#tcoaal discourse

[starrbar]

Time for my bitching hour again!

Putting it under a cut cause the screenshots might lengthen the post + mentions of incest.

I'm convinced that people like this don't actually give a shit.

These guys are literally sitting here admitting that they don't think there's ANY way for a story that includes incest to be good. So much for "We're not against dark topics!!! We just don't want them romanticized!!"

"I found out the incest was only there because of the author's fetish." is a straight-up fabrication.

"It probably is romanticized." is a dumbass assumption and isn't true. The siblings' relationship is depressing and upsetting and just because there's comedy or points where they get along doesn't automatically make the dark topics mishandled.

Bonus, no further commentary needed:

[leyleysgrave]

and this is why i trust proshippers over antis

[tsulaika]

seeing TCOAAL starting to get so popular that it's spreading out past the fandom is so fucking funny becasue i've seen several instances of the anti bee hive being smacked just by this games general existence. they're so upset that there's finally something not made for them, something they can't gatekeep and brush off the implications of because the incest is baked into the thing itself and is unavoidable. they're being forced to face the fact that there are more people out there willing to play, read, write about or draw fanart for taboo media like this than they thought

[kokodain-nation]

gravecest is the entire fucking point of the story!!!! it's gothic horror!!! incest is a common trope in gothic horror!!!

[d-0-t-t]

if you use these dni boxes when you're interested in a game where siblings kiss and fuck multiple times, i generally believe you're lobotomized; you CAN NOT act this dumb at this point with tcoaal after decay chapter 3

OR (it's a known fact that some of you have skeletons in the closet thus why y'all do performance activism over fictional shit) secretly into the incest but put on a huge act of doing canon x oc/selfship ONLY to just avoid the icky incest so y'all moots won't dogpile you for simply liking the game

there is NO logically reason for this bullshit

[aqours]

i've shared my thoughts on this in dms with like 3 people so i wanted to put it on paper so i can always get it

so i think one of the biggest questions that goes around tcoaatl is regarding it's incest, asked in both good faith and by annoying antis: "so is the incest... actually like portrayed as bad? or is it just hot and fetishized and romanticized?" and y'know, i think the most genuinely HONEST answer regarding that is this: "it's both." (the later mostly romanticized)

the Graves siblings have a horrifically co-dependent relationship which even the steam page is very happy to make you remember, multiple characters acknowledge it, it's a fucking awful terrible thing and you can make decisions that acknowledge it and its obvious to anyone with two eyes and a brain capable of basic critical thought that realistically while you can do w/e you want in a fanfic in a canon sense there's no way gravecest cannot result in what will ultimately be a lifetime of suffering even if both parties don't want to admit it. you're condemning them both to a chance of ever finding real genuine happiness that can exist without the other

that being said? they're both conventionally attractive and the game doesn't really shy from making its physical intimacy look hot and it's clear that nemlei doesn't want that physical intimacy to be disgusting or something that will make you feel ashamed if you intentionally pursued

i feel like this is the aspect of tcoaal that is debated the most on all sides of the fandom and i just wanted to post my own two cents in that i think the answer is "its both." the extent of how co-dependent these two are is very clear that it's not good and that most likely in the final release the best outcome for these two will probably involve acknowledging it

but also if you were to approach nemlei and just told her "listen i just think it's hot i don't give a shit about any of that other stuff i just wanna ship them." i think nemlei herself would nod and respect your decision completely. probably feed you even more if anything

you're free to disagree with me, i just wanna state my own thoughts somewhere, so i think the answer is a very solid "it's both" when it comes to this. tcoaal portrays the incest as horribly psychologically damaging for these two but also at the same time it's obviously not gonna judge you for liking it and if you find it hot nemlei would never judge you for it i think

but i just cannot in any capacity really take the argument it's a hard one or another seriously. i think if tcoaal wanted gravecest to only be seen as bad and horrifying that nemlei would've made different decisions in writing it bc it's obvious she COULD have if she wanted to, but also it's not fair to say it just makes incest look hot and sexy when it does show how fucked up it's characters are because of it

so... just wanted to say yeah- i think it's both

[coffin-ramblings]

Recently, Mr. Archive/HeavyBerry, the owner of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley Everything Server and the leader and head writer of The Coffin of Candy Scab and the upcoming The Coffin of No-Good Noelle mod teams, has been revealed to be supportive of Donald Trump, multiple racists, and at least one Nazi of his server. Furthermore, he was shown to have abused his power by forcing his staff to comply with his schemes to attack others and allowing a minor to be a mod with access to the NSFW chats. The justifiable backlash and criticism he received from the members of his server was returned with bans. Unknown9337, the server’s co-owner; head mod of the TCOAAL subreddit; and face of The Coffin of Andrew and Renee mod team, is his major accomplice in this censorship and support of hate by banning a major person of this incident from the subreddit for speaking out about Archive’s political views and corruption. 

In my good conscience, I can no longer play or review any of their mods, even more so now that I got banned from TCOAALES for writing this post. I call for both of them to step down from their positions of leadership now that I and many of the community no longer have any trust in them ensuring a hospitable online space.

More details of these revelations will be discussed under cut. Trigger warnings for racism, rape mention, and lolicon mention.

This all started when a member named OutwardwetZ made a report to the staff of a member being a supporter of the Alternative for Germany, a Neo-Nazi party. The staff immediately banned them, but Mr. Archive argued they should be unbanned and claimed a private, anonymous vote was made to overturn it. This is despite the fact that that Nazi supporter has broken Rules 1 and 6 by openly discussing the AFD in the server, then still being disrespectful to Outward in DMs.

This was leaked out to the rest of the server, where everyone has started posting screenshots proving his support for Trump's nationalist policies and unbanning racist members. Outward attempted to solve this peacefully by telling Archive that he needs to step down as owner, only to get banned in return.

This spurred a mod to give permissions to the rest of the server to see Archive’s corruption and beliefs. During that period of time, screenshots were posted proving his support for Trump. Despite Trump’s blatant neglect of the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic made it the country with the highest death count in the world and his close ties with Vladmir Putin would put Ukraine in a very unfavorable position, Archive still advocates him as the superior candidate for the United States and the international community.

Outward attempted to resolve this peacefully by convincing Archive that he needs to step down as owner, only to get banned in retaliation. More screenshots were found of his corruption following their ban, given in DMs by those rightfully enraged at Archive.

A mod, who left the server in protest, also revealed Archive wanted to unban a racist member who claims that Afghan refugees rape people, despite the member also being disrespectful in DMs with Outward.

Archive also wanted to unban another member that was banned for racism, but messages to prove that were deleted and cannot be accessed.

Furthermore, Archive was found to have forced a staff member to keep lolicon porn as “evidence” against someone. Given that he chose to delay revealing that, it likely is a way to blackmail or attack that person so he can gain something from it. This staff member was very uncomfortable with it, but was forced to comply because of Archive’s higher authority.

The message was referred to this comment they made in January: 

Despite wanting to attack someone for having lolicon porn, he allowed an underage mod to have access to NSFW chats. He claimed that mods have access to all channels until another mod disproved that.

I came in contact with the mod shown above to ask permission if I can use their name and picture. I stated my purpose for approaching them, however, it turned out they supported Archive and banned me in turn. They refused to consent to being shown, so I will not show any DMs of that conversation. 

In regards to Unknown, he was not active on Discord during the incident, but he was tellingly so on the subreddit. Outward showed me their Reddit post calling out Archive got deleted and was banned from there. 

As mentioned in the screenshots where Archive explains his reasons for allowing that underage mod have access to the NSFW chats, the same mod is part of the subreddit, which has a lot of nsfw content. This demonstrates that both Archive and Unknown have the same indifference to this kind of situation

All of this behavior is absolutely unacceptable, and I feel hurt and betrayed by all of this just like many of their community. However, I sincerely hope that both Archive and Unknown will leave their positions of power and reflect on their beliefs, words, and actions.

[ur-fav-is-schizo]

Andrew "Andy" Graves and Ashley "Leyley" Graves from The Coffin of Andy and Leyley are schizospec!!

[peantisdeliriouts]

“They romanticized the incest in TCOAAL so therefore the incest in the game is bad!”

Dude it’s a literal fucking horror game about satanic cannibals? You’re out here complaining about these fucked up people being in a fucked up relationship because WHY?

The entire point is that them being incestuous is another part of the horror and taboo of the game. They’re already killing and eating people, what makes you think that incestuous would be off the table for them? They clearly already don’t care all that much about morality themselves 🙄

[cookies-in-chees]

The coffin of Andy and Leyley discourse was super funny because it is a horror game where the main characters kill and eat people, and everyone seems to be ok with that part being “normalized and romanticized,” but incest is where they draw the line. Obviously, incest isn't great, but neither is murder or cannibalism, and this is a horror game; it is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable.

[lordandgodoftheobvious]

There are definitely more important things going on in the world for me to be worrying about, but the fact that I'm seeing the same sort of Discourse™ surrounding a psychological horror game that uses the taboos of cannibalism and incest to explore the limits of the social contract that you see around children's cartoon shows tells me y'all have lost the fucking plot.

I'm having trouble organizing my thoughts about this coherently, so let us begin with an allegory: the year is--I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's somewhere around 2016-ish--and you're in the Star vs. the Forces of Evil fandom, when you see tumblr user STTM promoting a pornographic doujin staring the series's extremely pubescent lead characters (...I never said this allegory would be fictional). The question I ask of you--in the Socratic fashion--is: why is this wrong?

When something is actually morally wrong, as opposed to people merely thinking it's wrong because they've mistaken their own sense of disgust for a moral compass, it's because it causes harm to someone--whether specific individuals or the people in general--so where is the harm that makes STTM's actions wrong located, exactly? Are we are somehow under the impression that Star and Marco are real people, as is claimed in the strawman about "antis"? No. Is it that consuming child pornography proves STTM's intent to molest a child in real life? No; while I would bet my left nut that he was indeed a sexual predator, this specific story does not prove it (and--while this again is admittedly a bad example--this actual claim by "antis" is only somewhat less absurd than the previous strawman, BTW). Because it's illegal? Don't make me laugh; the law is no metric for morality--indeed, obeying the law is oftentimes the least moral thing you can do. So what, exactly, makes what STTM was doing so bad?

The fact that he was exposing children to child pornography. The fact that he was in a space that should be safe for children--the fandom of a kids' show--and making it unsafe for children.

If you write an adult/minor ship fic and come up with some excuse for why this situation is an exception (since you don't want to write Misato from Evangelion as an unironic child predator when she seduces Shinji), any child who reads it will be more inclined to accept that excuse if they hear it than they were before and any predator who reads it will be more inclined to try that excuse. If you forego that excuse, you're still making it look to our hypothetical child reader more like a normal and acceptable thing that happens simply by adding to the quantity of adult/minor fics they have available to them (this is what is meant by "normalization," JSYK). Even if your explicit fic is purely child/child--which was presumably the case with the one STTM was pushing; for obvious reasons, I only read far enough to confirm it was what people were saying it was--you're still normalizing children being sexually active. Or to put it more concisely: child porn, yea verily including drawn child porn of fictional characters, is wrong because it's groomer propaganda.

(But like, for real; not like when conservatives pretend that cartoons that help LGBT kids understand they're not freaks, or help kids in general understand that periods are natural--or most tellingly of all, help abused kids understand what's happening to them and how to report it to the authorities--is "groomer propaganda.")

(Not that the live action stuff isn't also wrong for other reasons, of course.)

(And yes I had to get into all that--if I had claimed that something was "unsafe for children" without explaining how it was unsafe for children, how exactly would I be (provably) better than the people I'm complaining about???)

My point with all this is that this is not supposed to be about what squicks you out personally or what thoughtcrimes you think the creator of whatever you're complaining about may have created or any other form of pearl clutching--it's supposed to be about actual, tangible harm, and even when a potential vector of harm is identified it needs to be weighed according to how realistic the risk is.

The goal of this essay is to get y'all to analyze this shit through the correct (materialist) lens, not necessarily to get y'all to agree with my personal readings. But since I have you here anyway, I thought The Coffin of Andy and Leyley was fine.

[chompcourse]

yall are bout to be real mad at me

you guys arent very civil. or just nice period. like, even if i was a proshipper, i still wouldnt want to touch this fandom or interact with you guys at ALL. because you are fucking mean.

isnt the WHOLE point of problematic content “dont like dont read”? isnt that your fucking mantra? why, then, do you guys celebrate the fact that this game is breaching containment and making people upset?? why do you actively hunt out people that dont like the game and mock them for it?? ive actively tried to AVOID this game because it makes me uncomfortable but i still see it fucking everywhere. why do you do that?? why do you say “no ones making you play it” only to post sibling porn everywhere you go? why do you quite genuinely shove it in peoples faces???

where the fuck do you guys get off making fun of people that are uncomfortable with this fucking game? i saw a stupid fucking post the other day about how happy you guys are that the game is everywhere and making people mad because its “”finally something not made for them””. why?? why are you so full of fucking hate for people that JUST dont want to see the fucking game?? what is wrong with you people????

[the-last-clydlex-shipper]

Literally the fandom for The Coffin of Andy and Leyley.

why do anitshippers gravitate to dark media so much

[kokodain-nation]

gothic horror has nothing to do with goths, shut the fuck up

[aqours]

the thing about horror is that it's subjective. not everybody can be scared by the same things, horror is a study and exploration of the macabre in most modern cases

one of the main "criticisms" against tcoaal is how can it be horror when its not scary? and yeah, tcoaal isn't like, a conventionally "scary" game... but how could it be?

use jumpscares?

lots of more gore?

i can't find the post, but there's a screenshot going around twitter of somebody like "LMAO SURE TALK TO ME ABOUT HOW THE INC*ST GAME IS HORROR... i'm making my game about a blind guy put through horrible Saw traps and some maniac with a chainsaw-" and people were like, ok lmao you want a participation trophy?

i've seen people say Saw isn't real horror, just torture porn and gore, it's not scary anymore so its not horror. right now there's a post that got memed and ratio'd on twitter bc there's some upcoming movie where a kid might killed and they were like IF YOU WATCH THIS HORROR MOVIE WHERE A CHILD MIGHT BE KILLED AND TORTURED YOU ARE FUCKING DISGUSTING BLOCK ME NOW!!!" and people in the replies and qrts were talking about horror movies like Halloween 3 and The Blob (1988) where kids get killed

and there's people who will say that if you rely on a kid dying in your horror movie it's not actually horror its just edgy and should be discarded. other people will find it disgusting and horrifying beyond words.

while the game is very crass and sarcastic, tcoaal does explore a very macabre topic that would make anyone uncomfortable beyond words if it happened irl, and while it does also make it hot (i should make a post about that later) it doesn't shy away from the fact it's protagonists are horrible awful fucked up people and realistically the only way they can ever be truly happy is if they got restraining orders against eachother but they refuse to do anything to break this thing off and just keep descending into the muk. if chapter 3 doesn't have at least one murder-suicide ending i will be very pensive face

horror is a. very subjective thing. some people actually do find jumpscares scary other people find them annoying. society will never reach a consensus on what is scary and what is not bc people are scared by different things. tcoaal may not be a particularly scary game, mostly disturbing, but the idea that it's not horror in any capacity and how its an insult to REAAAAAL horror is... lol

[screuxluse]

It’s analysis like this that make me even more infuriated at the Ashley Haters of the fandom.

She’s a person with feelings. Are you also buying into fuckin’ Andrew’s perceived facade that she isn’t??

…how embarrassing-

~

.

Thinking about this scene where Ashley went on a date only to be a no-show. It's not dramatic or traumatic or tense. It's not a groundbreaking moment, nothing big is revealed. It's quiet and reflective.

We just spent the previous minute with Andrew going into Girl Dad Mode about to rescue his oh-so-innocent sister daughter from the guy with the douchiest hat in the world, only for that fantasy to be dashed by Ashley not following expectations. She ditched the guy before the date even started. She only agreed to it because her "friends" (she put friends in quotes) talk about boys all the time. She's not sad because her feelings were hurt, or that she feels guilty for ditching. She's sad because...I don't think she even knows why.

It also goes against a lot of presumptions about Ashley shared around. Folks imagined that if other guys have been interested a few thing would happen:

1 - Andrew would immediately put up a barrier before they even had a chance as the "protective" older brother/dad figure. This part's absolutely true, but here we see a scenario where Ashley didn't need to be protected. This goes completely against how Andrew often views Ashley as both defenseless and unable to make her own decisions without screwing up, especially in their current predicament where Ashley's hanging with the yarn ball demon.

2 - Ashley isn't interested in other men or anyone else for that matter, only Andrew, so she'd just off highhandedly refuse anyone else's pursuits or not even register them flirting. While she wasn't interested in the boy himself, she was genuinely trying to impress her friends by going out with one. And it didn't involve Andrew at all.

I think we forget that before the pandemic Ashley did try to be with other people. While Andrew wants to be liked by others for convenience and maintaining normalcy, Ashley wanted to be liked because she's lonely. She doesn't necessarily like them, but she prefers being with them over being alone.

We see Renee in Andrew's nightmares and flashbacks constantly telling him that he's all Ashley has, that no one else will care for Ashley like he does, and how this warped Andrew's feelings into only being able to love Ashley. But in this scene I think we see how this affected Ashley's own mindset. Because just as Andrew was told no one would care for her except him, so was Ashley. And this lead to her being unable to truly connect with anyone else, just like him. She tried to go on a date to impress her friends, but couldn't bring herself to do it. She didn't care enough, and it upsets her.

While Andrew fought back against the feeling he could only ever be with Ashley tooth and nail due to his lovesickness, I think Ashley had already quietly accepted that she can't truly connect with anyone other than Andrew by this point. She just kept trying to have friends because she was aware she couldn't be with him all the time.

And then her so-called friends abandoned her to starve just like her parents, and Andrew was the only one left. Renee said that Andrew's the only one who could care for Ashley, and the world proved her right.

I don't know, unfortunately my brains currently frying in a heat wave so I feel like I'm not fully articulating why this scene is so impactful. So here's the baton, discuss how you saw this scene.