I Just Think He’s A Lot More Physically Affectionate Deep Down, Not Just Because Ashley Initiates It.

,,Is there anything so undoing as a daughter?" Yeah man, being the daughter

An aspect of Andrew and Ashley’s relationship as kids I’m very interested in is that, when you read between the lines, they actually care about each other quite a bit.

On Leyley’s birthday, after she rants about how birthdays are “all nonsense anyway” and ends said rant with “who cares,” Andy responds that he does. In turn, Leyley is shown to have genuinely appreciated his willingness to celebrate it, as she made a drawing of that day and kept it with her until adolescence.

Prior to that, Leyley notably doesn’t make a fuss when she recognizes Andy can’t afford a cake. She also states she went along with Andy choosing the lemon muffins because she thought he wanted them.

In the flashback about Leyley’s suspension from school, she’s displeased that Andy’s cooked her “the same crap” again but quietly eats it anyway. This, in conjunction with the previous point, suggests that as much of a brat as she is, she does (in a way) understand that Andy is trying his best to look after her.

Leyley appears concerned for Andy as he breaks down at the grandparents’ house and asks him if he’s okay. When he asks her if she wants to be friends, she replies “I thought we already were.”

In the abstract segment within Andy’s subconscious at the start of 3A, his family is represented by ghosts. At one point, the player is given a choice - either Andy gets yelled at by his teacher, his mother, or Pink Ghost/Leyley. When he takes away Pink Ghost’s coloring pencils, her reaction is a quiet expression of sadness as opposed to a roar.

The same segment also contains a similarly abstract “family portrait.” Renee’s Lime Ghost is the one depicted as angry - Pink Ghost, contrary to expectation, is depicted as sad.

I find the last two points particularly noteworthy. Leyley’s external belligerence doesn’t seem to leave as visceral of an impression on Andy as the underlying reasons for it.

Everyone else sees a helion. He sees a heartbroken little girl.

i dont think fictional characters would want to participate in anti/proship discourse. wouldnt that be funny though? like imagine steven universe telling the crystal gems that he had to death threat jasper because she was darkshipping

im not done playing thru chapter 3 but i just need to share this moment i was fucking DYING

ashley is such a broken girl, it's sad.

everyone in her entire life, even on some accounts her own brother, has told her that she is an insignificant, small, useless, loud, annoying, childish and irritating thing. everyone either talks bad about her directly, or has negative thoughts about her in the back of their minds. and she just lives in the label because she has, really, genuinely NEVER felt real love and affection before.

her parents conditioned her to be clingy to the one source of love that she could possibly scrape up. and even then, andy only loved her initially out of a familial obligation that he was groomed into upholding by his own mother, it's only with time (as stated in-game) that andrew grew to love ashley.

shes like a feral cat with no direction, she can't even trust the small crumbs of affection she DOES get from others, because theres ALWAYS a caviot, surely! so she pre-emptively lets the other know through aggression that she SEES through their "facade of love", "whens the carpet being pulled!! wheres the cameras!! because surely it must be a joke!!"

shes so neglected that even when she DOES receive love she doesn't know HOW to take it, so she just... responds in the only way she know how to. its so indecipherable in her brain to receive this affection that she just defaults to anger or discomfort because of its unfamiliarity. shes so lonely that shes convinced herself that Other People aren't worth it, because when have they ever been for her?

its why it makes me so upset to see people demean ashley to a one-note abuser with a shitty mom. shes so fucking scared and lonely you don't even KNOW. shes a cat that hisses and scratches at getting pet. shes scared.

"proshippers like fucked up things but can't handle being told to die?"

well, yes! i don't fear fiction, i fear for my safety and wellbeing, and knowing people want me to die irl is unnerving! how does this not make sense to people? what, incest and age gaps are too far, but wishing death upon people is okay? liking fictional noncon is bad and insensitive, but telling people they deserved their trauma is better?

thought i’d add my two cents to the “is andrew a sadist?” discussion going on from a sadist’s perspective. andrew displays very strong and consistent sadistic tendencies, but understanding those requires understanding what the source of that gratification is. it is, of course, power, and everything in andrew’s life revolves around it.

most tend to think of sadism as exclusively sexual and the plain polar opposite of masochism— which, granted, it often is for people whose sadism is limited to the confines of the bedroom. when it isn’t, however, i wouldn’t say that’s particularly accurate. sadism in the paraphilic sense is just a psychological association between sexual pleasure and seeing others in pain that develops gradually when you get off enough times to that specific stimuli. your brain’s reward system now associates it with the rush of dopamine you get when you bust a nut. congrats, you’ve pavlov’d yourself into a fetish. this is not more innate than jacking it to footjobs on the daily and then getting aroused when you see feet.

i can’t relate to the exclusively kinky flavor of sadism myself, and i wouldn’t consider people for whom it is only a kink true sadists. for people with a sadistic personality, the gratification is emotional, sometimes exclusively so with no sexual component to it, and even with that component, the sexual arousal is secondary. no matter how many wires get crossed between how the sadism actually manifests and the core of that desire or need, the motivation is almost always vengeance and punishment for a perceived crime, projected onto whoever is seen as deserving of that punishment.

andrew sure as hell wants to avenge himself. that’s a recognizable pattern in his thought processes and behavior.

i saw his behavior towards ashley being used as a reference point here, but i personally do not see andrew’s sadistic tendencies applying to ashley— on the contrary, she’s the one person i’d say is exempt from his sadistic inclinations, who he instead feels mental discomfort when he’s causing her harm. his internal conflict shuts his sadism down instantly when he has thoughts along those lines, when he feels a desire to hurt her, because the sense of fulfillment he finds in being her one source of safety, comfort and happiness is stronger than acting on any sadistic desire would be. that’s where he gets his sense of purpose, his reason for living, and the two desires are naturally completely incompatible.

when andrew reflects on his lack of regret over murdering the warden, he admits that he only regrets not killing him slower and making him suffer, deriving pleasure from it, rather than hacking him up impulsively out of necessity to defend and protect his sister. why? the guy supposedly leered at ashley, looked at her as a potential sexual conquest, and for that, andrew would certainly gouge your eyes out and scrape out your eye sockets with a rusty spoon, and he’d savor every moment. my point: every other murder he commits is a stark contrast to the manner in which he kills ashley. he does this with tenderness and bitter sadness, her death pains him so unbearably much that he commits suicide the moment she is gone and dead in his arms, and he makes sure her death is quick and painless and that she doesn’t suffer. and to andrew, this is a loving act of mercy.

this deep love and care for her is not his sole motivator here, we’re not gonna do him the favor of pretending otherwise, he has utterly selfish motives as well, but andrew cannot stand the thought of abandoning ashley, so if he dies, she will have to die with him. in his mind, he needs to spare her from living without him even for a second, save her from the agony she would feel when he is gone and she’s alone in the world without her brother. if he kills her, he won’t have to leave her, and he could never, ever be the one to make his sister’s deepest fear into a horrifying reality. incomprehensible logic if you do not think like andrew does, but he’s not exactly sane.

as for the reactive abuse he inflicts on ashley, it does undeniably feel good to him in the heat of the moment, but it’s not sadistic gratification. it’s a wholly different emotional response. it’s relief from the extremely distressing feeling of powerlessness, the result of ashley relentlessly robbing him of any control until he feels small, helpless and cornered. perceived powerlessness induces panic, it suffocates him, and he lashes out accordingly with explosively excessive aggression when he’s triggered. he takes his power and control violently, whether this is when ashley pushes him so far with her abuse of him that he responds with violent reactive abuse, or when the woman in 302 attempts to retake control over the situation by lunging for the nail gun. the latter may look like self-defense, but only if you don’t know that andrew graves is a pathological liar.

the narrator generously informs us that andrew snapped and stabbed the woman in 302 way, way more times than is needed to kill a person, that he kept going until he felt satisfied even after she clearly stopped breathing, because the “dumb bitch” had the gall to think he was stupid and embarrass him.

to andrew, she insulted him, she deserved it, and it felt good and right to stab the fuck out of her for it. if the circumstances he found himself in simply made her death inevitable, if this was only a necessary evil to eliminate all witnesses, there was certainly no need for andrew to mutilate her.

but here we are. in the flashback to his point of view in apartment 302, we see the undeniable gratification he gets from power and control before the murder when he has the knife to her throat and she is entirely at his mercy, her life is in his hands, when she’s scared of him, and we see it again in the grand finale and act itself when he throws her onto the bed and stabs her to death without a second of hesitation. which he does when she shows that she is not as afraid of him as she should be— as andrew wants her to be. to andrew, fearing him is respecting him, and she was stupid enough to disrespect him when he’s holding a knife.

now this woman is just like ashley. andrew goes fucking batshit, sees red and snaps like a rubber band wound too tight, and the parallel here is clear as day to me given how we saw ashley treat him just a few scenes prior— i’m not scared of you, andy, who do you think you’re talking to?

ashley belittles him, subtly humiliates him when he stands up to her and challenges her to make him back down. she doesn’t take him even remotely seriously even when he makes an honest threat on her life, and now this “dumb bitch” doesn’t either. she doesn’t think he has it in him, so sure he’d never actually use that knife, he’d never actually kill her, he is not a real threat, he’s weak, he’s spineless, he’s a pushover, a doormat, he’s all bark and no bite. yeah, andrew’s livid, and there’s no fucking way he will let that slide when he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by killing this woman.

he will fucking show her how seriously she should have taken him— andrew makes a terrifying example out of her, she will take his sister’s punishment because he wouldn’t think of ashley as truly deserving of it, and he definitely enjoys every single second of it. that taste of power? i’ve no doubt he enjoyed it more than he’d ever imagined enjoying anything in his life.

none of this sadism ends up directed towards ashley at all. in fact, he obsesses over whether or not she’s safe and sound upstairs even as he’s reveling in the complete power and control he has over their notoriously fuckable neighbor. ashley returns unscathed and immediately calls him out on his shit, observant as she is— he killed the lady in 302 because he enjoys killing, not out of pure necessity, that’s an excuse, and he got off on it.

this is hardly ashley making shit up from a dismissive throwaway comment andrew made about the woman being easy on the eyes, even if he defensively reduces it to that to make ashley look and feel irrational. she can’t prove anything, so andrew will die on that hill insisting he was just dutifully protecting them both from harm, while this is ashley’s insecurities talking and making her act crazy. as usual. he clearly jumps through mental hoops to justify what he did and lies his way around his motives and intent constantly, but when ashley accuses him of getting his rocks off killing their downstairs neighbor, there’s his “even if i did, who cares, she’s dead.”

king of telling on himself even when he’s bullshitting.