coff-in - Tumblr blog

coff-in · 1 day

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heyhey!! may i req ashley with a fem reader? i may ramble here so please bear with me (reader and ashley are the same age)

reader and ashley were basically childhood friends, reader being the only person to actually give ashley a chance to actually be her friend rather than befriend her to try to get to andrew (which ashley was very wary of reader right from the get-go)

reader is basically known for being perfect and even "pure" by her peers back in highschool (and being a part of student council is no help) mostly due to her mother forcing her to excel and reader never really having much of an identity because of it

so it would be pretty scandalous for rumors of reader and ashley dating to go out, right? well, ashley fuels those rumors meanwhile reader tries to shut them down because reader isn't even out when it comes to liking girls

reader's mother is pretty disapproving of reader's and ashley's friend/relationship but the two usually sneak around to hang out anyways, mostly ashley

in the current game setting, reader is quarantined with the graves siblings since at that point, her mother stopped caring and viewed her daughter as a lost cause and is practically an accomplice in everything that happened

of course, with the quarantine, ashley and reader have gotten closer than ever before to the point that reader is questioning herself and her attraction to ashley

the relationship will be relatively toxic especially with reader likely being more of a doormat than andrew (somehow) and ashley's nature in isolating reader from friends and even her peers in general

notes from coff-in: this is actually such a cool idea, 'nonnie! i don't know to like, add on to this because it's just... it's so fucking good. you really cooked here :D still i tried my best, please enjoy!

[fem] reader-insert, homophobia(?)

holy shit, i think leyley would actually be so happy if [reader] actually came over to celebrate her birthday. even if [reader] wasn't able to bring her a gift, just her showing up to say "happy birthday, leyley!" would cause leyley to break out into a huge adorable smile!! the fact that [reader] actually takes the time and makes the effort to be there for leyley would make her like [reader]. [reader] is there for her, she likes to be friends with her. even having her sneak out of the house to hang out with ashley is so heart touching to her and enforces the idea that [reader] likes her. it also builds up that attachment to [reader] in ashley character.

i'm not too entirely sure how people in the neighborhood the graves' lived at react to gay people but... i'm sure it would be some sort of struggle being "outed" as gay when you yourself aren't even sure if you're gay or not. [reader] would definitely panic when ashley teases her about the rumors. "didn't you hear about them? everyone's talking about us~ about our relationship~"

"what?! what no! ashley, they can't-- they're lying!! we're not dating-- i don't even--"

"you don't what, [reader]? you don't like me? aren't we friends?? you're MY friend!!" omg the back and fourth the two go through of ashley pushing the boundaries of their relationship and [reader] calming her down after she (purposely) misconstrues her words turning ashley down. and it's so hard trying to dispel the rumors because yeah, they always hang out with each other (because ashley gets mad when [reader] tries to hang out with other people) and yeah, [reader] doesn't have many other friends outside of ashley (because ashley doesn't like to share :3c) AND NO, SHE'S NOT JUST FRIENDS WITH ASHLEY TO GET TO ANDREW!!

and GOD ONCE [READER]'S MOTHER FINDS OUT???? ashley knows all about shitty mothers, this is just another factor that she could use to keep [reader] close. it's an aspect that they can bond over!! they're both disappointing daughters to their mothers... kinda romantic, isn't it? it's like the only other that can relate is right next to them huh? (ashley's giving her smug bedroom eyes to [reader] while [reader] is like "haha... ha yeah, so true ashley canwetalkabout somethingelse?") THIS CONFLATES OR LIKE COMBINES WHEN THE QUARANTINE HAPPENS LIKE "WOWIE YOUR MOM DOESN'T WANT SHIT TO DO WITH YOU EITHER!!! we should kiss rn"

biggest question i have is whether or not andrew would like it or not? he's used to being ashley's rock, her anchor, the only one who loves her. and now [reader] comes along and... well, not steals her but makes her less reliant on andrew. ashley's always going to andy so it's not like andrew's leaving her (not like he wants to do so either) but there must be some tension or competition between him and [reader]. especially since [reader]'s taking his spot as "doormat extraordinaire" like bro!!! what the fuck!!! honestly such a fun idea to explore.

[reader] has nothing left but ashley. ashley drove away her friends in middle/high school, her mother abandoned her due to rumors of her dating ashley, and now she's stuck with ashley (and andrew) for three months. no one is calling the phone to talk to her, no one is trying to break her out, and no one is missing her. it's only [reader] and ashley (and andrew)

fucking love this idea, come here. let me kiss that wonderful brain of yours 'nonnie. MWAH MWAH MWAH!!!

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coff-in

#cobweb in the coffin #tcoaal #the coffin of andy and leyley #ashley graves #tcoaal x reader #the coffin of andy and leyley x reader #ashley graves x reader #sorry for the late response btw #got the wifi back

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coff-in · 1 day

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can I request an Andrew and Genderbend!Ashley (Ashton? Asher?) x younger sis reader? male!Ashley fanarts are making me act up and I need a double penetration threesome! and maybe some headcanons too? I feel like nothing would change except male!Ashley would probably be hornier than his female counterpart..

Thank you!!

notes from coff-in: i've never had sex, please take this with a grain of salt and enjoy

[fem] reader-insert, [afab] reader-insert, genderbent/male ashley graves, NSFW (vaginal and anal penetration/sex), incest, [reader] is younger than ashley graves by at least 1 year

Asher had you trapped under him as you two locked lips. His kisses weren’t as aggressive as Andrew’s, instead they were passionate. They weren’t necessarily soft though and you found yourself pulling away from your older brother to catch a breath. “Damnit, Asher, you’re going to suffocate me!”

The asshole just laughed at your face, his pink eyes shining with mirth. “Aw, but you always liked it when I had my tongue in you.” He laughed even louder as your face flushed from his teasing. You bent your neck to look at Andrew who was situated next to you, giving him a pleading look to reel in Asher. Andrew, who is also an asshole, just looked at you two with a smirk on his face.

“I’m sure she’d like it better if you kissed her other lips.” Asher’s eyebrows shot up as he looked up at Andrew, then back down to you.

“You want me to eat you, little sis?” Asher hadn’t had his turn to eat you out yet, as Andrew usually took the first chance to make you cum on his tongue. You were then too sore for him to eat you again, usually. Maybe this time you could have Asher take his turn. You sighed and gave him a small smile, nodding at him. He perked up and got off of your body, tugging your legs apart and baring your glistening pussy to him. He looked down at you with excitement before diving down and licking a long stripe across your folds with his tongue.

“Oh fuck!” You exclaimed as you felt the broad of his tongue brush up against your clit. Asher grinned and brought one hand to spread your folds, revealing your throbbing clit from your puffy lips, and started sucking. The sounds he made were fucking obscene as he slobbered all over your sensitive area. You let out mewls and moans as Andrew watched with gleaming green eyes, silently palming himself through his jeans. Asher was a messy eater but his vigorous pace led to you climaxing way sooner than you thought you would have.

With an embarrassing squeal, you brought your hand down into Asher’s messy black locks to keep him firmly in place as you rode out your orgasm on his face. The hands he had placed on your hips squeezed your flesh as you did so. Andrew seemed to be pleased at the sight of his little siblings having fun with each other.

You let go of Asher’s head once your orgasm subsided. He came up, heaving and panting. His lips and chin were wet and shiny with your slick and spent. “Oh, man… I can see why Andrew loves going down on you.” He brought his face closer to yours in an instant, “Here, have a taste.” He crashed his lips onto yours and forced his tongue inside your mouth. You both moaned and panted into the kiss. You could taste yourself on his tongue, sweet and addictive.

While you and Asher were making out, Andrew has reached over to the bedside drawer and grabbed the bottle of lube kept there. Jostling the bed while he removed his jeans and grey boxers, he situated himself behind you, sandwiching you between him and Asher. “Do you think you could take both of us, [reader]?”

You parted from Asher as he pulled down his shorts and briefs, nodding and letting out a pathetic “yeah”. Andrew chuckled and started to coat his fingers with lube. Asher giggled in front of you, his penis veiny and standing at attention. You couldn’t help but focus on its red leaking head, dripping precum onto the bedsheets.

“You’re such a greedy girl today, sis. Have we not been taking care of you lately?”

“No– you’ve both been, ngh!” You cut yourself off as you felt Andrew’s cold and slippery fingers prod at your asshole, teasing the rim before entering your tight ring. “You’ve both been taking good care of me… I j-just thought that tonight w-we could do something new!” Your voice stuttered as Andrew pumped two fingers into your asshole. You were, however, a little nervous about how this will feel. You’ve never taken them both at the same time and you were a little worried if you would even be able to fit them both inside of you simultaneously.

As if sensing your hesitation, Asher cupped your cheeks with his hands and kissed your nose. “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t worry. If things get too rough just let us know, okay? You know what to do?” You nodded and tapped his pale thigh three times. He smiled and kissed your lips. “Good girl.”

Andrew brought his hands under your armpits and lifted up into the air to sit you on his lap. You felt this thick cock rubbing between your cheeks. Asher positioned himself in between your legs, the tip of his penis kissing your drooling entrance. Andrew buried his nose into the crook of your neck, “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

With that, he and Ahser pushed into you simultaneously. All three of you let out a cacophony of groans and moans as your heat tried to accommodate them both. Andrew kissed your neck and murmured sweet praises into your skin. Asher looked at you with his pink eyes again. “Are you alright? Do you need a moment?”

You shook your head, “No… no you can move now.” He nodded and slowly started to shallowly thrust into your wet cunt. You and Andrew moaned in unison as you felt Andrew slightly move in you too with each thrust. The sound of wet slapping filled the air as Asher thrust in and out of you. Andrew pushed forward and caught Asher in a kiss, pressing you tightly between your brothers’ chests as Andrew then started to thrust in and out of your ass. You could feel them brushing against each other inside of you, separated by a wall of flesh and muscle.

The hot session didn’t last too long. You came quickly onto Asher’s cock, your poor cunt overstimulated from your previous orgasm. Once you came, Asher followed suit. The sensations of you squeezing him with your tight walls caused him to fill you up with this hot seed. Andrew lasted longer than you and Asher. His thrust started to get rougher as he got closer to cumming, the grip he had on your hips bruising your skin. He came with a grunt and a loud “Fuck!” as he spilled his warm semen into your ass.

You leaned back onto Andrew’s chest, exhausted. He patted your hair, kissed your cheek, and told you how good you did for them. Asher got up and went into the bathroom, coming back out with a wet towel and proceeded to wipe your legs and pussy, which was spilling his cum onto the bedsheets.

“That was really good. We should do that again!” He said as you three settled down next to each other in the bed. You hummed noncommittedly as you wrapped your arms around him, drifting off to sleep.

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coff-in

#cobweb in the coffin #tcoaal #the coffin of andy and leyley #andrew graves #ashley graves #tcoaal x reader #the coffin of andy and leyley x reader #andrew graves x reader #ashley graves x reader #sorry this took so long #got a bit into a writer's block i guess #still kinda in it and now i have wifi issues at home #i'll try to push through for you guys though

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coff-in · 1 day

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the wifi when out at my home so now i'll have to write porn at work until it gets fixed... what a monday, huh?

my art, [oc]s, amy graves, juno "jojo" wolfe, [blog persona]?, coff-in

coffin up nonsense in here

"coffin" sona is just my tumblr profile picture, which i got off of pinterest

#coffin art #tcoaal #the coffin of andy and leyley #ashley graves #tcoaal oc

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coff-in · 2 days

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Control: The Strange Dynamics of Andy and Leyley or

The Incest End Is Not The Fucking Bad End, Stop Coping

EDIT:

Hey guys! This post is blowing the fuck up, but this was my first essay on this game, and I think I've had many more insightful things to say since then. Here's a link to a masterpost with all of my essays, which I'd definitely suggest reading after this one:

Anyways, without further adieu...

I heard a lot about this game going in. I knew the general story beats and the funny haha incest memes. I knew it was about a toxic codependent relationship where Ashley, the sister, acted like your standard overly-controlling person who used various abuse techniques to keep someone in line. I expected Ashley to be a yandere-type character where she was borderline psychotic, irrational, and had a skewed perception of reality. I expected her to be a crazy bitch, and I love me some crazy bitches.

But then I actually played through the game. ...That is not what I got.

The game advertises Andrew as a doormat extraordinaire who is strung along by his Very Not Good sister and has no agency of his own' that he's just a henpecked abuse victim. But in practice, that doesn't seem to be the case. One of their first exchanges that in the story is when the occultist played his music and Ashley wanted them to check it out. He says 'no', sure, but then he smirks and says 'but I'll come along if you do.'

That is not the dialogue of someone who has no will of their own, that's the dialogue of someone who willingly gives up their own agency.

This is not, on its own, a sign of anything out of the ordinary. What caught my attention with it, though, is how it flew in the face of the common narrative surrounding their relationship dynamic. But that's not the first time I noticed it, it's just the first time, in retrospect, that their actual dynamic begins to show. The first time I personally noticed it is in the choking scene.

There are a lot of ways to view this situation. But my own reading? This was not a crime of passion. This was not him trying to break free. This is him doing something he's thought about for a while. This is premeditated. In this scene, Andrew is done playing along with Ashley's shit. In this scene, I firmly believe Ashley is the victim.

Ashley is the more openly abusive of the two who seeks to do whatever she can to trap Andrew so he'll never leave her. That much is clear. But Andrew-

-clearly has these same tendencies. He says this shortly after Ashley mentions putting her name up on a call girl's wall for money. There's protective brotherly instincts, and then there's this. This is not something you'd threaten a sister with, this is something that a man would threaten his wife with, which is directly brought attention to in the story.

(hey look he accepts the framing of it being WIFE beating at face value, and says Ashley is the only one who makes him like that! HMMMMMMMMMM WONDER WHAT THAT IMPLIES???)

It also implies that this is not the first time physical force has been threatened! I mean, that much is obvious, because of the choking scene that happened before, but I more mean that this implies that Andrew either threatening or utilizing physical force is an established pattern of behavior. However, the Decay route implies that she never thought Andy would kill her (but Andrew would) which can either be for or against depending on one's perspective, so I don't hold to the idea that it's an established pattern too strongly.

Okay, so. Andrew has some controlling and possessive tendencies too. So what? Their relationship is codependent. It's advertised as such. What of it?

Well first of all, it pretty much blows the lid off of the idea that Ashley is the sole perpetrator of abuse in their relationship. I've seen a lot of people view Andrew's behavior as justified retaliation against abuse, but frankly, I don't believe that him threatening to strangle Ashley for violating boundaries by trying to hold him accountable for his actions (given the strangulation part happens after she brought up Nina's death and how Andrew was ultimately responsible) is justified. And I ESPECIALLY don't believe that him threatening to backhand Ashley for her transactional attitude towards sex is justified in ANY circumstance.

EDIT: This part was edited in from the original post for the sake of readability so they don't have to see the reblogs to see the updated version! This post gained more traction than I was expecting!

…But perhaps even more telling is what she DOESN'T do.

Pushing someone's boundaries until they lash out is a pretty common tactic in abusive relationships. It's easy to see why, too: It justifies prior behavior and paints them in a negative light to others. This can be an important aspect of using DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender) against someone, although the two ideas aren't necessarily linked.

It's pretty easy to argue that this is what Ashley does, but if you look at the one time her boundary pushing DID go too far, when Andrew lashes out with physical violence… she doesn't do that. She doesn't blame him. She doesn't paint herself as the victim. She doesn't even try to give a reason as to why she shouldn't be killed outside of the comfort she gives him. Why is this notable?

Because the mom does, in fact, engage in what could be considered DARVO against Ashley:

(i will elaborate more on this screenshot in particular below)

Ashley is directly compared to Mrs. Graves by Andrew, and yet she crucially displays none of the habits that Mrs. Graves does. Mrs. Graves lays the blame on Ashley, but Ashley doesn't lay the blame on Andrew. Mrs. Graves tends to paint herself as the victim of Ashley, but Ashley does no such thing to Andrew. The mom denies her culpability at every turn; Ashley doesn't. Ashley tries to hold Andrew accountable for his role in Nina's death, which could be considered a kind of DARVO. But she never denies that she had a role to play in it. She just mentions that he was the one who pulled the trigger. And he was.

(and the point was more that she DIDN'T engage in it when threatened with physical violence; the perfect chance to)

In Mrs. Graves' mind, she is the victim of either Ashley, or society as a whole. In Ashley's mind, she knows what she is, what she does, and what she's about. The only thing she's oblivious to- or doesn't acknowledge, at least- is the threat Andrew poses to her. In her mind, she's the bad guy. In Andrew's mind, Ashley is the bad guy. In official art, she is the bad guy:

And yet, in the game itself, Andrew is the one holding the cleaver. Not her. Hm.

Ashley is the world's most convenient scapegoat. She allows people to mask their own worst habits and pretend they're better people than they are. She accepts this role. She embraces it. She doesn't try to deny it. But when that mask slips, people lash out at her. Both Mrs. Graves and Andy (NOT Andrew, crucially) predicate much of their self-perception on being what she's not.

But they're the ones who enabled her to become like this, every step of the way.

And that's what blew my fucking mind, and made me question just who the victim really is. She was never given a chance to be normal, because other people relied on her NOT being normal.

By the end of my second playthrough, I felt worse for Ashley than I did for Andrew, and I still do.

So. What am I getting at? What does this show me about the relationship between Ashley and Andrew?

(I also wanted to point out that Andrew does engage in DARVO too but I didn't want to distract from the behavior of the mother. Unlike what Andrew does, it doesn't require someone to reassess the narrative they have towards the game in order to realize the implications of it, whereas it's pretty easy to justify Andrew's words as not qualifying as DARVO if you buy into the narrative that he's the sole victim and/or that Ashley is the main perpetrator of abuse. A friend of mine pointed out that it's a pretty key part of the push/pull dynamic they have, and I completely agree.

However, the direct comparisons to the behavior of the mother can't be ignored no matter your narrative, so I felt as if I needed to highlight that more.)

EDIT OVER

It shows me that their relationship is all about control.

Specifically, the push and pull of who controls who in any given situation.

Andrew weaponizes his incompetence. He always looks to lay the blame on Ashley. This is drawn attention to several times, and said explicitly in the Decay route.

He is always surrendering control to her, and yet he never HAS to. He could always just say no. He could always refuse. What are the consequences? Her being upset? Well, unfortunately, it's not that easy. That's not how abuse dynamics work. He probably feels like he has to, or rather, feels like there's no other option. That he's in too deep, and stuck with her no matter what. But personally, I think it's pretty clear from his willingness to surrender control to Ashley that he still feels like he has it at points, because the moment he feels like he's about to lose it, he either considers violence, even as a child-

(the actual scene of slicing her finger is pretty sus too with this reading in mind)

-or resorts to it, outright, in both the choking scene and the vision in the Decay ending... when Ashley doesn't have enough bullets to defend herself (this will be important later!).

SO WHAT POINT AM I TRYING TO MAKE??? AM I JUST MAKING ABUSE APOLOGIA (the answer may surprise you)?

No. I don't think so.

Ashley is obviously very bad. She's controlling and uses pretty textbook abuse and entrapment tactics on Andrew whereas everything he does to her is inference, with Ashley too daft to realize just how much danger she's in until the vision in the Decay ending spells it out for her- and I don't know if a true abuse dynamic allows for one to be completely unaware of the consequences of breaking free. She could just let go of her desire for control and Andrew would be a much happier person.

And that's the point, because so would she.

I bring up control because that push and pull- that desire for control over each other- is exactly what's tearing their relationship apart, and this effect most obviously manifests in the two endings of episode 2. In the Decay ending, Ashley either tries to exert control over Andrew due to a lack of trust, or Andrew allows his feelings of entrapment to truly take root in his mind and guide his actions. In the Decay ending, Andrew becomes a true doormat with no will of his own, allowing his feelings of bitterness and resentment to fester and grow, eventually resulting in their deaths.

In the Burial ending, Andrew does the exact opposite. He takes control of the situation and does exactly what Ashley would do without much of a fuss. This eventually culminates in THAT scene (assuming you take the Questionable route), where his facial expression alone speaks volumes:

Look at how fucking confident this man is. This is not the face of someone who's unsure of himself; this is the face of someone who knows exactly what he wants and takes it. He is absolutely in control of this situation, and everyone is happier for it.

And what does Ashley have to do to get this ending?

Let's go back to Decay for a moment. If Ashley has bullets in her gun, she has control over the situation. She, at any point, could put an end to Andrew and survive. And yet, at the very end of it all, she could choose not to. She could choose to surrender control to Andrew, allowing herself to die. And that ending, I believe so much of his life and willpower will have decayed that there's nothing left for him to take control of, leaving him no choice- or rather, no use for the control he now has- but to die with her.

And in the Burial ending, she has to let him out of his cage before it's too late. She has to surrender control to him, and when she does-

-He will become everything she ever needed him to be.

It's all about her surrendering control, and it's all about him taking control. Because, no matter what, as long as that happens... the two of them will be together forever.

In life...

...or in death.

How romantic.

So no, the incest end is not the fucking bad end. They're going to be together forever in the end either way, so they might as well live through it.

#tcoaal #the coffin of andy and leyley #andrew graves #ashley graves #((i should make a reblog tag))

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coff-in · 3 days

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about Andrew's reaction to the incest vision...

let me just. frantically type up an essay after all cause this is eating me alive-

OKAY so basically, after watching the Burial vision scene a couple more times as one does i'm now starting to think that really, Andrew's mortified reaction is all about the fact that he feels found out. he's been trying so so so hard to deny his down-badness to even himself that having it spelled out so clearly to not only himself but also his sister of all people like that just sends him into a panic. he has to deny it even harder, even though it's completely absurd at that point to try and keep up the farce...

it's a vision, and the visions have been established in the game already to be true glimpses at the future unless someone goes out of their way to prevent them. that means there's no way for him to believably act like it's nonsense. he's being confronted with it first by the vision and then once they woke up, his sister as well.

and so of course he freaks out. cause he's probably internalized that actually acting out his incest fantasies is completely out of the question and would be crossing a final line where there's no coming back from and all of this has been driving him crazy to the point where it's completely warped his perception of Ashley's responses to his extremely casual out-of-line remarks and levels of physical intimacy. he's also convinced himself that Ashley sees this aspect of their relationship the same way, that she wouldn't want them to end up crossing that line.

HOWEVER, she's been happily replying to his inappropriate comments in kind, and even when their exchanges got very suggestive because of that, Ashley is just rolling with it because to her boundaries simply are incomprehensible. yes, she knows this is not innocent stuff, she's aware that it's not just jokes or whatever Andrew is trying to pass it off as. she's not oblivious to it. but it doesn't really affect her in the same way. thinking about them getting it on doesn't make her feel disgusted with herself in the same way it makes Andrew feel about himself. that's why she's so unbothered by the vision and even confused about his distress.

yet Andrew on the other hand has spent so much time living in a constant state of cognitive dissonance that he's successfully convinced himself (at least superficially) that this is totally just how normal siblings interact. nothing incestuous or inappropriate about it, nope. because if he had to admit that it's not, he'd have to come to terms with his "forbidden" attraction to his own sister!!

#tcoaal #the coffin of andy and leyley #andrew graves #ashley graves #((i should make a reblog tag))

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coff-in · 3 days

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my art, andrew graves, devious younger sister

my first time drawing andrew!! drawing him and ashley has like… idk but i feel healed somehow. i love them and i love you guys. thank you, thank you, thank you all :)

girls <3 my art, ashley graves, devious younger sister

this is my first time drawing ashley! kinda intimidating because her sprites are so beautiful i can’t look at her without feeling like a lovesick fool… hehe!

also, i’m sorry for not posting any writing today… i’m finding it kinda hard to complete whatever i’ve started (but i have started them!) i’ll try to get them posted as soon as possible.

#coffin art #tcoaal #the coffin of andy and leyley #tcoaal oc #andrew graves #devious younger sister

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coff-in · 3 days

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girls <3 my art, ashley graves, devious younger sister

this is my first time drawing ashley! kinda intimidating because her sprites are so beautiful i can’t look at her without feeling like a lovesick fool… hehe!

also, i’m sorry for not posting any writing today… i’m finding it kinda hard to complete whatever i’ve started (but i have started them!) i’ll try to get them posted as soon as possible.

#coffin art #tcoaal #the coffin of andy and leyley #ashley graves #tcoaal oc #devious younger sister #i love her lots #she gets her own tag too

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coff-in · 3 days

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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…