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Andrew was groomed by Ashley. Over time you can condition a sane person to become a lunatic.
Also, spoilers ahead.
First thing that I've noticed is that Ashley is the scapegoat of the family. You can see if subtly in various different places.
For instance, during Ashley's one of Ashley's dream sequences titled "Leyley and Leyley Alone", you can tell that she isn't wanted at the table during family meals. Andrew, Mr. and Ms Graves, all have chairs at the table, but not Ashley, who is expected to eat in her room. There's a stool she can pull up to the set of tables, but she can't sit on either that or the chair, if she removes Andy from it.
Further from there, if you take the "insane" route... One of the paintings on the wall depicts Ms. Graves with a "woe is me" gesture while barely holding Ashley with one hand. Ashley has a blank expression on her face. While it's unlikely Ashley would have memories of her childhood stretching that far back, it does indicate that neither her Mom nor her Dad made a secure attachment to her after she was born. Also, remember this "painting", as it's important later.
Another instance is during Ashley's birthday. Where she immediately recognises that "there's never any money for her birthday", and Andy later states "I'll have to remind Mom to set aside money for your birthday.". There is money for Andrews birthday however. Other things I pick up on here are that Andrew has friends while Ashley does not. This tells me that there's a big difference in how well both Andrew and Ashley have been socialised. In that Andrew was socialised properly, while Ashley was neglected in this regard, or outright not socialised at all. Also, it's only Andrew whom elects to celebrate Ashley's Birthday, with his own pocket money. Nothing was planned for Ashley. It's also apparent to me at least that this is part of an ongoing trend as by the end of her birthday memory, she doesn't see the point in celebrating her own birthday. A person who receives gifts, praise & adoration, and get's to play fun games or do cool stuff on their birthday wouldn't normally feel that way. Those things are clearly absent when Ashley's birthday.
The fact that Andrew celebrates her birthday however does one important thing here. It sets the stage for Ashley's insecure anxious attachment to "Andy". "Andy" specifically. Remember the painting I talked about earlier? When you put the "Andy" plush beside it, it get's painted over. It then depicts Andrew (or "Andy") holding her instead, giving her a cupcake with 3 candles on it. This pleases her greatly.
You can see her status as a scapegoat most clearly during a specific segment of the Grave's Family robbery incident. After Ms. Graves sends both Andrew and Ashley to bed, she later attempts to talk to Andrew alone, not immediately aware that Ashley was in the living room with them. Everyone later ends up in the basement, but eventually Ashley has an option that will make her leave the basement. If Ashley trusts Andrew (and hence, leaves), it's revealed to Andrew that Mom wanted talk about Ashley. Mom says specifically "I want to apologise to you. For always making you look after her (Ashley). That was wrong of me."... "I never hated you, I was just a ♥♥♥♥ up."... "Anyways, you where such an easy child, I thought we would be just fine having another. I wasn't counting on Ashley to be so... I'm sorry I made you raise her.". Most of this is centered around pretending to take responsibility for her poor parenting while simultaneously blaming Ashley for not being perfect. Comparing Ashley to some sort of punishment you wouldn't inflict on your worst enemy. The point here is that Mom never loved, nor liked, Ashley. I want to say not prepared because of the age at which she had Ashley, but the problem with that is that she was even younger when she had Andrew, and seemingly had no problems, so she should have been better prepared for Ashley anyway.
There are other examples between Ashley and Andrew where Andrew also blames her for a lot, but they aren't as clear cut because Ashley often plays a direct role in those issues, or she's in a life threatening situation where something has to be done. Which leads into a different problem analysing some of this stuff.
Namely, that for most of the game, both Andrew and Ashley are living in survival mode. The issue then comes in with necessity at times and sometimes ignorance. If an action is necessary to take for ones own survival (or the survival of the other), then it isn't necessarily apart of their mindset to do so normally. Those acts may be more attributed to anxiety, rather than psychopathy. Similarly, an act may be carried out of ignorance instead of malice or indifference. In particular, acts carried out of ignorance may more be a testament to a persons naivety rather than sadism.
The second thing that I've noticed is that Ashley is essentially her own foil in a way. In many instances she basically commands Andrew to love her, to stay with her forever, and so on. This stems from her anxious attachment to Andrew, which comes with it, a major fear of abandonment by him. This fear of abandonment compels Ashley to both test Andrews loyalty frequently, and also to find more ways to keep coercing him to stay with her. One of the subtle problems here is that in commanding love, she knows it isn't spontaneous. The lack of spontaneity tarnishes it's authenticity. She's felt real love from Andrew before, but she attributes that love as coming from "Andy". Hence, it doesn't matter what Andrew actually does to show his affection, Ashley wont believe it.
To further complicate things, she believes she doesn't deserve it. Ashley may not sound like it at first, but she is very shame bound. She hates seeing her old drawings from when she was a child, even though one of the biggest things she liked to do as a kid was draw. Every time she sees one of her old drawings, she is disgusted with it. Regularly comments "A sucky drawing." and "Wow, who drew all this garbage?" and so on. She deflects some of these with jokes about how "she's so ugly she's not worth feeding", and jokingly offering to put her number on a wall beside other numbers for call girls. She also regularly fishes for compliments from Andrew, and weather asks him to give them again when they fall flat. Part of it is a self deprecating joke at Ashley's expense, as she gives and takes many of these. But she also needs that praise to be real. In asking for that praise again, she renders it unreal, and then treats that as the joke. Also being scapegoated through-out all of your childhood as well as being rejected in one way or another by all of your friends leaves most people with inherent shame.
It would also be a bit of an oversight if I didn't bring up her being called "TaR sOuL" over and over, and the fact that she just accepts that without question. One one hand, in this story demons are real and are capable of affecting the human world. On the other hand, there's no real reason to believe that the demon would be telling the truth (or lying either). There's no real way for Ashley to verify that her soul is "black as tar". But she just accepts it without question anyway. The complicating factor here is the circumstances under which she meets said demon (starving, having almost been shot by a guard, and so on), which normalises it as escaping the apartment your starving to death in is more important than the passing nickname a demon gives you. It's almost a red herring.
*sigh*
I've been at this for like 3 hours actually without really even getting to Andrew. I need to take a break. But essentially I need to lay the ground work here before I get very much into Andrew as dealing with Ashley's problems is very much tied up in who Andrew is.
Edit: I decided to remove the spoiler tag as it's not how I thought it would work.
- Scapegoat of all the problems of the familly, not loved by Anyone besides Andrew.
- Complete sociopath, no sense of empathy at all, probably not even toward Andrew. She can't place herself in others shoes, therefore don't even realise the cruelty of her actions. All she does is alway about her and her alone.
- switching between phase 4 and 5 of depressions, clearly regulary pondering suicide options ( jokes about drinking bleach and jumping from the window)
- Use cynism, dark humor and sarcasm to hide her depression.
- Completely dependant of her relationship with Andrew.
- 0 self esteem. Has to out anyone from Andrew's life cause she can't imagine him to pick her instead of basicallly anyone else. Don't bat an eye to the "Tar soul" comment, joke about selling herself. Has to regulary ask for praises from Andrew.
- Yandere Bro-con. Andrew is Hers and hers alone. Won't share him with friends, even parents, don't even think about another girl. Don't really see him as a romantic partner at first, but can't imagine beiing far away from him, so one things lead to another.
- very distorded way of thinking about how love and comitment to someone should be.
Andrew :
- Originally sane mind affected by too much close proximity with Ashley.
- Probable multiple personality disorder. (brutal acces of violence, don't act the same way when around Ashley and around others, usually Adapt his personality to please others. Ashley complains about him not beeing "Andy", meaning there is a clear change in personality at work here, she is also uneasy about his change of personality in the burial route)
- Psychopath. don't see any problem about killing. Kill 3 times without batting an eye in the course of the "present" of the story. Meanwhile, even Ashley only ordered the demon to do her job. Hell, even as a child he pondered about stabing Ashley to get rid of his problems.
- Stade 4 - 5 of depression too. State he would jump after her if Ashley died.
- Fake his relationship with his sister. pretend to have nightmares to stay with her. Over protective, put himself in terrible situations to protect her.
- Has seen her as a romantic insterest since a very long time. Barelly keep himself to not make a move on her. Even outside of the burial route, his actions are.... well... he clearly has wandering hands in some of the GCs, their mother is clearly pissed when seeing them act "toutchy", meaning it's not the first time it happened. She even accuse him of screwing her, something you would not even think in normal conditions.
Also, it is implied he ask his girlfriend to tie her hairs like his sister. Probably so he can imagine himself screwing Ashley from behind.
she has literally every single symptom
-emotional dysregulation
-fear of abandonment
-inability to manage behaviour
-impulsive
-risky behaviours
-neediness
-self harming & abusive behaviours
etc
she's classic BPD.
andy is just an enabler
It may seem like that as BPD shares symptoms with ASPD, but Ashley doesn't express certain feelings or behaviour common with BPD. She doesn't appear at all to be depressed(She is very happy-go-lucky, unlike Andrew), engage in self-harm, or think lowly of herself. In fact, she probably thinks way too highly of herself.
She's certainly on the ASPD spectrum, people commonly refer to as either Sociopathy or Psychopathy on a case by case basis and the like. ASPD expresses itself typically in taking actions without feelings of remorse, lying, manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others. This defines Ashley a lot more than anything else.
These are both cluster B personality disorders, so they can share traits similar to one another. But I think the thing that most commonly defines her is her ASPD traits, I think that is so strong she could be diagnosed with that, while having some traits from BPD. It's not that she necessarily "loses control of her emotions", she often acts very disingenuously in order to manipulate Andrew. She can lose her cool or feel insecure with Andrew, but with anyone else she barely even cares enough to retain information about them.
Andrew appears to have depression, PTSD, and Dissociative identity disorder. He probably has developing ASPD through his environment, given it is in the family. Ashley just seems to have been ASPD from the get go.
Ashley has depression. Just look at her face while walking around.
Also, just examine the detergent bottle in chapter 1 at the start of the game.
Lots of people hide their depression, even in highly advanced stages, with jokes and an happy go lucky facade.
Also, she has no self esteem at all. You can see that with how harsh she judge her drawing capacities, how often she repeats that noboly loves her, how she act like "yeah, I know" when the demon call her Tar soul. She probably think that only her body is good looking, yet she still need to get a confirmation from Andrew every few minutes.
You're confusing a few things, assumptions mostly, as something that can diagnose an entire mental illness. That's the problem with diagnosing people in general. You have to take in their entire character and personality to get a good reading, because symptoms can overlap, Her sudden outbursts, particularly after the "Pretty Woman's" death, might lead some to believe she has BPD, but that is due to the obsession itself. In any other case she's typically composed, if reckless and impulsive. Her "moods" are often just for show to get Andrews attention or simply to manipulate him into thinking he's in the wrong. She also doesn't seem to have bipolar, either. She otherwise doesn't show any particular loss of emotional control that is beyond what is warranted in any given situation.
They're malnourished, of course they look like that, and it goes with the general darkness of the setting, that's just reading too far into it. in fact, Ashley has stated she's capable of compartmentalising everything and she doesn't let things get to her. That's not something someone with depression can easily so. She isn't particularly anxious, either, which is in stark contrast to her brother. There's nothing to suggest that Ashley is putting on a face in order to hide her depression, not like Andrew does and he's not even particularly good at it. Andrew spends nearly every waking hour with her, he knows better than anyone her personality and has noticed that unlike him she's able to keep chugging on like nothing phases her.
If you take in all of her symptoms and pathologies, she is showing clear signs of ASPD. Well, as much as we can tell without DSM registry. I doubt she has BPD or Depression. I know someone with Bipolar, their outbursts are very different from what Ashley showed that one time, a lot of crying to go with it and they can be like that for hours, so I'd rule that out from her, too.
And I am well placed to know that you can act cheerful and hyper when in fact, you're constantly occilating between stage 3-5 of depression.
Also, someone who doesn't have deep problems of self esteem doesn't call itself "useless", cf, How Ashley describe the pink plush representing herself in the burial dream.
Again, depression is not her sole problem, nor the most concerning one.
But then you're begging the question. She gives very little in the way of telling the audience that she is depressed. Her stuffed toy self saying useless doesn't mean she's depressed, she's just self-aware, but even that doesn't make her depressed knowing that. There's a difference between knowing something and feeling depressed about something.
I've said that Andrew has multiple issues. Ashley likely does, too, but not the one's people are assuming. Again, people are trying very hard to pin down what's wrong with these two but making assertions that they want, but I don't have to try very hard, she reeks of ASPD. Andrew does, too, but only later, he is clearly traumatized by Nina's death, but people also assume he wasn't.