hi, ash! i'd love to hear about your ffxv s/i and your ship with gladio! also, what does iris think about your s/i? :O
YAY!! I love talking about this kind of stuff!!!
(Some talk of death, injury, drowning, a bit of blood + spoilers for the game)
F.FXV Ash was born in the Crown City to two members of the Crownsguard (eventually the Kingsglaive). Ever since she was young, Ash was always fed this idea that her kingdom was amazing. She loved her home so much and she wanted to grow up there forever with her parents and her sister. It all changed when she was 16. She parents were killed in combat.
(In Episode A.rdyn, there's a boss fight against two soldiers... Those were her parents.)
Ash stayed in the city long enough to graduate high-school, but after that, she just couldn't keep going. She felt hollow and empty inside. The murder of her parents shattered her in every single way possible, wrecked her faith and her love to kingdom, ruined her life. She's messed up.
And so, Ash leaves. She makes a name for herself as a monster hunter, drifting from town to town and protecting the people. She comes to be known as Eos' Rose. Beautiful, but with thorns too. She didn't choose to be called The Rose, it's just that part of her outfit is a long, red coat. I still need to work out the details of her outfit and all that, but she has a red coat and quite a few earrings. She has a chain threader going through two lobe piercings on one ear, and a dangling rose earring on the other. Both silver.
(Whenever she was about 20, she met a lonely chocobo chick. This chocobo stays with Ash for a long time. She is a green chocobo named Sage. Sage is Ash's companion and best friend. Sage is very friendly to everybody, but she has a distaste for Gladio and has tried to bite him on multiple occasions. She succeeded once, but more on that later.
Again, Sage is naturally green. Prompto asks about this once.
"Hey, Ash! Why is your chocobo green?"
"Well, I dunno, Prompto. Why are you blond?"
It gets a good chuckle out of everyone.)
Anyways, early into the game, the Chocobros run into Ash! She actually draws her sword on Noct at first and then she realizes "holy shit, you're the prince. Oh my god, I tried to kill the prince. Oh no, oh no, oh no-"
It's a bit of a funny moment, but she ends up allying with the bros and she gets especially close with Gladio. They get along really well, both protectors of people and absolutely dorks too.
Ash is a gamer, so she gets along well with Prompto and Noct. They actually all played Kings Knight together online! So it's a bit of a "WAIT WE'RE KINGS KNIGHT MOOTS?!" whenever they finally meet. She gets along really well with Ignis too! Ash is very close with all of the gang. It's not long before her and Gladio are falling in love, kissing and sharing Cup Noodles under the stars.
And as for Iris, Iris ADORES Ash! Looks up to her as the big sister she never had. Iris thinks Ash is so cool and strong! And she tells Gladdy that if he breaks her heart, she'll kick his ass! Ash really loves Iris too. She was always the youngest in her family too, so it means a lot to her to be able to be an older sister figure to someone. Ash teaches Iris a bit about how to use a sword too.
Anywho, back to the plot.
Ash accompanies the bros whenever they go onto the boat to Altissia. Her and Gladio have a sweet, romantic date there. But that happiness doesn't last. It's been a bit of a running joke that Ash doesn't know how to swim.
The last thing Gladio expected was to lose her.
As Altissia falls, Ash sacrifices herself to save Gladio and Prompto. They both have to watch as Ash falls from a bridge and into the water. They watch as Ash dies. But there's not enough time to save her. Prompto sobs, Gladio screams in horror. Ash is content. She's going to die protecting the people she loves, right? It's not that cute and her almost drowning to death was the scariest moment of her life. She's choking and gasping for air, trying to grab any rubble she can just to stay alive.
Ash isn't seen again for a while. It's part of the reason why Gladio lashes out on the train—he's mourning his girlfriend's death. Whenever he's sitting there across the table from Ignis, you can hear him crying.
However, a few chapters later... Guess who comes back. She's injured, has scars on her face, and her coat is in tatters. Gladio hugs her and cries, Ash tells him to loosen up a bit since she has a few cracked ribs.
"What's the matter? Not a fan of ghosts?"
Gladio tells her that this isn't the time to crack jokes, but he hugs her so tight. She was alive. She was okay.
(However, during this time, Gladio actually found Sage and told her that Ash was dead. Sage bit him hard that day.)
But... How exactly did Ash survive..?
That gets explained in Episode Ignis. I won't talk about Ash's involvement in every DLC just to not make this to lengthy, but in Iggy's... Ravus sees her drowning. He grabs her out of the water and onto land. He's not gentle about it, and the impact of being thrown against rubble isn't great for Ash's bones, but she's alive. Ash is nursed back to health by the survivors of the town. There's a lot more detail there, but that's the gist of what happens.
Ash's relationship with Ravus is fascinating. They bond quite a bit and have a chat under the stars much later, right before Ash reunites with Gladio. I had to dig through like two years worth of discord messages for this but it went something like this
Oh and you know that level that's just Gladio and Ignis? Yeah, Ash is there too. She cusses out Ardyn actually. Although I really like Ardyn, my S/I doesn't. He makes a comment that she's quite grown up now. You know how he gets those flashbacks of peoples' memories after he kills people in his DLC? He saw an image of a little girl with red glasses. And here she was, a grown woman.
She breaks off from the group before the Ravus fight. I don't want her to see him like that.
Anyways, then timeskip rolls around. Whenever Noct arrives at Hammerhead is met with a familiar "kweh-kweh!". Sage greets Noct after ten long years, and then Ash runs over. They have a cute hug scene.
However, Ash's outfit is different. Not only is her hair curly (pre-ts Ash had it straightened), but she's wearing... Kingsglaive armor?! Her outfit is vaguely inspired by Crowe from Kingsglaive, but Ash had become a soldier. Not just to follow in her parents' footsteps, but because she had spent her whole life feeling lost and she had finally found a purpose. Traveling with Noct and Co had made her realize that her life had a purpose. She wanted to spend her life protecting her kingdom.
After her parents died, she didn't know what to do with herself. Noct was both her best friend and her king. Noct says that the Kingsglaive outfit looks good on her. It makes her smile. Ash had finally come home to Insomnia, and she had finally found what she was meant to do.
Before the gang leaves, she gives Noct a long hug and tells him to come back alive. She gives Gladio a kiss too.
FAVORITE COLOR? blue !! but im partial to greens & black
CURRENTLY WATCHING? I don't watch much tv :( but i am currently watching through mikesmic's pretty little liars synopsis my friend got me disastrously into his channel
LAST MOVIE? i rewatched trick 'r treat :) my son
SWEET/SPICY/SAVORY? ive got the worlds biggest sweet tooth
RELATIONSHIP STATUS? single! just got out of a relationship so kjsdfhg atm im good
CURRENT OBSESSIONS? final fantasy xiv, crochet, a dinosaur quilt project ( for myself ) & shibas because I'm adopting next year :)
LAST THING YOU GOOGLED? this is so embarassing-- cas' female vessel because my vampire the masquarade dm described a woman in our session today & i out loud said "oh its castiel" & the whole party went oh my god kat
twiddles thumbs I'll give a little tag to @infinitesinbin @xofemeraldstars @disabled-dean & @horrorshow with extremely low pressure
Could you give us a hint about the secret 3rd thing? 👀is it the monster library story that lost the poll to CoI?
Ok.... some crumbs...
If I recall correctly it is EARLIER than monster library (something that is very valid to want but idk if I will get to it yet). Some of you may have been around for a time when I mentioned a game called 'Everdark' that I had been pondering.
This is not that game. Or rather, it's a vastly reimagined version of it that is sexier and makes more sense 😌 also it's set in Australia.
I haven't seen every season of Drag Race, but I have watched most of the US episodes, and most of those I have watched in the past 4 months. So I feel comfortable saying this week's episode was the worst the show has ever had.
THE RESIDENT. Knowledge is your only weapon, and until now that’s always been enough. But you carry it like it’s something heavy, something you aren’t allowed to put down. You can’t leave yourself defenseless, but you’re so, so tired. It’s a blessing and a curse, you’ve realized, to know the truths of this place and not be able to give them away. No one believes you anyways, and you’ve learned not to waste your breath, not to scream your throat raw and broken to people you do not trust. So you keep it to yourself, like everything else. You grip these truths in your hands until they cut your knuckles and mar your palms, but at least now you can hold them at arm’s length when the walls start speaking.
tagged by: @cuttingcanine ♡
tagging: @kataskopeia, @sinsolucion, @ofgentleresolve ( mana ),
@sweetcst, @lykaiia, @violetprosecutor, @aptlyattorney and you !
THE HANSHIN TIGERS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE OF THE COLONEL!
For the people who don't know, in 1985, the Hanshin Tigers won their first (and at the time, only) Japan Series victory. Traditionally, they've been hard luck losers, and they're often compared to the Red Sox in the sense of their being overshadowed by the Yomiuri Giants, who, like the Yankees, have won more championships than any other team in their league.
When they won, fans resembling the players on the team were jumping into the Dotonbori Canal in Osaka - the fans would yell out a player's name, and a fan who looked like them would jump in. The problem was when they got to Randy Bass, who none of the Japanese fans looked like. They needed to find something resembling him and selected a statue of Colonel Sanders, who was white and had a beard like Bass, and threw it into the canal.
Colonel Sanders sank underwater, and the Hanshin Tigers did...horribly after that, usually coming in last in the league or close to it, to the point where the team was considered cursed by his presence in the canal. The team made the Japan Series a few times after that in the 2000s and once in the 2010s, but lost each time.
In 2009, the Colonel was located and recovered from the Dotonbori Canal, save for his left hand and his glasses. He's now at a location near Koshien Stadium, where the Tigers play their home games (and where the famed national high school baseball championships are played), and can be viewed there to this day.
Fans were, however, not convinced that they had earned the Colonel's forgiveness, since his hand and glasses were missing. In the image above, he's been given some replacement glasses, but he still lacks a left hand.
This year, Hanshin beat the Orix Buffaloes, a team that plays roughly 20 minutes away by train in Nishinomiya, 4-3 in a seven-game series. The curse is thus considered broken...so the fans did what they do best, and threw a fan dressed like Colonel Sanders into the Dotonbori Canal.
For years, this has been my favorite baseball story, and I'm so happy that I was alive to see it seen all the way through. Congratulations, Hanshin fans!
Since everyone seems to love my sex shop stories, here’s another one.
Phone calls were literally a game for us. Not all phone calls, but there was a specific brand of call where guys would creep on us. 90% of the workforce at the sex shops was women. So we’d get dudes calling jacking off or trying to get their jollies from us.
The game: make them hang up. We could have hung up. On a few occasions I did, but for the most part we made a sport out of getting creeps to go flaccid. It really depended on a caller.
You couldn’t just go in for belittling them straight off- some guys wanted that. You had to tailor your strategy to the perv. Overall it was pretty fun and it turned an aspect of the job that could’ve become a major bummer into a fun sport. We’d get excited when the phones rang.
So one day the phone rings. I pick up and it was very clearly a young teen who was putting on a deep voice. I was utterly delighted, I’d never had a crank call before. He said, “I have a dildo emergency! Can you deliver 5 boxes of dildos to my home?!”
It took everything in me not to crack in that moment. It was so funny. It was like three kids had walked through the door in a trench coat and the phrase “dildo emergency” was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard.
But I kept it together. In smooth customer service tones I replied, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear you’re having an emergency, but due to the nature of our product we do require people to come pick it up themselves.”
The caller audibly deflated. Some of the deep voice he was putting on bled away when he said plaintively, “But it’s an emergency…”
“I’m sorry, sir, rules are rules.”
He hung up. I burst out laughing and told my coworker what had happened. She said, “I will buy you lunch if you call back and pretend you can deliver something.”
This sounded like an all around win for me, and the kid hadn’t used anything to block his number. So I called back.
“Hello!” This was before caller ID was common for home phones and so he picked up in his totally normal voice, several octaves higher than before.
“Hello, I’m calling regarding your dildo emergency?”
“Oh! Hem hem,” he coughed, getting his voice back into character for me. “Yes! The emergency!”
“Well I’ve spoken to my manager and it’s your lucky day. We’ll be able to make a delivery after all. Five boxes you said? We can swing it by later, we’ll just need your name, address, and credit card number.”
He was thrown by needing to provide info and was silent for a moment then said, “Well how much is it for five boxes?”
“About five hundred dollars, sir.”
He slipped out of his character voice to exclaim, “Five hundred dollars?! What kind of dildos are they?!”
“Just standard six inches with balls, sir.”
This was his breaking point. He started wheezing with laughter trying to repeat the phrase “six inches with balls” incoherently.
“So your address and card info?”
He hung up and I broke down laughing too. We both got a kick out of it, and I won the game twice in one day.