I Feel The Need To Add The Fact That Asbel Will Never Infact Validate Any Part Of Richard's Guilt, Which

I feel the need to add the fact that Asbel will never infact validate any part of Richard's guilt, which means that Richard, without any real way of communicating to Asbel that he needs some sort of "you did do something wrong but I forgive you" rather than a "it wasn't your fault so there's nothing to forgive", would always be stuck in his cycle of guilt and Asbel would be helpless to fix it (which in turn leads him down his own cycle of failed savior complex because "I've done everything to help him, why isn't is working?" turns out to be a very unhelpful perspective and always leads to a bit of frustration targeted at Richard, which always leads to guilt on Asbel's part for even beginning to blame him, so the cycle repeats)

At this point RichAss is like an honorary problematic ship to me not bc they’re remotely questionable (besides the whole murder thing) but because Richard carries so much guilt about Asbel it’s basically equivalent to incest/age gap guilt and that’s free real estate baby