#kasu plays

Is he pepping on Ashley?

It's nice to see Andrew take some responsibility here.

The route diverges because Ashley is willing to shoot Andrew to save herself in the premonition. When Andrew finds out, he takes this to mean that he's not as irreplacable to Ashley as she is to him. He'd rather die than live without her, but to her, he's just a toy to be discarded.

This is, of course, completely off base, and the game goes out of its way to show how wrong Andrew's assumption is. Still, when Ashley again disobeys him and kills the campers, Andrew flies into a rage and tries to kill her. While resentment is at play, the operative motive here is actually possessiveness. He's given up everything for Ashley, and she can't even listen to a single thing he asks. Worse, he now knows she sees him as replacable. He's trying to assert that he won't let her get him killed and just move on. She's his, and if she won't be in life, she will be in death.

Still, Andrew does gradually come to his senses and realize he almost just killed the person he most cares about. So he tries to leave, hoping he can piece together what's left of his life, but also in the hope Ashley will be better off without him. How can he make her happy when he's failed over and over, and he even tried to kill her? Though again, possessiveness is at play here, since he thinks Ashley prefers the demon over him.

Andrew's escape fails, both because of Julia's growth (proud of you, Julia) and Andrew's own reluctance. He returns to Ashley, and the two have an intoxicated heart-to-heart where he both confesses his attraction and realizes that Ashley values him as irreplacably as he does her.

All might be well and good, but then Ashley finds out Andrew was in contact with Julia. Now it's Ashley who turns possessive, and while she's less open to reason than Andrew ultimately was, she also has more justification. Andrew did try to replace her with Julia, even if that proved entirely fruitless.

We've known since the voicemails in Ep 2 that Ashley feels insecure that her and Andrew have never consumated, and with Andrew's overt confession of attraction, Ashley's insecurity thus manifests in...dubious consent.

While Andrew wants to have sex with Ashley, he feels smothered by her, pressured into it, unable to say no. The resentment there can culminate in their double suicide, or Andrew can instead chose to marry Ashley. I don't doubt marrying Ashley is what Andrew wants to do, but Ashley's smothering insecurity prevent Andrew from making that choice freely.

Of course, we do see from Andrew's comments in the epilogue that, while drunk, he and Ashley did actually make love - only for Ashley to withdraw in the morning. It's not just Andrew who's having his desires smothered by his insecurities. I can only assume that Ashley becomes so entrenched in viewing sex as a means to an end to keep Andrew with her that the vulnerability and intimacy of love-making feels deeply uncomfortable to her.

This gives us a major clue as to what Nemlei is implying by her insistence that Burial -Questionable- isn't going the way people think. For Andrew and Ashley to have a healthy sex life, Ashley needs to understand it as an expression of love rather than a means of control.

Anyway, this route really upended the seeming trajectory of Andrew and Ashley's relationship. Burial -Questionable- seemed to suggest that Andrew and Ashley accepting their desires was the way for them to fix their relationship.

Shots and Such complicates the matter. By having Andrew and Ashley get together in a way that precludes addressing their greater insecurities, it becomes clear that while Andrew and Ashley connecting and working on their insecurities will naturally lead them to become a couple, becoming a couple in of itself isn't the end all, be all.

To some extent, it's not such a bad ending for a story as fucked up as this. They are together, their relationship is balanced enough, and they've accepted their feelings for each other rather than continuing to deny them.

Yet at the same time, the root problems are still unresolved. Ashley doesn't trust Andrew to stay with her, and Andrew is so deep in trying to please Ashley that he struggles to recognize his own desires.

It really is hard to not feel bad for Ashley here.

- Both came from minor nobility and rose through the military ranks in a time of crisis. For Louis it was the human attacks, for Napoléon it was the French Revolution.

- Not only is Louis a French name, but it's the name of Napoléon's only son.

- While they don't look too similar, when Napoléon was younger, he had long hair past his neck, similar to Louis'.

- Both believed strongly in a form of equality through meritocracy and disdained traditional nobility. They believed that those who proved themselves capable deserve to lead, regardless of background. I can truly imagine Napoléon nodding along in agreement to many of Louis' sentiments. In both cases, this was something that drew the lower classes to support them, but earned them the ire of the aristocracy.

With Persona 3, developer statements have lead me to think the evolution went someone like this:

Prototype Makoto and Yukari are created with the intention of making them a couple.

The decision is made to add dating sim elements. So as not to override player choice in the matter, Yukari's role is reimagined. They'll still tease them a bit, but it's now up to player choice if Makoto reciprocates Yukari's interest.

Meanwhile, enter Aigis. They want her arc to start with her focused on Makoto to create mystery and intrigue. If you make Aigis a tank or a man, this is more likely to creep people out. Make her a cute anime girl and the player will be presumably find her interest more palatable, even flattering.

Hashino wants to make the rooftop scene based on his experience with his wife, but it will be a ton of work and a ton of money to have every potential love interest in the game do it. So stick to one, and who else but Aigis? They've already decided to relegate Yukari as optional, so Aigis is the only other girl that would fit. She's a robot, too, so people aren't going to see her the same as other love interests.

Except, now we have a cute girl hyperfocused on the protagonist who is also going to be the only one with him when he dies. This is starting to sound like a canon love interest, but how would they turn back at this point?

If anything, they now have to dig in deeper, because if they want that final scene to really hit players even though it's not with their chosen girl, they have to justify it in the story.

The rest, is of course history. They started with a canon love interest, reneged, and then ultimately came full circle due to the practical needs of the story.

With Metaphor, I'm going even more out on a limb, but I suspect this is how it went down.

Eupha is imagined as a love interest to Will and spiritual successor to Aigis. However, the developers don't want this to be a love story, so her relationship with Will is downplayed, relegated to her follower link, and she herself is pushed to the back of the game.

Enter Gallica. They want a navigator mascot similar to Morgana in Persona 5, but they need to rethink a few details. Nobody is going to call Morgana as Ren's love interest, but players also had...mixed feelings on Morgana.

So, why not make the navigator a cute girl, right? They'll make her a fairy - that fits the fantasy setting. And hey, they'll also make her much more openly affectionate than Morgana or the infamous Navi from Zelda was. This will probably make her more popular among players.

Except, now, we're in the position that Will is spending 90% of his time affectionately tethered to a cute fairy girl...this is starting to sound like a love interest...

Well, luckily there's no need to define it definitively one way or another, so we'll just let the player go about it as they will.

Given this, it will be interesting to see how things develop further for Metaphor's likely inevitable spin-offs.

In Persona 3's case, the manga did try to reverse course, but they couldn't make Yukari work as the love interest without changing the story too much. Thus all future installments just pushed Aigis and Makoto to the point this eventually became accepted by the fandom.

Awwwwwwwwwww

Also me: Sees an anime femboy