the moral decay of andrew graves

i did get your ask, don’t worry. it was a detail i didn’t give much thought to the first time around, so i had to go watch the scene again before i could get back to you with my take on it.

i’ll dig your message out of my drafts where it’s buried under my 20+ shitposts i don’t remember writing, then drop a reply probably tomorrow.

> tcoaal fans join the war on abuse apologism on the side of the abuse apologists in my inbox, i tell them to block me and move on

> gets told i need to “chill”

i will indeed put every single one of my posts calling out abuse and rape apologism in the relevant tags, and thank you for proving just how necessary that is by calling it “petty drama”. it’s your responsibility to curate your tumblr experience and filter out content you don’t want to see, you can solve this problem instantly by hitting the block button instead of “ask tumblr user @sphacelating a question!” to whine in my inbox.

let me put this one in the tags as well just for you.

if i have to suffer, unfortunately so do all of you. congratulations, now we all have brain damage.

i appreciate this message a lot, thank you. while i’m unbothered by the load of crap in my inbox, it’s nice to hear that i have not in fact come off as unpleasant, “hateful” and unapproachable to everyone. i’m undeniably standoffish and unapproachable when i’ve no interest in making connections with like-minded people who share my hyperfixations, but that is the purpose of this blog. i have made an effort to seem less intimidating, i just can’t tell for shit how people who need an invitation to start a conversation perceive me most of the time.

“i wanted to be your friend but was too scared to talk to you, so i never did. i had no idea you were this easy to talk to and actually nice” is how it tends to go.

let’s get this out of the way: i’m a shameless fan of fictional sisterfucking and brotherfucking, wouldn’t be here otherwise. when it’s as interwoven into the characters and core of the plot as it is, why anyone would choose to play tcoaal of all games if they don’t actively like the incest is beyond me. there’s plenty of other options for you if you’re here for the murder, cannibalism, demonic worship, existential and moral dilemmas, the dichotomy of good and evil, whatever else. we’re all down with the incest, with different levels of enthusiasm about them kissing, boning, making babies, getting married, lovingly gazing into each other’s eyes, whatever gets your heartrate up. yes, that absolutely includes finding it hot and wanting them to do all that in game once, twice or fifty times.

it’s an integral part of andrew and ashley’s relationship, you would have no relationship to speak of if they were lovers who didn’t come from the same womb, nor would you if the sexual/romantic aspect was removed when this has been a constant repulsive and attractive force in their relationship, growing up and in the present.

when i talk about certain people’s disturbing romanticization of andrew and ashley’s relationship it’s not within the context of incest. i would hope that anyone sexually fixated on their own very real brother or sister hit up a psych rather than booting up tcoaal for another playthrough. even then, what do i look like— a cop?

nah. “romanticization” of the incest is pretty damn unlikely to cause harm because it’s impossible to successfully normalize. i mean romanticizing their dangerously codependent relationship, people genuinely aspiring to find a volatile partnership mirroring their abusive dynamic for themselves because they seriously see this as the epitome of desire, “live with me or die with me”, failing to recognize how being the object of a domineering individual’s obsession and desire to own and control you is going to suffocate and kill you. you will not get any good ending, there is no such thing inside a violent cycle of abuse. you’re getting your very own splat route or shots and such miserable ever after.

when i say “do not romanticize their relationship”, i mean pushing the absurd idea that you can love someone and be unbothered by the idea of causing them harm for your benefit, witnessing the damage you do to them chip away at their personhood, watching yourself destroy them mentally and emotionally while you inflict more harm until it’s irreparable and having the fucking gall to call this love, because a damaged person is easier to control and effectively possess. somebody who continuously hurts you carelessly and knowingly with no remorse doesn’t love you, they cannot and will never love you, and frankly, you’re lucky if you even survive them.

so. if you romanticize this, i will assume you have a death wish and you say “love” but mean “agony and suffering.” i want to die for love is romantic and beautiful as a concept, would i die for my wife? undeniably. in a heartbeat. i’d take a bullet for her any day. but the thing is that i shouldn’t have to. neither should she, and whether she would be equally willing to do that for me is irrelevant. i don’t want to be the death of her, i want to be the reason she wants to live on days where she can see few, if any, others. aside from recognizing that i was undeniably destroying every chance i had at happiness for myself, knowing that i have been a source of pain and destruction in her life was also what kicked my fucking ass into becoming a better person. for myself and the one and only love of my life.

annihilating each other because of the intensity of your love is something that belongs in fiction, absolutely not in real life. a lot of people cannot tell the difference.

i don’t believe it’s a misinterpretation of my words, per se. they think criticism of serious topics has no place in a fandom dedicated to what they perceive to be a silly little siscon-cannibalism-murder cartoon-art visual novel full of murder and incest jokes that was never meant to be taken seriously. the game is, to them, offensive, disrespectful and making light of these topics already— the whole game is an insult to abuse survivors in whatever version of reality they live in, their bullshit pales in comparison, the jokes supposedly wrote themselves already, so why the hell would abuse survivors piss and moan for.

they couldn’t have a more laughably wrong understanding of tcoaal, we are actually the part of the audience that’s able to appreciate the story, characters and message therein to the fullest, but i digress.

what i’m trying to pinpoint is what exactly set them off. the content on my blog since its inception has been:

“abuse needs to be taken seriously.” “find yourself thinking like a rapist? go to therapy or just straight to hell.” “your analysis is dog shit and needs work before you open your mouth about abuse and rape.” “andrew is absolutely not seeing the pearly gates and that, my friends, is exactly why i like him.” “if you romanticize the siblings’ relationship and cycle of mutual reactive abuse, you have missed the entire point of this game.” “andrew graves needs a lobotomy.” “andrew has a fat cock.” “i love my intelligent, beautiful, endlessly endearing and awful disaster of a wife.” “ashley graves did a lot of things wrong and you’re doing her a disservice by denying that. would i kill for that girl? point and i’ll shoot.” “i hate everyone in this bar except for the very few of you that i do not.”

so what’s the beef about.

lazy attempt, poor execution, still bored. giving you a 3/10 here is generous. we all learn from our failures: insults must be accurate to elicit a reaction and none of this even comes close to being applicable to me. did being bullied in school teach you nothing?

i’ve gotten so much help that i’m arguably more competent, experienced and qualified to do my therapist’s job than he is. what’s he gonna do, recite the dsm at me until our hour’s up?

boring ass low effort ragebait. if you want to get a rise out of me you’ll have to do better than that.

does any fellow millennial have the “she doesn’t even go here” meme on hand?