A follow-up to the prior post "A Matter of Preference" where Amber finishes Christine off in the worst way. Gas version will be posted in the comments. Wanted to lead with the clean this time to remind people I'm not an exclusively fart fetish artist. I like trad femdom and catfight stuff too.

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Since the last part of this piece wasn't a Storytime it's hard to inject it here. So let's think of another esoteric topic for me to babble about.

like many others, I've got into the Coffin of Andy and Leyley series that really blew up lately. On top of being a cool game, it gave me a lot of weird shit to think about.

There'll be spoilers so if you care about playing that series I'm gonna recommend you wrap up your reading here.

Spoilers Below
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Rather than focusing on video essay topics or whatever I want to tackle this from a more selfish angle, at least in the way I do content and how I try to present my characters. If you're reading this I'm gonna assume you're caught up on the story so far so I'm not gonna explain stuff. If you know you know.

As someone that aspires to have my own cast of ne'er do well protagonists and would like to create my own longer story someday, I think a lot about how Andy and Leyley are written. Insulting one another at every observation the game presents yet still maintaining a "fun" vibe. I both hate and am fascinated by the two of them and the fact that the creator, Nemlei, was able to make me care about two of the most despicable protagonists in recent memory, it's inspiring to say the least and I mean that in truly the best way possible.

Amber, Kat, and Olivia are school bullies. They do things that are bad to do and physically assail others against their will. Kat has trapped someone inside of her overnight, Amber and Olivia have knocked people out. They're cruel to their victims and these victims absolutely don't deserve it. And yet, I still like them. But I don't like Leyley.

When Andy and Leyley kill Nina in chapter one (later expanded on in chapter 2), why did it effect me so hard? I watched the scene and literally felt queasy. Trapping the asthmatic girl inside of a box that she can't escape from and keeping her there. The sinking feeling that she was going to die. The realization that this is only a few steps removed from the kind of content I make. The realization that no matter how much I hated what I was looking it, part of me still found it arousing. It made me feel... disgusting in a way these things seldom do.

If we separate my scenario versus their scenario. There's really only one major difference. That being the victim's mortality. In my content, the victim is abducted, the victim is restrained, the victim is berated and shoved somewhere that they can't get out of and forgotten about as they languish in their misery. In Andy and Leyley, the Nina scenario has all the same trappings, but Nina didn't make it through the night like one of my victim OC's would have. She died. And when checked on the next day, her death is seen as an annoyance to be dealt with versus a true crisis. A lack of humanity.

It got me thinking long and hard about how other people see my characters. Judging from the comments most seem to like them, though there are a few comments that have called for some more violent comeuppance. The Nina scene stuck with me and made me truly hate Leyley (that hate extended to Andrew a little later but it got there). All I could do from then on is look at them and see reflections of my own characters. Ideas, inspirations, danger signs, warnings, all of it useful. Is the difference between them simply that I refuse to kill anyone while they don't mind? Do AKO have a bit of humanity that is lacking in Leyley? I mean obviously this isn't a major revelation and it's all just shower ponderings, but The Coffin of Andy and Leyley did make me think about the nature of my own storytelling in a way I hadn't before.

I think all of this rambling is just to say how good that game is, how I want to make something cool like that with my characters someday, and idle wondering on how people see my girls. I've always wanted them to be likable while still doing the messed up things they do. But after Andy and Leyley, I see just how difficult that may be. Which leads to me another question. Is it more important that they be likable? Or is it more important that they be memorable? And if they can be both while still being menaces, what does that look like?

Anyways, I'm done. Hope you like the drawing and as always thanks for listening!


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All characters belong to me. Always welcome engagement, fanart, and fanfic!

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