YMMV / The Letter

• Adorkable: Isabella is either an energetic young woman who has a tendency to go gaga over art or someone awkward yet incredibly nice.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is the ghost who commits murders in the game Lady Charlotte Ermengarde or Takako? Some people probably believe that the former is behind the brutal murders in the game due to her sadistic nature and the atrocities that she committed when she was alive, considering the fact that Charlotte gleefully tortured Takako by making her own men rape her and broke her spirit by murdering her cat and Edward while forcing Takako to watch. After Charlotte was Driven to Suicide by the ghost, she ended up fusing with Takako's spirit, as evidenced by the emotional mood swings from pleading for help to a sadistic laugh and the scene with Luke Wright in the gardens. While it could be Takako's vengeful side that makes her a vicious and sadistic ghost, the real evidence lies in Charlotte herself. Whether it is one or the other - or both - that commits the murders, we will never know until the creator confirms it was one of them.
    • What also makes this really interesting is whether Charlotte or Takako corrupts and encourages Luke to murder his own wife or he does this of his own will. We will never know the answer but the evidence could be directed towards the former due to the ghost whispering something to Luke despite the latter probably doing this of his own volition.
• Arc Fatigue: Rebecca's chapter is noticeably longer than the others due to it covering a very large number of the days in the timeline. While this is necessary to explain several moments involving her that are established in earlier chapters as well as set up a few crucial plot points), the length and pacing can still leave the reader feeling a bit drained at the end. It doesn't help that Rebecca is already one of the more polarizing characters in the story, as further explained below.
• Awesome Music: The Letter's opening theme song. Sang by Ama Lee herself.
• Base-Breaking Character: Luke and Rebecca are considered to be this by the fandom and here are the reasons:
  • Some people see Luke as a one-dimensional Jerkass, especially with his actions towards Zach, being a pompous rich man all the time and even having the potential to murder his own wife out of spite. However, there are some people in the fandom that find him somewhat enjoyable. For example, many people considered his voice actor Curtis Arnott's performance one of the best parts of his character and the Freudian Excuse in the form of his mother's death and, in the true ending, his regret after killing his wife, and especially his unborn children, are strong enough that some people ended up defending him.
  • Rebecca is also considered this due to her tendency to pick fights with everyone (but especially with Isabella) even after it's been established that the ghost is real and fighting with each other is the last thing anyone needs to be doing. Some of the fans found her motherly tendencies rather irritating and presumptive. However, some fans defend her due to her childhood relationship with Ashton which is considered pretty cute and her sad death scene in her own bad ending.
• Complete Monster: Lady Charlotte Ermengarde is the vicious daughter of the founders of Luxbourne City and its prior head, who hides behind a benevolent façade while secretly masterminding the misfortunes of the work. When her maid Takako discovers Charlotte's infidelity, she has Takako thrown in jail and raped by her men. Exposed to her fiancé Eduard, Charlotte orders both him and Takako's cat killed as well to torment her, before framing Takako and sentencing her to be burned at the stake. Returning after death as "The Ghost" fused with Takako, Charlotte leaves the latter unable to move on to the next life while haunting Luxbourne as the Anslem Butcher, Rose and Johannes being among her victims, and psychologically torments the protagonists, potentially killing them all and raping one.
• Jerkass Woobie: Luke might be a horrible person in the game, especially with his racist remarks towards Zach and the possibility of him killing his own wife. However, he did have a pretty sad life, which included being abandoned by his father and his mother dying early even though she tried her best to give love to him, and he shows regret after killing Hannah.
• Moe: Isabella, who's small, cheerful (mostly) and cute.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Luke might be a snobbish rich jerk with a shady past and personal problems in life. However, he crosses this if he kills his wife, Hannah. Even Luke considers himself beyond saving for it in the True Ending.
  • Lady Charlotte Ermengarde crossed this after she ordered her henchmen to torture and rape her maid, Takako, out of pettiness while watching with sadistic glee.
• Narm Charm: Luke's reaction regarding something or him being angry (e.g. when he saw the prison cell underneath his house or getting hit by Rebecca) is sometimes hard to take it seriously. This is due to Curtis Arnott's natural performance for voicing him and it helps a lot since he's one of the highlights to this character.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Any time the players encounter the ghost. It all goes downhill from there. Her appearance is also rather... unsettling. Her flesh is decaying and flayed to the point you can see her brain. Her toenails are gone and she drags her left foot when she walks. Also, the Slasher Smile and Evil Laugh that she has are chilling to the bone.
  • Luke's fate in the "Everybody Dies" Ending is nothing short of horrific. The ghost catches up to him while he's drunk and off his guard. She then does... something that is comparable to vivisection (among other things) that last goodness knows how long, then puts Luke's insides back together in the wrong order. Luke is left sobbing, begging for her to stop, then screaming for someone to save him until he gives one final scream. He's then trapped in the manor with her forever, and on certain nights, passersby can still hear him...
  • The "Bye, bitches!" ending. In order to get it, one must go for the true ending (where only Zachary, Rebecca, and Isabella make it to the final chapter with Luke), and have Luke betray them and flee at the last moment by choosing "This isn't how it's supposed to end". It's not shown what happens to them - there's only the Big Bad laughing, a scream from all of them, and a lot of blood splattering over the windows...
• The Scrappy: Kylie is this due to her unusually large head, her grating voice (which doesn't sound authentic), her Innocently Insensitive nature, and her overly cutesy personality.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Kylie gets a very dark one in the Golden Ending; if Everybody Lives, she gets her neck snapped by the ghost. Given that she's the only one to die in that ending, many players consider her death to be Worth It.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Marianne. While her character does have some potential and a great character design, her role in the plot basically didn't change the story at all for the true ending and to make matters worse, she is one of the characters that have to be killed off in order to gain it. Her character could have some decent potential in the story as foreshadowing of something good or something really ominous in the final chapter or the true ending. However, she ended up becoming a wasted opportunity and gets killed off in the true ending anyway. While mitigated in other endings, playing her in the true ending seems like wasting her potential for the real plot of The Letter.
• The Woobie:
  • Isabella used to be a sweet kid who tried to pursue her dreams in an Arts & Crafts school. However, as the time went by, her father ended up getting sick and thus Isabella was forced to abandon her dreams and decided to work overseas and thus ended up as a Real Estate worker in the Briar Reality Corporation so that she could make money to treat her father's illness. However, after selling the Ermengarde mansion, things went downhill for her. First, she ended up encountering the ghost that resides in the mansion and got stalked relentlessly by her and also most of her friends didn't even believe her and dismissed it as nonsensical. Second, her mentor, Rose Cooper, was brutally murdered which emotionally broke her and lastly, her father dies in the sixth chapter and she can't even save him. What makes it worse is the true ending where one of her friends, Ashton, dies and in a coma route when she ends up going insane after her friends are killed by the ghost. Even though this is kind of mitigated in some endings where she is alive, she really needs a hug.
  • Zachary is this due to his own Dark and Troubled Past, where his parents were murdered in a hate crime and because of this incident, he and his sister moved to England to live with their grandparents. To makes matters worse, due to him being a black man, he was bullied at school. But despite all this, he decided to make a documentary video about his own past experiences. However, his dream was shattered after his film got a huge negative reception from the critics in spite of years of hard work and thus Zach doesn't even try to make another movie anymore. Made even worse in one of his bad endings, where he ends up getting caught and framed by Luke Wright due to him finding Hannah's corpse in the nursery. And if that wasn't bad enough, he gets murdered in his prison cell in the very same ending. Fortunately, he is one of the characters that survive in the true ending. However, it's not that hard to sympathize and feel sad with this guy especially with the hardships he has been through.
  • Marianne is this since she was abandoned by her biological parents in the darkest alleys of Ireland. Fortunately, she ended up getting adopted by a peddler and then got sent to a Catholic school. However, she was lonely in this school until she met Lorraine. She may have ended up neglecting her due to Marianne needing to focus on her studies, however, after hearing her best friend committed suicide, she regretted abandoning her and her guilt is swallowing her to this day. Not only that, it gets worse when the ghost starts taunting her about her past and then she gets murdered as a requirement for gaining the true ending or in one of the bad endings.
  • Perhaps the saddest of them all is Takako. The maid who served as Lady Charlotte Ermengarde's maid in 17th Century. Initially got rescued by Charlotte from the slavery ring, Takako's life was originally good but things went downhill for her after she caught her master cheating with her lover, Eduard Ermengarde's, cousin. And because of this incident, Charlotte orders her men to capture Takako and torture her by rape while Charlotte watch it with a sadistic smile on her face. Fortunately, Edward discovered Charlotte's secret and then breaks up with her. However, this didn't ended there since after this debacle, Takako's spirit continues to be broken as Charlotte murders her cat and Edward while forcing Takako to watch. To make matters worse, Takako ended up getting framed by Charlotte and then getting burned in the stakes as the final nail in the coffin. This ended up making Takako an undead spirit that desires for revenge. However, after she got her revenge, Charlotte's spirit ended up fused with her and torments her in eternity.