All The Andrew Julia Shippers And “andrew Is A Victim Only” People Have Disappeared. Amazing

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.

The only one Mukuro will marry is Junko, there are no other options

"you're romanticize-"

me af

Im sure that the main reason why antishippers say that "lolicon is csam", "darkshipping is illegal", "proshipping is unhealthy", yada yada, is because they just want more people to side with them.

So, basically spreading lies on purpose to try and get some people onto their side. While calling or relating dark fiction to propaganda...

Think for yourself and know your facts before going ballistic over drawings and fanfiction of characters.

Don’t let your girlfriend stop you from finding your wife.

me because I have an unhealthy addiction to characters being evil

The fact that the way the Lord Unknown is named changes as Andrew's perception of them does too means a lot to me.

"Something kind" 💔

All Andrew really needed at that moment was someone (or something) to open up to, to actually listen to him, to *know* him.

I'm happy he was able to get that somehow, even if he got it from a mysterious demon.

Here's an interesting instance of Andrew manipulating the audience: I've seen many people say that this moment proves Andrew can feel remorse, but really read what he says,

This is in no way a display of genuine guilt. This is him justifying his decision to not go to the police. He knows that he should feel bad, that's what a normal person would feel, so he needs a good reason to explain why he will never turn himself in. "It won't bring her back" is as good an excuse as any - never mind that confessing would give Nina's friends and family closure (and considering Julia took him to her grave I'm sure he's well aware of this). But alas, Andrew does not actually care, he just comes up with more excuses because that's much easier than admitting he's not normal.

😣

source - Feyy_Incognito

The way physical violence was focused on and upped in episode 3 really got me thinking specifically about how Ashley actually responds to it. Because, like…

When we start in the flashback at the start of the episode, we get given a clear picture of Renee’s stance on using it as disciplinary action, and for all that she is shitty and cruel and neglectful and spitefully manipulative in every scene that she’s in, one line that she won’t cross with the kids that she’s barely parenting is hitting them, and she tells Andrew as much.

Albeit aggressively, but what she’s saying here is obviously that she doesn’t believe it will make a difference, and that she won’t allow that to be how Andrew is forced to parent Ashley for her. To be fair, it is quite in line with her general methods of getting what she wants usually through manipulation, but it is, perhaps, a single redeeming factor about her parenting style, and represents a line that shouldn’t be crossed.

(It’s also possible indicative of her own childhood, which is interesting considering what her mother had to say about Douglas’s father in the Renee and Douglas vision, but I digress. This isn’t a Renee analysis or apologist post.)

But another piece of backstory that these flashbacks give us is that, perhaps unsurprisingly, Andrew and Ashley lived with their grandparents for a few years, before their actual parents. Renee was kicked out and had no money, so of course Douglas’s parents were left with Andrew and Ashley for an unknown amount of years. And their parenting style was… different. Seemingly not as neglectful as Renee’s, and I do think we get the sense that even if Douglas’s mother is just as much of a doormat as he is, and refuses to stand up to her husband (and given the wife beating mentions, is possibly not in the position to) she does genuinely care about her grandkids. So at their grandparents there’s… parenting. Maybe not good parenting, but still some parenting.

Interacting with the swing in the yard, Andrew recounts a short memory of how exactly his grandfather tended to respond to him (or presumably Ashley) doing anything wrong.

Woohoo, the kids aren’t abandoned, but they’re still blamed for things that aren’t their fault, and they’re beat for their troubles too!

But seriously, this obviously goes to show that before Andrew and Ashley moved in with their parents, physical violence was on the table against them as punishment. Andrew certainly remembers it, and we can speculate to what degree that informs his response to Renee about hitting Ashley later, but in particular, it’s Ashley I’d like to actually focus on here.

I don’t think it’s too big of a logical leap to assume that if Andrew was beaten by his grandfather, so was Ashley, given said grandfather’s horribly misogynistic views and obvious tendency towards beating his wife. And as unfortunate as it would be, I have to wonder… Did Ashley actually respond to this? In some way did she, or perhaps more likely Andrew, ever figure out how to behave to avoid it?

Looking forward to the present day, physical violence hasn’t been properly levelled against her in a while. Andrew supposedly attempts to choke her out in episode 1, but she notes that he wasn’t squeezing hard enough to actually choke her. And they get up in each other’s faces, and they yell, and she has a vision about him straight up killing her, but to some extent all of this is just not quite that far, or a true ultimatum. Never is Ashley actually faced with physical violence as any kind of punishment despite it being noted all the way back in episode 1 that Andrew has physical strength beyond her, as he is able to keep trying to kick the door down where she notes she doesn’t at all have the energy.

It’s a possibility in spirit. Andrew has the physical advantage and he could so easily use that against her, but it’s all presented as a game to Ashley in the first few episodes – one that she thinks Andrew isn’t actually trying at. She’s not even especially afraid of the prospect until the episode 2 Decay vision shows that he’s fully willing to kill her, and at some point in the near future too. That’s still an ultimatum more than it is a direct punishment, but it presents the idea to her that for all she thought he was playing around, no, Andrew would be willing to go there.

And then, this is followed through on in any Decay playthrough where Andrew is willing to grow a spine. He crosses the line that Renee set up, and that gives the moment a lot of narrative weight.

He slaps her, and her expression tells us a lot here. She wasn’t expecting something like this from him either, because of some combination of to not being a punishment she’s actually faced since childhood, Andrew never having gotten like this with her properly before, and how quick and sudden it is. This isn’t just a death threat or potentially far-off vision of him killing her; he’s actually done it now.

Their subsequent conversation is quite interesting too:

"What's with that look? You're the one who put violence on the table."

"...I-!! I didn't mean to............."

"Honestly it's all the same at this point."

Given the characters, we definitely shouldn’t necessarily take their words at face value, but even with that, I do think some part of Ashley is sincere here. When she held the cleaver to his neck, and when she offered a death threat, she still thought that she was just playing. This isn’t any different to Andrew taking his hands to her neck but not pressing hard enough to choke her, to her. She’s back-pedalling quite so hard to try and keep him, of course, this is Ashley we’re talking about… But I also don’t doubt that her sentiment is genuine. She didn’t exactly mean to.

And Andrew’s response tells us exactly why he’s so willing to cross that line. He just doesn’t care! Renee’s dead, so he doesn’t have to care about her rules and policies, and given how cynical he feels towards his life at this point, perhaps he wouldn’t care anyway. If this is a genuine way to get a response from Ashley, then he’ll try it, because for all that his mask of trying for normalcy is still up at this point, this is just between the two of them, where it!s always mattered the least, and as it is, that mask is quickly slipping.

I’d like to note this part of Ashley’s reaction as well, because, well… First we see that same shock as immediately after, but I’ve thought the exact same thing about that second frame, ever time I’ve seen it. With the background and the tears, isn’t this such a Leyley reaction? Such a Leyley expression?

Decay, especially Shots and Such which can follow on from this, is all about Ashley clinging to the Andy and Leyley dynamic to both of their detriments. It changes form as she feels she needs to adapt and find new ways to keep her Andy, but she’s constantly affirming whether or not she has Andy or Andrew because the violence and the hate all comes from Andrew to her, so when she’s continually trying to play Leyley, it keeps coming as a shock.

Andrew slaps her in the car, and she can only react as Leyley would. She never wants to be Ashley, because Ashley never fits into their games, and because Ashley has always been subconsciously rejected by Andrew. Being Ashley would mean facing what Andrew has done here rather than just making petty jokes about it for the rest of the episode and crying like I imagine she would have if her grandfather hit her.

But the cycle of violence only gets worse once Andrew continues to stew in apathy, and as perhaps he realises, that it does get a desired reaction from her. Ashley doesn’t respond in the long term to any threat that he throws, but she’s genuinely scared by the prospect of what him actually killing her means to her, and getting violent against her is a piece of that.

Part of what Shots and Such emphasises is that, even if it never works in the long run, Ashley does respond respond to violence, and that through out all of the ending, it remains Andrew’s way of fighting her.

This doesn’t exactly paint a happy picture of how Andrew regularly treats her. Er… Not that just about anything in Shots and Such is especially happy…

But it once again perpetuates the cycle of violence. Ashley gets actually violent now too, when she can. She makes sex painful for Andrew when she can, because that’s the degree of control she still has as someone who can’t a fight back when Andrew gets physical with her. She’s physically weaker, and with the bathroom lock torn down behind her, she has nowhere to hide. He beats her to short term avail to make himself feel better, and to keep her in line for tiny amount of time, and she gives that right back when she has her own opportunities.

And that’s all without actually talking about the scene of her getting beat.

Ashley’s a terrible person, but this scene is still very genuinely upsetting, because once again, something in her reaction comes across as genuine. She apologises profusely as her only way of even trying to get him to stop, and she goes back to the convenient story of being the scapegoat. She’s the problem, just like how he wants it to be. This doesn’t actually stop any of the heinous stuff she does to him after this point – if anything, it just makes her more desperate to try and exert control back when she gets the chance – but for a short while, it works. She shuts up and leaves him alone. She just makes cookies because that’s all that she can fathom that she’s good for.

Renee was right that hitting Ashley would never fix her behaviour. She was right after her grandfather had presumably done it to her as a young kid, and that was never the attention she needed, and she was right after Andrew crossed the line she set because she’s gone, and he has nothing left to lose. Hitting Ashley never teaches her any kind of actual lesson, save, of course, from how to act when people get violent with her.

All that’s learnt is how to behave in the short term to get the immediate beating to stop, and that’s enough for Andrew. Their push and pull has turned into violent fits against each other for control for just a short while, but he genuinely can’t care for it to be another way. After beating Ashley, he just once again reiterates that “I don’t care either way at this point” and that’s that.

It never fixes her behaviour, but it reinforces his. Just like his grandfather, Andrew becomes a wife beater, and he crosses Renee’s line for just a short moment of power and control. His spine is now like a gummy worm because he’s stuck in the easy cycle.