The trouble with writing The Coffin of Andy and Leyley fanfiction is that Andrew and Ashley Graves do not give a single shit about anything but each other.
Don't get me wrong, I love their terrible relationship! I think they're fascinating! But it does narrow the scope of the stories that can be told.
I touched on this in the end-of-year fic meme, but it struck me, when I was writing my Life Is Strange 2/Andy and Leyley crossover, how hard it is to get these two to talk to anyone else. Basically, it's a real challenge to make the Graves siblings interact interestingly with other characters when they only really have two modes of interaction outside each other: 'ignore this person' and 'murder this person'.
I suppose murder is not technically an uninteresting way of interacting with someone, but there are only so many directions you can take it in, particularly if the murderer is not inclined to feel bad about it.
What this all boils down to is that I love these awful characters and I'd like to write more about them, but I'm out of ideas!
Given these difficulties in expressing my Andy and Leyley feelings through fanfiction, I continue to work my way through the developer's back catalogue in the hope that will scratch the itch somehow.
Divilethion, Nemlei's second game, is a very short visual novel; I think my playthrough took under an hour. It ends up feeling like a prologue, or a proof of concept; the story ends when it's just getting started. This made a lot of sense when I learnt it was created for NaNoRenO, an event in which the goal is to create a full visual novel from scratch in a month. Given that background, it's extraordinarily impressive!
I had a great time with Divilethion. Nice blend of darkness and humour, some cool art (I love the way Lynn's words cover his eyes when he's going through the motions of comforting the sacrifice), an intense and complicated relationship between siblings (my weakness!). My only real complaint is that I'd have loved it to be longer, which is a pretty good complaint to have!
Divilethion is a game where you can really see the DNA of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. Demonic beings, human sacrifice. A darkly comedic tone. Siblings growing close in the shadow of a neglectful mother and a spineless father. A young man who's good at putting on a mask but really doesn't care about anyone but his sibling. A sibling relationship that's unhealthy, perhaps even abusive, but not without love. (To be clear, I'm not saying that the presence of love diminishes the abuse; I'm just saying that the love exists.) One sibling unflinchingly committing murder to protect the other, and the two of them going on the run. I say I'd love to see a longer version of Divilethion, but, in a sense, I already have.
Don't get me wrong, I love their terrible relationship! I think they're fascinating! But it does narrow the scope of the stories that can be told.
I touched on this in the end-of-year fic meme, but it struck me, when I was writing my Life Is Strange 2/Andy and Leyley crossover, how hard it is to get these two to talk to anyone else. Basically, it's a real challenge to make the Graves siblings interact interestingly with other characters when they only really have two modes of interaction outside each other: 'ignore this person' and 'murder this person'.
I suppose murder is not technically an uninteresting way of interacting with someone, but there are only so many directions you can take it in, particularly if the murderer is not inclined to feel bad about it.
What this all boils down to is that I love these awful characters and I'd like to write more about them, but I'm out of ideas!
Given these difficulties in expressing my Andy and Leyley feelings through fanfiction, I continue to work my way through the developer's back catalogue in the hope that will scratch the itch somehow.
Divilethion, Nemlei's second game, is a very short visual novel; I think my playthrough took under an hour. It ends up feeling like a prologue, or a proof of concept; the story ends when it's just getting started. This made a lot of sense when I learnt it was created for NaNoRenO, an event in which the goal is to create a full visual novel from scratch in a month. Given that background, it's extraordinarily impressive!
I had a great time with Divilethion. Nice blend of darkness and humour, some cool art (I love the way Lynn's words cover his eyes when he's going through the motions of comforting the sacrifice), an intense and complicated relationship between siblings (my weakness!). My only real complaint is that I'd have loved it to be longer, which is a pretty good complaint to have!
Divilethion is a game where you can really see the DNA of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. Demonic beings, human sacrifice. A darkly comedic tone. Siblings growing close in the shadow of a neglectful mother and a spineless father. A young man who's good at putting on a mask but really doesn't care about anyone but his sibling. A sibling relationship that's unhealthy, perhaps even abusive, but not without love. (To be clear, I'm not saying that the presence of love diminishes the abuse; I'm just saying that the love exists.) One sibling unflinchingly committing murder to protect the other, and the two of them going on the run. I say I'd love to see a longer version of Divilethion, but, in a sense, I already have.
