve's condition (which we can be fairly certain doesn't resemble real-world DID in any way) actually manifests, what behaviours it might actually lead her to, and how this is consistent with the way that we see her behaving in the game.

For example:

When she describes her childhood experiences, is she consciously making them up, or does she literally believe them to be true? If she is consciously making them up, how is this different from a person who *doesn't* have DID making up a story (and, thus, how does the diagnosis of DID add anything to our understanding of events)? If she consciously believes them to be true, would this not imply that she really did believe that she and Hannah were separate people? In which case why would she fake a tattoo in order to "trick" the police into believing something that she thinks is true anyway? And why would she only get the tattoo on day five if she really believes that she has had it for the best part of ten years?

If her childhood stories about Hannah punching her in the eye and her taking Hannah's virginity with a hairbrush represent her rationalisation of the fact that the "Eve" personality always had the same injuries as the "Hannah" personality, why does she cover up the bruise on day 3? DID-theorists seem to argue that she felt compelled to because the bruise was something "Hannah" had, not something "Eve" had, but this is inconsistent with the way she describes her own condition as manifesting. It would be more natural for her to simply assume that Hannah had given her a black eye so that they would be better able to impersonate one another. Of course it is possible that "Hannah" faked the bruise on day 2 and that "Eve" simply didn't know that she had done this but ... why?

Again, we come back to the issue that the DID interpretation makes sense only if we accept that a mentally ill person's actions don't need any particular justification or motivation.

I think you could *just about* construct a consistent DID interpretation in which:

Hannah/Eve has a medical condition that in no way resembles real-world dissociative identity disorder and which is probably best categorised as "Plot Necessity Disorder" (PND).

Hannah/Eve's PND manifests in her having two distinct personalities, one of which ("Hannah") genuinely believes that she and Eve are two different people, and identical twins, and the other of which ("Eve") is aware that they are two facets of the same person.

Hannah believes that she murdered her husband, but her PND causes her to believe that she has an alibi in the form of "Eve", who she (falsely) believes was in Glasgow at the time. She consistently acts in order to preserve the illusion that she and Eve are one person (or that Eve was a childhood friend who did not look anything like her, see the Bob Dylan story), and pins her hope for survival on convincing the police that she was elsewhere at the time of the murder. This explains why she consistently denies that she has a twin, describes Eve as a "friend", and places so much emphasis on the importance of the Glasgow alibi.

Eve, on the other hand, knows that she murdered Simon while under the control of the Hannah personality, and also knows that they only have one body between them and that they cannot, therefore, rely on being seen in Glasgow to get them off. She therefore decides to exploit Hannah's delusion that they are really identical twin sisters by planting subtle clues that she and Hannah really are physically different people. This explains why Eve is the only one who presents the faked evidence that she and Hannah are two different people (covering up the bruise, getting a temporary tattoo after the police see her bare arms).

Finally Eve completes the deception by "confessing" to the murder on behalf of Hannah, who she claims has run away, relying on the hints that she had deliberately dropped over the last week to make the police believe that they really did get the wrong sister, and knowing that she has the backup of an insanity defense.

This, let's be clear, is pretty clearly absurd, but it's the only way I can make a "mental illness" theory fit what actually happens in the game.

I think twins makes more sense on balance.

[Dode]

This, let's be clear, is pretty clearly absurd, but it's the only way I can make a "mental illness" theory fit what actually happens in the game.

I think twins makes more sense on balance.

I, and others, find the balance to be otherwise. Using the word "vacuous" to describe the opinions of other people when neither opinion is substantiated either way is itself vacuous.

[Left Intentionally Blank]

Originally posted by Dode:

I, and others, find the balance to be otherwise. Using the word "vacuous" to describe the opinions of other people when neither opinion is substantiated either way is itself vacuous.

I think you're misunderstanding what I mean when I say "vacuous". I'm not using it to mean "stupid", I'm using it to mean "empty of content" or if you prefer "lacking in explanatory power".

To try to explain again.

Eve claims that she and Hannah are twins separated at birth. This, in line with the classic trilemma, implies one of three things:

1) She is insane. You can call this "MPD" or "DID" or whatever you like. Either way, she genuinely believes herself to be a twin separated at birth and is not, from her own perspective, lying about it.

2) She is lying. She knows that she is not really a twin separated at birth but is deliberately claiming otherwise to mislead the police.

3) She is telling the truth. She really is a twin, separated at birth from her other twin, Hannah.

The problem with option (1) is that even if she *does* believe herself to be a twin separated at birth, the events we observe in the clips necessarily require her to have *also* deliberately faked evidence to this effect. This means that we cannot accept option (1) alone, it can exist only in combination with option (2).

With the possible exception of the lie detector, there is nothing about Hannah/Eve's actions that cannot be explained by the *necessary* observation that, if she is indeed one person, she is deliberately pretending to be two people in order to mislead the police. Hypothesising that she has Dissociative Identity Disorder is superficially attractive, but it in fact offers no greater insight into events than hypothesising that she has an oedipus complex, clinical depression, or a fondness for soft cheeses. If she is one person, then she is necessarily engaged in a calculated effort to deceive the police. Her every action can be explained simply as part of that calculated deception.

Again, this is what I mean when I say the MPD theory is "vacuous". It explains nothing that is not already explained by other observations that are *already necessary parts of the theory*.

I would add that the MPD theory is "vacuous" in a secondary sense, which is that it has no content beyond "she is mad". It is convincing only to people who believe that it is reasonable for "she is mad" to stand as justification for any action a character might take, because mad people can do whatever the plot demands of them. My long and deliberately silly description of how her "MPD" would have to manifest in order for her actions during the interviews to make any sense *to her* was an effort to highlight this. As far as I know, I am the only person who has made any effort to provide any such description of the "disorder" which supposedly explains Hannah/Eve's actions (and I don't even believe in it).

A genuinely convincing "MPD" theory would need to explain:

- What each of the "Eve" and "Hannah" personas actually believe is happening at any given point, and how their actions are consistent with those beliefs.
- Why the police seem never to suspect that their prime suspect is mentally ill in any way.
- Why the police seem to become increasingly convinced that they are dealing with two physically separate people.
- Why mental illness is a more plausible explanation for Eve/Hannah's actions than mere deceptiveness, given that her actions must necessarily include a certain element of deliberate deception.
- Why we should ignore the rather important fact that the only real-world mental illnesses that look even remotely like Eve/Hannah's condition do not result in behaviour anything like Eve/Hannah's behaviour.
- Why, if we accept all of the above, Her Story can still be considered a good game, despite its apparently having been written by a man who didn't even bother to research the topic it is supposed to be about, and who seems to have gone out of his way to reinforce harmful stereotypes about the very people who would be most inclined to identify with its main character.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I do not think anyone here - including Laura Hudson - is suggesting Her Story to be a bad game. ;)

[Left Intentionally Blank]

That's sort of the thing, though. I'd sort of argue that it *is* a bad game if it's about a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder, because that would mean that it fails completely in its intended purpose.

Indeed part of what I find so confusing about Laura Hudson's article is that I don't understand how you can, on the one hand, believe the game to be a deliberate and intentional depiction of Dissociative Identity Disorder which reinforces harmful ideas about mental illness, clearly did not involve the tiniest modicum of research about its subject, and relies for its impact purely on unpleasant stereotypes about "mad" people while also considering the game to be in any way "good". The moderately innovative interface and the effort that clearly went into seeding useful keywords throughout the clips wouldn't remotely make up for the fact that the actual *story* was a poorly constructed mess that relied entirely on tacky stereotypes and nonsensical misdirects.

Not to put too fine a point on it, *if* I thought the game was about mental illness, I'd think that the game was terrible and that Sam Barlow was basically a hack.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I did not get that impression: she is critical of a few aspects, sure, but overall, she still seems to have enjoyed it. That reminds me of the late Roger Ebert and his review of the original Die Hard: he thought it was an excellent action film, but disliked how the authorities were portrayed as utterly clueless and incompetent.

Personally, I do think Her Story is generally well written, but I agree it can be interpreted as prejudiced against mental illness.