#just asking a few people to remember ashton is disabled

[angelsndragons]

sooo let’s talk about ashton, since all the cool kids are doing it. warning: long post word vomit.

i’m seeing some pretty hot takes about their character and about the way they talked to laudna but a lot of these takes are missing one key point of ashton’s character: ashton suffers from a traumatic brain injury. it’s not just chronic pain on their side, their brain literally does not work “correctly” anymore.

in no particular order, tbi have been linked to the following:

Speech difficulties (both in word usage/recall and in actual pronunciation)

Memory issues (recalling older information, retaining new information, chronology and cause and effect)

Sensory disturbances

Difficulty with numbers, often exhibited as issues with money

Inability to recognize objects/people (not necessarily sight oriented, can be any of the senses)

Issues with emotional regulation

we’ve seen evidence of all these issues across the campaign. ashton fumbles for his words constantly (even more so than taliesin himself), they have had problems with bright lights and once punched himself after the deep brain dive to reorient/ground himself, we had the whole lens incident (memory and impulse control issues), and so on.

i’m not excusing ashton’s words because lord howdy were they a dick to laudna. but ashton is a member of the hells and that means their control issues -in ashton’s case their fucked up brain- cut and slam against other party members’- in this case, laudna reestablishing control over her life-, often without malice or intent. it’s a pattern that’s followed the hells from their inception. just this episode we also had imogen’s desire to be free of her power, to let go, to be normal cut deeply into orym’s pain and grief. fcg’s quest to absolve themself of responsibility and to grapple with what sentience fundamentally is keeps stepping all over fearne and imogen’s control issues; it’s not for nothing that fcg’s holy symbol is the very coin that decided between orym and laudna. whether fearne lied about the coin flip or not is irrelevant, that coin is now inextricably linked to the party’s greatest trauma and fcg keeps waving it (and what it represents) in their faces.

ashton is usually very good at keeping their bullshit from messing with someone else’s bullshit. but drink and jealousy and the end of the world make it harder to do. and ashton is fucking tired.

milo was not a member of the nobodies. never has been. they hired the nobodies for several small jobs and went on the hexum break-in but they are not one of the nobodies. milo saved ashton. the nobodies are the orphans from bassuras who said ‘fuck that shit’ and went to make something of themselves. together. the nobodies left ashton for dead. their friends, kids they grew up with, the closest things they have to a past, left them. and ashton’s starting to realize that maybe they didn’t have to. that yeah, sure, it might have been the smart move but that doesn’t make it the right move. that, combined with their jealousy and certainty that something is Up with their past, seems to be driving ashton to dredge up long buried anger and frustrations. i don’t think they’re coming apart like fcg but cracks are definitely forming in our punk rock.

the thing that fascinates me about ashton’s perspective, past, and memory is that all three are notoriously unreliable. and there’s something going on there. because the narrative’s not quite right. it’s not any one thing, really. it’s the discrepancy between milo’s “it was just a smash and grab, just ransacking someone’s house,” the “shipments are scheduled and coming regularly, it’ll be there” planning session, sally’s insistent “did you find it, did you find it,” and ashton’s inability to recall what precisely they were there for. it’s milo’s “everything’s kind of fuzzy about that night,” ashton drawn to the vials without knowing why, holding onto one through a split skull and near death experience, and the slightly different loops of events matt’s treated us to. it’s ashton’s initial ‘hexum is harmless, she’s upfront and has her moods, we work well together’ gradual shift to ‘she is the worst person i know and i don’t want to indenture myself to her again but i will if i have to.’ it’s the fact that hexum only brings up the “closure” of ashton’s debt after she hears he has a new crew and that ashton pretty strongly thinks she fucked with their brain (for the record, it’s my theory that ashton paid off the “debt” a long time ago but their tbi prevented them from keeping close enough track of the money to realize this and hexum kept using it until such a time that he had other people he was earning money with again). it’s all the possible permutations of ashton, it’s the way that the hishari and his parents vanished from their memory long before the campaign started. it’s the growth and regression (this is not who i thought i’d be versus i thought if i indebted everyone enough and i love you all versus i hate you all a little). it’s the gaps and cracks and puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together.

taliesin has a knack for exploring characters in the negative spaces, in the holes, in the things left unsaid. molly’s multiple choice past and flippant disregard for someone he wasn’t, kingsley’s ‘i’m trying to make new mistakes,’ and caduceus’ quiet trauma and recovery. i honestly can’t wait to see what comes next for ashton, it’s going to be exciting.