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An Essay About Slash Review of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, A Video Game Which is Very Good

(and also: has prompted many quite wrong rather bad takes)

An essay by Audrey of the joystick system

The very bad discourse and drama around The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has served to obscure the simple fact that it is quite a very good video game and this video essay is here to tell you about that.

Video version:

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Previous video essay: Lost Judgment's Lost Plot

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Transcript:

Hi everyone. So. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is really, really fucking good.

If you’ve heard of this game, you’ve probably heard of it in the context of memes, screenshots divorced from context, and/or capricious moral outrage. If you’ve not heard of this game, well, you’re hearing of it now! And good thing, too, because much of the coverage and discussion around this game that already exists has… been, let’s just say, not particularly earnest. I hope to remedy that at least somewhat with this video.

If you’ve heard about this game because of discourse, and come here expecting drama and hot takes, then, this may not be your video. Or your YouTube channel, even. Or maybe it is, if you’d like the delicious comments section. If you’re that sort of clicker, though— welcome! I’m Audrey of the joystick system, and this is the place where I (and my headmates) talk honestly about things we care about, and I hope you’ll hear me out a little and maybe consider staying and improving our viewer retention. Thanks, if you do.

So, to writ: My purpose today is to gush. I will be gushing here. For most of it. And as for what I will be gushing about, some of it will be gushing BLOOD, GUTS, AND DELICIOUS DEATH. I am entirely serious. The subject of today’s presentation contains mature content, including copious foul language and themes slash depictions of death, cannibalism, cultism, demon summoning rituals, parricide, dystopian social decay, and heterosexuality. Oh, and also a little bit of incest as a treat, I guess, but the incest is heterosexual, and that’s worse.

[long pause]

Excellent. You’re still here. So. This morbidly beautiful video game may not be for everyone, but that’s good, because it is instead for exactly me! A short plot synopsis of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley might go as follows:

if you're not watching the video listen to this for extra effect

Siblings Andrew and Ashley Graves are forcibly quarantined inside their apartment by the local authorities, with no food and even less hope for rescue. Their parents have abandoned them. Absolutely no one is coming to save them. In order to survive and escape this awful situation, they butcher and consume the fresh flesh of some guy who got himself soul vored by a demon that he summoned without a plan.

This conspicuously carnivorous crime, and their effort to cover their tracks, puts them in a fair bit of a deeper shithole than they are already in. So naturally they keep digging themselves deeper by committing even more crimes, AND in the process, also dig themselves deeper into their toxic codependent sibling relationship, which is going just great, thank you. Sure, Andrew almost killed his sister, but he didn’t, and that’s what matters! And she still loves him, so it’s all good!

This is of course a joke.

First thing I absolutely love about this game is the writing. It’s witty, intelligent, uncompromising, and just generally delicious. It holds nothing back in depicting the toxicity of the two leads and their relationship, resulting in two compelling characters whose flaws and few virtues perfectly complement slash exacerbate one another, resulting in a beautiful train wreck of a relationship dynamic that proves equal parts disturbing, mesmerizing, and hilarious.

The charming darkly comedic bite of the writing style also lends a lot of great character to the setting. This sardonically presented dystopian world is both richly detailed and fleetingly elaborated on, a commendable balance to have achieved, in my opinion. The first chapter of this game is hilarious not just because of the banter between Ashley and Andrew (which is terrific), but because it presents such a sharp satire of current year bullshit.

As just an example, I give you, one of my favorite jokes in the game:

I probably don’t need to explain the thing this is making fun of to you, but I will anyway.

The situation presented in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s first episode is very easily readable as an allegory for how disasters that are a direct result of ongoing 2020s late capitalist decay continuously fuck people over. In particular, this scenario feels like a direct commentary on both the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Flint, Michigan water crisis. The former obviously has affected way more people but what both have in common is that they are crises created and exacerbated by malfeasance and/or negligence committed in the name of for-profit interests, and that the “response,” to them, such as there was one, has amounted to dehumanizing and marginalizing the victims while minimizing the issue, forcing the victims out of society’s wider view, and being reticent to punish the individuals responsible.

Just as the authorities responded to the water crisis and the worst excesses of the pandemic in real life, the authorities in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley impose half-measures designed to further restrict the freedom of the dirty undesirables who bear the worst damages, while merely shielding the upper echelons of society from the disaster rather than actually addressing or attempting to solve the issue. Most of you who lived through 2020 in the United States probably have experienced the frustration of being on the receiving end of this kind of policy.

During the pandemic, the quarantine was supposed to protect us, but for a lot of people it ended up doing quite the opposite. A lot of folks didn’t have any savings, and couldn’t get any since the employment market wasn’t exactly on fire, and our representatives had to be bothered way too much just to put out a pithy economic stimulus just to save face. Not to say that this all has stopped, exactly, as all that’s changed now is that we’re just, living with this situation, but.

It wasn’t literally a cop outside everyone’s door preventing them from going outside to not die, but for a lot of people, it might as well have been that! Never mind those who, y’know, had no inside to retreat to. Or were imprisoned during the pandemic and left even more unprotected! Or thrown out by their landlords! And so on. And, y’know, the big chain grocery stores keep throwing out all the perfectly good unsold food, so they’re already sending this message in all but, well… these exact words.

So, that’s why I think this joke lands. It’s exaggerated, but familiarly rooted, and that’s just good satire! It’s a joke which feels lifted right out of Invader Zim, which, I would put The Coffin of Andy and Leyley right about on the level of as far as both the tone it’s going for and the quality of its execution. Which of course, brings us to the extremes that these circumstances push its characters, and its plot, to.

Okay, so, also like Invader Zim, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is hardly a polemic, nor is it a morality tale. Sure, there’s social commentary in it, but that’s just a nice side thing. It’s not a story about the otherwise innocent victims of an unjust society who are pushed to do terrible things by circumstances outside their control— it is, rather a story of terrible people, who, both because of their character failings, and the desperate situations they find themselves in, find themselves doing even worse things.

Andrew and Ashley commit the cannibalism the first time in large part because they kind of have to do it. No food! Cop outside their door actively deterring them from getting food! Out of options! So they do it. They could probably be excused, if only they were given a fair trial. Which they realize they’re not going to get. So yeah. It’s understandable that they do it. And that they kill this one cop, who very much has it coming.

But they do not have to keep doing it! And gosh grief, do they keep fucking doing it— so many its. They really do not stop digging that hole that they are in. Even the first time that they do the cannibalism, when they kind of really have to do the cannibalism, Ashley is just a little bit more excited about doing the cannibalism than she probably should be.

I love this kind of delicious edgy dark humor. I love stories that go for it, imagine the worst possible people they can, and also try to make that funny. I love this about Invader Zim, that it presents a character who is unquestionably a monster, but also has relatable human desires like wanting to fit in and being concerned about looking weird or abnormal, but has those feelings for very different reasons and acts on them by committing some very despicable crimes. It really gets at a deep-seated darkness that I and a lot of other fucked up traumatized queer people who were little kids when this show aired have, the catharsis of visualizing some of our worst intrusive thoughts while evoking the emotions that pushed us to imagine this kind of fucked up shit.

I’ve loved this kind of thing since we saw Heathers when we were 14. Heathers is an absolutely incredible film that you should check out, by the way, and about which we failed to properly or interestingly articulate our thoughts a few years back. Its lead protagonists, Jason “J.D.” Dean and Veronica Sawyer, are similarly relatable characters who have familiar feeling flaws and emotionally resonant trauma hangups, and also function as very toxic enablers of each other’s worst traits, leading them to work through those feelings by, y’know, murdering their classmates!

Heathers made us realize just how exactly mentally ill of a 14 year old we really were when we were 14, and I love it for that. So. So fucking much.

That was ten years and change ago.

We are still a mentally ill 24 year old.

And Andrew and Ashley Graves, if I had to sum them up, are basically J.D. and Veronica, if they were in their twenties, siblings, and also way, way, way worse.

And I love them.

So, obviously. Ashley and Andrew are hilarious. At least, I find them to be such. They’re terrible, and awful, and amazing, and Ashley is such a girlboss. She is one of the most God Forbid Women Do Anything characters ever.

Anyway! I’ve talked about the cannibalism, and the dystopia, and the characters, and why all of that’s good. I’ve also forgotten to talk about the part where they evade an assassin, and, also a host of other things.

I love that this game has so many fun little optional interactions with NPCs, objects, and items, that you can totally miss. I love how the narration hints at the solutions to puzzles by snarkily referring to things you can interact with as what their purpose is to the characters rather than what they are, this quip about the mop that you clean up a murder scene with, the interactions that Andrew has with these cultists who suck at demon summoning, the excellent in-game art and the brilliant visual duality of Andrew and Ashley’s character designs, this line where Andrew is upset that life is so hard for them as fugitives from the law because they can only find this one shitty motel that takes cash and doesn’t ask them for their ID, and also the music, which is royalty free music made by people unassociated with the developer but is nonetheless perfectly suited for the game.

So much about this game is stuff I find so completely brilliant, and I have so little to criticize, that I think we’d probably be here all day if I kept going. So.

Let’s spend a thousand ish more words talking about the parents.

When The Coffin of Andy and Leyley begins, the protagonists’ parents are absent. You can optionally find two early references to them early on— one, if you interact with the bed in their bedroom, and encounter the shocking revelation that “Your parents have FUCKED on this bed.”

The second, is if you interact with the phone, the game dutifully informs you that,

You’re probably less than five minutes into the game at this point, barely begun solving the first puzzle, which prompted you to “find nutrients to not die.” And of course, this says about all you need to know. These children have been abandoned. But if it needed to be any clearer, the game later delivers unto you a flashback to prior in the story, when Ashley desperately calls Mrs. Graves for help after they leave and go move to a hotel, and later a new house, to which the kids are of course not invited. And this specific scene, specific line, here, fucking hit me:

“And I don’t want to hear these lies about starving anymore.”

Emphasis mine.

Even as Ashley and Andrew escalate the severity of their crimes which gradually come to have less and less to do with their need to survive as the story goes on, I find it very hard to not be on their side at least a little bit, and this is easily the biggest reason why.

I have had this phone call.

Not this exact specific phone call, of course. Obviously, I’ve never been locked up in an apartment with an armed patrol outside my door whose job it was to gaslight me while ensuring that I starved to death. Obviously, my mom has never said those exact words.

But gosh grief and fuck me if it’s never felt like she has. She may as well have fucking told me that, with all the things she told me I was lying about. And who fucking knows, maybe she did say those exact words to us, and we repressed them. I don’t know. I am very not done working through all the bullshit that she gaslit us over.

*sighs, preparing to vent*

I have called our mother and had to beg her to pay for food. I have called her and had to beg to pay for our rent, while our parents were supposed to be supporting us studying abroad. I have called her and begged her to forgive me for daring to use just a few of the thirty dollars our parents used to send us to live with every month back then, to buy a drink or a movie ticket or something. I have had to concede to our parents financially holding us hostage, had to go the last week of the month on a shoestring diet while waiting for them to graciously deposit another thirty dollars into our bank account... so that we could continue eating. I used to relish February, the shortest month, for being the one part of the year in which I had to stretch out that thirty dollars the least. And once, I pleaded with our mother to pay for us to move to another apartment when the landlord suddenly kicked us out of the current one, abruptly and obligatorily switching gears from arguing with her to kissing her ass through our gritted teeth, under threat of our parents cutting off their financial support of us completely, abandoning us in a foreign country where we had no money, no job, and barely spoke the language.

And one day, after I stopped dancing to their tune, they just stopped listening, stopped even pretending to want to help. After nineteen years of escalating emotional and physical abuse and neglect, they abandoned us. And one day, after I spent months working 10 hour days every week Ubering food around for tips, sending my resume, filling applications, making calls, stopping into places to ask for work, all to no avail, for months, and desperately plugging the Patreon page of this very YouTube channel praying that some generous soul with money to burn would solve all our problems. All of this still wasn’t enough, and wasn’t going anywhere, and I’d run out of money and was short on rent on the one sublet room we could get that cost exactly three hundred dollars…

And I called her, and I asked her for help. I really didn’t want to. I wanted to hear nothing of her again. And she said to stop lying. To stop bullshitting her that I couldn’t get enough money, or find a job.

Not too long after, I swore off all contact with her, and eventually also with our father. And every time I have spoken to either of them since, I have made no secret of how I feel. Because if I get nothing out of kissing their ass, why fucking pretend.

My family is not poor. They own their house. They own, and leased out, a second house. Their house is full of fancy IKEA furniture and various other niceties, they’ve renovated the place at least twice, they live in a nice, safe neighborhood, they have an attic and a basement, they at one point paid for multiple plane tickets for us per year while still refusing to let us eat on any more than thirty five dollars, an extra five dollars we also had to beg them for. Our dad has a lucrative tech job. All of this, and they insisted, while refusing to answer questions about their finances in any detail, that they couldn’t afford to help us go to where we wanted to go for college, that they had no place for us in their house, that they couldn’t afford three hundred dollars of rent to help us have a roof over our head for one more month.

So when I read this delightful jaunt of a chapter of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, where Andrew and Ashley break into their parents’ new huge house to steal all their shit, and Ashley says “This is some rich people stuff!” about their fireplace,

And when their mom says, “there’s no room to keep housing you here indefinitely,” and the internal monologue says, “even though it’s way bigger than the old house.” It’s both an entertaining mockery of the attitude of the typical American family, how first you’re your parents’ property for eighteen years and then you’re turned out on your own to face the world without their support, and how the fuck are you supposed to live like that, to figure out how to live your life in the face of that, to meaningfully be a fulfilled person in that situation, especially in a time, when, no, mom, I can’t pay a college tuition on a waitress salary like you did back in the fucking nineties, you c--t,

Even though they have an extra bed in their basement and a perfectly good couch and plenty of space for another bed besides, and a vegetable garden, and a kitchen, and all these other middle-class petty bougie niceties, the Graves mom says, “sorry, we can’t keep helping you,” and. And. I read all this, and I think,

“I understand why Ashley wants to fucking flay these people. I understand why she wants to K1!L them.”

I cannot tell you how much catharsis the ending of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley episode 2 gave me. I cannot convey the weight of my gratitude that someone out there validated my anger and my specific fucked up power fantasy with their art. I didn’t even ask them to. I probably would’ve eventually done it on my own. But I’m so glad that someone did it for me.

If I ever hypothetically meet Nemlei, somehow, and have some cash, I will happily buy them a drink. Hopefully, by paying this excellent game’s ten dollar cover price, I already have!

I know you’re not watching this, but on the off chance this reaches your ears, I just wanna say thanks. For giving me a safe, legal, regret-free, socially acceptable, non-violent outlet for the rage I feel towards my parents.

Well.

Mostly socially acceptable.

Meow.

This game is not finished, as you may have noticed if you’ve gone to check it out on Steam. It ends on an ambiguous and open note, but in my opinion, a perfectly satisfying one. Nemlei could disappear absolutely, never release the proper ending of this game, and never make another game again, and I would not be mad. I've already got more than my money’s worth and then some. So. Yeah. I’m happy. Count me as happy!

I kinda wanna start talking a bit more about the branches of the second episode. I wanna say how it’s a brilliant idea to have two separate story arcs for the two variations of this episode’s ending, and how I hope that that’s executed on as beautifully as the rest of the game already is. I wanna talk about the ways in which Andrew and Ashley’s mom is ambiguously humanized despite being so obviously terrible. I wanna talk about the dialogue Andrew does when his parents offer him a chance to make amends, and he has doubts, if you choose to let him have them, and how I would probably also have doubts in his position, and not be able to follow through without my lovely evil cannibal sister pushing me towards… the thing. I wanna talk about this line, where Ashley talks about why she likes eating people, and how it’s so equal parts poetic and macabre and edgy bullshit and that that’s such a beautifully balanced cocktail of emotion to nail and Nemlei totally fucking nails it

I WANT TO GUSH FOREVER. ABOUT THIS GAME. AND I WANT NO ONE TO STOP ME.

Alas, I will stop myself.

And move on to the elephant in the room!

THE FUCKING.

Mom: “But that-.... That doesn’t make any sense.” Mom: “Why would you not-......” Mom: “Ah, I get it.” Andrew: “..........??” Mom: “You fuck her.” Andrew: “Wha— HUUUUH?!?!!?” Mom: “Oh that is disgusting! Andrew, she’s your sister for god’s sake!” Andrew: “I haven’t done anything!? What the hell, mom!?” Mom: “Then what does she give you that makes it worth all this?” Andrew: “W-well that’s none of your business, is it??” Mom: “I knew something was off… How did I fuck up so bad? I’m the worst mother ever..!” Andrew: “No! I mean yes you are, but I have never—!” Ashley: “I’m baaaa-ack!!!” Andrew: “Now of all times!?” Ashley: “I got the money! Did you miss me, handsome?? Did you? Did you??” Mom: “...........................” Andrew: “(I WANT TO DIE!!!!!!)”

Okay. So. I said I didn’t want to talk about this. But I’m talking about this game. I can’t not talk about it.

Yep, it’s hot takes and drama time!

So, not too long ago, Nemlei deleted their Twitter, their Itch.io, their everything, their entire online presence. The Steam page for The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, which used to list Nemlei as the developer and publisher, now lists “Kit9 Studio.” It is the only game to their name on the platform. A community forum post from said entity known as Kit9 announces that “the developer” (no name given) “has decided to permanently and completely terminate their activities online from here on.”

I don’t know exactly what happened, or why they did this. There’s a lot of people around who sure think they know. But in brief, as neutrally as possible: Nemlei, or someone close to them, was doxxed, or at least sought out as a doxxing target, by one or multiple users of an online forum. Their supposed crime? Making a video game “for degenerates.”

I don’t know who did the doxxing. I don’t know what their motive was, and for my own sanity, I am not going to look. I am choosing not to care. The most important and most obvious fact at hand here is that Nemlei’s creation has been met with controversy amongst social media users, and about one or two hack video game outrage journalists, who seem to have nothing better to do or say. And it seems clear that the doxxing wouldn’t have happened had they not been met with this negative attention. And all because of this.

Not the cannibalism, not the parricide, not the demon sacrifices. No, um, the one implied sex scene.

And it doesn’t even actually happen! It’s just a premonition of a possible future event that Ashley and Andrew supernaturally receive. It’s not particularly graphic, it doesn’t yet go anywhere, and it’s a short scene on an optional route that the game actively forewarns you about. You have to be trying to see it on purpose.

Well, that’s all true. It is indeed a minor and avoidable scene, and the discourse about it has absolutely poisoned the well when it comes to the conversation about the game. But also, “uhh, it’s optional and not a big thing,” is inadequate as a defense. This is still content in the game that Nemlei actively chose to put in the game, and even discounting this, the themes of incest are all over the game. Ashley speaks flirtatiously to Andrew at basically every turn. Even if you avoid this specific scene, the incest themes are not something you’re going to just not notice, if you’re paying attention to the text.

All that being said, it’s not like this content comes as a surprise. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s Steam store page accurately represents the product! A brother and sister. Codependency and cannibalism. It’s not as if you don’t know what you’re paying for and choosing to play. You came here for this! Most of the people playing this are here for this! You have to figure that if they are fine with killing and eating people, they’re probably fine with fucking each other, or, eventually possibly eventually going to be, at least.

So you’d think, except that many people seem to unironically believe that the cannibalism is more moral than the incest.

Oh, god, I’m doing this right now, aren’t I.

So, I get it. While I’m pretty skeptical of the notion that cannibalism is not as bad as incest, I do realize that incest is, at the very least, the more taboo of these things, and that a lot of people are more uncomfortable with it than they are with the cannibalism and the murder. To quote the one positive and in-depth review available in any media outlet at the time of this writing, from Destructoid:

“This aspect is undoubtedly the most controversial element about The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, and I understand why. While cannibalism is a taboo subject, it’s present in mainstream games like Fallout as an option for players. Having incestuous themes crosses over into Drakengard territory, and even then, no option allows Caim to reciprocate Furiae’s feelings for him.”

"The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is horrifying and I can’t get enough of it" Andrea Gonzalez, Destructoid, November 12 2023

So, yeah, I. y’know. Get it. I know why. However.

I can point to a lot of things that Andrew and Ashley do wrong in this game. They are, as per the game’s premise, very not okay, not as individuals, and not together. Andrew is way too attached to Ashley, and Ashley is generally an awful person who is way too attached herself, and also, all too quick on the draw to take advantage of Andrew’s attachment to her to make him do what she wants. This is not a healthy relationship. And we’re here for it! It’s compelling!

But, I think it’s worth asking why it’s such a toxic dynamic. Is it because they’re siblings? Well, not really. It’s a dynamic that’s specifically possible with them being siblings, but it’s not because of their sibling connection.

The actual reason why Andrew and Ashley’s relationship turns abusive isn’t because their relationship is abusive by necessity or nature, but because Ashley abuses their relationship. And she is doing this for basically the whole game. Like, it is abusive the whole time. It doesn’t become abusive when their relationship takes its romantic turn. Does it become more abusive? I mean. Maybe. Maybe the romance exacerbates the abuse. I dunno, we’ll have to wait and see what the next episode says.

So, then, why is the notion of them possibly in the future having sex the elephant in the room here, when before that, they do so many objectively worse things that cause much more harm both to themselves and others? Is that really so much more of a bigger deal than the murder and the people eating?

Or. To phrase it Ashley’s way. You played a game about mutilating and eating your parents’ corpses, and getting laid is what you’re freaking out about?

Is the incest really that much more extreme, or are you just more disgusted with it?

And even if you are more disgusted with it. Even if we grant that it is, actually, somehow, more harmful for siblings to have sex with each other, than to do murder and cannibalism. Is this the hill you’re dying on? What you’ve decided is of such utmost importance and injustice that you decide to go harass some random indie dev who just wants to make a silly video game about a couple of siblings eating people?

Does it truly make sense to let your kneejerk moral disgust guide you to the conclusion that the creator of this game deserves to be persecuted for merely writing about and drawing a thing you don’t like?

Well, to answer that, we have to get into the question of whether or not “immoral fiction” is harmful, or “normalizing” things that are wrong. Does fictionally depicting an immoral action actually cause harm?

I could dance around in circles for a little while about the edge cases, and certain writers who are publishing bad or hateful material in bad faith, or fascist propaganda, which is of course always bad, or whatever other example I could use to qualify my point or list out an exception to appease the people who disagree with me, but, I’ll just cut right to the chase, and tell you the answer

No!

The answer is NO!

The thing about taboos is that they don’t make us more safe. They don’t protect us from bad things. All they do is protect people’s comfort by silencing people they don’t want to understand, and enable bad actors by keeping their victims in the dark, and denying them the ability to talk about it.

The only thing we end up doing by censoring stories about these uncomfortable topics, and making it socially unacceptable to talk about them, is make it harder to know. We deny ourselves knowledge. We deny ourselves a conversation about these subjects, we deny ourselves the ability to meaningfully understand them. We deny ourselves power, what little we have, as readers, to understand, and to critique, to reason.

There’s a tumblr post I really like. Well, a number of them, I really like, on this topic, but I’m picking this one, because it’s got a quote I really like. It talks about Lolita. That Lolita. And, now, I’ve never read Lolita, at least not yet. Lolita is a novel about child sexual abuse, told from the perspective of an abuser. It’s an uncomfortable book with an uncomfortable topic, and it’s not wrong to be uncomfortable with it. The author of this post acknowledges that.

But they talk about it. They talk about how it shines a light on its subject matter. The why and the how of abusers and their actions. The ways in which their victims suffer. How it shows all of this in a way that it only could from the perspective it takes. And, I’m just going to quote them. I can’t do anything else. They said it better than I could, right now.

“Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it’s nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality.” - tumblr user legsdemandias

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has been ridiculed, joked about, hot taked on, made a target, drama-ed over, and so on, but it’s hardly been criticized. No one I’ve seen admitting to not liking it talks critically about why it’s disgusting to them, or tries to understand why it exists, or what it’s for. And this is most people’s reaction to most media that deals seriously with anything taboo. “I don’t get it. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t exist. Get it away from me.”

I’m annoyed that the medium, the art form, of video games, is valued so little by so many that this is the wide reaction when something like this gets popular. That the mainstream games journalism media ridicules it, and the creator gets threatened by an internet mob, and it falls on the weirdos and the freaks and the no-name YouTube uwu girls, to give it the serious consideration and recognition it deserves.

To summarize, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is, in my opinion, a very good video game, and on its behalf, I am mad at video games.

Now, go on. You made it through this video. I told you the plot! You can probably stomach the plot! So go, go. Shoo. Go buy Nemlei a drink. If you want to.

Or, buy us, the joystick system, a drink! You can do that at patreon dot com slash joycestick, or, ko-fi dot com slash joycestick. You can buy us drinks in both of those places.

I’ve been Audrey. Thank you for listening.

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onlinegames2020-blog · 5 years

Text

Laplace M Hack, Cheats, Tips & Free Guide

Laplace M was created and published by “ZlongGames”company and it is available to be downloaded and played on Android and IOS platforms.

One of the greatest MMORPG games out there; you can explore fantastic islands adding to it a finely written script. You can double the fun by using Laplace M cheats and enjoying most of the in app purchases features freely.

You can create your own family, meeting friends from all over the world. Fight your way to save the town from the destruction fate. You can learn more about the storyline by scrolling down…

Get Started

We will skip all the unnecessary introductions in our Laplace M review and jump ahead towards the important features inside the gameplay itself.

Let us begin with the available classes and their main pros and cons:

Mage: only wise apprentices with self-discipline may become a mage. There are three core skills and two secondary class charge path skills. Very solid when it comes to AOE damage and of course ranged attacks. We cannot consider it as a sharpshooter but still a very solid range, when it comes to the defensive area, this class will find big problems.

Warrior: fearless and steadfast, warriors are the ones you can trust with your life. You may become a paladin to tank the incoming attacks and stay longer on the battlefield or move as a berserker to become a damage dealer and depend on yourself in the journey. With some help of Laplace M hack, your warrior will become unstoppable.

Priest: healing support, the most loyal companion who protects and heals their comrades almost like the Odin god. You may not be able to play on your own with this class, as it requires having a damage dealer by her side that is something you need to have in mind when you are picking it.

Assassin: working behind the scenes I thrilling, it is as you are one with the shadows doesn’t that sound amazing? Become a ninja and all your skills will be based on the backstabbing damage effects. Very low defense but the damage when dealt at the right moment, it will demolish anything!

By reaching this point, you should be more than ready to pick your fighter class and progress forward. The Laplace M hack will also provide a decent backup to your journey.

Flowed Customization System

Customization has taken a big part of the gameplay as well; you can now enjoy customizing your own hairstyle, hair color, eyes, eye color and even the head size and shape. All of these are coming with tons of available styles and options to choose from, we do prefer the simple style so keep it simple if you want and start the adventure right away after you pick up a name to represent your character on the field.

Dear adventurer: a new land to be conquered, a history to be made.

Logging in tomorrow will allow you to obtain a golden soul card. All of them will boost up your performance in the game, so adding the Laplace M cheats will enhance it even more!

Right now, we will talk more about the game controls.

Use the left joystick to control your character’s movement. It is easily played single handedly if you are going after quests only, but if you were seeking further fights and challenges, then using the attacking slots on the right bottom corner would be a right move.

Once you kill an enemy, the dropped items will be collected automatically to your inventory. You may get some new weapons and equipment.

Always try to do a comparison between the newly added items to your inventory and the current ones you are using. You may also purchase new strong ones via Laplace M hack.

After each upgrade of items to your character, you can see the BR number is increasing. It is representing the overall power points your character has.

Gameplay In Depth

There are several playable paths in the game, sometimes you would enjoy the open world roaming system or following the given mission. By following the main missions, you should be looking for the yellow circles; these are the checkpoints of the task.

At some points, you will be forced to cut down trees in order to create a bridge to move over. These are one of the unique features of the game.

On the top left corner, you can see your overall health points and the face of your main character. Try to keep an eye over the health state to know exactly where you are standing on the battlefield.

At the end of each mission, there will be a boss fight waiting for you ahead.

The bosses usually have much higher health points and stronger attitude. They will deal massive damage, so you need to be careful and use the Laplace M hack to upgrade your character enough to win those boss battles.

You can always skip the cinematic scenes and jump ahead to the main parts of the gameplay

Remember that current captain of Yggdrasil was once ashamed of being a bastard until farids introduced him to become a member of shield watch. Ever since then, beck has been taking care of everyone with all his heart and showed oracular sympathy towards Audrey…

In addition, the Laplace M cheats will help you to chase down the enemy and being back peace to the town. This is going to become your main task from now on.

Improve Your Character Powers With Laplace M Cheats!

You can open the map from the top right corner and at this point, you will see all the places you have explored and you can teleport yourself from one point to another instantly.

The available quests will be shown on the map with the explanation yellow mark. You can also check on the required level for each area according to the monsters over there.

Try to keep the Laplace M hack ready to save you from the hard situations that you could fall into while exploring the surrounding area.

Audrey: when she was a little girl, the town mayor adopted her after the mysterious death of her parents. She is very understanding and thus beloved by everybody around the town. Under the kind and gentle appearance, is however a sensitive and fragile heart. Which she only shows when she is alone with beck!

Outstanding Communicating System

You can start chatting with players from all over the world via the chat box located on the middle bottom side of the screen. You can also use the microphone in the communication system.

If you feel like this is harming your privacy, then tap on the settings icon and disable the chatting feature entirely.

Do not post anything related to the Laplace M cheats in the chat box as it could affect the service.

Remember that each character has its own attributes; you can access the character info details by clicking on the character icon.

The main attributes are the physical attack if you were a melee fighter and if you were a wizard, then you can check the magical damage number.

All of the attributes can be boosted rapidly by spending on the right equipment with the help of Laplace M cheats.

All our reviews and content have been tested and written by the Real Gamers forum, Here is the main post for Laplace M Hack, Cheats, Tips & Guide.

Laplace M Hack

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joyce-stick · 1 year

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The Beef Stroganoff Song! (arbitrary subtitle discourse edition)

So, you may have noticed here that the subtitles in this clip (from Symphogear GX episode 3) are fairly different from what you're used to seeing when people post this video, and the phrasing in the subtitles is fairly different from what the associated memes often say

For those who don't know, Symphogear got itself released on blu-ray by Discotek, and with that came with a new translation authored by Noelle (@ulsairi on twitter ) who is notable for being the only trans lesbian anime translator I know of off the top of my head.

Her translation appears, in my opinion, really rather polished and very good, and I strongly appreciate the way it's written and how much character it adds to the dialogue by giving everyone distinct voices and adapting things into more natural English. It's also a fair bit gayer. I haven't encountered many people who've seen these subs, but I think most fans of the series would consider these a net positive change. There are some people who are mad about these subtitles, and they can die mad.

Anyway, let's talk about the different phrasing of the beef stroganoff song. I'm mostly going to compare to Crunchyroll's subtitles for reference since that seems to be what most others go off of. Here's a link to that version.

So right off the bat we can see here that while CR's translation appears to be a lot more, for lack of a better word, functional, Noelle's translation tries to apply more dialectal force "it's beef stroganoff/Yes! It's THAT beef stroganoff!" And generally communicate through the tone how excited the girls are to get started. Additionally you'll see throughout that the latter is a fair bit more lyrical, there's a lot more punctuation and verbal tics and filler phrases written into the dialogue to express that they are singing, which makes sense since Japanese tends to omit a lot of the sorts of prepositions that Noelle threw in here,

Like, Yumi (yes I went and looked up her name on the wiki) just says "beef stroganoffu" because it's obvious from context that it is beef stroganoff, she doesn't need to spell it out, at least, not in Japanese

(We know like maybe ten hiragana and 1 kanji do not trust us on Japanese this is all just basic shit we learned from online guides)

So this probably leads to a rushed translator from Crunchyroll (they are notoriously crunched for time) who's just trying to Get It Done probably not really bothering to throw in extra additional connecting letters to express the tone of the character, only doing so when it's required to make basic grammatical sense in the target language. So they likely didn't think to make the subtitles have flourishes like this that aren't explicitly in the original Japanese. Noelle meanwhile had the time to consider things like this and take such liberties in order to attempt to convey the same tone that was arguably implied by the Japanese, even if not explicitly put forth

And that's about all the things I should not repeat I guess, TL;DR, these subtitles are more fun to read because the translator had more time to think about the best way to make them more fun while still being accurate to the spirit of the original dialogue, who'd have thought!

(In case you're wondering, the Commie subtitles say kind of the same thing here, and y'know, it doesn't seem like a wrong translation, but also I really dislike this subtitle styling, orange on pink with that font and that drop shadow is just kinda bad. I appreciate the effort but like. Come on. Please fansubbers, please think about if the font and colors you chose actually work with the image you're putting them on)

Moving on!

horizontal and middle rhyme with each other so you can almost actually sing this, actually let me take a moment to try it right now- never mind, I can't sing. Hahaha. I don't actually think it lines up that well with the melody But I thought it did! Didn't I? That's significant, that this actually reads like plausible lyrics to a silly song someone made up instead of a literal translation of a Japanese song

Anyway, here comes the first major difference!

So in the Crunchyroll subtitles, Yumi says "it doesn't have to be beef" which in English (in my estimation) sounds a tad scatterbrained, like, "oh yeah sure beef but whatever really it doesn't actually matter," while Noelle's subtitles rather say "Got no beef? Don't you worry!" Which implies something different.

"It is recommended to use beef, but you may substitute something else if you are sorely lacking in beef" as opposed to "Oh the beef doesn't actually matter, zoinks lol!" CR's translation is kind of a bit funnier in how it sorta comes from nowhere without this qualification, which probably lead to this phrase's memeticness, but Noelle's translation seems more reasonable to me so yeah again, tada, yay for sensicalness.

Now here's another interesting change:

Again, the flat manner in which the CR subtitles say "finish with salt" with rendezvous only being included because that's literally what they said, is sort of absent any stronger emotional implication,

Noelle's translation meanwhile going with "don't forget them, they need it" imparts personhood upon the salt and pepper. The implication being that the girls are saying, "the salt and pepper are in love, please reunite them, they must be in gay love together." Or maybe you think the salt and pepper cannot be forgotten and must be reunited because they are Only Friends.

Whether you choose to believe that this is the salt and pepper getting married, or merely subtext, or an interpretation, or salt and pepper shipping bait, this is a deeply important tonal indicator because it reminds you that these girls are ultimately playing with their food!

"And there, now you're in for a treat!" I don't think I need to explain this one.

Now, here's an interesting one!

In the Crunchyroll subtitles, it just says the memetic "boys don't know this." With no context, no elaboration, no clarity, no qualifiers. Boys don't know. Did the boys magically get their brains wiped? Are the boys biologically incapable? Who knows. Nothing is said but that.

Noelle's subtitles, on the other hand, qualify this statement by saying "Boys aren't taught to cook, so they may not know" (And note again how, it says "kno-ow" to emphasize, once more, that they're singing, and also this lines up with the long "ooooo" sound they make at the end of this lyric, so cool)

There is now context! Boys aren't taught to cook! Anime and Japan's culture in general still pigeonholes people into gender roles! And an anime translator just wrote you a hidden translation note about it! You might be a boy, you might know how to cook, but certain boys in another part of the world aren't traditionally taught cooking, so they may not know

They may not, but they could!

Trust a trans person to express gender facts with subtle nuances like this in anime translations.

And with that lovely bit of good translation and good writing and good localization of a thing to make it make sense to people

Mew!

#symphogear #symphogear gx #beef stroganoff #translation discourse #boys dont know this #(or rather THEY MAY not)#(but could if they were told how!)#you know it from anime and manga #audrey (of the joystick system) posts

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joyce-stick · 1 year

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This blog will continue to talk about gay sexual content. My headmates want to have gay sex, and we want anime girls to have gay sex, and our posting will reflect these facts. Also, I think it's funny.

#yuri #audrey (of the joystick system) posts #gay sex gay sex gay sex #memes #lycoris recoil

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joyce-stick · 5 months

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I didn't like Scott Pilgrim Takes Off all that much. I feel like elucidating on why, a little bit. so. Anyway.

First, letterboxd review I wrote within a few hours of finishing the show (read this first please):

So, I read all of the comic (finally) prior to watching Takes Off. Having seen the movie several times before, I found the comic interesting in how it develops its characters further over a longer timeframe and ties up a few loose ends that the movie sort of left open in weird ways that don't make sense. Ramona has more agency, Knives shows more maturity, Scott and Ramona are more explicitly on equal footing and make for better foils for each other in the comic than in the movie. Scott regrets his life choices and runs away for a while. Ramona regrets her life choices and also runs away. They both come back and beat up Gideon together with, y'know, mutual agreement that they both kinda equally suck and deserve each other and are going to both try to get better for themselves and one another and it's fine

It's not like, groundbreaking feminist storytelling, but it sure is a lot MORE gender equal than the movie which just goes like. Ramona is mind controlled! Scott must save her! Scott beats up Gideon sorta unilaterally (with a little bit of help) and then gets Ramona because he does! It's okay. It's fine. I mean, both the movie and the comic are fine. The movie is a hyperinventive visual feast and a stellar adaptation as far as faithfully replicating its source material in the target medium. I love it. Anyway.

Both the comic and the movie are fairly complete stories which really don't need more elaborating on. They're done. They exist. People either like them, or hate them, and have been discoursing on them for years. People discuss how bad of a person Scott is or isn't, or how transgender of a reading you can apply or not apply to Scott.

(I mean, you can! You're allowed to!)

It's all well-worn. And stuff. I don't know that Scott Pilgrim is a trans girl. I mean, it's plausible fanfiction. You can do it if you like. I wish that Takes Off had played with that idea, instead of what it did do, or, in addition to what it did do? And what it did do is just. Weh?

Weh.

Okay where do I start. Um.

spoilers for Takes Off below this point

Takes Off starts by taking Scott out of the picture. He is assumedly presumably made dead. Coined. Whoo.

Okay so obviously Scott isn't actually dead, he comes back later, but him being presumed dead for a bit does open the door to the rest of the cast to get some attention. Which you'd think would be good. Alright. So, we have Matthew Patel, still here. He's an incel, it turns out. Beats Gideon in a fight being like "man I got the bigger dick here." Wins totally! Okay! The league of evil exes is all either like "wow good going Matt" or "man screw this shit" and leaves. That's amusing for a minute.

Roxy shows up for an episode, fights Ramona, and is like "YOU LEFT ME RAMMY! I HATE YOU!" And we get some delicious flashbackiness to their relationship, and they kinda reconcile. Then Roxy kisses Kim, and is like "nah I don't care Kim" and dips. Yay.

The fight between Ramona and Roxy is well animated and fun to watch. I enjoyed it. It's alright.

What else... Um, Gideon has a backstory! Gideon isn't even his real name! And he's become the mega incel that he becomes because he got rejected by some girl in high school and this turned into his supervillain origin story. Okay

Lucas Lee does skateboarding and skateboards some paparazzosi to coindeath! Go him! That is genuinely a fun sequence and I enjoyed it, I guess

Wallace Wells seduces Todd Ingram and they have a lot of hot gay vegan sex! He and Envy Adams sorta fight about it! How wacky! Okay

The Katayanagi Twins get some speaking lines in this show! Their robot (which appeared in the comic but not the movie if I remember right) is around. Um.

Julie! Julie is an old school friend of Gideon. She lets him stay at her house. Gideon/Gordon and Lucas Lee do some bro shit. Cool man

All of this is like, fine, and fun, and stuff. I'm fine with it. I liked it. I enjoyed it. Oh and I guess there's a meta subplot about the Scott Pilgrim movie becoming the Scott Pilgrim movie but failing to become the Scott Pilgrim movie because the actors keep having too many video game fights on the movie set

Okay so this is all stuff that Ramona finds out or sorta bumbles into while looking for Scott, who she's surmised has disappeared and is not actually dead. Of course, Scott is not actually dead. He's just been kidnapped and displaced in time by an older version of himself, who is having a midlife crisis because his relationship with Ramona is going badly and he wishes that it had never happened, so he kidnaps young Scott to make it so that it never happened. This does not really work. Also future Ramona does some of her own intervening in the past to counter the plot of future Scott. She has Delorean rollerblades that time travel at 88 miles per hour *rolls eyes*

Anyway, then older older Scott has a fight with younger younger Scott, future Ramona intervenes and merges with younger Ramona to become a super form Ramona and they're just like "my beloved Scott, please, just go back to the future and sort out our marriage, like a responsible adult," he is teleported back to the future, all the exes are not coinexploded, and we get a final scene implying that Julie and Gideon/Gordon are planning something which will lead into a second season, and I don't know why

Why is any of this?

I could analyze it. I could try to tell you why any of this is. But like. I really can't. I don't know.

None of this really advances or develops the characters in any way that wasn't already adequately explored in the existing material. Like, Roxy's hangup over Ramona is fleshed out a bit more, sure, and that's the part of the show I really liked, but... is there anything to that? Does it add anything to Roxy's character that we didn't already know? Not really. We could already pretty easily infer from the comics that Ramona left Roxy, just like she left all her exes, and that Roxy is mad about it. Is it nice that they talk about it? I guess. Sure. It's nice to have a version of that conversation without Scott being the third wheel. But does it meaningfully change her character?

...No

And this is the same for all the characters. Our understanding of Matthew Patel and Gideon Graves is not particularly deepened by their incel dickmeasuring fight, or Gideon's origin story about getting rejected in high school. Our understanding of Lucas Lee is not especially enhanced by the newly revealed detail that he's a headache for his agent because of his reckless wild free devil may care skater dude attitude causing PR risks. Our understanding of Wallace Wells is not amazingly additioned by seeing him seduce Todd Ingram and piss off Envy Adams. Our understanding of Knives doesn't change when she learns how to play music and gets along with Kim and Stephen... And such and so forth.

And our understanding of Scott does not meaningfully change, either. There's really no radically new character interpretation to be drawn from "Scott divorces Ramona and then tries to undo his past". That's just kind of a thing you'd figure he'd do. And of course Ramona would try to set him straight! And look for him! And. Yeah

So yeah, Takes Off feels like, almost, the definition of that phrase that Dan Olson used in that one video

"No meaning, only lore."

I cannot fathom why this show exists other than that Netflix wanted a Scott Pilgrim show, and Bryan Lee O'Malley decided to pitch one because he's sure as hell not got any other big hit comics being cross-media franchises right now, and the plot that ended up being there feels like his end of the entire writing process was spent wracking his brain, fighting for his life to come up with a reason, any reason, to write more of fucking Scott Pilgrim

And the best he could come up with was, I guess, Scott has a midlife crisis, and also more superfluous character detail, and the fanservice angle of getting to see Ramona fight Roxy, or Gideon fight Matthew, or Lucas Lee skateboard more

I had a lot of fun seeing all that but I don't know why I watched it. I don't know who wanted this. And I definitely don't know who wants a second season of this. Who would want more of this? The season we do have was already grasping for straws to do more with this setting and these characters as it was. What would they even do?

Anyway. If I was gonna rewrite this and write this smarter. I'd probably tell y'all about the moment when Young Neil is trying to write a screenplay, and some mysterious figure (later revealed to be future Ramona) shows up in his room and types up the screenplay for the Scott Pilgrim movie for him. And then he wakes up, the screenplay is on his desk, and he's like "WHOA I don't remember writing this! I totally wrote this!"

And I'd say, if I were trying to be smart and write some smart video essay analogy in a better more polished review, that Takes Off feels like Bryan Lee O'Malley wished that the script for the show would similarly emerge fully formed from nowhere from the future for him.

Or something.

Anyway, thanks for reading this impromptu, review rant something. If you liked whatever this was, and want to see us write more, better things, then, giving us money would be cool.

Patreon | Ko-fi

#scott pilgrim #scott pilgrim takes off #joyce stick #audrey (of the joystick system) posts #essays #reviews #I didn't like it very much

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