Peering into the Abyss

An endeavoring untangler of the Graves siblings and their world

[coffin-ramblings]

Welcome to my blog, you can call me Rambler or Fenri. I post The Coffin of Andy and Leyley theories, analyses, devlog commentary, and mod reviews. I am 20+ years old. This blog will be sfw, but I will mention sex and sexuality a lot without going explicit on the act.

I generally tag coffincest and gravecest both for fans of it to find and those who may not want to see to a discussion or occurrence of their incestuous relationship. If I don't tag it, then it means that there is no intention for that or that it's worth noting. I like Andrew and Ashley both as a couple and just siblings, so if you do not feel comfortable with that, you are free to block me.

I refuse to engage with pro/anti discourse, and I will block anyone who tries to start that with me.

If you want access to TCOAAL assets, here is the link: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1itJPXLIRoEqsdWjKXemgz9RrpKDbDdJi.

[coffin-ramblings]

hi! i was wondering what your thoughts are on the devlog that included an image of Renee hugging Ashley and the recent devlog video which features both parents in it! to me, both come off as things Ashley wants, but i'd like your 2 cents on it (^_^)

Hello, thank you for your ask! I agree with that premise that they reflect Ashley's desires, though they are different versions.

I think Renee hugging Ashley is Ashley's dream, where she finally gets the love she needed from Renee, who genuinely is sorry for everything she did to her and Andrew. If it's a dream, it's an interesting departure from how Ashley's dreams are mainly just flashbacks of the past. This is Ashley in the present, wanting what she couldn't have. While tragic, that is significant because Ashley is now facing the present-day in all of its bitter truth. She is getting closer to realizing that she didn't ever fully reject wanting Renee's love, and she is mourning that it never will happen. Perhaps this dream came from enough interaction with Six Eyes, which would trigger a reflection of her own relationship with her parents and possibly grandparents.

With the "Demon Ashley can make fantasies into reality" theory, this could also be taken of Ashley is making that fantasy come true. But her surprised reaction weakens it, and I think the dream is a more powerful explanation. Plus, Cataracts being a "fantasy-made-reality" can contradict this, though not fully since Ashley presumably had to create Wren herself, so she could create a Renee she needed. This actually is a good segue into the video, so let's get to it.

Cataracts has two theories that I like the most: Wren is the canon Andrew/Ashley child and that was a "what-if" timeline, or Demon Ashley is using her family's souls to create the fantasy-made-reality. However, the former doesn't leave much to talk about it, so it's time to focus on the Demon Ashley one. That one actually has some evidence suggesting this is part of the main game, since the video tells you you're playing as Renee, which isn't present in the vision room. It seems like Ashley doesn't have complete control of where the fantasy goes, because Wren is born with a cataract and Renee is a spiteful, money-grubbing bitch as she always is. There is the inherent horror that Renee and Douglas only regain their agency and full memories of themselves by taking part in Ashley's fantasy, but they could rebel in it as Renee might be doing. Douglas acts as he always does, and interestingly not in a submissive way as he's usually depicted, but as someone genuinely invested in being a grandfather and wanting to keep the peace between the family. That's quite different from where he begs for a conciliatory option during the sacrifice ritual scene, a self-denial of the facts. Here, he genuinely wants to celebrate his grandson's birth to try to bring the family together and maybe figure out how they can get everyone on board to treat Wren's cataract.

But Renee and Douglas might actually not be the making their own decisions. Even though the theory was originally made to explain the Vision Room visions pre-Chapter 3A, it's entirely possible Ashley can navigate the fantasy world through the mind of Renee because she ate her. Ashley lost her own identity to walk, talk, and think as her mother. Now this isn't a theory I have a lot of investment in because it feels way more clunky than the other two, but it's something fun to think about.

[mx-pokirby]

The tcoaal publicity team keeps choosing to get in hot water for some reason with people doing things with their art that they don't approve of, and ngl the optics are kinda pathetic at this point. Like about as out-of-touch of Nintendo is with piracy, idea ownership, anti-transformation. And the devlogs have been weirdly vague about these events they're allegedly "in the full legal & moral right" about. The attitude just comes off as super corporate /derogatory. Idgi. The art (tcoaal) itself comes off as wiser than the people brought in to help make it somehow.

[coffin-ramblings]

There are so many contradictions with this kind of behavior that I'd love to unpack, especially with the anti-capitalist themes of TCOAAL. I'll wait until they release the guidelines of what they allow, but yeah, I do get the sentiment. The message of "We want people to make Coffin-likes" appears to be partly PR control, but instead it ends up being confusing.

Anyway, my theory for why they're getting involved with these legal disputes is because of Archive/HeavyBerry, the guy who created The Coffin of the Candy Scabs mod. His TCOAAL Everything Discord server was struck down because he re-uploaded Nemlei's old games under his name on Steam, which you know, that's fraudulent. There is the hole though in that should have been a one and done deal. However, given how dumb this guy can be, he might be doubling down and getting himself into trouble. And yes, I know from experience because I exposed him for being a far right winger supporter, got banned from his server, and he crashed out on me instead of actually proving I'm wrong.

[mx-pokirby]

Yeah the only bit of that I'd side with the tcoaal team on there is against the guy fraudly reselling the games on Steam. (Money aside it's not even a media preservation thing; you could still find Nemlei's old stuff for free on Internet Archive...)

The rest is maybe at best annoying to know is happening in your fandom, inherently difficult to filter out edgelords & bigots when making dark art you hope speaks for itself, (and at worst a "who cares?" @ people making tcoaal mods/fan content. People unfortunately already know you as just The Incest Game, we're far past libel/brand image intergrity mattering) but none of that sounds like something this friggin' small indie team needs to waste manpower "dealing with" like they're Nintendo Ninjas™, the Fine Bros or the FNAF Fanverse Initiative 🙄

[coffin-ramblings]

I neglected to mention but the guy did put it on Steam for free, that's my mistake. There were people who tried to talk him out of it, but he still pushed along it anyway. So yeah, it wasn't media preservation at all, he was just being egotistical and thought he could get away with it.

I agree that Kit9 and Nemlei seem to care way too much about the fandom (as we can see with the school hallways retcon not being well received...). But it is also incredibly unfortunate that they got the edgelords and bigots attracted to the fandom, and they're probably morally disturbed that they are getting money from them. But we can't separate that from the world we live in right now, so all you can do is try to pretend they don't exist until the world changes.

[mx-pokirby]

Definitely fair to add. I wanna joke "if the best thing you can say about the situation is ' at least he wasn't literally scamming people' then-" but I can't think of a solid punchline and it wouldn't add anything beyond that.

So that's interesting since I sometimes hear in passing, either some reworked dialogue or a slightly expanded scene gets updated in, but We don't really replay unless there's a new chapter update basically. So We'd heard about a change in the school hallway, ig "to drive a point home that was too subtle for some people before" is the vibe I got. But had no idea how people generally felt about any of it. (Maybe staying "outside" the fandom has been the wise choice...) They kinda keeps doing that afaik, adding these minor tweak updates, and since there's still no Chapter Select I do wish there was some place to just list all the changes in detail and which update they were a part of. Just Steam patchnotes don't really get specific enough.

The only people We personally know who're into tcoaal are cool trans/queer people whom We got them into the game in the first place. :p So ever since We got told the game has a decent right-wing portion of its fanbase, We've been trying to unpack why, past the default amount for any art to expect. We don't think it's the sibling-fucking; idk why I've heard some people talk about it like a "right-wing thing" but it's very much a bipartisan subject. I know it's easy for art that doesn't spell out its morals to your face are easy for the right to not think about and decide the art agrees with them actually, but that answer feels too simple. Tcoaal's writing feels too... "smart and empathetic" for that to make complete sense. Maybe it's just a question for the ages.

Loved that part in tcoaal 7 where Wren looks into the camera and says "I'm a girl" and half the playerbase is confused. /s

[coffin-ramblings]

A friend told me "It's because incest appeals to the blood purism of the right-wing". Add in the fact Andrew and Ashley are very pretty and very white, yeah, they'd really fit the ideal archetype of the white nationalists. The siblings are already the mini demonstration of the ideology by excluding everyone else outside of this one group, where since they were kids, they're desperate for someone to stay loyal to them and fulfill their physical and social needs (especially on Ashley's part with Andrew as her only caregiver). Combine that they are incestuous and literally kill outsiders for their own survival, and you have the "the white bloodline remains alive and untainted through force" with a romantic spin.

But you're right, it's not just incest that attracts the right-wingers. Andrew and Ashley are people suffering in a shit-fucked capitalist hellscape world, something we can all relate to, but the conclusions of what to do vastly differ depending on your political stances. Even though the game does show they commit violence because their shitty world forced them to to survive, the right sees this as society's victims committing violence as a rebellion against it. While yeah, that is partly why Andrew and Ashley do that, the right only focuses on that reason because they glorify that kind of behavior. If you are "brave enough" and "strong enough" and "break through all the barriers and institutions the """enemy""" set up", you can make a great change in the world. You just need to steel against yourself the blood you'd have to shed, which Andrew and Ashley are accustomed to because they weren't really treated as human beings in their entire life. This is why as kids, they weren't that bothered about Nina's death as a person. She mainly mattered as an extremely threatening moment for all aspects of the Graves' existence, which is why you got the violently transactional relationship between the siblings that was always present, it just didn't show its truest and ugliest face until that moment. Furthermore, Nina represented the "first" threat to the siblings' relationship, so her being killed by the siblings and them getting away with it would be a moment the blood purists love. It's extremely unfortunate she and Julia unironically would be called "hussies" in that circle.

Also, given how the right also pushes "family values" (which is really another form of individualism) Andrew and Ashley being siblings facing against the world appeals to that. To the right, this really is family at its best, especially with the romantic aspect of "us alone against big dangerous world", and Andrew and Ashley mostly falling into the typical gender norms and roles. We also must acknowledge that Ashley does get mischaracterized and bashed on (pun unintended...) in those circles because she's not a demurely submissive woman, and they would actually think Andrew beating her is okay or even great, he's asserting his "right as a man after being denied doing that so long". The right-wingers wouldn't or don't want to see the horror that is boiling underneath that beating, all they see is fiction that validates their beliefs after being told they're wrong for so long. This misreading is so prevalent, TV Tropes actually lists the backhand moment in early episode 3 in its YMMV as a "Carthasis Moment". Yet TV Tropes, which is supposed to be politically neutral, frames it as "Andrew was abused by Ashley for so long and now fought back", but never says it's played for horror. The intent may be different, but the conclusion is the same: neither refuse to see the horror that lies underneath the violence.

The irony is the game makes it clear that these "family values" are horrible and shouldn't be emulated, nor does individual violence actually solve anything except cause more pain and misery, as Shots & Such proved. The Graves family is extremely dysfunctional, with the sexism, poverty, Grandpa's physical; financial; and emotional abuse, the latter two kinds of abuse Renee inherits and uses, and the kinder family members terrified into staying submissive by Grandpa, all compounding onto the siblings since they were born. The siblings clearly need other people to help them to survive, proven by the Entity giving them the hitman vision that made sure they even make it past Chapter 2, and Lord Unknown and Six Eyes possibly being the unorthodox positive influence the siblings need. But even among the wider fandom, there is a distrust of any potential allies the siblings meets, because they're so used to the idea that no one wants to help them or cares to help them, these allies are just in it for themselves. While of course, the game encourages that via the siblings thinking and acting like that, that distrust is also prevalent in real life because the world sucks so much right now. That is an understandable reaction, and while most of the fandom would not identify as right-wing, that unfortunately makes them vulnerable to the right's modus operandi (especially when a lot of them would try their best to hide it). The right-wing makes that distrust, amplifies it, and only focuses on individual force as the solution to all problems because if you have a society that trusts no one, then no one can get together to make a meaningful change. And if no one trusts each other to make a meaningful change, you get Shots & Such on a bigger scale.

[mx-pokirby]

Reading this, it's starting to make more sense how the objectively wrong stupid bad stinky people~ 💅 found their way into this fanbase.

Though part of me doubts the majority of them are even consciously aware of any of these stated points. Even by making theoretical arguments for them, I can only picture "it's just a game, you're reading too much into nothing" responses if this thread broke containment. I never like assuming the Right ever bothers to actually analyze the art they claim to enjoy; it's helped Us get this far.

Tcoaal has and will continue to drive me crazy (/neutral) for almost respecting the intelligence of its player too much. That Ashley and Andrew (the latter moreso) are pretty blatantly written to be conservative-minded as a natural reaction to their upbringing. Their "fuck you, got mine" attitude towards life. Yet their apparent damage and unhappiness is supposed to get you, a presumable human being with logic and empathy, to like... pity them at least, as the lost-causes they keep choosing to be?

We remember seeing a post of somebody talking about that scene where the siblings learn about the doctor, and OP getting upset at Andrew's "I don't care about single-handedly saving the world, I want to live quietly and die in relative peace" speech @ Ashley's suggestion for taking revenge for "the game pushing conservative messages" and We just couldn't bother explaining the nuances between what a work of art is actually trying to convey VS what a character inside that fiction does/says.

We just realized all this framing may even be deliberate. With how the very first major crime/taboo we see these two morons (<3) cross (even if it's not the first chronologically) is afaik a cartoonishly generic hypothetical someone might ask you at a party to figure out when you would consider cannibalism justifiable. (minus the two being literally stranded on an island) It wouldn't surprise me if most players were conditioned by the universe's "immediate survival precedes helping others" lesson to start painting every other action in the game under that lens. Because it's hard to argue morals in the face of literal survival instincts. But eventually that PTSD-like reflex wears off and it hits you these two are still throwing others under the bus, despite there being no immediate danger in quite some time. It's all they've ever known from the start (... of the game)

I dunno where I'm going with this.

[coffin-ramblings]

I know I'm reblogging from this again becuase the first response ended up not having any room to let me complain about the TV Tropes thing, so I'm doing it here because fuck whoever made the TCOAAL TV Tropes page. They clearly have a negative view of both siblings, but the favoritism is more for Andrew because they still stick to the "Andrew is the victim" narrative even when later episodes refute that. They're Renee apologists since Chapter 2, to the point they consider it heartwarming that she didn't tell Andrew and Ashley to piss off after they break into her new fancy home. Even though she clearly didn't care they were alive, just surprised they were at all. They also state it was "divisive" for the Olive Branches video to even exist because it "ruined the ambiguity", even though everything pointed to them being responsible for the insurance fraud. Chapter 3 makes it worse where they are Grandpa apologists, to the point they call Grandpa a "Jerk with a Heart of Gold" with the shoddy excuse of "it's a charitable view". Also they argued Grandpa was right to send Ashley off to boarding school and the parents were too stupid to do so, even though family separation would be a horrible solution for Ashley. They don't even mention the fact he's financially abusive to his own family, which is one of the biggest reasons why the Graves are so poor. This is not even getting into the fact the Renee mod has its own dedicated page, though interestingly, they're more harder on Renee there because they blame her for being Andrew's source of misery and submission in that verse. This is probably because the mod appeals strongly to the "Andrew is the victim" narrative, but I digress.

It's very clear that the editors talk more like the haters of the game forced to catalogue an internet phenomenon than actually interested fans. What's not clear are if the editors are actually closeted right-wingers or liberals who think taking a view of both sides is correct. Either way, this goes to show that the both side-ism can easily become an apology for abusers and right-wingers, and that phenomenon should be taken seriously.

[mx-pokirby]

Christ

By now I know I should be used to the 'Andrew Did Nothing Wrong' members of the fandom... [Insert multi-paragraph rant about the long-standing cultural norm of pathologizing women over men. Re: Crazy Sister, "I can fix her" culture, etc] (He might be my "preferred" Graves, but simply because I can relate more to the obviously fucked up things wrong with him than with Ashley, personally :p)

And in a vacuum, I can sympathize with narratively preferring ambiguity in some places. Unbiased towards Renee or any character, I could get someone disliking Olive Branch for that reason.

But We draw a line in the sand that someone could ever play Decay 1 and see a single trait worth admiring in their gods damned Grandpa. One of the most unsubtle "this guy is JUST a piece of shit" characters in tcoaal so far, a game whose majority population is people who are some degree of 'just shit' 😭

We haven't forgotten this is kinda the crux of most of what this thread's been about, but. Tcoaal feels like such an anomaly of a work of art. Like it carries this aura that filters out most people, and 99% of the people who don't get filtered and stick around become insane, in the cringe way (unlike us, who're insane about it in the cool based way 😎 /hj)

Humanity just wasn't ready for this game ig 💔

[coffin-ramblings]

Yeah, I'm of the same thought for Olive Branches being disliked, but given the pattern of TV Tropes, I had to list it because it was a part of the both side-ism attitude.

Their explanation for why Grandpa is actually a nice guy is because: he gave Renee a home despite calling her a whore, and he wanted the parents to be proactive in taking care of the siblings. Even though none of these actions absolve him of the fact of being an abusive piece of shit to everyone involved, and can easily be read that he only cares about maintaining a good reputation within their community and he needs someone to inherit his business and wealth.

I absolutely agree with you on how special The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is. I think it is one of the most important games of the 2020s, up there with Slay the Princess. I'm of the belief that if it finishes on a strong note, it can become one of the most important games of the first half of the 21st century. It is refreshingly honest about the conditions we live in, about the relationships we have, and it does so unflinchingly yet respect for the player's intelligence. Even though Nemlei may not have expected that the incest to actually attract a loud fandom and hatedom, there is something extremely timely of its presence. We live in a society that is so confused and distressed from the open decay of the capitalist system, many people take comfort in political polarization and moral policing. The reasoning goes that if you yell loud enough or act aggressive enough, maybe you will have some control amidst all this chaos. The fact it provoked such a great reaction is a significant symptom of that decay, but it also attracted plenty of people to look into it more and fall in love with it. I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't like game initially, but its powerful premise drew me to learn about it further. I'm very glad that my curiosity has brought me to here today.

But as you said, a lot of people only see the more surface levels of the game, which is annoying at best and actually harm full at worst it is. The most wonderful part of the game is if you let your own mind sit with it, it is a very powerful and enlightening experience to have. It is indeed a shame the game came out when society is having a collective existential crisis that makes it lash out at anything that challenges the norm. But once that crisis passes and a new world is built, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley may gain a wider appreciation as a powerful historical document.

[mx-pokirby]

Only imagine in my mind at this point in regards to all the fan/hate-dom misreadings is the ever iconic-

except at this point the characters aren't even putting on facades. They're just looking into the camera, saying "I'm a bad person", they kick a puppy and then people still think "Well they're nicer than Ashley by doing less than the bare minimum by my definition so they're probably just misunderstood"

Starting with a side tangent, tcoaal oddly keeps being an artistic sister piece to Deltarune and vice versa for Us? Both being WIP indie RPGs that shot up to my Top 5 Favorite Games when there were only 2 chapters out for already displaying such complex writing & handling of themes I've not yet seen anywhere else even attempt, causing me to level up my own media literacy skills. (also them both releasing their 3rd chapter less than 30 days apart???? Basically no one talks about that time)

Anywhoo

Wholly agree about the game's both present and potential future legacy. The StP comparison feels very apt, and not just because of similar artstyles, and not just because of this post We made in adamant confidence. :p

Tcoaal wears the crown in my book for... I dunno how to translate that lead-in to the words I also wanted to say so. Fuck it The last time I, somebody intimately familiar with (insert oversharing TW list of things A&A experience here) has truly felt so seen by a piece of media was the anime Scum's Wish. (10/10 btw) And now that tcoaal's come & swooped that right up as the best We've ever seen, We're now having doubts anything could top it for Us in that area for decades.

It feels impossible for me to imagine how the game could actually "end" (despite S&S being one such actual ending to infer from) and maybe I'm just naively optimistic yet at this point I can't foresee the ball ever being fumbled or dropped. Unless Nemlei genuinely crashes out and makes everything bad on purpose out of spite before unplugging. /hj I think tcoaal is and will prove to be One Of The Bests. Period.

Yet. Unfortunately the bar to entry is quite high in this current climate. A combination of RPG Maker game, Visual Novel, multiple routes that you're basically expected to play through all of, tragedy-horror genre (non-jumpscares), non-advertiser-friendly subject matter (🤢), loudly insufferable fandom (so a normal fandom), and depending how the future shakes out among other things, developer/publisher drama There's a lot that the average person just bounces off of at the word Go. It's little wonder the game remains as niche as it is, despite those few like us fighting the good fight, championing this incredible game to the best of our abilities.

There'll likely still be more publicity pushes. Yes when more chapters come out/the game finishes, of course. But also Nemlei not opposed to the idea of merch in that one Q&A... (Listen, even if FanGamer won't personally agree to the optics of selling pastel bunny plushies with face-kissing action, an IRL Demon Trinket or a cute acrylic stand of Ashley & Andrew with their adorable totally incest baby Wren, We've seen some of the people MakeShip makes deals with, and all I'm saying is, there's definite open avenues for merch around at some point :p)

Maybe that's the kind of reputable thing that gets laypeople to reconsider, maybe not. Either way for now I think I'm at peace with the idea of one of the greatest stories I've ever read going underappreciated (as long as Nemlei still gets fair compensation) As long as media literacy remains at an all-time low, We'd rather things hover around the popularity of In Stars And Time or StP than, say, TADC. (Especially with what that much attention did to its creator 🙏)

I realize I've kinda been rambling just shootin' the shit for fun for a few paragraphs. I'll blame that on it being 7am if I can get away with that. We just love this game so much yet struggle to think of new ways to keep singing its praises with all it has to say about abuse, trauma, sex, gender, expectations, empathy, taboos, society and so much more. Especially after however many threads we've written so far. And without spoiling anything from a very, very, insanely long essay I'm helping write.

I think all we can do is just keep being As Based As Possible in hopes our takes survive the longest after all the clickbait thumbnails fade from the algorithm and all the puriteens grow up and find literally anything better to do with their time.

If tcoaal has a thousand fans, we're two of them. If tcoaal has only one fan, then one of us has probably been mysteriously erased from the timeline. :p

[coffin-ramblings]

I don't know Deltarune well myself, but I can definitely see the parallels between it and TCOAAL. It plays around the meta aspect of being a video game player controlling characters within the game, it's about growing up under harsh and constrained circumstances, resisting against unjust authority, and has a grim and thoughtful honesty about relationships (as the Weird Route showed).

I think a good way to put it is TCOAAL is visceral about the grim parts of life in an honest and thoughtful way. That is rare when a lot of the time in fiction, those topics are either treated lightly or used as pure shock value. That thoughtfulness is so consistently done that it feels unthinkable the ball would be dropped. I really would hope that Nemlei doesn't make it worse out of spite, especially looking at this fandom. And yeah, I do like how TCOAAL isn't massively popular right now, and it doesn't need to be. I'm just glad to be studying it alongside you and other people. It'd be nice once the game finishes and merch is sold, there would be more fans, but I like what we have right now. Hopefully our analyses will be dug up and spread widely years from now.

I really look forward to the essay you're writing! It'd be great to engage with it.

[mx-pokirby]

The tcoaal publicity team keeps choosing to get in hot water for some reason with people doing things with their art that they don't approve of, and ngl the optics are kinda pathetic at this point. Like about as out-of-touch of Nintendo is with piracy, idea ownership, anti-transformation. And the devlogs have been weirdly vague about these events they're allegedly "in the full legal & moral right" about. The attitude just comes off as super corporate /derogatory. Idgi. The art (tcoaal) itself comes off as wiser than the people brought in to help make it somehow.

[coffin-ramblings]

There are so many contradictions with this kind of behavior that I'd love to unpack, especially with the anti-capitalist themes of TCOAAL. I'll wait until they release the guidelines of what they allow, but yeah, I do get the sentiment. The message of "We want people to make Coffin-likes" appears to be partly PR control, but instead it ends up being confusing.

Anyway, my theory for why they're getting involved with these legal disputes is because of Archive/HeavyBerry, the guy who created The Coffin of the Candy Scabs mod. His TCOAAL Everything Discord server was struck down because he re-uploaded Nemlei's old games under his name on Steam, which you know, that's fraudulent. There is the hole though in that should have been a one and done deal. However, given how dumb this guy can be, he might be doubling down and getting himself into trouble. And yes, I know from experience because I exposed him for being a far right winger supporter, got banned from his server, and he crashed out on me instead of actually proving I'm wrong.

[mx-pokirby]

Yeah the only bit of that I'd side with the tcoaal team on there is against the guy fraudly reselling the games on Steam. (Money aside it's not even a media preservation thing; you could still find Nemlei's old stuff for free on Internet Archive...)

The rest is maybe at best annoying to know is happening in your fandom, inherently difficult to filter out edgelords & bigots when making dark art you hope speaks for itself, (and at worst a "who cares?" @ people making tcoaal mods/fan content. People unfortunately already know you as just The Incest Game, we're far past libel/brand image intergrity mattering) but none of that sounds like something this friggin' small indie team needs to waste manpower "dealing with" like they're Nintendo Ninjas™, the Fine Bros or the FNAF Fanverse Initiative 🙄

[coffin-ramblings]

I neglected to mention but the guy did put it on Steam for free, that's my mistake. There were people who tried to talk him out of it, but he still pushed along it anyway. So yeah, it wasn't media preservation at all, he was just being egotistical and thought he could get away with it.

I agree that Kit9 and Nemlei seem to care way too much about the fandom (as we can see with the school hallways retcon not being well received...). But it is also incredibly unfortunate that they got the edgelords and bigots attracted to the fandom, and they're probably morally disturbed that they are getting money from them. But we can't separate that from the world we live in right now, so all you can do is try to pretend they don't exist until the world changes.

[mx-pokirby]

Definitely fair to add. I wanna joke "if the best thing you can say about the situation is ' at least he wasn't literally scamming people' then-" but I can't think of a solid punchline and it wouldn't add anything beyond that.

So that's interesting since I sometimes hear in passing, either some reworked dialogue or a slightly expanded scene gets updated in, but We don't really replay unless there's a new chapter update basically. So We'd heard about a change in the school hallway, ig "to drive a point home that was too subtle for some people before" is the vibe I got. But had no idea how people generally felt about any of it. (Maybe staying "outside" the fandom has been the wise choice...) They kinda keeps doing that afaik, adding these minor tweak updates, and since there's still no Chapter Select I do wish there was some place to just list all the changes in detail and which update they were a part of. Just Steam patchnotes don't really get specific enough.

The only people We personally know who're into tcoaal are cool trans/queer people whom We got them into the game in the first place. :p So ever since We got told the game has a decent right-wing portion of its fanbase, We've been trying to unpack why, past the default amount for any art to expect. We don't think it's the sibling-fucking; idk why I've heard some people talk about it like a "right-wing thing" but it's very much a bipartisan subject. I know it's easy for art that doesn't spell out its morals to your face are easy for the right to not think about and decide the art agrees with them actually, but that answer feels too simple. Tcoaal's writing feels too... "smart and empathetic" for that to make complete sense. Maybe it's just a question for the ages.

Loved that part in tcoaal 7 where Wren looks into the camera and says "I'm a girl" and half the playerbase is confused. /s

[coffin-ramblings]

A friend told me "It's because incest appeals to the blood purism of the right-wing". Add in the fact Andrew and Ashley are very pretty and very white, yeah, they'd really fit the ideal archetype of the white nationalists. The siblings are already the mini demonstration of the ideology by excluding everyone else outside of this one group, where since they were kids, they're desperate for someone to stay loyal to them and fulfill their physical and social needs (especially on Ashley's part with Andrew as her only caregiver). Combine that they are incestuous and literally kill outsiders for their own survival, and you have the "the white bloodline remains alive and untainted through force" with a romantic spin.

But you're right, it's not just incest that attracts the right-wingers. Andrew and Ashley are people suffering in a shit-fucked capitalist hellscape world, something we can all relate to, but the conclusions of what to do vastly differ depending on your political stances. Even though the game does show they commit violence because their shitty world forced them to to survive, the right sees this as society's victims committing violence as a rebellion against it. While yeah, that is partly why Andrew and Ashley do that, the right only focuses on that reason because they glorify that kind of behavior. If you are "brave enough" and "strong enough" and "break through all the barriers and institutions the """enemy""" set up", you can make a great change in the world. You just need to steel against yourself the blood you'd have to shed, which Andrew and Ashley are accustomed to because they weren't really treated as human beings in their entire life. This is why as kids, they weren't that bothered about Nina's death as a person. She mainly mattered as an extremely threatening moment for all aspects of the Graves' existence, which is why you got the violently transactional relationship between the siblings that was always present, it just didn't show its truest and ugliest face until that moment. Furthermore, Nina represented the "first" threat to the siblings' relationship, so her being killed by the siblings and them getting away with it would be a moment the blood purists love. It's extremely unfortunate she and Julia unironically would be called "hussies" in that circle.

Also, given how the right also pushes "family values" (which is really another form of individualism) Andrew and Ashley being siblings facing against the world appeals to that. To the right, this really is family at its best, especially with the romantic aspect of "us alone against big dangerous world", and Andrew and Ashley mostly falling into the typical gender norms and roles. We also must acknowledge that Ashley does get mischaracterized and bashed on (pun unintended...) in those circles because she's not a demurely submissive woman, and they would actually think Andrew beating her is okay or even great, he's asserting his "right as a man after being denied doing that so long". The right-wingers wouldn't or don't want to see the horror that is boiling underneath that beating, all they see is fiction that validates their beliefs after being told they're wrong for so long. This misreading is so prevalent, TV Tropes actually lists the backhand moment in early episode 3 in its YMMV as a "Carthasis Moment". Yet TV Tropes, which is supposed to be politically neutral, frames it as "Andrew was abused by Ashley for so long and now fought back", but never says it's played for horror. The intent may be different, but the conclusion is the same: neither refuse to see the horror that lies underneath the violence.

The irony is the game makes it clear that these "family values" are horrible and shouldn't be emulated, nor does individual violence actually solve anything except cause more pain and misery, as Shots & Such proved. The Graves family is extremely dysfunctional, with the sexism, poverty, Grandpa's physical; financial; and emotional abuse, the latter two kinds of abuse Renee inherits and uses, and the kinder family members terrified into staying submissive by Grandpa, all compounding onto the siblings since they were born. The siblings clearly need other people to help them to survive, proven by the Entity giving them the hitman vision that made sure they even make it past Chapter 2, and Lord Unknown and Six Eyes possibly being the unorthodox positive influence the siblings need. But even among the wider fandom, there is a distrust of any potential allies the siblings meets, because they're so used to the idea that no one wants to help them or cares to help them, these allies are just in it for themselves. While of course, the game encourages that via the siblings thinking and acting like that, that distrust is also prevalent in real life because the world sucks so much right now. That is an understandable reaction, and while most of the fandom would not identify as right-wing, that unfortunately makes them vulnerable to the right's modus operandi (especially when a lot of them would try their best to hide it). The right-wing makes that distrust, amplifies it, and only focuses on individual force as the solution to all problems because if you have a society that trusts no one, then no one can get together to make a meaningful change. And if no one trusts each other to make a meaningful change, you get Shots & Such on a bigger scale.

[mx-pokirby]

Reading this, it's starting to make more sense how the objectively wrong stupid bad stinky people~ 💅 found their way into this fanbase.

Though part of me doubts the majority of them are even consciously aware of any of these stated points. Even by making theoretical arguments for them, I can only picture "it's just a game, you're reading too much into nothing" responses if this thread broke containment. I never like assuming the Right ever bothers to actually analyze the art they claim to enjoy; it's helped Us get this far.

Tcoaal has and will continue to drive me crazy (/neutral) for almost respecting the intelligence of its player too much. That Ashley and Andrew (the latter moreso) are pretty blatantly written to be conservative-minded as a natural reaction to their upbringing. Their "fuck you, got mine" attitude towards life. Yet their apparent damage and unhappiness is supposed to get you, a presumable human being with logic and empathy, to like... pity them at least, as the lost-causes they keep choosing to be?

We remember seeing a post of somebody talking about that scene where the siblings learn about the doctor, and OP getting upset at Andrew's "I don't care about single-handedly saving the world, I want to live quietly and die in relative peace" speech @ Ashley's suggestion for taking revenge for "the game pushing conservative messages" and We just couldn't bother explaining the nuances between what a work of art is actually trying to convey VS what a character inside that fiction does/says.

We just realized all this framing may even be deliberate. With how the very first major crime/taboo we see these two morons (<3) cross (even if it's not the first chronologically) is afaik a cartoonishly generic hypothetical someone might ask you at a party to figure out when you would consider cannibalism justifiable. (minus the two being literally stranded on an island) It wouldn't surprise me if most players were conditioned by the universe's "immediate survival precedes helping others" lesson to start painting every other action in the game under that lens. Because it's hard to argue morals in the face of literal survival instincts. But eventually that PTSD-like reflex wears off and it hits you these two are still throwing others under the bus, despite there being no immediate danger in quite some time. It's all they've ever known from the start (... of the game)

I dunno where I'm going with this.

[coffin-ramblings]

I know I'm reblogging from this again becuase the first response ended up not having any room to let me complain about the TV Tropes thing, so I'm doing it here because fuck whoever made the TCOAAL TV Tropes page. They clearly have a negative view of both siblings, but the favoritism is more for Andrew because they still stick to the "Andrew is the victim" narrative even when later episodes refute that. They're Renee apologists since Chapter 2, to the point they consider it heartwarming that she didn't tell Andrew and Ashley to piss off after they break into her new fancy home. Even though she clearly didn't care they were alive, just surprised they were at all. They also state it was "divisive" for the Olive Branches video to even exist because it "ruined the ambiguity", even though everything pointed to them being responsible for the insurance fraud. Chapter 3 makes it worse where they are Grandpa apologists, to the point they call Grandpa a "Jerk with a Heart of Gold" with the shoddy excuse of "it's a charitable view". Also they argued Grandpa was right to send Ashley off to boarding school and the parents were too stupid to do so, even though family separation would be a horrible solution for Ashley. They don't even mention the fact he's financially abusive to his own family, which is one of the biggest reasons why the Graves are so poor. This is not even getting into the fact the Renee mod has its own dedicated page, though interestingly, they're more harder on Renee there because they blame her for being Andrew's source of misery and submission in that verse. This is probably because the mod appeals strongly to the "Andrew is the victim" narrative, but I digress.

It's very clear that the editors talk more like the haters of the game forced to catalogue an internet phenomenon than actually interested fans. What's not clear are if the editors are actually closeted right-wingers or liberals who think taking a view of both sides is correct. Either way, this goes to show that the both side-ism can easily become an apology for abusers and right-wingers, and that phenomenon should be taken seriously.

[mx-pokirby]

Christ

By now I know I should be used to the 'Andrew Did Nothing Wrong' members of the fandom... [Insert multi-paragraph rant about the long-standing cultural norm of pathologizing women over men. Re: Crazy Sister, "I can fix her" culture, etc] (He might be my "preferred" Graves, but simply because I can relate more to the obviously fucked up things wrong with him than with Ashley, personally :p)

And in a vacuum, I can sympathize with narratively preferring ambiguity in some places. Unbiased towards Renee or any character, I could get someone disliking Olive Branch for that reason.

But We draw a line in the sand that someone could ever play Decay 1 and see a single trait worth admiring in their gods damned Grandpa. One of the most unsubtle "this guy is JUST a piece of shit" characters in tcoaal so far, a game whose majority population is people who are some degree of 'just shit' 😭

We haven't forgotten this is kinda the crux of most of what this thread's been about, but. Tcoaal feels like such an anomaly of a work of art. Like it carries this aura that filters out most people, and 99% of the people who don't get filtered and stick around become insane, in the cringe way (unlike us, who're insane about it in the cool based way 😎 /hj)

Humanity just wasn't ready for this game ig 💔

[coffin-ramblings]

Yeah, I'm of the same thought for Olive Branches being disliked, but given the pattern of TV Tropes, I had to list it because it was a part of the both side-ism attitude.

Their explanation for why Grandpa is actually a nice guy is because: he gave Renee a home despite calling her a whore, and he wanted the parents to be proactive in taking care of the siblings. Even though none of these actions absolve him of the fact of being an abusive piece of shit to everyone involved, and can easily be read that he only cares about maintaining a good reputation within their community and he needs someone to inherit his business and wealth.

I absolutely agree with you on how special The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is. I think it is one of the most important games of the 2020s, up there with Slay the Princess. I'm of the belief that if it finishes on a strong note, it can become one of the most important games of the first half of the 21st century. It is refreshingly honest about the conditions we live in, about the relationships we have, and it does so unflinchingly yet respect for the player's intelligence. Even though Nemlei may not have expected that the incest to actually attract a loud fandom and hatedom, there is something extremely timely of its presence. We live in a society that is so confused and distressed from the open decay of the capitalist system, many people take comfort in political polarization and moral policing. The reasoning goes that if you yell loud enough or act aggressive enough, maybe you will have some control amidst all this chaos. The fact it provoked such a great reaction is a significant symptom of that decay, but it also attracted plenty of people to look into it more and fall in love with it. I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't like game initially, but its powerful premise drew me to learn about it further. I'm very glad that my curiosity has brought me to here today.

But as you said, a lot of people only see the more surface levels of the game, which is annoying at best and actually harm full at worst it is. The most wonderful part of the game is if you let your own mind sit with it, it is a very powerful and enlightening experience to have. It is indeed a shame the game came out when society is having a collective existential crisis that makes it lash out at anything that challenges the norm. But once that crisis passes and a new world is built, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley may gain a wider appreciation as a powerful historical document.

[mx-pokirby]

The tcoaal publicity team keeps choosing to get in hot water for some reason with people doing things with their art that they don't approve of, and ngl the optics are kinda pathetic at this point. Like about as out-of-touch of Nintendo is with piracy, idea ownership, anti-transformation. And the devlogs have been weirdly vague about these events they're allegedly "in the full legal & moral right" about. The attitude just comes off as super corporate /derogatory. Idgi. The art (tcoaal) itself comes off as wiser than the people brought in to help make it somehow.

[coffin-ramblings]

There are so many contradictions with this kind of behavior that I'd love to unpack, especially with the anti-capitalist themes of TCOAAL. I'll wait until they release the guidelines of what they allow, but yeah, I do get the sentiment. The message of "We want people to make Coffin-likes" appears to be partly PR control, but instead it ends up being confusing.

Anyway, my theory for why they're getting involved with these legal disputes is because of Archive/HeavyBerry, the guy who created The Coffin of the Candy Scabs mod. His TCOAAL Everything Discord server was struck down because he re-uploaded Nemlei's old games under his name on Steam, which you know, that's fraudulent. There is the hole though in that should have been a one and done deal. However, given how dumb this guy can be, he might be doubling down and getting himself into trouble. And yes, I know from experience because I exposed him for being a far right winger supporter, got banned from his server, and he crashed out on me instead of actually proving I'm wrong.

[mx-pokirby]

Yeah the only bit of that I'd side with the tcoaal team on there is against the guy fraudly reselling the games on Steam. (Money aside it's not even a media preservation thing; you could still find Nemlei's old stuff for free on Internet Archive...)

The rest is maybe at best annoying to know is happening in your fandom, inherently difficult to filter out edgelords & bigots when making dark art you hope speaks for itself, (and at worst a "who cares?" @ people making tcoaal mods/fan content. People unfortunately already know you as just The Incest Game, we're far past libel/brand image intergrity mattering) but none of that sounds like something this friggin' small indie team needs to waste manpower "dealing with" like they're Nintendo Ninjas™, the Fine Bros or the FNAF Fanverse Initiative 🙄

[coffin-ramblings]

I neglected to mention but the guy did put it on Steam for free, that's my mistake. There were people who tried to talk him out of it, but he still pushed along it anyway. So yeah, it wasn't media preservation at all, he was just being egotistical and thought he could get away with it.

I agree that Kit9 and Nemlei seem to care way too much about the fandom (as we can see with the school hallways retcon not being well received...). But it is also incredibly unfortunate that they got the edgelords and bigots attracted to the fandom, and they're probably morally disturbed that they are getting money from them. But we can't separate that from the world we live in right now, so all you can do is try to pretend they don't exist until the world changes.

[mx-pokirby]

Definitely fair to add. I wanna joke "if the best thing you can say about the situation is ' at least he wasn't literally scamming people' then-" but I can't think of a solid punchline and it wouldn't add anything beyond that.

So that's interesting since I sometimes hear in passing, either some reworked dialogue or a slightly expanded scene gets updated in, but We don't really replay unless there's a new chapter update basically. So We'd heard about a change in the school hallway, ig "to drive a point home that was too subtle for some people before" is the vibe I got. But had no idea how people generally felt about any of it. (Maybe staying "outside" the fandom has been the wise choice...) They kinda keeps doing that afaik, adding these minor tweak updates, and since there's still no Chapter Select I do wish there was some place to just list all the changes in detail and which update they were a part of. Just Steam patchnotes don't really get specific enough.

The only people We personally know who're into tcoaal are cool trans/queer people whom We got them into the game in the first place. :p So ever since We got told the game has a decent right-wing portion of its fanbase, We've been trying to unpack why, past the default amount for any art to expect. We don't think it's the sibling-fucking; idk why I've heard some people talk about it like a "right-wing thing" but it's very much a bipartisan subject. I know it's easy for art that doesn't spell out its morals to your face are easy for the right to not think about and decide the art agrees with them actually, but that answer feels too simple. Tcoaal's writing feels too... "smart and empathetic" for that to make complete sense. Maybe it's just a question for the ages.

Loved that part in tcoaal 7 where Wren looks into the camera and says "I'm a girl" and half the playerbase is confused. /s

[coffin-ramblings]

A friend told me "It's because incest appeals to the blood purism of the right-wing". Add in the fact Andrew and Ashley are very pretty and very white, yeah, they'd really fit the ideal archetype of the white nationalists. The siblings are already the mini demonstration of the ideology by excluding everyone else outside of this one group, where since they were kids, they're desperate for someone to stay loyal to them and fulfill their physical and social needs (especially on Ashley's part with Andrew as her only caregiver). Combine that they are incestuous and literally kill outsiders for their own survival, and you have the "the white bloodline remains alive and untainted through force" with a romantic spin.

But you're right, it's not just incest that attracts the right-wingers. Andrew and Ashley are people suffering in a shit-fucked capitalist hellscape world, something we can all relate to, but the conclusions of what to do vastly differ depending on your political stances. Even though the game does show they commit violence because their shitty world forced them to to survive, the right sees this as society's victims committing violence as a rebellion against it. While yeah, that is partly why Andrew and Ashley do that, the right only focuses on that reason because they glorify that kind of behavior. If you are "brave enough" and "strong enough" and "break through all the barriers and institutions the """enemy""" set up", you can make a great change in the world. You just need to steel against yourself the blood you'd have to shed, which Andrew and Ashley are accustomed to because they weren't really treated as human beings in their entire life. This is why as kids, they weren't that bothered about Nina's death as a person. She mainly mattered as an extremely threatening moment for all aspects of the Graves' existence, which is why you got the violently transactional relationship between the siblings that was always present, it just didn't show its truest and ugliest face until that moment. Furthermore, Nina represented the "first" threat to the siblings' relationship, so her being killed by the siblings and them getting away with it would be a moment the blood purists love. It's extremely unfortunate she and Julia unironically would be called "hussies" in that circle.

Also, given how the right also pushes "family values" (which is really another form of individualism) Andrew and Ashley being siblings facing against the world appeals to that. To the right, this really is family at its best, especially with the romantic aspect of "us alone against big dangerous world", and Andrew and Ashley mostly falling into the typical gender norms and roles. We also must acknowledge that Ashley does get mischaracterized and bashed on (pun unintended...) in those circles because she's not a demurely submissive woman, and they would actually think Andrew beating her is okay or even great, he's asserting his "right as a man after being denied doing that so long". The right-wingers wouldn't or don't want to see the horror that is boiling underneath that beating, all they see is fiction that validates their beliefs after being told they're wrong for so long. This misreading is so prevalent, TV Tropes actually lists the backhand moment in early episode 3 in its YMMV as a "Carthasis Moment". Yet TV Tropes, which is supposed to be politically neutral, frames it as "Andrew was abused by Ashley for so long and now fought back", but never says it's played for horror. The intent may be different, but the conclusion is the same: neither refuse to see the horror that lies underneath the violence.

The irony is the game makes it clear that these "family values" are horrible and shouldn't be emulated, nor does individual violence actually solve anything except cause more pain and misery, as Shots & Such proved. The Graves family is extremely dysfunctional, with the sexism, poverty, Grandpa's physical; financial; and emotional abuse, the latter two kinds of abuse Renee inherits and uses, and the kinder family members terrified into staying submissive by Grandpa, all compounding onto the siblings since they were born. The siblings clearly need other people to help them to survive, proven by the Entity giving them the hitman vision that made sure they even make it past Chapter 2, and Lord Unknown and Six Eyes possibly being the unorthodox positive influence the siblings need. But even among the wider fandom, there is a distrust of any potential allies the siblings meets, because they're so used to the idea that no one wants to help them or cares to help them, these allies are just in it for themselves. While of course, the game encourages that via the siblings thinking and acting like that, that distrust is also prevalent in real life because the world sucks so much right now. That is an understandable reaction, and while most of the fandom would not identify as right-wing, that unfortunately makes them vulnerable to the right's modus operandi (especially when a lot of them would try their best to hide it). The right-wing makes that distrust, amplifies it, and only focuses on individual force as the solution to all problems because if you have a society that trusts no one, then no one can get together to make a meaningful change. And if no one trusts each other to make a meaningful change, you get Shots & Such on a bigger scale.

[mx-pokirby]

Reading this, it's starting to make more sense how the objectively wrong stupid bad stinky people~ 💅 found their way into this fanbase.

Though part of me doubts the majority of them are even consciously aware of any of these stated points. Even by making theoretical arguments for them, I can only picture "it's just a game, you're reading too much into nothing" responses if this thread broke containment. I never like assuming the Right ever bothers to actually analyze the art they claim to enjoy; it's helped Us get this far.

Tcoaal has and will continue to drive me crazy (/neutral) for almost respecting the intelligence of its player too much. That Ashley and Andrew (the latter moreso) are pretty blatantly written to be conservative-minded as a natural reaction to their upbringing. Their "fuck you, got mine" attitude towards life. Yet their apparent damage and unhappiness is supposed to get you, a presumable human being with logic and empathy, to like... pity them at least, as the lost-causes they keep choosing to be?

We remember seeing a post of somebody talking about that scene where the siblings learn about the doctor, and OP getting upset at Andrew's "I don't care about single-handedly saving the world, I want to live quietly and die in relative peace" speech @ Ashley's suggestion for taking revenge for "the game pushing conservative messages" and We just couldn't bother explaining the nuances between what a work of art is actually trying to convey VS what a character inside that fiction does/says.

We just realized all this framing may even be deliberate. With how the very first major crime/taboo we see these two morons (<3) cross (even if it's not the first chronologically) is afaik a cartoonishly generic hypothetical someone might ask you at a party to figure out when you would consider cannibalism justifiable. (minus the two being literally stranded on an island) It wouldn't surprise me if most players were conditioned by the universe's "immediate survival precedes helping others" lesson to start painting every other action in the game under that lens. Because it's hard to argue morals in the face of literal survival instincts. But eventually that PTSD-like reflex wears off and it hits you these two are still throwing others under the bus, despite there being no immediate danger in quite some time. It's all they've ever known from the start (... of the game)

I dunno where I'm going with this.

[coffin-ramblings]

I know I'm reblogging from this again becuase the first response ended up not having any room to let me complain about the TV Tropes thing, so I'm doing it here because fuck whoever made the TCOAAL TV Tropes page. They clearly have a negative view of both siblings, but the favoritism is more for Andrew because they still stick to the "Andrew is the victim" narrative even when later episodes refute that. They're Renee apologists since Chapter 2, to the point they consider it heartwarming that she didn't tell Andrew and Ashley to piss off after they break into her new fancy home. Even though she clearly didn't care they were alive, just surprised they were at all. They also state it was "divisive" for the Olive Branches video to even exist because it "ruined the ambiguity", even though everything pointed to them being responsible for the insurance fraud. Chapter 3 makes it worse where they are Grandpa apologists, to the point they call Grandpa a "Jerk with a Heart of Gold" with the shoddy excuse of "it's a charitable view". Also they argued Grandpa was right to send Ashley off to boarding school and the parents were too stupid to do so, even though family separation would be a horrible solution for Ashley. They don't even mention the fact he's financially abusive to his own family, which is one of the biggest reasons why the Graves are so poor. This is not even getting into the fact the Renee mod has its own dedicated page, though interestingly, they're more harder on Renee there because they blame her for being Andrew's source of misery and submission in that verse. This is probably because the mod appeals strongly to the "Andrew is the victim" narrative, but I digress.

It's very clear that the editors talk more like the haters of the game forced to catalogue an internet phenomenon than actually interested fans. What's not clear are if the editors are actually closeted right-wingers or liberals who think taking a view of both sides is correct. Either way, this goes to show that the both side-ism can easily become an apology for abusers and right-wingers, and that phenomenon should be taken seriously.

[mx-pokirby]

The tcoaal publicity team keeps choosing to get in hot water for some reason with people doing things with their art that they don't approve of, and ngl the optics are kinda pathetic at this point. Like about as out-of-touch of Nintendo is with piracy, idea ownership, anti-transformation. And the devlogs have been weirdly vague about these events they're allegedly "in the full legal & moral right" about. The attitude just comes off as super corporate /derogatory. Idgi. The art (tcoaal) itself comes off as wiser than the people brought in to help make it somehow.

[coffin-ramblings]

There are so many contradictions with this kind of behavior that I'd love to unpack, especially with the anti-capitalist themes of TCOAAL. I'll wait until they release the guidelines of what they allow, but yeah, I do get the sentiment. The message of "We want people to make Coffin-likes" appears to be partly PR control, but instead it ends up being confusing.

Anyway, my theory for why they're getting involved with these legal disputes is because of Archive/HeavyBerry, the guy who created The Coffin of the Candy Scabs mod. His TCOAAL Everything Discord server was struck down because he re-uploaded Nemlei's old games under his name on Steam, which you know, that's fraudulent. There is the hole though in that should have been a one and done deal. However, given how dumb this guy can be, he might be doubling down and getting himself into trouble. And yes, I know from experience because I exposed him for being a far right winger supporter, got banned from his server, and he crashed out on me instead of actually proving I'm wrong.

[mx-pokirby]

Yeah the only bit of that I'd side with the tcoaal team on there is against the guy fraudly reselling the games on Steam. (Money aside it's not even a media preservation thing; you could still find Nemlei's old stuff for free on Internet Archive...)

The rest is maybe at best annoying to know is happening in your fandom, inherently difficult to filter out edgelords & bigots when making dark art you hope speaks for itself, (and at worst a "who cares?" @ people making tcoaal mods/fan content. People unfortunately already know you as just The Incest Game, we're far past libel/brand image intergrity mattering) but none of that sounds like something this friggin' small indie team needs to waste manpower "dealing with" like they're Nintendo Ninjas™, the Fine Bros or the FNAF Fanverse Initiative 🙄

[coffin-ramblings]

I neglected to mention but the guy did put it on Steam for free, that's my mistake. There were people who tried to talk him out of it, but he still pushed along it anyway. So yeah, it wasn't media preservation at all, he was just being egotistical and thought he could get away with it.

I agree that Kit9 and Nemlei seem to care way too much about the fandom (as we can see with the school hallways retcon not being well received...). But it is also incredibly unfortunate that they got the edgelords and bigots attracted to the fandom, and they're probably morally disturbed that they are getting money from them. But we can't separate that from the world we live in right now, so all you can do is try to pretend they don't exist until the world changes.

[mx-pokirby]

Definitely fair to add. I wanna joke "if the best thing you can say about the situation is ' at least he wasn't literally scamming people' then-" but I can't think of a solid punchline and it wouldn't add anything beyond that.

So that's interesting since I sometimes hear in passing, either some reworked dialogue or a slightly expanded scene gets updated in, but We don't really replay unless there's a new chapter update basically. So We'd heard about a change in the school hallway, ig "to drive a point home that was too subtle for some people before" is the vibe I got. But had no idea how people generally felt about any of it. (Maybe staying "outside" the fandom has been the wise choice...) They kinda keeps doing that afaik, adding these minor tweak updates, and since there's still no Chapter Select I do wish there was some place to just list all the changes in detail and which update they were a part of. Just Steam patchnotes don't really get specific enough.

The only people We personally know who're into tcoaal are cool trans/queer people whom We got them into the game in the first place. :p So ever since We got told the game has a decent right-wing portion of its fanbase, We've been trying to unpack why, past the default amount for any art to expect. We don't think it's the sibling-fucking; idk why I've heard some people talk about it like a "right-wing thing" but it's very much a bipartisan subject. I know it's easy for art that doesn't spell out its morals to your face are easy for the right to not think about and decide the art agrees with them actually, but that answer feels too simple. Tcoaal's writing feels too... "smart and empathetic" for that to make complete sense. Maybe it's just a question for the ages.

Loved that part in tcoaal 7 where Wren looks into the camera and says "I'm a girl" and half the playerbase is confused. /s

[coffin-ramblings]

A friend told me "It's because incest appeals to the blood purism of the right-wing". Add in the fact Andrew and Ashley are very pretty and very white, yeah, they'd really fit the ideal archetype of the white nationalists. The siblings are already the mini demonstration of the ideology by excluding everyone else outside of this one group, where since they were kids, they're desperate for someone to stay loyal to them and fulfill their physical and social needs (especially on Ashley's part with Andrew as her only caregiver). Combine that they are incestuous and literally kill outsiders for their own survival, and you have the "the white bloodline remains alive and untainted through force" with a romantic spin.

But you're right, it's not just incest that attracts the right-wingers. Andrew and Ashley are people suffering in a shit-fucked capitalist hellscape world, something we can all relate to, but the conclusions of what to do vastly differ depending on your political stances. Even though the game does show they commit violence because their shitty world forced them to to survive, the right sees this as society's victims committing violence as a rebellion against it. While yeah, that is partly why Andrew and Ashley do that, the right only focuses on that reason because they glorify that kind of behavior. If you are "brave enough" and "strong enough" and "break through all the barriers and institutions the """enemy""" set up", you can make a great change in the world. You just need to steel against yourself the blood you'd have to shed, which Andrew and Ashley are accustomed to because they weren't really treated as human beings in their entire life. This is why as kids, they weren't that bothered about Nina's death as a person. She mainly mattered as an extremely threatening moment for all aspects of the Graves' existence, which is why you got the violently transactional relationship between the siblings that was always present, it just didn't show its truest and ugliest face until that moment. Furthermore, Nina represented the "first" threat to the siblings' relationship, so her being killed by the siblings and them getting away with it would be a moment the blood purists love. It's extremely unfortunate she and Julia unironically would be called "hussies" in that circle.

Also, given how the right also pushes "family values" (which is really another form of individualism) Andrew and Ashley being siblings facing against the world appeals to that. To the right, this really is family at its best, especially with the romantic aspect of "us alone against big dangerous world", and Andrew and Ashley mostly falling into the typical gender norms and roles. We also must acknowledge that Ashley does get mischaracterized and bashed on (pun unintended...) in those circles because she's not a demurely submissive woman, and they would actually think Andrew beating her is okay or even great, he's asserting his "right as a man after being denied doing that so long". The right-wingers wouldn't or don't want to see the horror that is boiling underneath that beating, all they see is fiction that validates their beliefs after being told they're wrong for so long. This misreading is so prevalent, TV Tropes actually lists the backhand moment in early episode 3 in its YMMV as a "Carthasis Moment". Yet TV Tropes, which is supposed to be politically neutral, frames it as "Andrew was abused by Ashley for so long and now fought back", but never says it's played for horror. The intent may be different, but the conclusion is the same: neither refuse to see the horror that lies underneath the violence.

The irony is the game makes it clear that these "family values" are horrible and shouldn't be emulated, nor does individual violence actually solve anything except cause more pain and misery, as Shots & Such proved. The Graves family is extremely dysfunctional, with the sexism, poverty, Grandpa's physical; financial; and emotional abuse, the latter two kinds of abuse Renee inherits and uses, and the kinder family members terrified into staying submissive by Grandpa, all compounding onto the siblings since they were born. The siblings clearly need other people to help them to survive, proven by the Entity giving them the hitman vision that made sure they even make it past Chapter 2, and Lord Unknown and Six Eyes possibly being the unorthodox positive influence the siblings need. But even among the wider fandom, there is a distrust of any potential allies the siblings meets, because they're so used to the idea that no one wants to help them or cares to help them, these allies are just in it for themselves. While of course, the game encourages that via the siblings thinking and acting like that, that distrust is also prevalent in real life because the world sucks so much right now. That is an understandable reaction, and while most of the fandom would not identify as right-wing, that unfortunately makes them vulnerable to the right's modus operandi (especially when a lot of them would try their best to hide it). The right-wing makes that distrust, amplifies it, and only focuses on individual force as the solution to all problems because if you have a society that trusts no one, then no one can get together to make a meaningful change. And if no one trusts each other to make a meaningful change, you get Shots & Such on a bigger scale.

[mx-pokirby]

Reading this, it's starting to make more sense how the objectively wrong stupid bad stinky people~ 💅 found their way into this fanbase.

Though part of me doubts the majority of them are even consciously aware of any of these stated points. Even by making theoretical arguments for them, I can only picture "it's just a game, you're reading too much into nothing" responses if this thread broke containment. I never like assuming the Right ever bothers to actually analyze the art they claim to enjoy; it's helped Us get this far.

Tcoaal has and will continue to drive me crazy (/neutral) for almost respecting the intelligence of its player too much. That Ashley and Andrew (the latter moreso) are pretty blatantly written to be conservative-minded as a natural reaction to their upbringing. Their "fuck you, got mine" attitude towards life. Yet their apparent damage and unhappiness is supposed to get you, a presumable human being with logic and empathy, to like... pity them at least, as the lost-causes they keep choosing to be?

We remember seeing a post of somebody talking about that scene where the siblings learn about the doctor, and OP getting upset at Andrew's "I don't care about single-handedly saving the world, I want to live quietly and die in relative peace" speech @ Ashley's suggestion for taking revenge for "the game pushing conservative messages" and We just couldn't bother explaining the nuances between what a work of art is actually trying to convey VS what a character inside that fiction does/says.

We just realized all this framing may even be deliberate. With how the very first major crime/taboo we see these two morons (<3) cross (even if it's not the first chronologically) is afaik a cartoonishly generic hypothetical someone might ask you at a party to figure out when you would consider cannibalism justifiable. (minus the two being literally stranded on an island) It wouldn't surprise me if most players were conditioned by the universe's "immediate survival precedes helping others" lesson to start painting every other action in the game under that lens. Because it's hard to argue morals in the face of literal survival instincts. But eventually that PTSD-like reflex wears off and it hits you these two are still throwing others under the bus, despite there being no immediate danger in quite some time. It's all they've ever known from the start (... of the game)

I dunno where I'm going with this.

[coffin-ramblings]

I agree that there are plenty of right wingers who are most likely not consciously aware of those points. This post was primarily a political analysis, but by the nature of it, it's also a psychological one. I'd love to know their reactions to it if it breaches containment.

But yeah, a lot of the right has been systematically trained to not study into anything. They're just being constantly told they're right to feel like they've been wronged and/or suffering, but blame it on a marginalized group and/or encourage them to take violent action against them and/or society at large. This is because if you let them analyze even fiction, they'll either realize it's a reflection of the real world, or is encouraged them to analyze the world. And when those people start to analyze the world, that is when right wing's illusion starts to disintegrate. You can actually stop someone from entering the right-wing pipeline entirely with a mixture of respect from that person, and telling them that bigotry is just the government trying to distract people from economic inequality and the economy being shit in general. I have done that before successfully.

Onto that post criticizing the game for being "conservative" because Andrew just doesn't want to deal with the Surgeon, that person misses the point that Andrew is so fucking crushed by the world because he's been told to shut up, keep his head down, and work hard since he was a child. Of course he just wants to live a quiet, long life. And he also has a point that the quarantine conspiracy is systemic, not individual. You can't kill the Surgeon when he has those in the wings ready to take over his role, nor can you reform a government who's okay with letting people's organs get harvested. You have to overthrow it and the profit-based system that makes it a possibility. Two people can't overthrow a system alone, and Andrew knows that on some level, even though he probably isn't consciously thinking about revolution. Now a lot more people of similar backgrounds and circumstances as Andrew and Ashley can revolt, but neither sibling has the epiphany, capacity, knowledge, and/or ability to organize that. All they got is one gun that might not be loaded, one cleaver, blood, a lighter, and one demon with its own agenda. Them going against powerful people in society is just suicide.

I agree, the cannibalism may seem cartoonishly out of touch with what we'd normally deal with, and it indeed is meant to reflective of the capitalist system. It is a dog eat dog system, where competing to have the most money, prestige, resources, etc no matter the cost is a central part of the system and even glorified. And when the siblings are starving because, as we find out in the April 2026 update, the wardens were pocketing the money that was meant to buy food for them, they resort to desperate measures, having already normalized it being okay to screw over other people. That deprivation is the exact dynamic of why a lot of people resort to theft and entering the drug trade in real life.

And yeah, Andrew and Ashley have been taught to throw people under the bus because their entire life has been just survival mode. They got this from Renee and Douglas, who have to work their asses off while Grandpa is perfectly okay letting his descendants starve because they don't live up to his standards, despite sitting on a fuckton of cash and literally employing Andrew. Everyone else around them judges them for being poor, even though it's not actually their fault, it's the fault of Grandpa and the government for either cutting the welfare and support services or not giving them the welfare and support services at all. Because of those judgemental eyes, the family has a strong incentive to try to climb up the social ladder, and they're hoping Andrew does so because he's a good student and could get a well paying job. This is partly why Nina and Julia are treated as threats to Ashley's relationship with Andrew. He has the ability to get richer, get together with a girl who is on a higher social status level than him, and leave behind his "shameful poor family", which includes her. And Ashley has no one else, so she's going to be socially starved and basically non-existent as a person.

The siblings getting out of survival mode means starting to trust other people. However, they're afraid of doing so because everyone who should have taken care of them didn't or couldn't, and they are afraid of that betrayal happening again. They don't even trust each other, even though the other fulfills their needs and been loyal to each other throughout their entire lives. That's why they get so aggressive to each other and other people. If they think the other isn't meeting their needs, then they must make sure they will at all costs. If other people challenge their codependency status quo, that triggers an identity crisis because their entire personhood is tied to their codependency, and they might take away their one source of needs fulfillment. It's not easy to see with the limited knowledge you have in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 does start to show this was their norm, but the attention being focused on the hitman which has no personal connection to the siblings, then them getting revenge on their parents for neglecting them and profiting off of their deaths would likely delay the realization. In fact, the parents being dead is celebrated by the siblings and a good chunk of the audience, even if they find it horrifying. But then Chapter 3 fully establishes just how much of the Graves' lives were survival mode, and the family using Andrew as tool through it was a central part of that mode. It makes total sense why Andrew has no problem using other people, that's what happened to him too, and he's told he's a good son/brother for being a good tool. That's why he said the family value pack joke after the siblings had their death threat fight. He wants to signal to Ashley that he's doing the "right thing" they've been told, while also securing their future survival in uncertain circumstances.

One of the real horrors of the game is that it can make the player be normalized into thinking like Andrew and Ashley. A lot of people killed the camper kid because Andrew's thought suggests that's not optional, even though if you're careful enough in exploring the area or realize "Wait shit he should leave to tell Ashley now", you actually can spare the kid. On a more consequential level, thinking too much like Andrew and Ashley in Chapter 2 is what puts you on Decay route. Killing Andrew in self-defense if you have the gun loaded is a very not Ashley moment, but that is where you have hit the point of no return. There are no meaningful choices in Andrew and Leyley route because you have been convinced that violence is the only solution to these tensions. Talking no longer works, you have to watch these siblings become firmly convinced that and now resort to violent power struggles just to ensure their needs are still met.

Now this is less horrifying and more insidious, but the narration itself encourages the audience to take a less full view of the situation. They're encouraged to find Andrew and Ashley as individually horrible people, even though that is a product of their extremely harsh circumstances. In Cliffhanger, the narrator admonishes the player for saying Andrew is a family man partly because he assaults his sister, even though he retaliated against Ashley because she attacked him first. Obviously, that violence was disproportionate and he shouldn't have threatened to kill her, but the facts were a lot more complicated than what the narration says. That phone scene can make the player to see Andrew as the primary cause of the siblings' shitty relationship, even though both of them are responsible for the toxicity. This is also partly why pessimism in the siblings not changing is prevalent in the fandom, they took the narration at face value.

The greatest goals for the siblings are to let go of that survival mode and cycle of abuse, form healthy relationships with other people, and be able to choose the other as the most important person in their life. This requires them to live in safe and stable conditions where they don't have any need to engage in these power struggles. But as long as the capitalist system exists, they will always have a chance of slipping back into survival mode, because they will face rising rent and prices and work for someone who might not pay them well or fire them altogether. This is not something unique to the siblings, this happens to millions of people every day. The struggle to maintain healthy relationships are real, but they are fragile as long as these conditions remain.

[coffin-ramblings]

July 2026 Devlog

It sucks that Burial is delayed, especially over legal disputes. I really don't have a good feeling with how Kit9 has been handling these copyright infringements to be honest, but I rather wait and see what they have to say first before I make my judgement. It's a very fascinating topic I'd love to get into.

Anyway, onto the pictures.

We just saw this thumbnail updated on the April devlog, which is pretty depressing. It might be a puzzle hint or expression of Ashley's loneliness as a child. Ashley being caged and sad is really depressing though, man. I think the purple bunny is meant to represent Nina, but the orange bunny is a new one. Is it a bully? Rebecca? Who knows.

This is the best summary of Ashley's POV of herself. Though she looks faded out here, so is this a dream of Andrew's? It feels like it.

This is a funny as fuck line and Andrew's face sells it. I don't think he's gloating over that he finally gets Ashley all to himself to Renee here, he's grimacing and could be disgusted? Most likely at Renee though. And this is very likely Cliffhanger, which makes it so funny the Entity is just floating there like. "Weird ass family reunion." This also does give credence that the Entity really wasn't actively planning to remove Andrew since it would have immediately blocked Andrew being in its pantry. Instead, it's just letting Andrew talk to his mom. I think he just wants to curse Renee's unaware soul for the shit of it. He did kick Renee's head and can bottle up her soul to be eaten after all.

Why is Andrew's finger bandaged up here? How did you cut yourself dude? Did Ashley bite you? And Ashley is quite nervous here, which makes sense with all the build up Burial hints has made, but also probably because she doesn't expect Andrew to actually claim him as hers. As a friend pointed out, this looks exactly like the Personality Switch AU drawings, which further confirms Burial Questionable is the canon Personality Switch.

This looks kinda like the motel except not? I guess these two moved somewhere else. It could be Cliffhanger, or maybe Six Eyes helped them go somewhere else.

Wren's getting his own post, I love this little guy. I'll just talk about the Cataracts video main game instead.

I didn't realize there was a subtle meta-pun (maybe meta?) here, god that's so horrible, excellent writing.

I really love Renee here, how she has the self-narration that she really does think she's trying to be a good mother, that she tries to love them, but then not only does she never think of her own kids with their names, she resents them for making their own choices and refuses to pay for her own grandson's surgery. Despite swimming in money from her father in law that she might have killed. What a fucking piece of shit, I love her.

Her insisting that the father of Wren should be paying and involved with raising the baby is also a very fascinating moment that displays her complexity. She's clearly angry the baby daddy is irresponsible probably because Douglas didn't abandon her after two teen pregnancies, but given how getting money is Renee's main motivation, it's also very easy to read that she rather have him pay for the baby instead of Renee doing it.

Douglas is also pretty sweet, with the little heart bubble seeing Wren, happily calling himself Wren's grandpa, praising Andrew for actually stepping up to be the kid's father figure, and then trying to keep Renee from arguing with their kids by offering them to buy coffee and eat bagels. It really does suck that he wasn't the father his kids needed.

Like Renee, are you seriously you gonna act grumpy at the fact that Andrew is doing what he always does and be a good older brother for Ashley????

Also what do you mean "shithole" Renee, this house looks fantastic. Cramped, but fantastic. Andrew has a writing desk, Ashley has blooming pants and glow in the dark stickers, and they have a shared bed together. She's so miserable, what a great chewtoy.

Anyway, Cataracts clearly is not in the main game timeline, because Renee and Douglas are still alive despite Andrew and Ashley being legally dead. Also, revealing Andrew's and Ashley's child in the devlog instead of the main game itself suggests this is not a "main" route so to speak, because it wouldn't have all that lore. It's also a smart marketing move to keep the fandom alive by having them draw art of Wren and imagine stories of him.

There are three possibilities I've heard of so far (thanks to my friend for sharing me them): Wren is actually Andrew's and Ashley's potential child, but this scene is a what-if Renee and Douglas lived; the Entity is showing an alternative reality; or Demon Ashley is able to make fantasies become reality, with Renee, Douglas, and Andrew as her literal dolls in this fantasy-reality. I'll break down each one theory.

First one is a possible baseline for all the theories, and it could have started as an interesting exercise on Nemlei's part that she kept in the game as a bonus scene/Vision Room thing. Given that a lot of the videos released in the Devlog are Vision Rooms, this one is quite plausible, especially since we're playing as Renee.

Second one is not far fetched because the Entity already can see the future, it could have seen other futures had the past not change. Why the Entity would show this to Andrew and Ashley is the most puzzling part, because the Entity only cares about Andrew and Ashley being good servants for it. There is no point showing them their lives if their parents they're okay with sacrificing were around to see their kid. The siblings might just be confused or angry. This is the weakest out of the three imo.

Third one one is the funnest one and fits in the puzzle of what Demon Ashley exactly is. Demon Ashley is highly suggested to be an Ashley who never grew up beyond her Leyley mindset. Her only moments on screen is when she claims Andrew like he's her favorite doll (which he is).

With this theory, it confirms that the tar soul and white soul we see in Ashley's Demon World is Renee and Douglas, and she is literally using their souls to execute this fantasy world of hers where she and Andrew are a "married couple" and Renee and Douglas actually do pay attention to what they're doing.

There is a great horror that Andrew, Renee, and Douglas are forced to act out in this Entity's dream world who never grew up and see other people as just other people. Andrew and Douglas may comply with what she wants because well, they don't have any reason to rebel, while Renee doesn't want to be controlled and is rebelling by acting the way she is: spiteful, greedy, and uncaring of her children's problems while telling herself she is being a good person. There is the major hole of "Then why are we playing as Renee and not Ashley?", but it's a fun thing to think about regardless.

[coffin-ramblings]

My friend pointed out that the video saying "You are Renee!", which doesn't happen in the vision rooms, gives evidence it is in the main game. Which if this actually is the case, that makes this route even more exciting to play with.

[mx-pokirby]

The tcoaal publicity team keeps choosing to get in hot water for some reason with people doing things with their art that they don't approve of, and ngl the optics are kinda pathetic at this point. Like about as out-of-touch of Nintendo is with piracy, idea ownership, anti-transformation. And the devlogs have been weirdly vague about these events they're allegedly "in the full legal & moral right" about. The attitude just comes off as super corporate /derogatory. Idgi. The art (tcoaal) itself comes off as wiser than the people brought in to help make it somehow.

[coffin-ramblings]

There are so many contradictions with this kind of behavior that I'd love to unpack, especially with the anti-capitalist themes of TCOAAL. I'll wait until they release the guidelines of what they allow, but yeah, I do get the sentiment. The message of "We want people to make Coffin-likes" appears to be partly PR control, but instead it ends up being confusing.

Anyway, my theory for why they're getting involved with these legal disputes is because of Archive/HeavyBerry, the guy who created The Coffin of the Candy Scabs mod. His TCOAAL Everything Discord server was struck down because he re-uploaded Nemlei's old games under his name on Steam, which you know, that's fraudulent. There is the hole though in that should have been a one and done deal. However, given how dumb this guy can be, he might be doubling down and getting himself into trouble. And yes, I know from experience because I exposed him for being a far right winger supporter, got banned from his server, and he crashed out on me instead of actually proving I'm wrong.

[mx-pokirby]

Yeah the only bit of that I'd side with the tcoaal team on there is against the guy fraudly reselling the games on Steam. (Money aside it's not even a media preservation thing; you could still find Nemlei's old stuff for free on Internet Archive...)

The rest is maybe at best annoying to know is happening in your fandom, inherently difficult to filter out edgelords & bigots when making dark art you hope speaks for itself, (and at worst a "who cares?" @ people making tcoaal mods/fan content. People unfortunately already know you as just The Incest Game, we're far past libel/brand image intergrity mattering) but none of that sounds like something this friggin' small indie team needs to waste manpower "dealing with" like they're Nintendo Ninjas™, the Fine Bros or the FNAF Fanverse Initiative 🙄

[coffin-ramblings]

I neglected to mention but the guy did put it on Steam for free, that's my mistake. There were people who tried to talk him out of it, but he still pushed along it anyway. So yeah, it wasn't media preservation at all, he was just being egotistical and thought he could get away with it.

I agree that Kit9 and Nemlei seem to care way too much about the fandom (as we can see with the school hallways retcon not being well received...). But it is also incredibly unfortunate that they got the edgelords and bigots attracted to the fandom, and they're probably morally disturbed that they are getting money from them. But we can't separate that from the world we live in right now, so all you can do is try to pretend they don't exist until the world changes.

[mx-pokirby]

Definitely fair to add. I wanna joke "if the best thing you can say about the situation is ' at least he wasn't literally scamming people' then-" but I can't think of a solid punchline and it wouldn't add anything beyond that.

So that's interesting since I sometimes hear in passing, either some reworked dialogue or a slightly expanded scene gets updated in, but We don't really replay unless there's a new chapter update basically. So We'd heard about a change in the school hallway, ig "to drive a point home that was too subtle for some people before" is the vibe I got. But had no idea how people generally felt about any of it. (Maybe staying "outside" the fandom has been the wise choice...) They kinda keeps doing that afaik, adding these minor tweak updates, and since there's still no Chapter Select I do wish there was some place to just list all the changes in detail and which update they were a part of. Just Steam patchnotes don't really get specific enough.

The only people We personally know who're into tcoaal are cool trans/queer people whom We got them into the game in the first place. :p So ever since We got told the game has a decent right-wing portion of its fanbase, We've been trying to unpack why, past the default amount for any art to expect. We don't think it's the sibling-fucking; idk why I've heard some people talk about it like a "right-wing thing" but it's very much a bipartisan subject. I know it's easy for art that doesn't spell out its morals to your face are easy for the right to not think about and decide the art agrees with them actually, but that answer feels too simple. Tcoaal's writing feels too... "smart and empathetic" for that to make complete sense. Maybe it's just a question for the ages.

Loved that part in tcoaal 7 where Wren looks into the camera and says "I'm a girl" and half the playerbase is confused. /s

[coffin-ramblings]

A friend told me "It's because incest appeals to the blood purism of the right-wing". Add in the fact Andrew and Ashley are very pretty and very white, yeah, they'd really fit the ideal archetype of the white nationalists. The siblings are already the mini demonstration of the ideology by excluding everyone else outside of this one group, where since they were kids, they're desperate for someone to stay loyal to them and fulfill their physical and social needs (especially on Ashley's part with Andrew as her only caregiver). Combine that they are incestuous and literally kill outsiders for their own survival, and you have the "the white bloodline remains alive and untainted through force" with a romantic spin.

But you're right, it's not just incest that attracts the right-wingers. Andrew and Ashley are people suffering in a shit-fucked capitalist hellscape world, something we can all relate to, but the conclusions of what to do vastly differ depending on your political stances. Even though the game does show they commit violence because their shitty world forced them to to survive, the right sees this as society's victims committing violence as a rebellion against it. While yeah, that is partly why Andrew and Ashley do that, the right only focuses on that reason because they glorify that kind of behavior. If you are "brave enough" and "strong enough" and "break through all the barriers and institutions the """enemy""" set up", you can make a great change in the world. You just need to steel against yourself the blood you'd have to shed, which Andrew and Ashley are accustomed to because they weren't really treated as human beings in their entire life. This is why as kids, they weren't that bothered about Nina's death as a person. She mainly mattered as an extremely threatening moment for all aspects of the Graves' existence, which is why you got the violently transactional relationship between the siblings that was always present, it just didn't show its truest and ugliest face until that moment. Furthermore, Nina represented the "first" threat to the siblings' relationship, so her being killed by the siblings and them getting away with it would be a moment the blood purists love. It's extremely unfortunate she and Julia unironically would be called "hussies" in that circle.

Also, given how the right also pushes "family values" (which is really another form of individualism) Andrew and Ashley being siblings facing against the world appeals to that. To the right, this really is family at its best, especially with the romantic aspect of "us alone against big dangerous world", and Andrew and Ashley mostly falling into the typical gender norms and roles. We also must acknowledge that Ashley does get mischaracterized and bashed on (pun unintended...) in those circles because she's not a demurely submissive woman, and they would actually think Andrew beating her is okay or even great, he's asserting his "right as a man after being denied doing that so long". The right-wingers wouldn't or don't want to see the horror that is boiling underneath that beating, all they see is fiction that validates their beliefs after being told they're wrong for so long. This misreading is so prevalent, TV Tropes actually lists the backhand moment in early episode 3 in its YMMV as a "Carthasis Moment". Yet TV Tropes, which is supposed to be politically neutral, frames it as "Andrew was abused by Ashley for so long and now fought back", but never says it's played for horror. The intent may be different, but the conclusion is the same: neither refuse to see the horror that lies underneath the violence.

The irony is the game makes it clear that these "family values" are horrible and shouldn't be emulated, nor does individual violence actually solve anything except cause more pain and misery, as Shots & Such proved. The Graves family is extremely dysfunctional, with the sexism, poverty, Grandpa's physical; financial; and emotional abuse, the latter two kinds of abuse Renee inherits and uses, and the kinder family members terrified into staying submissive by Grandpa, all compounding onto the siblings since they were born. The siblings clearly need other people to help them to survive, proven by the Entity giving them the hitman vision that made sure they even make it past Chapter 2, and Lord Unknown and Six Eyes possibly being the unorthodox positive influence the siblings need. But even among the wider fandom, there is a distrust of any potential allies the siblings meets, because they're so used to the idea that no one wants to help them or cares to help them, these allies are just in it for themselves. While of course, the game encourages that via the siblings thinking and acting like that, that distrust is also prevalent in real life because the world sucks so much right now. That is an understandable reaction, and while most of the fandom would not identify as right-wing, that unfortunately makes them vulnerable to the right's modus operandi (especially when a lot of them would try their best to hide it). The right-wing makes that distrust, amplifies it, and only focuses on individual force as the solution to all problems because if you have a society that trusts no one, then no one can get together to make a meaningful change. And if no one trusts each other to make a meaningful change, you get Shots & Such on a bigger scale.

[mx-pokirby]

The tcoaal publicity team keeps choosing to get in hot water for some reason with people doing things with their art that they don't approve of, and ngl the optics are kinda pathetic at this point. Like about as out-of-touch of Nintendo is with piracy, idea ownership, anti-transformation. And the devlogs have been weirdly vague about these events they're allegedly "in the full legal & moral right" about. The attitude just comes off as super corporate /derogatory. Idgi. The art (tcoaal) itself comes off as wiser than the people brought in to help make it somehow.

[coffin-ramblings]

There are so many contradictions with this kind of behavior that I'd love to unpack, especially with the anti-capitalist themes of TCOAAL. I'll wait until they release the guidelines of what they allow, but yeah, I do get the sentiment. The message of "We want people to make Coffin-likes" appears to be partly PR control, but instead it ends up being confusing.

Anyway, my theory for why they're getting involved with these legal disputes is because of Archive/HeavyBerry, the guy who created The Coffin of the Candy Scabs mod. His TCOAAL Everything Discord server was struck down because he re-uploaded Nemlei's old games under his name on Steam, which you know, that's fraudulent. There is the hole though in that should have been a one and done deal. However, given how dumb this guy can be, he might be doubling down and getting himself into trouble. And yes, I know from experience because I exposed him for being a far right winger supporter, got banned from his server, and he crashed out on me instead of actually proving I'm wrong.

[mx-pokirby]

Yeah the only bit of that I'd side with the tcoaal team on there is against the guy fraudly reselling the games on Steam. (Money aside it's not even a media preservation thing; you could still find Nemlei's old stuff for free on Internet Archive...)

The rest is maybe at best annoying to know is happening in your fandom, inherently difficult to filter out edgelords & bigots when making dark art you hope speaks for itself, (and at worst a "who cares?" @ people making tcoaal mods/fan content. People unfortunately already know you as just The Incest Game, we're far past libel/brand image intergrity mattering) but none of that sounds like something this friggin' small indie team needs to waste manpower "dealing with" like they're Nintendo Ninjas™, the Fine Bros or the FNAF Fanverse Initiative 🙄

[coffin-ramblings]

I neglected to mention but the guy did put it on Steam for free, that's my mistake. There were people who tried to talk him out of it, but he still pushed along it anyway. So yeah, it wasn't media preservation at all, he was just being egotistical and thought he could get away with it.

I agree that Kit9 and Nemlei seem to care way too much about the fandom (as we can see with the school hallways retcon not being well received...). But it is also incredibly unfortunate that they got the edgelords and bigots attracted to the fandom, and they're probably morally disturbed that they are getting money from them. But we can't separate that from the world we live in right now, so all you can do is try to pretend they don't exist until the world changes.

[coffin-ramblings]

July 2026 Devlog

It sucks that Burial is delayed, especially over legal disputes. I really don't have a good feeling with how Kit9 has been handling these copyright infringements to be honest, but I rather wait and see what they have to say first before I make my judgement. It's a very fascinating topic I'd love to get into.

Anyway, onto the pictures.

We just saw this thumbnail updated on the April devlog, which is pretty depressing. It might be a puzzle hint or expression of Ashley's loneliness as a child. Ashley being caged and sad is really depressing though, man. I think the purple bunny is meant to represent Nina, but the orange bunny is a new one. Is it a bully? Rebecca? Who knows.

This is the best summary of Ashley's POV of herself. Though she looks faded out here, so is this a dream of Andrew's? It feels like it.

This is a funny as fuck line and Andrew's face sells it. I don't think he's gloating over that he finally gets Ashley all to himself to Renee here, he's grimacing and could be disgusted? Most likely at Renee though. And this is very likely Cliffhanger, which makes it so funny the Entity is just floating there like. "Weird ass family reunion." This also does give credence that the Entity really wasn't actively planning to remove Andrew since it would have immediately blocked Andrew being in its pantry. Instead, it's just letting Andrew talk to his mom. I think he just wants to curse Renee's unaware soul for the shit of it. He did kick Renee's head and can bottle up her soul to be eaten after all.

Why is Andrew's finger bandaged up here? How did you cut yourself dude? Did Ashley bite you? And Ashley is quite nervous here, which makes sense with all the build up Burial hints has made, but also probably because she doesn't expect Andrew to actually claim him as hers. As a friend pointed out, this looks exactly like the Personality Switch AU drawings, which further confirms Burial Questionable is the canon Personality Switch.

This looks kinda like the motel except not? I guess these two moved somewhere else. It could be Cliffhanger, or maybe Six Eyes helped them go somewhere else.

Wren's getting his own post, I love this little guy. I'll just talk about the Cataracts video main game instead.

I didn't realize there was a subtle meta-pun (maybe meta?) here, god that's so horrible, excellent writing.

I really love Renee here, how she has the self-narration that she really does think she's trying to be a good mother, that she tries to love them, but then not only does she never think of her own kids with their names, she resents them for making their own choices and refuses to pay for her own grandson's surgery. Despite swimming in money from her father in law that she might have killed. What a fucking piece of shit, I love her.

Her insisting that the father of Wren should be paying and involved with raising the baby is also a very fascinating moment that displays her complexity. She's clearly angry the baby daddy is irresponsible probably because Douglas didn't abandon her after two teen pregnancies, but given how getting money is Renee's main motivation, it's also very easy to read that she rather have him pay for the baby instead of Renee doing it.

Douglas is also pretty sweet, with the little heart bubble seeing Wren, happily calling himself Wren's grandpa, praising Andrew for actually stepping up to be the kid's father figure, and then trying to keep Renee from arguing with their kids by offering them to buy coffee and eat bagels. It really does suck that he wasn't the father his kids needed.

Like Renee, are you seriously you gonna act grumpy at the fact that Andrew is doing what he always does and be a good older brother for Ashley????

Also what do you mean "shithole" Renee, this house looks fantastic. Cramped, but fantastic. Andrew has a writing desk, Ashley has blooming pants and glow in the dark stickers, and they have a shared bed together. She's so miserable, what a great chewtoy.

Anyway, Cataracts clearly is not in the main game timeline, because Renee and Douglas are still alive despite Andrew and Ashley being legally dead. Also, revealing Andrew's and Ashley's child in the devlog instead of the main game itself suggests this is not a "main" route so to speak, because it wouldn't have all that lore. It's also a smart marketing move to keep the fandom alive by having them draw art of Wren and imagine stories of him.

There are three possibilities I've heard of so far (thanks to my friend for sharing me them): Wren is actually Andrew's and Ashley's potential child, but this scene is a what-if Renee and Douglas lived; the Entity is showing an alternative reality; or Demon Ashley is able to make fantasies become reality, with Renee, Douglas, and Andrew as her literal dolls in this fantasy-reality. I'll break down each one theory.

First one is a possible baseline for all the theories, and it could have started as an interesting exercise on Nemlei's part that she kept in the game as a bonus scene/Vision Room thing. Given that a lot of the videos released in the Devlog are Vision Rooms, this one is quite plausible, especially since we're playing as Renee.

Second one is not far fetched because the Entity already can see the future, it could have seen other futures had the past not change. Why the Entity would show this to Andrew and Ashley is the most puzzling part, because the Entity only cares about Andrew and Ashley being good servants for it. There is no point showing them their lives if their parents they're okay with sacrificing were around to see their kid. The siblings might just be confused or angry. This is the weakest out of the three imo.

Third one one is the funnest one and fits in the puzzle of what Demon Ashley exactly is. Demon Ashley is highly suggested to be an Ashley who never grew up beyond her Leyley mindset. Her only moments on screen is when she claims Andrew like he's her favorite doll (which he is).

With this theory, it confirms that the tar soul and white soul we see in Ashley's Demon World is Renee and Douglas, and she is literally using their souls to execute this fantasy world of hers where she and Andrew are a "married couple" and Renee and Douglas actually do pay attention to what they're doing.

There is a great horror that Andrew, Renee, and Douglas are forced to act out in this Entity's dream world who never grew up and see other people as just other people. Andrew and Douglas may comply with what she wants because well, they don't have any reason to rebel, while Renee doesn't want to be controlled and is rebelling by acting the way she is: spiteful, greedy, and uncaring of her children's problems while telling herself she is being a good person. There is the major hole of "Then why are we playing as Renee and not Ashley?", but it's a fun thing to think about regardless.

[mx-pokirby]

The tcoaal publicity team keeps choosing to get in hot water for some reason with people doing things with their art that they don't approve of, and ngl the optics are kinda pathetic at this point. Like about as out-of-touch of Nintendo is with piracy, idea ownership, anti-transformation. And the devlogs have been weirdly vague about these events they're allegedly "in the full legal & moral right" about. The attitude just comes off as super corporate /derogatory. Idgi. The art (tcoaal) itself comes off as wiser than the people brought in to help make it somehow.

[coffin-ramblings]

There are so many contradictions with this kind of behavior that I'd love to unpack, especially with the anti-capitalist themes of TCOAAL. I'll wait until they release the guidelines of what they allow, but yeah, I do get the sentiment. The message of "We want people to make Coffin-likes" appears to be partly PR control, but instead it ends up being confusing.

Anyway, my theory for why they're getting involved with these legal disputes is because of Archive/HeavyBerry, the guy who created The Coffin of the Candy Scabs mod. His TCOAAL Everything Discord server was struck down because he re-uploaded Nemlei's old games under his name on Steam, which you know, that's fraudulent. There is the hole though in that should have been a one and done deal. However, given how dumb this guy can be, he might be doubling down and getting himself into trouble. And yes, I know from experience because I exposed him for being a far right winger supporter, got banned from his server, and he crashed out on me instead of actually proving I'm wrong.

[drainyuu]

i raise you my new crackship: kylia

[coffin-ramblings]

That's a lie, Ashley.

Awww

This is a metaphor for something in canon.

[coffin-ramblings]

Julia's Pity Party

Julia decided to move on from her crush and got depressed about it, so the others held a pity party...

A bit too mean there, Ashley.

You didn't invite Ashley with you, Andrew??? For shame. At least Ashley's happy for him.

Andrew, how??? We don't even have a train on this island.

LMAO ENTITY

She would fucking say that

Man.

Ashley tries again later...

Ouch, but not the right thing to say, Ashley.

[coffin-ramblings]

Random Tomodachi Life Pics

You guys held a vote on who is that and no one voted for you, not even yourself. Andrew come on.

This is in response to me saying I'd rule the world with superpowers. It's okay Entity, I let you live in my fancy home and give you an entire feast of your own.

This is in response to me saying I'd fight bad guys with superpowers.

Did you invite Julia Ashley, and if so, how???

I gave that quirk to you dude.

[coffin-ramblings]

Couldn't screenshot it but Mii Ashley saying, "This made be odd to say about myself, but what you see is what you get." is such a perfect summary of how Ashley's views and actions towards Andrew causes problems between them.

[coffin-ramblings]

Ashley/Andrew is Real!!!!!

FINALLY

I told her to confess in her room, gave her a fancy new outfit, and told her to set the scene because I was curious on how it was gonna go.

I was kinda expecting she'd show him a drawing ngl

Me too Andrew, me too (and damn I love the stars glow)

Holy shit

LMAO Ashley saying something cheesy like this does sound like her

She would fucking do all of that

The ominous Andrew

The anticipation...

Awwww

This is such a sweet shot

And no one to crash it either! Thank god, because like half of my confessions has someone crashing it. I'm really thankful I told Julia to go crush on another woman because this would have gotten a hell lot more awkward

I know that Andrew tends to call Ashley "nightmare" when he's being affectionate and "beloved" when he's being annoyed, but since he didn't have to raise her here (and beloved has been used for genuinely affectionate moments), I just decided to stick with "my beloved" instead.

I'm glad you took the leap too Ashley, I thought this was gonna be another month long slowburn.