#especially the ones that includes coffincest

[ultravioletqueen]

I am a julia stan, but i understand that hanging out with someone just to get close to their sibiling is pretty selfish, julia was in the wrong? Yes, but ashley take it to other level.

Lets not forget that ashley relentless bullying FOR YEARS provocked that julia would have suicidal depression and tried to unalive herself, what julia did with ashley was bad? yes, but the actions that ashley take against her were far worse.

And andrew using his ex not only as a consolation prize but also as a example of why ashley is worst than him makes me sick.

Okay 2am thoughts it’s interesting how Julia is depicted as “the perfect victim” compared to the siblings, at least in Andrew’s eyes. She’s nice, she doesn’t swear in a game where even the shop owners need a mouthwashing, and even though she was being harassed by Ashley we haven’t yet seen her confront or talk cruel about her. It makes it very easy for us (and Andrew in his dream) to see Julia as “the perfect victim” especially compared to Ashley who somehow made the parent soup dry.

But in this game where the two main characters are both victims and abusive themselves it might be a good idea to look at Julia’s situation differently. Yes she was harassed, yes her boyfriend ignored the harassment and she was absolutely in her right to dump his ass. But I think we’re missing some pieces to the story. Like how she was Ashley’s “friend” in school yet went out with her brother. Ashley already had one “friend” who might’ve only hung out with her because she liked her brother, how’d she feel realizing the same thing happened again? No wonder she hated Julia.

And the voice calls Andrew heard in his his dreams, are those things he actually heard? Or are they what he imagined his mean, evil sister would act? It’s so funny how in his dream it’s all about what Ashley did, not him. Because Ashley makes it so, so easy to be blamed for everything.

Idk, this became less about thinking on the concept of victimhood and which victims “deserve” our empathy and more about how Andrew is using his ex as a foil for his mean sister, just so he can once again avoid responsibility for his own part.

[stellar-mop]

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has me thinking about gender and gender roles a lot. I know other people have done more in-depth analysis of this, but I'm just gonna throw my thoughts out into the void of tumblr (the void is welcome to yell back, just be nice please)

I think one of the things that makes these characters fascinating especially for me as a vaguely-agender nonbinary person is like the places I can see where their gender is impacting their interactions and choices. Like changing the gender of the characters would fundamentally change their story and personality (love y'all's genderswap AUs tho, this is not an objection).

Something I'm not sure how to articulate super well is how the game interacts with like neurodivergence gender stereotypes. On the surface level they line up with the "women are emotional and men aren't allowed to show feelings" set of gender stereotypes. But I think there's another layer if you look at it through the lens of how societal pressures around mental illness and gender intersect especially in like school-aged kids/teens. Like Andrew being the "easy child" and Ashley being... Ashley. In not-particularly-nuanced terms: "boy" neurodivergence shows as acting out and being a problem child (which Ashley does), and "girl" neurodivergence gets hidden via masking and passivity (which Andrew does). I think it's neat that this is contrary to societal expectations - like this would be a very different story if Andrew was a pushy chaotic mess and Ashley was apathetic but seething under the surface. Because gender! What's even up with that?

Less sfw thoughts under the cut, including some coffincest stuff. Warnings for unhealthy relationships and attitudes towards sex:

The way Ashley and the mom talk about sex is fascinating. I've read some really good analyses on here about Ashley thinking about sex as transactional and I think she gets that from her mom. In that one scene ("you fuck her") the mom asks Andrew something like "what does she give you to make it worth it?" Like, the only reason she can think of for why Andrew wants to spend time with Ashley is sex. That says a lot about the mom as a person (also wow she really does see zero value in Ashley as a person wtf), and probably the way Ashley was raised to think about sex. And that's a very gendered (like cishet women specifically) view of sex. Like sex in a relationship as something to be tolerated, and for Ashley "another way to keep him around".

But I'm also wondering about the flip side of that, like is the mom only tolerating the dad for sex? Because I don't really get the impression that she likes him very much, but they textually have a very active sex life. If so, this is also sort of counter to societal gender roles/expectations. I really don't like the parents but they're such fascinating characters too.

I guess my point with all this is like we got distracted by the cannibalism and murder and incest and demon summoning, but there's some really neat and subtle stuff about gender in here that I want to talk about too! It's just so well written there's so much depth

*slaps roof of game* this bad boy can fit so much dysfunction!