[Commission Work] Parting Gift

A follow-up to the prior post "A Matter of Preference" where Amber finishes Christine off in the worst way. --------------------------------------- Y'know 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 been getting into the Coffin of Andy and Leyley series that everyone's talking about so let's talk about it, and more importantly the weird shit it made me 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 . . . Rather than focusing on the same stuff everyone talks about I wanted to tackle this from a more selfish angle, at least in the way I do content or how things influence me on a psychological level. 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. Narrative foils constantly playing off and insulting one another at every observation the game presents. 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 awful 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 did the same thing to 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 found it arousing. It made me feel... disgusting. If we separate my scenario versus their scenario. There's really only one major difference. 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. The Nina scene stuck with me and made me truly hate Leyley (the hate extended to Andrew a little later but it got there). But 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. Was the difference between them simply that I refuse to kill anyone while they don't mind? Was it that AKO seem to still have a bit of humanity the others two don't? I mean obviously this isn't a major revelation and it's all just fiction pondering, but it 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 lastly wondering 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'm not so sure of my mission. 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! --------------------------------------- All characters belong to me. Always welcome engagement, fanart, and fanfic!