Someone once said to me, “I hope the pain eases soon.” It struck me as the purest blessing that had ever been offered over my head - I hope the pain eases soon. It’s so gentle, so kind, so hopeful. So to everyone who’s hurting: I see how hard you’re trying, and I hope your pain will ease soon.
quarterly reminder that if i reblog something ai-generated it is 110% and always an accident and for the love of god please tell me so i can delete it from my blog
andrew and ashley’s toxic co-dependency (+ everything else) in tcoaal is so well-written, and i wish more people would see its beauty. — an andrew graves fictive.
people particularly tear into the toxic, co-dependent incest between the graves siblings, but it is never shown in a good light. in fact, it’s clear in the game that it doesn’t matter what end you get—they will NEVER have a ‘healthy’ relationship. (and it’s done on purpose!)
it’s not ‘fetishized’ nor ‘glorified,’ and everyone who says that—lacks media literacy very much. i also want to add that shipping coffincest or drawing/writing sexual things related to them does NOT mean you ‘lose’ the deeper meaning. you can sexualize media and still understand what the message is. those two things can co-exist.
if you’re the opposite, and you think it’s icky? congratulations! the discomfort is a totally normal thing to feel when faced with these subjects. you don’t have to ‘ship’ them, or ‘like’ that they’re incestuous at all, contrary to what antis might tell you. if you like darkships, that’s cool—and if you don’t? that’s also cool!
you can enjoy the story and these characters no matter how you feel about it. because after all, it is FICTION.
there are no rules here.
andrew and ashley’s sick, co-dependency-to-incest pipeline is a result of their abusive neglect and lack of stability in their childhood into adulthood, which we see in the game regularly.
these traumatic events take a toll on andrew and ashley VERY clearly—and they latch onto each other because they genuinely believe they are all the other has. they almost become one, instead of normal, separate siblings who are supposed to be independent and have boundaries.
my system has actively lived some of the trauma depicted in tcoaal, more specifically the neglect—and it captures the psychological and emotional torture of these traumas SO fucking well. (along with the general abuse, different trauma responses, etc.)
to say it has no meaning or lesson to teach? is insulting. these dark topics are censored so often because it makes people uncomfortable. but that’s the reality of these issues. they’re going to be uncomfortable. they’re sickening. but that’s doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be portrayed or learned about.
if you cannot see the absolute tragedy in them, you do not understand the complexity of real generational trauma, neglect, trauma responses, and—C-PTSD.
from a fictive’s prospective—my system got attached to andrew graves because his characteristics and background are everything we are, and were as a child. now, i hold that trauma. so, ironically, our body trauma is very close to mine in source.
andrew is very accurate to being the eldest sibling—stepping up to raise your sibling because your parent won’t, or struggles to. a child isn’t meant to do that, so it can and WILL put strain on the eldest, as well as the youngest. that can lead to catastrophic results, and we commend nemlei for getting that spot on. we really do.