#ash has stunted his life and growth for 3000 years

[not-poignant]

I really hope Ash doesn't end up feeling towards humans the way Augus does 🥺 What makes him my favourite character is is capacity to love and accept anyone no matter their species. It would be a shame for him to lose that part of himself. I understand he has to eat humans and detach himself from them in order to do that but I pray he doesn't become completely cold towards them. But of course he's your character Pia so I'll accept whatever choices you make regarding him xoxo

I mean, you'll never see most of those changes because they're all purely theoretical at the moment. I don't plan on writing anything past The Ice Plague.

More thoughts about Ash under the Read More.

The thing is, Ash was the perfect exaggerated example of someone who keeps everyone happy except for himself.

He sublimated his own personality, his own wants and needs, and hurt himself and tortured himself in order to accept everyone.

He's literally the sign that doing this is actually really kind of unhealthy for you, even if everyone else wins.

Ash will always be extremely body positive, and body accepting. Augus is too! Fat fae, thin fae, ugly fae, beautiful fae, you name it, they love it, and support it. This is never going to change. On a physical/aesthetic level, they can accept all fae, all species of fae.

But Ash directly harms himself by accepting and loving all humans. The whole arc of his character and story is that this is bad for him, and actually bad for everyone to do. The Raven Prince finds him so disgusting because he's like 'you'll literally destroy yourself for humans. Why won't you respect who you are as a fae?'

It's good and healthy for him to lose that part of himself. If he one day sees his prey as prey, then that's... appropriate, and healthier than the complexity of him making random one-off companions all the time, never seeing these people again, and having sex with them because he's literally starving himself and in a constant state of starvation.

His 'niceness' hid an extremely feral eating disorder, self-rejection, self-hatred, and an inability to accept himself. He gave everyone else what he refused to give himself, and the Glashtyn suffered for it, and he suffered for it too.

Ash is like... the ultimate People Pleaser. He's just a recovering one now.

He'll always enjoy accepting fae where they're at, and making them happy, but that's not all he is. And it's the reason Augus was so disapproving of it, and also the Raven Prince, and also Mosk. Anyone who got to know Ash better was like 'oh shit.'

Ash's arc in the canon universe is to literally start to respect himself more than he respects the food he eats. To love himself just a little bit more than the food he eats.

That might be off-putting to you, or something that saddens you, or something that you don't like about him, but imho to me that's a really powerful message, especially for chronic People Pleasers. Imho, the whole Unseelie arc and the reason I was largely writing about Unseelie characters was to highlight the ugly humanity in them, and then be like 'they still deserve love, and comfort, and to keep growing, and to keep being comforted actually, no matter what.'

And that's especially true for Ash, who is the least connected to his Unseelie self out of all of them.

Ash still accepts all the fae he meets. But yeah, his relationship to food has changed, because his relationship to himself has changed. I think he's sad about it sometimes, and still wishes he didn't have to eat humans sometimes, but...he does.