#The Coffin System
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thecoffinsys · 5 days ago
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Slay the Princess is the perfect demonstration of trauma, dissociation, and systemhood.
I NEED MORE PEOPLE TO TALK ABOUT THIS. And it's NOT just for the reasons you may think. Yes, it is due to the multitude of voices, but that isn't all there is to systemhood. Slay the Princess dives into almost every fundamental stage of grief, trauma, stress, and body sensations regarding traumatic events that we as a collective have ever experienced. Stay with me.
SYSTEMHOOD
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Not only does Slay the Princess display systemhood through the multitude of voices, inability to come to a conclusion on outerbody decisions, and having different methods of how to survive specific situations— it also displays systemhood through loss of time, depersonalization, loss of identity and sense of self, alters having abilities over the body that others do not, looping the same trauma over and over again, and rapidly splitting due to traumatic experiences — even down to not being believed by family members when you tell them something horrible happened to you.
The entire idea of jumping from one alternative world to the next after dying or making the incorrect choice perfectly displays a repetition of the same traumatic memory over and over again, the mind trying to logistically think of what could have been done differently as a means of coping with what really happened. When you fail to save the world in one reality, your mind restarts the entire scenario again, trying to find a better option to the mistake you've already made.
The Stranger rout perfect displays depersonalization, dissociation, loss of self and identity, and confusion regarding time. The second you step down a staircase, you completely and utterly forget yourself in the mundane action. Forgetting who you are, where you are, what your purpose truly is - and sinking deep within your own mind, until suddenly you're right where you are meant to be and have no memory of how you got there. It's so perfect in how it shows the confusion and distress.
This game is about becoming. whole. Gaining. A sense. Of self. And purpose. Gaining more perspectives, more understandings of what it means to be a person. (Oh my god I'm screaming)
In The Nightmare, the voice of the Paranoid displays perfectly symptoms of not only paranoia regarding trauma, but symptoms of OCD due to trauma. He has an ability that no other alter has, which is to keep their organs running by participating in his own compulsion. Which really displays how some alters have abilities that other do not, because to be a system, you must be fragmented. Several shards of glass attempting, to the best of their ability, to be a functional mirror- but never having the exact strength. And different shards will hold different capabilities than those who are smaller, weaker, and carry smaller and/or more specific burdens. Paranoid is a very big shard, I think.
Following that — mirrors are a huge motif of the game. Not only do you continuously see them in every rout, but you end each rout by finally looking at yourself and seeing you for you. And the more perspectives you gain, the less "you" you truly feel. You become tired, withered. But it is all in the efforts to "become whole". To make this being of perception finally understand what it means to be more than just broken worlds creating branching understandings.
In A Moment of Clarity, dozens of voices begin to cloud our understanding due to the very traumatic thing we experienced in the last world. A rapid split because of trauma! We become more broken; "losing ourselves". Now there are even more conflicting thoughts, feelings, and opinions regarding how we should go about surviving- and it displays our further descent from our sense of self. Which is ironic given the name of the ending!
And finally (but most definitely not finally, I could keep going on and on but no one would want to read all of that), The Narrator never believing you when you tell him you've been here before, have experienced horrors that he could never imagine, and have been through countless nightmares. But not only does he not believe you, he will also ridicule your idea, and go on to say "you failed because you didn't listen to me" or "you damned another world because of what you did". Puts the blame on us, once again. It's the same thing a lot of systems do experience in the real world. You try to reach out, you try to explain to someone you trust that something horrible happened to you, but you're met with disbelief and shamed for your own trauma. Made to feel like the guilty one when you are in fact the victim- the survivor. That one stood out to me very personally.
. . .
I really want to go on but this is already a billion paragraphs and I worry no one will even get this far. But this game means a lot to us as a system and as someone who experiences things very similar to what is displayed in the game on a daily basis. Slay the Princess might be one of our all time favorite games as of right now, especially considering the guy who traumatized us for 200 episodes straight is the main guy voicing the entire thing- that also helps with sentiment-
Uhhhh thank you for reading if you made it this far :]
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bishy437 · 1 year ago
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congratulations to moshang for being the most popular pairing of my mxtx charms! 💙 🧡
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And congratulations to Coffin!Hualian for being the overall most popular item LOL ❤️🤍
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spiritsblade · 2 months ago
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i am tired of "andrew is a good boy" congratulations!! you've fallen for his mask!!!! andrew is not just "one of ashley's victims" they are both victims of extreme childhood neglect (and the dreary world tcoaal is set in). andrew was forced into being a parental figure for ashley but that doesn't mean he's some soft boy heart of gold trying his best victim of every situation being dragged into sin by his evil witch of a sister........ they're both twisted, but ashley is more overt whilst andrew tries to keep a semblance of normalcy (and ends up smushing down all his emotions in the process (expected of somebody who was forced to parent their sibling, tbh)).
i think the latest preview (voicemails) is a pretty good example of how uncaring/cruel he can be. he listens to the violent messages julia has been recieving and barely acknowledges them, brushing them off even when julia accuses ashley. it's only when julia points out their relationship (threatening his "normal and sane person" mask) that he snaps...
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then quickly backpedals when he realizes he fucked up (and got caught giving a shit)...
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and offers julia the bare minimum in comfort, never even addressing her original worries and even projecting his feelings towards ashley onto her. okay!
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coffincestuous · 10 months ago
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made some teeny tiny gifs out of coffin balloons!!
free to use, no credit needed, etc etc
+ bonus Evil Skull
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plural-this-user-is · 24 days ago
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"This Fictive identifies heavily with source despite the problems. It's not your place to judge." - 🐙🟰
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Requested by Headmates.
Feel free to use! Credit is not necessary, but always appreciated!
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joyce-stick · 9 months ago
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An Essay About Slash Review of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, A Video Game Which is Very Good
(and also: has prompted many quite wrong rather bad takes)
An essay by Audrey of the joystick system
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The very bad discourse and drama around The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has served to obscure the simple fact that it is quite a very good video game and this video essay is here to tell you about that.
Video version:
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Previous video essay: Lost Judgment's Lost Plot
If you enjoy this essay, please consider following us here or on any other platforms, and/or donating to support future works via our Patreon or Ko-fi.
Patreon • Ko-fi • YouTube • Twitter • Cohost • Tumblr • Bluesky
Transcript:
Hi everyone. So. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is really, really fucking good.
If you’ve heard of this game, you’ve probably heard of it in the context of memes, screenshots divorced from context, and/or capricious moral outrage. If you’ve not heard of this game, well, you’re hearing of it now! And good thing, too, because much of the coverage and discussion around this game that already exists has… been, let’s just say, not particularly earnest. I hope to remedy that at least somewhat with this video.
If you’ve heard about this game because of discourse, and come here expecting drama and hot takes, then, this may not be your video. Or your YouTube channel, even. Or maybe it is, if you’d like the delicious comments section. If you’re that sort of clicker, though— welcome! I’m Audrey of the joystick system, and this is the place where I (and my headmates) talk honestly about things we care about, and I hope you’ll hear me out a little and maybe consider staying and improving our viewer retention. Thanks, if you do.
So, to writ: My purpose today is to gush. I will be gushing here. For most of it. And as for what I will be gushing about, some of it will be gushing BLOOD, GUTS, AND DELICIOUS DEATH. I am entirely serious. The subject of today’s presentation contains mature content, including copious foul language and themes slash depictions of death, cannibalism, cultism, demon summoning rituals, parricide, dystopian social decay, and heterosexuality. Oh, and also a little bit of incest as a treat, I guess, but the incest is heterosexual, and that’s worse.
[long pause]
Excellent. You’re still here. So. This morbidly beautiful video game may not be for everyone, but that’s good, because it is instead for exactly me! A short plot synopsis of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley might go as follows:
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if you're not watching the video listen to this for extra effect
Siblings Andrew and Ashley Graves are forcibly quarantined inside their apartment by the local authorities, with no food and even less hope for rescue. Their parents have abandoned them. Absolutely no one is coming to save them. In order to survive and escape this awful situation, they butcher and consume the fresh flesh of some guy who got himself soul vored by a demon that he summoned without a plan.
This conspicuously carnivorous crime, and their effort to cover their tracks, puts them in a fair bit of a deeper shithole than they are already in. So naturally they keep digging themselves deeper by committing even more crimes, AND in the process, also dig themselves deeper into their toxic codependent sibling relationship, which is going just great, thank you. Sure, Andrew almost killed his sister, but he didn’t, and that’s what matters! And she still loves him, so it’s all good!
This is of course a joke.
First thing I absolutely love about this game is the writing. It’s witty, intelligent, uncompromising, and just generally delicious. It holds nothing back in depicting the toxicity of the two leads and their relationship, resulting in two compelling characters whose flaws and few virtues perfectly complement slash exacerbate one another, resulting in a beautiful train wreck of a relationship dynamic that proves equal parts disturbing, mesmerizing, and hilarious.
The charming darkly comedic bite of the writing style also lends a lot of great character to the setting. This sardonically presented dystopian world is both richly detailed and fleetingly elaborated on, a commendable balance to have achieved, in my opinion. The first chapter of this game is hilarious not just because of the banter between Ashley and Andrew (which is terrific), but because it presents such a sharp satire of current year bullshit.
As just an example, I give you, one of my favorite jokes in the game:
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I probably don’t need to explain the thing this is making fun of to you, but I will anyway.
The situation presented in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s first episode is very easily readable as an allegory for how disasters that are a direct result of ongoing 2020s late capitalist decay continuously fuck people over. In particular, this scenario feels like a direct commentary on both the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Flint, Michigan water crisis. The former obviously has affected way more people but what both have in common is that they are crises created and exacerbated by malfeasance and/or negligence committed in the name of for-profit interests, and that the “response,” to them, such as there was one, has amounted to dehumanizing and marginalizing the victims while minimizing the issue, forcing the victims out of society’s wider view, and being reticent to punish the individuals responsible. 
Just as the authorities responded to the water crisis and the worst excesses of the pandemic in real life, the authorities in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley impose half-measures designed to further restrict the freedom of the dirty undesirables who bear the worst damages, while merely shielding the upper echelons of society from the disaster rather than actually addressing or attempting to solve the issue. Most of you who lived through 2020 in the United States probably have experienced the frustration of being on the receiving end of this kind of policy.
During the pandemic, the quarantine was supposed to protect us, but for a lot of people it ended up doing quite the opposite. A lot of folks didn’t have any savings, and couldn’t get any since the employment market wasn’t exactly on fire, and our representatives had to be bothered way too much just to put out a pithy economic stimulus just to save face. Not to say that this all has stopped, exactly, as all that’s changed now is that we’re just, living with this situation, but.
It wasn’t literally a cop outside everyone’s door preventing them from going outside to not die, but for a lot of people, it might as well have been that! Never mind those who, y’know, had no inside to retreat to. Or were imprisoned during the pandemic and left even more unprotected! Or thrown out by their landlords! And so on. And, y’know, the big chain grocery stores keep throwing out all the perfectly good unsold food, so they’re already sending this message in all but, well… these exact words.
So, that’s why I think this joke lands. It’s exaggerated, but familiarly rooted, and that’s just good satire! It’s a joke which feels lifted right out of Invader Zim, which, I would put The Coffin of Andy and Leyley right about on the level of as far as both the tone it’s going for and the quality of its execution. Which of course, brings us to the extremes that these circumstances push its characters, and its plot, to.
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Okay, so, also like Invader Zim, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is hardly a polemic, nor is it a morality tale. Sure, there’s social commentary in it, but that’s just a nice side thing. It’s not a story about the otherwise innocent victims of an unjust society who are pushed to do terrible things by circumstances outside their control— it is, rather a story of terrible people, who, both because of their character failings, and the desperate situations they find themselves in, find themselves doing even worse things.
Andrew and Ashley commit the cannibalism the first time in large part because they kind of have to do it. No food! Cop outside their door actively deterring them from getting food! Out of options! So they do it. They could probably be excused, if only they were given a fair trial. Which they realize they’re not going to get. So yeah. It’s understandable that they do it. And that they kill this one cop, who very much has it coming.
But they do not have to keep doing it! And gosh grief, do they keep fucking doing it— so many its. They really do not stop digging that hole that they are in. Even the first time that they do the cannibalism, when they kind of really have to do the cannibalism, Ashley is just a little bit more excited about doing the cannibalism than she probably should be.
I love this kind of delicious edgy dark humor. I love stories that go for it, imagine the worst possible people they can, and also try to make that funny. I love this about Invader Zim, that it presents a character who is unquestionably a monster, but also has relatable human desires like wanting to fit in and being concerned about looking weird or abnormal, but has those feelings for very different reasons and acts on them by committing some very despicable crimes. It really gets at a deep-seated darkness that I and a lot of other fucked up traumatized queer people who were little kids when this show aired have, the catharsis of visualizing some of our worst intrusive thoughts while evoking the emotions that pushed us to imagine this kind of fucked up shit.
I’ve loved this kind of thing since we saw Heathers when we were 14. Heathers is an absolutely incredible film that you should check out, by the way, and about which we failed to properly or interestingly articulate our thoughts a few years back. Its lead protagonists, Jason “J.D.” Dean and Veronica Sawyer, are similarly relatable characters who have familiar feeling flaws and emotionally resonant trauma hangups, and also function as very toxic enablers of each other’s worst traits, leading them to work through those feelings by, y’know, murdering their classmates!
Heathers made us realize just how exactly mentally ill of a 14 year old we really were when we were 14, and I love it for that. So. So fucking much.
That was ten years and change ago.
We are still a mentally ill 24 year old.
And Andrew and Ashley Graves, if I had to sum them up, are basically J.D. and Veronica, if they were in their twenties, siblings, and also way, way, way worse.
And I love them.
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So, obviously. Ashley and Andrew are hilarious. At least, I find them to be such. They’re terrible, and awful, and amazing, and Ashley is such a girlboss. She is one of the most God Forbid Women Do Anything characters ever.
Anyway! I’ve talked about the cannibalism, and the dystopia, and the characters, and why all of that’s good. I’ve also forgotten to talk about the part where they evade an assassin, and, also a host of other things.
I love that this game has so many fun little optional interactions with NPCs, objects, and items, that you can totally miss. I love how the narration hints at the solutions to puzzles by snarkily referring to things you can interact with as what their purpose is to the characters rather than what they are, this quip about the mop that you clean up a murder scene with, the interactions that Andrew has with these cultists who suck at demon summoning, the excellent in-game art and the brilliant visual duality of Andrew and Ashley’s character designs, this line where Andrew is upset that life is so hard for them as fugitives from the law because they can only find this one shitty motel that takes cash and doesn’t ask them for their ID, and also the music, which is royalty free music made by people unassociated with the developer but is nonetheless perfectly suited for the game.
So much about this game is stuff I find so completely brilliant, and I have so little to criticize, that I think we’d probably be here all day if I kept going. So.
Let’s spend a thousand ish more words talking about the parents.
When The Coffin of Andy and Leyley begins, the protagonists’ parents are absent. You can optionally find two early references to them early on— one, if you interact with the bed in their bedroom, and encounter the shocking revelation that “Your parents have FUCKED on this bed.”
The second, is if you interact with the phone, the game dutifully informs you that,
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You’re probably less than five minutes into the game at this point, barely begun solving the first puzzle, which prompted you to “find nutrients to not die.” And of course, this says about all you need to know. These children have been abandoned. But if it needed to be any clearer, the game later delivers unto you a flashback to prior in the story, when Ashley desperately calls Mrs. Graves for help after they leave and go move to a hotel, and later a new house, to which the kids are of course not invited. And this specific scene, specific line, here, fucking hit me:
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“And I don’t want to hear these lies about starving anymore.”
Emphasis mine.
Even as Ashley and Andrew escalate the severity of their crimes which gradually come to have less and less to do with their need to survive as the story goes on, I find it very hard to not be on their side at least a little bit, and this is easily the biggest reason why.
I have had this phone call.
Not this exact specific phone call, of course. Obviously, I’ve never been locked up in an apartment with an armed patrol outside my door whose job it was to gaslight me while ensuring that I starved to death. Obviously, my mom has never said those exact words.
But gosh grief and fuck me if it’s never felt like she has. She may as well have fucking told me that, with all the things she told me I was lying about. And who fucking knows, maybe she did say those exact words to us, and we repressed them. I don’t know. I am very not done working through all the bullshit that she gaslit us over.
*sighs, preparing to vent*
I have called our mother and had to beg her to pay for food. I have called her and had to beg to pay for our rent, while our parents were supposed to be supporting us studying abroad. I have called her and begged her to forgive me for daring to use just a few of the thirty dollars our parents used to send us to live with every month back then, to buy a drink or a movie ticket or something. I have had to concede to our parents financially holding us hostage, had to go the last week of the month on a shoestring diet while waiting for them to graciously deposit another thirty dollars into our bank account... so that we could continue eating. I used to relish February, the shortest month, for being the one part of the year in which I had to stretch out that thirty dollars the least. And once, I pleaded with our mother to pay for us to move to another apartment when the landlord suddenly kicked us out of the current one, abruptly and obligatorily switching gears from arguing with her to kissing her ass through our gritted teeth, under threat of our parents cutting off their financial support of us completely, abandoning us in a foreign country where we had no money, no job, and barely spoke the language.
And one day, after I stopped dancing to their tune, they just stopped listening, stopped even pretending to want to help. After nineteen years of escalating emotional and physical abuse and neglect, they abandoned us. And one day, after I spent months working 10 hour days every week Ubering food around for tips, sending my resume, filling applications, making calls, stopping into places to ask for work, all to no avail, for months, and desperately plugging the Patreon page of this very YouTube channel praying that some generous soul with money to burn would solve all our problems. All of this still wasn’t enough, and wasn’t going anywhere, and I’d run out of money and was short on rent on the one sublet room we could get that cost exactly three hundred dollars…
And I called her, and I asked her for help. I really didn’t want to. I wanted to hear nothing of her again. And she said to stop lying. To stop bullshitting her that I couldn’t get enough money, or find a job.
Not too long after, I swore off all contact with her, and eventually also with our father. And every time I have spoken to either of them since, I have made no secret of how I feel. Because if I get nothing out of kissing their ass, why fucking pretend.
My family is not poor. They own their house. They own, and leased out, a second house. Their house is full of fancy IKEA furniture and various other niceties, they’ve renovated the place at least twice, they live in a nice, safe neighborhood, they have an attic and a basement, they at one point paid for multiple plane tickets for us per year while still refusing to let us eat on any more than thirty five dollars, an extra five dollars we also had to beg them for. Our dad has a lucrative tech job. All of this, and they insisted, while refusing to answer questions about their finances in any detail, that they couldn’t afford to help us go to where we wanted to go for college, that they had no place for us in their house, that they couldn’t afford three hundred dollars of rent to help us have a roof over our head for one more month.
So when I read this delightful jaunt of a chapter of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, where Andrew and Ashley break into their parents’ new huge house to steal all their shit, and Ashley says “This is some rich people stuff!” about their fireplace,
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And when their mom says, “there’s no room to keep housing you here indefinitely,” and the internal monologue says, “even though it’s way bigger than the old house.” It’s both an entertaining mockery of the attitude of the typical American family, how first you’re your parents’ property for eighteen years and then you’re turned out on your own to face the world without their support, and how the fuck are you supposed to live like that, to figure out how to live your life in the face of that, to meaningfully be a fulfilled person in that situation, especially in a time, when, no, mom, I can’t pay a college tuition on a waitress salary like you did back in the fucking nineties, you c--t,
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Even though they have an extra bed in their basement and a perfectly good couch and plenty of space for another bed besides, and a vegetable garden, and a kitchen, and all these other middle-class petty bougie niceties, the Graves mom says, “sorry, we can’t keep helping you,” and. And. I read all this, and I think,
“I understand why Ashley wants to fucking flay these people. I understand why she wants to K1!L them.”
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I cannot tell you how much catharsis the ending of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley episode 2 gave me. I cannot convey the weight of my gratitude that someone out there validated my anger and my specific fucked up power fantasy with their art. I didn’t even ask them to. I probably would’ve eventually done it on my own. But I’m so glad that someone did it for me.
If I ever hypothetically meet Nemlei, somehow, and have some cash, I will happily buy them a drink. Hopefully, by paying this excellent game’s ten dollar cover price, I already have!
I know you’re not watching this, but on the off chance this reaches your ears, I just wanna say thanks. For giving me a safe, legal, regret-free, socially acceptable, non-violent outlet for the rage I feel towards my parents.
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Well.
Mostly socially acceptable.
Meow.
This game is not finished, as you may have noticed if you’ve gone to check it out on Steam. It ends on an ambiguous and open note, but in my opinion, a perfectly satisfying one. Nemlei could disappear absolutely, never release the proper ending of this game, and never make another game again, and I would not be mad. I've already got more than my money’s worth and then some. So. Yeah. I’m happy. Count me as happy!
I kinda wanna start talking a bit more about the branches of the second episode. I wanna say how it’s a brilliant idea to have two separate story arcs for the two variations of this episode’s ending, and how I hope that that’s executed on as beautifully as the rest of the game already is. I wanna talk about the ways in which Andrew and Ashley’s mom is ambiguously humanized despite being so obviously terrible. I wanna talk about the dialogue Andrew does when his parents offer him a chance to make amends, and he has doubts, if you choose to let him have them, and how I would probably also have doubts in his position, and not be able to follow through without my lovely evil cannibal sister pushing me towards… the thing. I wanna talk about this line, where Ashley talks about why she likes eating people, and how it’s so equal parts poetic and macabre and edgy bullshit and that that’s such a beautifully balanced cocktail of emotion to nail and Nemlei totally fucking nails it
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I WANT TO GUSH FOREVER. ABOUT THIS GAME. AND I WANT NO ONE TO STOP ME.
Alas, I will stop myself.
And move on to the elephant in the room!
THE FUCKING.
Mom: “But that-.... That doesn’t make any sense.” Mom: “Why would you not-......” Mom: “Ah, I get it.” Andrew: “..........??” Mom: “You fuck her.” Andrew: “Wha— HUUUUH?!?!!?” Mom: “Oh that is disgusting! Andrew, she’s your sister for god’s sake!” Andrew: “I haven’t done anything!? What the hell, mom!?” Mom: “Then what does she give you that makes it worth all this?” Andrew: “W-well that’s none of your business, is it??” Mom: “I knew something was off… How did I fuck up so bad? I’m the worst mother ever..!” Andrew: “No! I mean yes you are, but I have never—!” Ashley: “I’m baaaa-ack!!!” Andrew: “Now of all times!?” Ashley: “I got the money! Did you miss me, handsome?? Did you? Did you??” Mom: “...........................” Andrew: “(I WANT TO DIE!!!!!!)”
Okay. So. I said I didn’t want to talk about this. But I’m talking about this game. I can’t not talk about it.
Yep, it’s hot takes and drama time!
So, not too long ago, Nemlei deleted their Twitter, their Itch.io, their everything, their entire online presence. The Steam page for The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, which used to list Nemlei as the developer and publisher, now lists “Kit9 Studio.” It is the only game to their name on the platform. A community forum post from said entity known as Kit9 announces that “the developer” (no name given) “has decided to permanently and completely terminate their activities online from here on.”
I don’t know exactly what happened, or why they did this. There’s a lot of people around who sure think they know. But in brief, as neutrally as possible: Nemlei, or someone close to them, was doxxed, or at least sought out as a doxxing target, by one or multiple users of an online forum. Their supposed crime? Making a video game “for degenerates.”
I don’t know who did the doxxing. I don’t know what their motive was, and for my own sanity, I am not going to look. I am choosing not to care. The most important and most obvious fact at hand here is that Nemlei’s creation has been met with controversy amongst social media users, and about one or two hack video game outrage journalists, who seem to have nothing better to do or say. And it seems clear that the doxxing wouldn’t have happened had they not been met with this negative attention. And all because of this.
Not the cannibalism, not the parricide, not the demon sacrifices. No, um, the one implied sex scene.
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And it doesn’t even actually happen! It’s just a premonition of a possible future event that Ashley and Andrew supernaturally receive. It’s not particularly graphic, it doesn’t yet go anywhere, and it’s a short scene on an optional route that the game actively forewarns you about. You have to be trying to see it on purpose.
Well, that’s all true. It is indeed a minor and avoidable scene, and the discourse about it has absolutely poisoned the well when it comes to the conversation about the game. But also, “uhh, it’s optional and not a big thing,” is inadequate as a defense. This is still content in the game that Nemlei actively chose to put in the game, and even discounting this, the themes of incest are all over the game. Ashley speaks flirtatiously to Andrew at basically every turn. Even if you avoid this specific scene, the incest themes are not something you’re going to just not notice, if you’re paying attention to the text.
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All that being said, it’s not like this content comes as a surprise. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s Steam store page accurately represents the product! A brother and sister. Codependency and cannibalism. It’s not as if you don’t know what you’re paying for and choosing to play. You came here for this! Most of the people playing this are here for this! You have to figure that if they are fine with killing and eating people, they’re probably fine with fucking each other, or, eventually possibly eventually going to be, at least.
So you’d think, except that many people seem to unironically believe that the cannibalism is more moral than the incest.
Oh, god, I’m doing this right now, aren’t I.
So, I get it. While I’m pretty skeptical of the notion that cannibalism is not as bad as incest, I do realize that incest is, at the very least, the more taboo of these things, and that a lot of people are more uncomfortable with it than they are with the cannibalism and the murder. To quote the one positive and in-depth review available in any media outlet at the time of this writing, from Destructoid:
“This aspect is undoubtedly the most controversial element about The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, and I understand why. While cannibalism is a taboo subject, it’s present in mainstream games like Fallout as an option for players. Having incestuous themes crosses over into Drakengard territory, and even then, no option allows Caim to reciprocate Furiae’s feelings for him.”
"The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is horrifying and I can’t get enough of it" Andrea Gonzalez, Destructoid, November 12 2023
So, yeah, I. y’know. Get it. I know why. However.
I can point to a lot of things that Andrew and Ashley do wrong in this game. They are, as per the game’s premise, very not okay, not as individuals, and not together. Andrew is way too attached to Ashley, and Ashley is generally an awful person who is way too attached herself, and also, all too quick on the draw to take advantage of Andrew’s attachment to her to make him do what she wants. This is not a healthy relationship. And we’re here for it! It’s compelling!
But, I think it’s worth asking why it’s such a toxic dynamic. Is it because they’re siblings? Well, not really. It’s a dynamic that’s specifically possible with them being siblings, but it’s not because of their sibling connection.
The actual reason why Andrew and Ashley’s relationship turns abusive isn’t because their relationship is abusive by necessity or nature, but because Ashley abuses their relationship. And she is doing this for basically the whole game. Like, it is abusive the whole time. It doesn’t become abusive when their relationship takes its romantic turn. Does it become more abusive? I mean. Maybe. Maybe the romance exacerbates the abuse. I dunno, we’ll have to wait and see what the next episode says.
So, then, why is the notion of them possibly in the future having sex the elephant in the room here, when before that, they do so many objectively worse things that cause much more harm both to themselves and others? Is that really so much more of a bigger deal than the murder and the people eating?
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Or. To phrase it Ashley’s way. You played a game about mutilating and eating your parents’ corpses, and getting laid is what you’re freaking out about?
Is the incest really that much more extreme, or are you just more disgusted with it?
And even if you are more disgusted with it. Even if we grant that it is, actually, somehow, more harmful for siblings to have sex with each other, than to do murder and cannibalism. Is this the hill you’re dying on? What you’ve decided is of such utmost importance and injustice that you decide to go harass some random indie dev who just wants to make a silly video game about a couple of siblings eating people?
Does it truly make sense to let your kneejerk moral disgust guide you to the conclusion that the creator of this game deserves to be persecuted for merely writing about and drawing a thing you don’t like?
Well, to answer that, we have to get into the question of whether or not “immoral fiction” is harmful, or “normalizing” things that are wrong. Does fictionally depicting an immoral action actually cause harm?
I could dance around in circles for a little while about the edge cases, and certain writers who are publishing bad or hateful material in bad faith, or fascist propaganda, which is of course always bad, or whatever other example I could use to qualify my point or list out an exception to appease the people who disagree with me, but, I’ll just cut right to the chase, and tell you the answer
No!
The answer is NO!
The thing about taboos is that they don’t make us more safe. They don’t protect us from bad things. All they do is protect people’s comfort by silencing people they don’t want to understand, and enable bad actors by keeping their victims in the dark, and denying them the ability to talk about it.
The only thing we end up doing by censoring stories about these uncomfortable topics, and making it socially unacceptable to talk about them, is make it harder to know. We deny ourselves knowledge. We deny ourselves a conversation about these subjects, we deny ourselves the ability to meaningfully understand them. We deny ourselves power, what little we have, as readers, to understand, and to critique, to reason.
There’s a tumblr post I really like. Well, a number of them, I really like, on this topic, but I’m picking this one, because it’s got a quote I really like. It talks about Lolita. That Lolita. And, now, I’ve never read Lolita, at least not yet. Lolita is a novel about child sexual abuse, told from the perspective of an abuser. It’s an uncomfortable book with an uncomfortable topic, and it’s not wrong to be uncomfortable with it. The author of this post acknowledges that.
But they talk about it. They talk about how it shines a light on its subject matter. The why and the how of abusers and their actions. The ways in which their victims suffer. How it shows all of this in a way that it only could from the perspective it takes. And, I’m just going to quote them. I can’t do anything else. They said it better than I could, right now.
“Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it’s nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality.” - tumblr user legsdemandias
The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has been ridiculed, joked about, hot taked on, made a target, drama-ed over, and so on, but it’s hardly been criticized. No one I’ve seen admitting to not liking it talks critically about why it’s disgusting to them, or tries to understand why it exists, or what it’s for. And this is most people’s reaction to most media that deals seriously with anything taboo. “I don’t get it. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t exist. Get it away from me.”
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I’m annoyed that the medium, the art form, of video games, is valued so little by so many that this is the wide reaction when something like this gets popular. That the mainstream games journalism media ridicules it, and the creator gets threatened by an internet mob, and it falls on the weirdos and the freaks and the no-name YouTube uwu girls, to give it the serious consideration and recognition it deserves.
To summarize, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is, in my opinion, a very good video game, and on its behalf, I am mad at video games.
Now, go on. You made it through this video. I told you the plot! You can probably stomach the plot! So go, go. Shoo. Go buy Nemlei a drink. If you want to.
Or, buy us, the joystick system, a drink! You can do that at patreon dot com slash joycestick, or, ko-fi dot com slash joycestick. You can buy us drinks in both of those places.
I’ve been Audrey. Thank you for listening.
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telephone-blights · 7 months ago
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★ NARCPLEX ; 🦇
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☆  … NARC / NPD + PLEX ?!
A plurplex (link) term that means the system’s narcissistic personality disorder affects the entire system. It doesn’t have to affect everyone the same, it just has to affect everyone. A narcplex system may have headmates that fill different narcissistic stereotypes (the arrogant, the grandiose, the secretary, etc.), headmates with differing amounts of empathy, some headmates that are generally more open to criticism than others or any other kind of arrangement. A narcplex system may also just be narcplex by default of having the disorder without it majorly affecting anyone.
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©️ CREDIT @npdflag (flags) @isobug (icon) 🗯️ TAGGING @plurplex-archive-dot-net @plurchive ⚠️ WARNING while our terms have no DNI and anyone can use them, this is still to an extent our personal blog. you are free to do and use this term however you want: like it, reblog it, kiss it. however other parts of our blog do not follow this rule and we are block-happy.
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friedwizardwhispers · 1 year ago
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Mxtx: write a few vague sentences about an event happening to a character without going into details because the implications are horrifying enough.
Fanfic writers:
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momentsofamber · 9 months ago
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If the Graves siblings ever got a Nintendo Switch, Ashley would insist on getting these so they can play 2P games and each have their own designated controller.
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And then whenever one of them plays 1P they'd still be thinking about the other the entire time, whether or not they're watching them play. 💗
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burialbunnys · 24 days ago
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another thing i wanted to mention about having to wait for ep 4 to be finished before getting 3a is that this isn’t the first time we’ve had community voting to decide if something is released separately…
i mean if we hadn’t voted for episode 2 to be released on its own we’d still only have one episode, and i feel that many of us (if not most of us) wouldn’t even be in the fandom rn…idk just makes me think 🥲
regardless of a cliffhanger, i do really wish us as a community/fandom had decided on releasing 3a early (then we’d have one episode a year ideally)
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thecoffinsys · 10 days ago
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A Letter To All Systems
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After having the biggest meltdown over our body and the deep, deep sorrow that fell over me when I realized that we will never truly feel like ourselves— that we will always be a truth scratching and pleading at the wall of the mask glued to our faces— I had the urge to come tell all of you out there, every single collective swimming within this indefinite sea of anguish and burden, that you will always be loved by someone on this planet. Even if the grand majority of the universe forever perceives you as the porcelain exterior that you're forced to put on, the true you buried beneath all the broken clay will be truly and deeply adored by someone.
Even if people cannot see you and the body you hold within, I see you. I care for you. I love you and I hold your tears within my hand like an offering to the Gods. You are adored. Nothing could convince me of your rottenness, your decay, your worthlessness. No matter how many layers of porcelain you hide behind, I sit with you upon this lifeboat, and we float together.
I love you. And I am so proud of you. I am proud of us. We have been an optical illusion to every mirror, and every naked eye for all this time, yet we still push forward. There is nothing more beautiful and more inspiring than your perseverance.
We are beside you. 💙
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neversetyoufree · 2 years ago
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Lord I cannot believe it took me this long to realize this, but. Vnc's refrain of Noé trying to grab Vanitas's hand is a metaphor.
This whole time I've been reading the constant references to "Noé grabs Vanitas and saves him from falling, but one day he'll fail" as very literal foreshadowing for a day when Vanitas is going to fall and get hurt (or die?) and Noé will fail to catch him. And I still think there's a good chance that's true! However, it's also really obvious symbolism for the idea of salvation in general.
I've beaten this drum to death, but Vanitas is more or less the ultimate example of a character doomed by the narrative. He is going to die; the entire story is the buildup to his death. And one of the main conflicts is that Noé wants desperately to save him (and wants it more and more as they grow closer), but by nature of the story, we know he can't.
At least by Noé's definition of salvation, Vanitas is unsaveable. His death and suffering cannot be prevented, and despite Noé's best efforts, he is going to die by Noé's hand.
Enter the falling metaphor.
The absolute certainty of Vanitas's death works like the force of gravity. He is constantly being pulled down and down toward his doom like an endless free fall. But then Noé steps in and tries to save him, and in little ways he even succeeds! In all the little less important ways, he grabs Vanitas's hand time after time.
When Vanitas goes toppling off the ledge in Gévaudan, Noé catches him and shortens his fall. When Vanitas sinks into despair in Moreau's lab, Noé snaps him out of it. And when Vanitas gets lost in his own trauma and self-hypnosis at the amusement park, Noé brings him back to reality. For all of the little free falls, both literal and metaphorical, Noé is there for Vanitas before he hits the ground. The beating heart of their relationship is Noé's constant attempts to catch him.
However, Noé is haunted by the fear that he is going to fail someday. When Faustina reverts back to Naenia and dissipates in Gévaudan, he's shown a vision of Charlatan(?) telling him his hand cannot reach Vanitas. Naenia preys on people's worst fears and weaknesses, and this is one of Noé's. He fears that his hand will not reach the one he's grasping towards, and he will fail to save those that matter to him. The very broad line "you persist in reaching out for them" in the middle of Noé trying to literally catch someone more or less tells us outright that the falling and catching is a metaphor for salvation.
And when he speaks from the future, Noé confirms that this exact fear has come true. Noé in his narration is haunted by the regrets of "that day when I didn't grab your hand." His grand attempt at Vanitas's salvation has ultimately failed, and he didn't catch him when it mattered most.
The night that he first meets Vanitas, Noé throws himself out of an airship in the attempt to catch and save him. And from that point onward, he tries to catch him over and over again. Their relationship is one long straining outstretched hand as Noé attempts to pull Vanitas from his endless plummet downward. He is the one person deeply focused on Vanitas's salvation. However, Noé cannot ultimately stop the forces of tragedy and gravity and doom, and in the way that matters most, he can never quite reach Vanitas's hand.
There is going to be a day when Noé will be unable to catch him, and that day is the day that the entire rest of their relationship (and the entire rest of the metaphor) is building to. Noé is constantly reaching out, but he cannot save a man that is already dead, no matter how passionate the outstretched hand.
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There's a severe lack of coffin sex in the AO3 tags when it comes to the vampire fandoms. I know Hellsing should have it, I think I've read a fic with coffin sex, but it is rare. Hell, Castlevania is also surprisingly lacking. It's surprising. Why the fuck are the vampire fandoms less horny when it comes to coffins, while the fucking Sims and SVSS seem to have it downpat with only one having it with vampires.
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bpdleyley · 5 months ago
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I can not stand people on tiktok, sorry, but sometimes they can be so sensitive or pissy towards systems and alters with problematic sources. Sorry I didn't ask to be from my source? It's insane.
And systems who shit on other systems sources too are crazy. Like, um, HELLO?? YOU'RE A SYSTEM TOO. AND I BET YOU HAVE PROBLEMATIC ALTERS AS WELL. YOU ARE NOT INNOCENT.
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raddestrose · 6 months ago
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I DONT THINK THAT IS HIS SWORD HILT
sorry for yelling, but i don’t think that’s his sword it may be something else
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cannibalistjc · 6 months ago
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🫀 ashley's intro ༊࿐๋࣭⛧
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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ‿︵˓ ʚ𖹭ɞ ˓ ︵‿
ㅤ ㅤ ݂ ͘ ౨ৎ never say never, ⟢ ۫
ㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ andrew my dear .ᐟ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ︶ ͡ ۫ ˓ ʚ𖹭ɞ ˒ ۫ ͡ ︶
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︶⊹︶︶⠀🌹 ⠀︶︶⊹︶
♡ 。 𓈒 O1 🔪 ₊ ݁ ੭
﹒⟡﹒; she ﹒﹒︴ fae !!  ◎﹐
☆﹒ꕀ﹔ashley / leyley ﹒ꕀ﹒
ꕀ﹒ᶻz ; 20 / osdd1b / host !!
リ﹒Ꮺ — ♡﹒; bodily black
︶⊹︶︶⠀ 🩸⠀︶︶⊹︶
♡ 。 𓈒 O2 🧷 ₊ ݁ ੭
i am an ashley graves introject ~ 𖹭 i have romantic memories with andy ^^ if you dont like that then youre free to leave !! i am very sure of my identity so do not tell me i am not myself because it will do nothing ~
︶⊹︶︶⠀🚬⠀︶︶⊹︶
♡ 。 𓈒 O3 🫀 ₊ ݁ ੭
no strict dni !! i am an ex-anti gone anti anti lol as long as youre kind youre welcome ~ 𖹭
i will block freely though ^^
︶⊹︶︶⠀🪓⠀︶︶⊹︶
♡ 。 𓈒 O4 💌 ₊ ݁ ੭
please do not try to involve yourself with the other members of our system as they do not want to be associated with anything anti anti and id like to respect that ^^
︶⊹︶︶⠀🥀⠀︶︶⊹︶
🫀— cannibalistjc ༊࿐๋࣭⛧ anything i deem important enough
🪦— cemetary ༊࿐๋࣭⛧ deep dark thoughts ill take to my grave
🌹— incorrect quotes ༊࿐๋࣭⛧ as the name says, incorrect quotes
💋— sibling bonding ༊࿐๋࣭⛧ gravecest :P
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