Have you ever wanted to bring home a terrible teenager?
Come read ASHCOMBE on AO3: completed on AO3 / explicit original work boarding school m/m romance novel / 169k / terrible teenagers seeking loving readers.
Good news! Ashcombe Hall is opening its doors for one day only, and our current residents are seeking patient, loving homes with strong nerves and a high tolerance for rugby talk, yearning, emotional repression, and teenagers who communicate primarily through bad decisions.
All cast members come with age-appropriate baggage and at least one scene where they should absolutely have known better.
Please adopt responsibly.
Come read ASHCOMBE on AO3.
Completed / explicit / original m/m boarding school romance / 169k words / first love, rugby, yearning, terrible teenagers, and the emotional hazards of being sixteen / ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN
Prequel of WESTRAY (queer second chance at love)
Also to be read: EAST WORKS (the collection of AUs and one-shots for Ashcombe universe)
All teenagers come non-microchipped, emotionally under-socialised, and with varying degrees of trauma.
Descriptions of our adoptables under the "keep reading" line.
ROBBIE MCALLISTER
Small but sturdy working breed. Responds poorly to sudden affection and direct questions. Excellent recall on a rugby pitch, terrible recall when asked to name an emotion. May growl when frightened but is secretly very loyal. Best placed in a patient home with access to tea and one dramatic American boy to herd.
ISAIAH โIZZYโ WALKER
Imported long-limbed show creature. Nervous, clever, decorative, and prone to theatrical displays. Not suitable for households with strict religious doctrine or poor cassette storage. Will bond intensely with a emotionally unavailable rugby player and make this everyoneโs problem.
JAMIE SINGH
Quiet observation animal. Low-maintenance on the surface, and excellent with secrets, poor with nonsense, may stare directly into your soul if you lie. Best kept in a calm environment with occasional access to chaos for enrichment.
TOM FLETCHER
Large friendly golden retriever: cheerful, loud, physically affectionate, and good with most people. May attempt to solve complex problems by grinning or clapping someone roughly on the shoulder.
ELLIE CARTER
Tiny fox-terrier gremlin. Highly intelligent, food-motivated, and not to be trusted near gossip or unattended secrets. Will steal your snacks, heart, dignity, and potentially your legal arguments. Requires firm boundaries, which she will promptly ignore.
CHELSEA TURNER
Sleek black cat in eyeliner. Independent, sharp, affectionate on her own terms, and capable of drawing blood with one look. Not a starter pet. Best suited to homes that respect her intelligence and do not waste her fucking time. May adopt confused queer boys against her better judgment.
FREDDY BRUDENELL-FITZWILLIAM
Expensive pedigree bastard. Beautiful coat, questionable instincts, may become smug if praised. Requires socialisation, finer things in life, and possibly a bell around his neck so working-class scholarship boys can hear him coming.
HANNAH CLARKE
Practical working dog with excellent posture. Capable, dry, and not impressed by your nonsense. Good in emergencies. Best suited to people who understand that affection can look like telling you to stop being a twat.
SOPHIE LANE
Soft-looking but not actually soft. Elegant house cat with excellent earrings and quiet judgment. May appear gentle until provoked, at which point you will discover she has claws and a detailed memory. Good with girls, gossip, and emotional triage.
All adoptions are final. Ashcombe Hall accepts no responsibility for sudden attachment to fictional teenagers, rugby-related yearning, or the discovery that your favourite character is, in fact, a small feral imaginary creature in school uniform.
Come read ASHCOMBE on AO3.
Completed / explicit / original m/m boarding school romance / 169k words / first love, rugby, yearning, terrible teenagers, and the emotional hazards of being sixteen / ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN
Prequel of WESTRAY (queer second chance at love)
Also to be read: EAST WORKS (the collection of AUs and one-shots for ASHCOMBE universe)
โโ Art potraits generated at Picrew, either with makowka OC maker or makowka character maker II - if you fall into this rabbit hole, please be prepared to spend an hour or three.โโ
Imagine being sixteen, queer, furious, jet-lagged, and sent across the ocean to a boarding school where the bells tell you when to eat, your roommate thinks honesty saves time, and everyone appears to have accepted rugby as a legal form of violence.
Thatโs Ashcombe. AO3 link -- 38/38 chapters out / completed at 169k words -- Rated Explicit for eventual smut
A 90s queer boarding-school slow burn about Isaiah Walker, an American boy exiled from Utah after a rumor, and Robbie McAllister, the guarded local rugby boy in the bunk below him; practical, northern, impossible to read, and inconveniently good at noticing when Isaiah needs help.
Expect: damp corridors, chapel bells, terrible tea, rugby mud, class tension, religious shame, first love with teeth, boys being emotionally illiterate in several different accents, and tiny acts of care treated like cathedrals built in secret.
A reader recently told me the story has made them feel ๐ฝ๐ถ๐ ๐ ๐, ๐ป๐๐๐๐๐๐ถ๐๐๐น, ๐๐ถ๐น, ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐น, ๐๐พ๐น๐น๐, ๐ถ๐๐น โ๐๐๐๐ ๐ถ ๐๐พ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐พ๐ธ๐โ, and that they wanted to consume more while also being a little afraid of what was coming because the emotions might be too big.
Which is honestly the ideal Ashcombe experience.
For readers who like:
m/m slow burn
queer coming-of-age
boarding-school atmosphere
complicated first love
religious/family fallout
class tension
found friendship
emotionally repressed rugby boys
dramatic Americans in hostile weather
the mortifying ordeal of being seen by your roommate
Start from the beginning on AO3: Ashcombe by housemasterwilkes (Art of the main villains by exceptional cursedartistnelari!)
Our fandom is tiny, but the people there are great. All aboard the emotional repression vehicle!
I NEED TO REBLOG THIS AGAIN, GO LOOK WHAT @hum0r0us THE LITTLE GREEN ASHCOMBE ALIEN DID!
LOOK AT CHELS. LOOK AT ROBBIE. LOOK AT IZZY. LOOK AT THEM. I want to kiss all their stupid little faces and then immediately write them into absolutely terrible situations. LOOK, IZZY HAS A RANCID HOODIE ON. LOOK.
Seriously, getting fanart of your ridiculous beloved OCs is one of the biggest compliments an author can receive. I am currently basking on a gorgeous (maybe velvet?) fainting couch, being fanned by beautiful oiled people, using text-to-speech on Google Docs like, โAlexa, please write me a deeply self-indulgent new Ashcombe AU. Chop chop.โ (imagine that in the poshest voice possible).
I am so in love with our tiny little fandom, and I want to invite every single one of you to join us. Come read. Come suffer. Come hang out. The tea is hot, the teenagers are terrible, and the people are very fun and full of deeply cursed ideas (and I am nothing but an enabler).
ASHCOMBE @ AO3
OH MY GOD, GO LOOK AT MY GORGEOUS GIRL ELLIE CARTER!!!!
Sheโs adorable. Sheโs annoying. She knows both of these things and has decided to make them everyone elseโs problem. @hum0r0us has CAPTURED HER PERFECTLY!!! LOOK AT THOSE LIPS! LOOK AT THOSE EYEBROWS! THAT FACECARD!!!!
Important Ellie lore: I have always headcanoned my beloved chaos-and-snacks goblin ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ช๐ท๐ธ๐ป ๐๐ช๐ป๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ป growing up to become a terrifying London lawyer, causing emotional damage both inside and outside the courtroom. Cross-examination? Devastating. Earrings? Big. Moral restraint? Umm... situational?
Please go admire her immediately. I have formally hired @hum0r0us as part of ๐ธ๐ค๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ค๐ฅ๐๐๐: Official Little Green Alien in a tweed suit, armed with unlimited art supplies and apparently a direct line to my heart (and Discord). โก
The Ashcombe fandom may be small. It may, at this stage, be two people and one alien in a trench coat. BUT IT EATS WELL, IT LOVES HARD, AND IT MULTISHIPS WITH ALARMING ENTHUSIASM.
P.S. New chapters 21 and 22 are out today! Featuring: Calder! Emotional repression! Rugby-related religious experiences! Saint Isaiah of Watching Practice With The Girls! Bad communication choices near water! Come suffer. GO READ! Ashcombe @ AO3! Ashcombe @ Wattpad!
Hate to be a bother but I wanted to say I love Ashcombe so far and Iโm excited for the next update! I also made fanart.. itโs on my account ๐
Iโm a little forgetful also, if you didnโt mind could you give your description/interpretation of your characters? Especially Ellie, I love her a lot but I forgot what her characteristics were and Iโm too lazy to go read everything to look for all the details ๐ญ
Will Ashcombe continue after the story thatโs currently posted on Ao3?
Would you ever try to get it published as an actual book or have adaptations of it? Is that a hope of yours?
Again sorry for the yap, but Ashcombe has just been on my mind recently!
For legal reasons, please imagine me pacing in front of my keyboard, screaming into the void, clapping like a seal, and then spontaneously combusting out of sheer excitement.
Hi love, first of all: an ask from someone who has read my stuff is never, ever a bother. You have made my whole week. Possibly my whole month. I am SO excited, and I love the fanart so much, and I will be reblogging it with a ferocity formerly unknown to mankind. You have made one housemaster very, very, very happy. ๐
And because you have brought me fanart, I shall reward you with a secret: Ashcombe will continue after the story currently being posted on AO3. There is a second book, and then a sort of third creature as well, because I need somewhere to put all the one-shots and extra pieces that do not fit neatly inside the main books. So no need to start mourning the terrible teenagers just yet. Unfortunately for everyone, they are sticking around.
As for publishing: I donโt think Iโm really the one for traditional publishing, at least not with Ashcombe as it exists now. I genuinely love sending my work out to the faceless masses of the internet, and readers/commenters/art-makers like you make that feel absolutely worth it. The joy of someone finding it, caring about it, yelling at me about it, or making art from it is honestly the best possible version of this whole thing.
And yes, character descriptions! I LOVE when people have their own headcanons and mental images for the cast, but I am also very happy to provide some canonised/written-down features, plus a few out-of-the-pages details, because I am nothing if not a rambler and a character builder.
Ellie Carter: dark corkscrew hair, mischievous little fox face, sharp and bright and almost always up to something. Think Bailey Bass-ish energy. Think: Devon Rex -cat.
Hannah Clarke: blonde, athletic, blue-eyed, freckled, and not easily impressed. Very good at looking like she has already decided whether your nonsense is worth her time. Think: working line Cocker Spaniel.
Sophie Turner: long straight auburn hair, green eyes, soft jumpers, gorgeous earrings. Quietly stylish in a way that looks effortless and absolutely is not. Think: Russian Blue cat.
Tom Fletcher: tall, blond, possibly curly-haired, with a nose that has definitely been broken at least once. Smiles all the time, usually right before saying something magnificently idiotic. Think: Golden Retriever.
Jamie Singh: narrow-faced, dark-eyed, slender, observant to a frankly dangerous degree. Sees everything, hears even more, and stores it all for later use. Think: Oriental Shorthair cat.
Freddy Brudenell-Fitzwilliam: tall, dark-haired, gorgeous, sharp jawline, expensive-looking menace. The sort of boy who looks like he was built by centuries of inheritance law and bad decisions. Think: show-line Dobermann. Or an Afghan Hound.
Marcus Doyle: short, dark-haired, runnerโs build, and physically incapable of not talking. If there is silence, Marcus considers it a personal failure. Think: Jack Russell Terrier.
Chelsea would be a black cat. Definitely.
And to repeat myself until the end of time: thank you thank you thank you thank you. Truly. Fanart is such a wild and beautiful thing to receive, and I am going to be emotionally insufferable about it for the foreseeable future.
As promised.. hereโs Robbie๐.. I hope itโs okay
@housemasterwilkes
I made this before reading actually ๐. If I missed anything about his physical appearance pls let me know!! Iโm already caught up to the most recent update, canโt wait for the next!!
Imagine being sixteen, queer, furious, jet-lagged, and sent across the ocean to a boarding school where the bells tell you when to eat, your roommate thinks honesty saves time, and everyone appears to have accepted rugby as a legal form of violence.
Thatโs Ashcombe.
AO3 link -- 10/38 chapters out -- Rated Explicit
A 90s queer boarding-school slow burn about Isaiah Walker, an American boy exiled from Utah after a rumor, and Robbie McAllister, the guarded local rugby boy in the bunk below him; practical, northern, impossible to read, and inconveniently good at noticing when Isaiah needs help.
Expect: damp corridors, chapel bells, terrible tea, rugby mud, class tension, religious shame, first love with teeth, boys being emotionally illiterate in several different accents, and tiny acts of care treated like cathedrals built in secret.
A reader recently told me the story has made them feel ๐ฝ๐ถ๐ ๐ ๐, ๐ป๐๐๐๐๐๐ถ๐๐๐น, ๐๐ถ๐น, ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐น, ๐๐พ๐น๐น๐, ๐ถ๐๐น โ๐๐๐๐ ๐ถ ๐๐พ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐พ๐ธ๐โ, and that they wanted to consume more while also being a little afraid of what was coming because the emotions might be too big.
Which is honestly the ideal Ashcombe experience.
For readers who like:
m/m slow burn
queer coming-of-age
boarding-school atmosphere
complicated first love
religious/family fallout
class tension
found friendship
emotionally repressed rugby boys
dramatic Americans in hostile weather
the mortifying ordeal of being seen by your roommate
Start from the beginning on AO3: Ashcombe by housemasterwilkes
(Art of the main villains by exceptional cursedartistnelari!)
Dude you guys ever see the most jaw-dropping beautiful artwork of all time and are just sad you canโt immediately learn that artstyle ๐ line work is one thing coloring and rendering is another๐ญ๐
Specially speaking of @selroom_taa on TikTok as well as majority fanarts of Law (one piece)
kianamaiart
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
discoholicmusic
stormborns
2087
yousharknotpass
areudirty
origamiaround
blakekathryn
gamechangershow
