#mr graves the coffin of andy and leyley | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ang3lofdivinity · 4 months

Note

Can we have Andrew and Reader have a life after the events of the game (In the Bulletless Decay route)?

Reader would be an exchange student who would have gone to stay with the Graves family, but in the end she ended up being another 'victim' of the game's circumstances.

She would be a type of person who was indifferent to almost everything, cold-blooded, with somewhat sociopathic tendencies but with a kind heart.

Okay, let's do this, after Ashley's murder, Andrew and Reader finally got fake teeth and moved somewhere far away, but with all the recent traumas and along with the fear of being abandoned.

Andrew started to have possessive tendencies, a little clingy, toxic, manipulative towards our 'poor thing' Reader and that would result in them having children in the future, to keep her trapped in the coffin with him.

❝𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐧❞

꒦꒷︶°꒷₊˚ʚɞ˚₊︶꒦˚︶꒷꒦

Relationship(s): (somewhat)yan!andrew x fem!reader

Format: Headcannons + some stories

Genre: ANGST. A bit of fluff?? + Yandere(?)

Warnings: spoilers for tcoaal, yandere themes (toxic behavior, non consensual kisses and such, etc), marking, smoking, swearing, blood, death.

A/n: Ty so much for this first ever request!! Other warnings will be tagged in this post later on, ofc.

Also, fair warning to all of you, my dearest readers; if anyone or yourself is acting like this in real life, please get some professional assistance as this is not healthy. This is a work of fan-fiction. Thank you.

Andrew didn’t know all of this would happen, let alone know he’d meet someone new

He and his sister had planned to rob their parents after killing that murderer within the woods where Andrew used up all of Ashley’s bullets in her gun!

How (absolutely not) lovely.

For you? You were living somewhat in Elysian.

You were a college student, a pretty good one too, so much so because you got a scholarship to get into the college in the first place, that being a huge achievement since that was hard and not only free!

But then again, you didn’t really have anyone to stay with..

Before Mr and Mrs Graves offered, of course!

Your parents died at a young age, and you learned how to take care of yourself from that age as well

Yet.. you couldn’t feel anything for them, you felt lack of empathy, you didn’t even shed a real tear at their funeral when you truly wanted to

You felt crazy and something akin to depersonalization came over you, and it stayed there within you for months, or well you entire life

You were taken into an orphanage until you became 18, moving somewhere else to start fresh where you became an exchange student

During your time in the orphanage, you still had school.. and you did that well to the point where you colleges were almost begging you to join

But you first needed somewhere to stay while you finished your studies

And thankfully, the Graves gave you the offer to stay with them (which you took)

You’d cook, clean after your own messes, do chores, keep quiet unless it was a severely bad issue, wouldn’t be around during their.. ‘personal playful time’, and pay them for staying there

In return, they kept you fed, helped you with clothes (specifically Mrs Graves), and the most important of all; let you stay there and finish your studies

You worked some extra jobs outside of college to pay for the Graves and to continue your studies, etc

You usually slept on the couch or at the table from studying, not like you got much sleep at all since you practically overworked yourself

Speaking of college, you didn’t have many friends because of your “weird behavior”

I’m talking about the fact had a lack of empathy for others including yourself

You were impulsive

You lied a lot

You were a bit manipulative

You ignored most rights and feelings of others

And the cherry on top, you were aggressive with most people

All factors of your sociopathic tendencies and personality

You had started going to therapy to try and fix that, and it somewhat worked..

Keyword: somewhat

You found out that you had a much more.. softer side so to speak

There wasn’t much you could do about your sociopathic tendencies but to mask them

And you did just that

Cutting to the chase here though, you were out for the day getting some ingredients for some cookies for you along with Mr and Mrs Graves

And if you had any extras, you’d give some other people within the neighborhood.

You got all of your items, went to the register and payed for all of it before packing them all into bags and leaving

The store wasn’t too far from the Graves house, so you would just walk to and from the store

One your way though, an odd sense of apprehension took over you.

It.. was just super weird

You had to stop for a few seconds on your walk and just, shudder

And this wasn’t normal

You pressed on nonetheless, making it to the house

When you unlocked the door, taking out your key and opening the door all the way- you saw Mrs Graves on the couch in deep though

However, the atmosphere was palpable

Something wasn’t right.

“Good evening, Mrs Graves.”

She didn’t respond, only looking up at you in pure fear.

“Dad??” Someone called from kitchen

..Dad? What.

Mrs Graves slowly got up as a perplexed look came across your face, going into the kitchen

She said something you couldn’t hear before she approached you

“(___)..” she started

Before you knew it, two people walked out of the kitchen

One was a woman with cherry blossom pink eyes, the same as Mr Graves. She wears a black top together with a visible black brassière, light grey shorts, and a yellow pendant hanging from a black choker. Her hair is uncombed and tied at the back in a ponytail

Then the other was a man with emerald green eyes like that of Mrs Graves (just darker) who was pale-skinned with black uncombed hair, like the woman’s and a black, slightly over-sized jumper with light grey ripped pants.

“..meet my two children, Ashley and Andrew.”

Safe to say you were genuinely so shocked

“..Good evening. I’m (___), it’s a pleasure to meet you.” You spoke solemnly, a blank look on your face.

“Nice to meet you too..” the male suddenly spoke as he looked somewhat.. stunned and mesmerized by who knows what.

“What he said.” The girl rolled her eyes inconspicuously (or at least tried to), but you saw it. You always managed to catch onto small things like that.

From then on, it was somewhat.. odd living with the two newcomers.

You crashed over at a close friend’s house for a while as Mrs Graves tried to figure everything out, but a little bit after that Andrew gave you.. small little gestures here and there, like he was asking for you to stay.

And sometimes you did.

On those times, he would try talking to you after a lot of awkward silence in between you both.

“..(___), right?” Andrew quietly asked you, looking over at you.

“..Mhm.” You managed to utter back as you refused to meet his eyes as eye contact wasn’t.. all that comfortable

“You.. go to college, what profession are you working on?”

“Law. I’m thinking about becoming a lawyer” you quickly replied back.

“Mm..”

“Let me guess, you were a psychology major?”

“How did you-“ He stuttered over his words, baffled by yours.

“You just seem like that kinda person to be interested in that major” you calmly stated.

You two had a long staring contest before Andrew spoke again for the both of you.

“I’m pretty fond of you..”

“Any particular reason why?..”

“You’re kinda like… somewhat the opposite of my sister” He shrugged nonchalantly.

“Don’t like her all that much?” You raised an eyebrow.

“It’s- not that..”

“What is it then?”

“..We’ve only had each other for.. so long. As long as I can remember. My- our mom forced me to take care of Ashley when I was 7 because she had me when she was 15 and felt like I was able to take of a 5 year old Ashley. That,, didn’t go well. Shes attached to me at the hip and I can’t get rid of her now.”

“Maybe try. Point out every little thing shes doing that makes you uncomfortable, tell her how shes made it feel like what it is shes doing normal when it’s not.”

You returned to slowly eat your food while Andrew just, stared.

“..Thank you” he suddenly spoke as you gave a small nod.

Tapping your foot for a few seconds as you pondered about what to say next, you sighed softly and turned your head to him.

“Want some?..” you motioned to your food.

He, although astounded by the request, accepted.

He didn’t even bother grabbing another fork and just ate from yours..

Ew.

Moving on from this however, you two bonded over a lot of things you thought you probably never would.

Interests (mainly him liking things that you liked), personalities, dislikes, likes, etc.

And due to this, you started hanging out more with each other!

And his sister obviously showed that she didn’t like you because of that.

“Oops” she’d say as she spilled over your drink, ate your food even after when you caught her multiple times and told her to stop, dropping anything she had in her hands onto you, it was just.. sucky of her.

And whenever you tried anything even defending yourself, she went crying to Andrew!!

“I’m sorry.” He would mumble to you and give you a hug for his sisters acts while she stared daggers at you.

This went on for a while until one night—

“Get up” a harsh voice echoed quietly as you were violently shook from your slumber. You had passed out after studying for hours on end for your exam next afternoon.

The room was filled with a scent of blood, and the food you all had from earlier. The zephyr wafting

“H-huh?” You drowsily said, wiping the drool away from your mouth and looking around as a hand reached up to your head and slammed it down onto the wooden table, creating a loud thud as you winced.

You wanted to yell, scream, fight back. But, with the moonlight shining through the curtains of the windows and illuminating your surroundings, you saw Ashley holding a gun.

Your breath hitched as you chewed your bottom lip as you waited for Ashley said something else.

“I didn’t say to speak, dumbass. Keep fucking quiet.” The girl groaned as you heard footsteps approaching.

“Ashley!! I told you not to touch her! You have already taken our parents lives— but not hers. You can’t, Ashley.” Andrew’s familiar voice echoed throughout the kitchen, sounding demanding.

“Oh? So she matters more than me now? YOU CARE MORE ABOUT HER?” She started raising her voice, almost loud enough to alarm the neighbors as he slapped a hand over her mouth to shut her up.

“KEEP YOUR FUCKING VOICE DOWN.” He whispered yelled as he furrowed his brows together. She pried off his hand with a furious look, gritting her teeth together.

“Oh, don’t wanna admit it, huh? WELL FUCK YOU!” Ashley got closer to Andrew than anyone would be comfortable with as she pointed the gun at him.

“.. damn, crazy bitch.” You whispered to yourself and giggled, before you even knew it she had the gun pointed at you next.

And she got close to pulling the trigger before—

Blood.

Theres blood everywhere.

Andrew had killed his sister with the cleaver he had been clutching in his hands so tight that his knuckles turned white.

You didn’t even know what to say anymore..

Well.

“..what did you both do to Mr and Mrs Graves?” The question slipped past your lips even though it wasn’t the moment to be talking about any of this when someone in-front of you has been murdered.

“It’s.. nothing”

“Andrew- what did you do?” You asked, adamant on prying out an answer from him.

“…”

No answer.

Who knew that this little encounter would lead to both you and Andrew cleaning up the body of his dead sister.

But, nonetheless, he took a shower to clean up from the blood that splattered all over as you turned to washing both of your piles of clothes within the washer and dryer.

No sign of Mr or Mrs Graves at all.

You laid out some clothes from him from Mr Graves; A baggy sweater, some baggy light grey pants, some really old converse shoes you’d thought he’d fit in.

Surprisingly, they did!

Huh.

Like Father like Son. You guess

Being that those shoes are when Mr Graves was just a teen to young adult.

Nonetheless, you two decide to have a conversation about.. what to do now.

Which was… off putting

“I can pay for most of the house bills. I have a job after all… though- I would have to find out how to get the police to believe that the Graves gave the house to me.” You spoke. Hands resting one over the other in your lap.

Andrew was in front of you while you were seated on the couch, your head felt.. dizzy about everything that he and his now.. non-available sister did.

The Graves weren’t the best, but they weren’t the worse while you knew them. So why?..

He told you everything about them that happened in his childhood, and you just… felt a bit disgusted.

“We could just.. move into a less expensive place.”

“True. Until I graduate, of course. Then I could get us into a much bigger and nicer house.” You chimed in, a faint small on your face.

“I can also help you get a job, Andrew”

He seemed.. surprised.

“I can also see if I can get you back into college. I can truly believable story about why you dropped out.”

Andrew stayed silent before he slowly dipped his head down low.

“Why.. are you helping me so much?”

A quiet gasp left your mouth, your lips agape as you fidgeting with your fingers. You paused to take a moment to yourself.

“..I feel bad for you. You deserve much more than this world offers.”

Safe to say he cried a bit. Thanking you profusely.

He also told you a bit about having to dump the bones of Mr and Mrs Graves, along with Ashley.

So you went just as the sun was beginning to rise, and chucked the bags out into the lake, with the three skulls.

The two of you then just… sat in the car for a bit, processing what you two just did.

“Ready?..”

“..not really but just,, go ahead…”

The car then drove off, you hugging your knees as you stared out the window.

And that’s when the two of you started bonding more and moved in together!!

Of course, the police got into contact with you more than once about the deaths of Mr and Mrs Graves, and you told them you knew nothing as you tried to make yourself seem sadder than you were about the situation.

Nonetheless, living with Andrew in the apartment you bought wasn’t too bad.

You quickly graduated your college, now getting a job as a lawyer.

Andrew himself got a job somewhere, thankfully well paying.

You two managed to move shortly after you both were doing well enough on money as he expressed that he wanted to go back to college, to learn psychology!

You didn’t see any harm in that, and decided to help him pay for the expenses.

Maybe you shouldn’t have though.

Eventually, during your time together, he’d start commenting on some of the outfits you wore.

“..That looks a bit too short”

“The color doesn’t match you”

“It exposes.. maybe a bit too much”

You of course questioned further why he was acting like this when he wasn’t even dating you, making him reply; “I’m just.. worried about you”

So you shrugged it off.

Then the gifts started.

Romantic ones.

Flowers you loved, stuffed animals, jewelry you liked, etc.

You found it.. admiring.

Andrew started getting more touchy too.

Even if you didn’t want it.

He apologized for that of course, before going back to touch you more.

This was all before he proposed the idea that you two should start dating.

Of course, for mainly appearance looks.

But you didn’t know the truth, nor the mistake you’ve made.

It only took a little more time before Andrew started getting more and more possessive over you.

He would always have some form of physical contact with you, started saying you could only go out with him, until it changed you couldn’t go out at all besides for work.

Even then he would secretly have a tracker on you always to make sure you were always where you said you were.

You tried to object to his actions, before he started making excuses for his behavior.

“Do you know how many men would drool over you??”

“I’m just trying to protect you.”

He would then cajole you to place down the subject.

Now while you were at home, he was all handsy with you, even being bold enough to start giving you hickeys and markings in very noticeable places.

And he was far too good at manipulating you that you would start standing up for yourself.

The final straw was when he got you pregnant.

You sobbed for days, you never wanted children.

You eventually tried to get him out and break up with him.

But he threatened you all too well.

“If you do this, i’ll make sure to ruin everything you have, you wouldn’t want to raise that child all by yourself?” “You wouldn’t live without me”

So you sucked it up, and couldn’t even get rid of the child either since you were too afraid.

Genuinely afraid

So.. now you’re trapped with him forever in this rose covered coffin. One where the roses are wilting and have poisonous thorns so you may never leave again.

Woah, this took— much longer than I expected. But, i’m alive!! Ty all for reading and I’ll be sure to try and update more!

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lisafication · 7 months

Text

Digging Graves for your Morals; Or, The Ethical Problem of Outlawry

Hello, yes, I am here again. This one is shorter, I swear (it’s under four thousand words, even). If this is the first post from me you’re seeing, this is a follow-up to my prior essay posted here on the game The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, although it should be able to mostly stand alone.

At the end of my last essay, I touched on both the game’s nearly uncompromising moral scepticism and relativity, but I didn’t really dig into it. I outlined that the game only textually frames actions as ‘morally bad’ in the context of a morality set by the society and the world that has treated them as no better than farm animals raised for the slaughter. Well, I have a lot to say on the topic of ethics on the topic of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, so buckle in, this one’s going to talk about the social contract, moral scepticism and everyone’s favourite topic: Mrs. Graves.

As usual, this was originally posted and formatted for on Sufficient Velocity and you can perhaps more easily read it there. Spoilers abound, and my content warning from last time still applies.

She’s not too hot on either ethics or her mother

The Meat of the Matter

Since a lot of this is optional or otherwise missable information, let’s review the premise the game gives us. If you’re already aware of all of this, I apologise, it won’t take long.

First off the bat, the quarantine at the start of the game was a hoax-driven money-making scheme of which you can pick up more-or-less all the relevant details of. This is entirely missable and by the time it’s possible to discover, our protagonists have better things to dwell on and have dialogue about, so I’ll give you a summary of what you can deduce from reading the notes and thinking about it.

The quarantine is an organ harvesting operation, as per some documents you can discover in the wardens’ office. They entrap the residents, test their blood types and starve to death those they deem surplus to requirements — alternatively the starvation itself could be their method of ‘preparing the harvest’, there’s evidence in both directions and it hardly matters — harvesting the organs of the others for sale. As our protagonists are AB-typed, the ‘universal recipient’ or ‘most selfish blood type’, they’re some of the first on the chopping block.

If you read through the newspapers and the documents in Mr. Washing Machine’s car, you can discover that ultimately ToxiSoda are responsible, and a similar thing is happening in a different city under the guise of a ‘chemical leak’. Should you further investigate matters, you will find mentions of the ‘man behind it all’, the doctor, or the Surgeon, as the fandom have been referring to him — you may recall Mrs. Graves mentioned someone similar! Yeah, he’s the guy who runs ToxiSoda, who are themselves partners with the water company that faked the parasite outbreak in the first place.

It’s all a life insurance scam, apparently

How much the details of the operation matter is something open to interpretation — it might just be something for players to figure out and Episode 3 will not cover the Surgeon at all, or he might play a major part; it's not particularly relevant to this essay. What matters is that it happened at all — indeed, it’s fairly easy to justify Ashley and Andrew in everything they did in Episode 1 (flashbacks aside), arguing that if they’d made any other decisions they’d have died — an argument that the victims dug their own graves, even if the Graves siblings put them in them. How correct that is is a matter of debate, but that you can make the argument at all matters, and we’ll be returning to this later. In my last essay (and again in the introduction here), I made an analogy to farm animals, raised without love and for slaughter. Let’s put a pin in the ‘for slaughter’ part for now and take a look at the ‘without love’ part.

That’s right, it’s time to meet the parents.

As Andrew notes, there are significantly more compelling reasons for you to say that

They Fuck You Up, Your Mum & Dad

They really do.

Our charming protagonists are, as with many things depicted in this game, an exaggerated, almost farcical example of this phenomenon — one that’s just grounded enough to still feel very real, just like the siblings themselves.

The late and lamentable Mrs. Graves is just the same: originally a teen mother, hopelessly out of depth with two difficult children — even if one was good at masking it — and an unreliable, emotionally unavailable (at least to their children) partner who can’t hold down a job, ends up foisting them off on each other and doing a Parental Negligence because she simply Cannot Cope. That’s the real part. The part where she gets paid off by an organ harvesting operation to leave them to die, that’s the borderline-farcical exaggeration that throws all the nooks and crannies of her character into sharp relief.

Mrs. Graves does not have a good relationship with either of her kids. Having self-admittedly fobbed the job of raising Ashley off on her son, to the degree that they did not even celebrate her birthday as kids, both of them hold differing degrees and types of resentment for her.

For Ashley, it’s hate — perhaps not quite so clear cut as that, as it’s her that calls for the eulogy and she shows some potential signs of discomfort while cleaning up her parents’ corpses, but by and large, it’s fairly simple and straightforward, as usual for Ashley. The sentiment is not exactly unreturned, either.

This brings Ashley’s heart great delight!

The most clear incident raising her from everyday ‘neglectful’ to ‘wow she wanted nothing to do with this kid’ is the optional ‘birthday cake’ scene, obtained by finding the present in Ashley’s first ‘transitory world’ dream, in which we see Ashley’s birthday and the founding of a lemon cupcake tradition between Leyley and Andy. She has received nothing from her family, notes that her ‘friends’ would say they were busy before she even told them the schedule and Andy takes her out to buy cupcakes with his pocket money.

This scene gets a callback in Andrew’s dream later. Just remember to Ask Nicely, rather than Kill Her.

Parents of the year, everyone.

So with Ashley it’s as straightforward and obvious as she herself is — she hates her mother, her mother hates her. With Andrew, as with Andrew himself, it’s a fair bit more complicated. His mother is a much more nuanced figure, who is believable in her role as an unfortunate teen parent who was trying her best. He has a degree of trust in her against, seemingly, his own good judgment In her conversation with Andrew, she acknowledges her fault in raising him and seemingly sincerely tries to offer him a ‘way out’, an olive branch.

I think many people have had relationships where they might say this

This scene in particular intrigues me, because she is acknowledging fault in a way that Andrew strictly avoids doing — and well, there’s nothing Andrew likes more than a good way to avoid acknowledging any fault of his own. With her dominant relationship over their father as a model for Andrew to draw comparisons to his own relationship with Ashley with, it’s no surprise that the narrative resonates with him to the point of ‘Accept’ being many people’s first completion.

Of course, that’s not all there is to it. There is a fascinating contrast with her later conversation with Ashley, where she — despite accusing Ashley of brainwashing Andrew — refers to Leyley and Andy as ‘two psychos’ and states that she always knew they were responsible for Nina’s death and that, implicitly, they owe her for not turning them in.

There's something about mother-daughter relationships here that I just do not have the time or reading to dig into, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, when Andrew interrogates her on her possession of their death certificates, she has… an interesting, plausible story about a life insurance scam and claims that she really did think they died in the fire, implicitly denying the claim that she sold them. It’s entirely possible that she’s describing the details of the ‘scam’ correctly — you can even buy that she genuinely does care for Andrew in some way, if not Ashley, but her claim about being an honest, grieving parent shocked at their deaths… doesn’t add up?

This is a very normal reaction to your supposedly dead children showing up in your house.

As Andrew himself notes after hearing her story, she’s full of shit. This gets into speculation, because there are a few ways to read this, but the most plausible ‘gist’ is that she and her partner were paid off in money and jobs to not raise a fuss — the surgeon she mentioned is almost certainly the founder of ToxiSoda, remember?

The overwhelming difference in presentation between how she speaks to Andrew and Ashley invites investigation — and when Andrew turns down her offer and tells her he isn’t interested in her offer in Decline, her reaction isn’t… despair, it’s shock — and well, there’s a good reason for that.

Why do you think she did it in the first place?

This is the happiest we see her

Well — it’s so she can finally fit into society. That white picket fence, that idyllic 1950s life — hell you can call it the American Dream. She wants that, or as close to it as she can get — the working-class teen mother, living in poverty, aspiring to the middle-class. It’s a very common, very real and very grounded motivation.

And to that end, she effectively sold off her children. It’s no wonder she can’t fathom why Andrew wouldn’t choose the same.

That’s the part that makes you think — just like the deaths in Episode 1, well- maybe the siblings are justified here, too. It’s a weaker argument, but it’s still one you can make under many common moral paradigms today — what goes around comes around, all that jazz. Just look at how awful she was to Ashley.

She’s finally found what she’s been striving for.

Here’s the thing, here’s the thing though — what, reasonably, could she have done? Andrew and Ashley briefly highlight this in conversation about Ashley’s ‘friends’ in Episode 1 — was she supposed to fight gunmen to try and break them out? Throw food to the balcony from four stories?

Moreover, as she herself says to Andrew… would anyone really have been able to do better than her in her position? She was seventeen when Ashley was born, living in poverty with a partner who couldn’t even remember Andrew’s name when he was a kid. Anyone would have had difficulty, let alone with these kids.

Her evils are — they’re not any deliberate action, but rather… prompted inaction. She didn’t have the emotional energy, resources or plain capability to properly parent her children, she didn’t have any solutions to their murder of Nina in a state so blatantly hostile to its underclass, she didn’t have a way to connect with Ashley and she took the money rather than fight a futile and likely suicidal battle against a corporation and its armed goons in a dystopian setting.

Ashley, notably, does not deny this.

Her sin is the one we’re all, I think, guilty of — that of not trying hard enough, that of inaction in the face of difficult tasks, of not standing up on principle because it’s just too much that day and you don’t have the spoons, you’ll do it tomorrow (no you won’t). It’s a petty, everyday kind of evil — that of not doing enough.

Is that enough to condemn her? Certainly, there’s a pretty manipulative read of her that likely has some truth to it — in the locked door in Ashley’s dream in ‘Decay’ you can discover that she has a ‘not-hatched’ tar soul — but consider that lens — the game won’t make up your mind for you, so you’ll need to choose that for yourself.

The dad is interesting in terms of negative space — but he’s mostly important in that he doesn’t matter, so I decided to not fit him in here. He has art, though — just no sprite, because, well, he’s never mattered to either sibling.

The Contract We Call Society

Right, it’s time to get a little bit Theoretical in here. Not much, but a little. Social contract theory is a complex topic with a lot of nuance, much of which I will be eliding in the name of not writing a twenty thousand word paper on semiotics, law, and anthropology, but the short analogy is… the idea that as long as you play by society’s rules, as long as you are a good citizen, a good person, the state, or the community, will take care of you.

In a number of ways, the harshest penalty levied by many historical states and legal codes was not death, but rather the criminal status of outlawry, a practice that’s cropped up a number of times in history — the practice of no longer being protected by the law. This meant one could be killed or worse with impunity — you were no longer protected by mob justice and, while overexaggerated as a term of reference, certain texts from Medieval England refer to outlaws as bearing a wolfshead, ‘for the wolf is a beast hated by all folk’. Never minding that wolves are actually delightful, this was a time when wolves were actively hunted and sold by people — and the same was intended to happen to outlaws. They were ‘fair targets’ as far as society was concerned, no longer to be treated as your fellow citizens.

This was the gravest punishment on the books, for most of these legal codes — something saved for those who had broken the social contract so completely that there could be no turning back (civil outlawry is… a bit different, that’s not the topic here). Among others, a modern critique of the concept is that it offers no incentive for improvement, no incentive to change or to cease harming society — if an outlaw has none of the social contract’s protections, what reason do they have to obey… any of the social contract? If that seems familiar, well, let me ask you this:

What if the state or community fails its end first? What responsibility does the innocent outlaw have to that contract?

It’s an interesting phrasing, that the world is better off.

It’s time to talk about the incest, and part of why it’s there. The cannibalism too, but that’s less impactful here. If you’ve seen me elsewhere, you might have seen me say that the incest is a load-bearing narrative pillar — in large part due to it being a critical facet of the siblings’ relationship, but in another large part due to it being an equally critical part of how the game uses taboo.

A taboo is in this context something that is considered repulsive and to be avoided by society. It’s a more complex term than that — you can also use it for certain sacred actions or utterances that are only permitted to certain people, for example — but that’s what it is here. Swearing, premarital sex, BDSM and murder are, approximately from weak to strong, some example taboos held in modern Anglospheric society.

Strong taboos are a staple of horror — they shock, they disgust, they draw people’s attention and it’s that last one that’s critical here. Incest is a very strong taboo — while I am absolutely not segueing into its historical context, the very well-established Westermarck effect gives it a certain timelessness and immunity to desensitisation that most other taboos don’t have — murder, to contrast, is a taboo we’re largely desensitised to in modern media and works of modern media have to put in actual work to make a murder seem horrifying — through atmosphere, cinematography, evocative prose etc.

And this is important because the use of taboo I’m covering in this essay is that the incest is used to invite judgment — it is so ingrained as a ‘wrong thing’ in people’s brains almost regardless of background that it forces the player to engage with the work morally. And that’s where the fun starts.

I’ve mentioned before, very briefly, about the juxtaposition of tone between the Burial & Decay endings, contrasting with the very monstrous difference in morality. Burial is remarkably light-hearted — they play around with the drain blockage, they joke about their mother’s personality and this is further exaggerated on the Love path, where Andrew is much more comfortable with casual contact and the two make a game out of how far they can throw their parents’ skulls, the humour is directly contrasted against their abhorrent actions.

I’ll be real Ashley is far more merciful than I, I’m shuddering at the thought of that gunk in my hair

In comparison, Decay is… bleak. I’ve seen it being referred to as being ‘emotionally sandblasted’ and, yeah I think that’s fair — it’s uncomfortable, it’s heavy and it’s just not fun. And this is the route in which, if you chose Trust into Accept, Andrew has bought into the narrative that his mother’s offered — that he can fit just fine into society if he wasn’t stuck, if not for Ashley — the route that ‘fits’ most closely to the social contract, to Andrew feeling the guilt that we think he should and hating the monsters that they’ve become, as the social contract deems them. Given the pains the game takes to attach the player to the protagonists, this normative moral ending is very easily interpreted as the bad ending.

And well, isn’t it?

Thing is, as mentioned above, the social contract has never held up its end for them. The game takes careful pains to point out to a viewer that they’ve never had the life that society promises people, so why do its moral standards apply?

The game invites you to judge the characters, and in the same motion, asks you from what principles you judge them, making a pretty good guess in that, like most people who haven’t spent a large amount of time navel-gazing and reading some very boring books by very dusty old men, they come from the society around you.

Love even has Ashley express this sentiment directly after the incestuous dream — she asks you — well, Andrew, but this is also something for the player to mull over — why this is what’s engaged your morality or sense of revulsion, rather than the desecration, cannibalism or murder.

Andrew and Ashley are both very funny and very fascinating in this scene.

And that’s the framing that it casts all of its own moral judgement in — even the ‘tar-soul’ aspect is… well, it’s unclear what it even means. Mrs. Graves was a ‘not-hatched’ tar soul, after all. Other than that, it’s society and the world being better off without them, rather than any kind of assertion of objective morality. Due to the present of ‘soul colour’, we’ll presumably see the game make some moral statements in Episode 3, but as it stands?

It’s nearly completely morally sceptical, in and of itself — it’s not interested in moral assertions or education, it’s interested in making you question your own morals. Deconstructive (not that kind), rather than dialectic, to be mildly pretentious.

It uses taboo and shock to invite moral judgement, but then uses tone, charm and our instinct to look for the happiest end for our blorbos to get you to recognise that these are principles you yourself brought into the game, rather than any it’s handed you.

To summarise: you’ve brought these principles in from society, but what do the siblings, the protagonists, the villains to the world, owe society? Enough that they should follow them? It failed them first, after all.

Closing Thoughts

This one is a bit less energetic than the last, tragically — my sleeping schedule is the stuff of nightmares recently, I love windy weather. Wait, no the opposite. Huge thank you to everyone who commented on the last one, you are the wind beneath my wings and the main reason I managed to get this out this week.

This essay is a bit more interpretative than my last one — certainly, there are alternative readings and I’ve been toying with the idea of deliberately taking a reading I don’t like very much and writing from that perspective as a demonstrative exercise recently — mostly that you shouldn’t just take my word for things!

Otherwise, if the last bit at the end seemed murky, I apologise — I did try to write a more detailed version, but firstly, it was three thousand words and secondly, I re-read it the next day and I could not understand what the fuck I was talking about. Personally, I blame Derrida — suffice to say that I strongly recommend playing through it with an eye towards considering culpability, morality and why you think certain characters are more or less forgivable than others, and for what deeds. See what you get out of it.

I managed to keep one particular thread open to wrap up with here — I try to keep speculation on Episode 3 content to a minimum in the main essays, but it should be fine here — you might have noticed that I refer to Episode 1 and Episode 2 being on something of a spectrum of justifiability, with the siblings’ actions being ‘more’ justifiable in Episode 1 and ‘less’ justifiable — but still justifiable if you try — in Episode 2.

To continue the thought of the happiest ending being the one in which they step the furthest away from common morality and to further jar the viewers’ sense of morality by contrasting societal morality and blorbo-oriented morality, Episode 3: Burial could continue this trend in having a major victim be someone who, well, has done nothing wrong and isn’t even guilty of bystander syndrome.

I wonder if there’s any good candidates, someone who’s sweet, harmless and will indisputably be an innocent victim…

…I’m sure she’ll be fine

#the coffin of andy and leyley #tcoaal #analysis #essay #ashley graves #andrew graves #mrs graves #nnnnot sure what the next topic will be #might do a deranged take on purpose #this one and the last one have been very grounded #I'll get to my asks tomorrow #probably #I've been busy sorry

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