#see also: my post on people projecting 20-21st century politics/mores onto a completely fictional fantasy world

[utilitycaster]

I keep seeing people say Ashton is very loyal but I just don't see it? I don't have a very good read on Ashton's character though and it seems to be a pretty common thought so I could be wrong but I'd love some thoughts!

Yeah, a lot of people are wrong.

I covered some of this here after the first paragraph but it's worth going into more because I think people are really wrong about Ashton (and I like Ashton!)

I think a lot of people saw that Ashton is a punk and decided that Ashton is their idea of a punk: leftist politics, class struggle, DIY, tear down the system and rebuild it with mutual aid, marginalized identity, a sense of community. But they are full-on projecting something that does not exist within the text of the show. I will leave my further thoughts about this up to the readers of this post; know that they are very derisive, but also very funny.

Punk was made a widespread movement because a fashion designer wanted to use it to sell clothing and a band said "yeah, we'll do that." It was initially, if it was about anything, about pissing people off. At the height of the movement there were the same issues in punk as any rock movement had: drug abuse, sexism, anti-LGBT bigotry, racism. Straightedge, Riot grrrl, queercore, and "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" didn't come from nowhere - they came from people's actual bad experiences within the punk community. And the prototypical punk just wanted to fucking break shit.

In short: people desperately despite want Ashton to be a punk in the mold of Billie Joe Armstrong or Ian MacKaye (or worse, but unfortunately more accurately, in the mold of some ahistorical Tumblr post that says thing like "punk is about loving animals" and ignores the existence of like, skinheads, or the fact that words have meanings) and conveniently forgets that the Sex Pistols were largely just nihilists and Johnny Ramone fucking loved Ronald Reagan. And I think Ashton is modeled off that dissatisfied nihilism.

Ashton lives in a semblance of a co-op or punk house, and even has some friends there (well, Milo, and kind of Anni), but you get the sense he'll leave once he's got the chance. As I said, they gave up FCG - and Krook House - to the Corsairs in a heartbeat as collateral.

Ashton isn't loyal to Jiana. They're loyal to the existing agreement, that she won't turn them in and they'll work off the debt, but that's the limit.

Ashton mistrusts people who use vague terms like "greater good" and "loyalty". There is no sentiment or desire for the right thing or moral compass here. As they say to the Green Seekers when they explain their philosophy, "No, I always prefer working with people who are in it for the money. Then you know what they want. The 'right thing' can mean fucking anything." No loyalty to a cause, because they don't trust causes.

Ashton isn't loyal to Jrusar, or frankly, to Bells Hells yet, and seriously considers Ratanish's offer. Because Ratanish makes sense. Ratanish works for the highest bidder, even if that bidder is a power-hungry politician working with a slug monster and the Nightmare King. Ashton is, in the end, immensely self-interested.

Now: because the other pillar of his personal philosophy is "follow the fucking rules of whatever you're doing" (not the law - the rules, like "if something blows up you say you have no idea what's going on") he doesn't want The Verdict to die, because Evon Hytroga is an asshole and broke those rules of engagement, but he has no loyalty to them either - it was just that the rules were "get the earring as best you can, and there will be some security" and Ashton's furious that the "security" was way more fatal than indicated. It's not loyalty, it's a common enemy.

One could argue that Ashton's point of view is the result of being left behind by the Nobodies. They're living the result of that "everyone for themselves" philosophy and you know what, it sucks, but they have doubled down on it.

If I may (it's my blog, I always may): this isn't new. People love to project a morality onto Taliesin's characters that flat-out doesn't exist. Like, the idea that Molly was the moral compass is outright laughable. Molly treated Kiri, in Taliesin's own words, "like an animal you were going to butcher" [much like Ashton treated the horses], tried to enthrall two party members when he simply could have asked, and was unwilling to do anything other than give a bit of money or food to the Schusters, only joining in to an actual attempt to materially help them when other party members pushed for it. In the Talks episode after Molly's death, the philosophy outlined (other than "Life's short, do something to a bagel," which does to be fair outline a certain lazy hedonism that is generous when convenient) was "Make people have to deal with you but making dealing with you as pleasant an experience as possible" and the thing about that is, you still have to fucking deal with him, and the pleasantness of being treated as disposable or worthy of mind control is debatable.

So for Ashton, the philosophy is more like "trust only the most concrete of motivations, follow the code, it is what it is, and everyone's looking out for themselves". They're not building bridges out here. And I think that's great and interesting to explore! But fuck, is Ashton not loyal.