#lady ash

[alucardsinep]

redrew my favourite ash diecomic panel yay women

(original by stephanie hans)

[smoothjazzwaluigii]

[comicweek]

Die #14 Cover by Sana Takeda

[knightotoc]

It’s funny to me that of two of the great Gen X-nerd-meta-epics -- Ernest Cline’s dreadful Ready Player One / Two and Kieron Gillen’s wonderful Die -- in which our heroes’ success depends upon their grasp of musty genre trivia -- only Die’s Ash has actually read The Silmarillion. Surely that book is the most famous example of navel-gazey geekery, so I’m baffled that Cline made it a gap in Wade’s extensive knowledge. Not only is Ash a more compelling character in every way, she could even beat Wade at his own stupid game.

[comicweek]

Lady Ash

Stephanie Hans

[girlsofcomics]

Agent Uno

-Real name:-

-A.k.a.: Uno, Number One, Lady Ash, Jane Doe

-Publisher: Marvel

-Type: Human

-Occupation:  Agent

-Afilliations: Paranormal Law Enforcement Team

-Powers: Intellect, leadership, marskmanship, weapon master.

[gen-is-gone]

Some thoughts about Chuck post-Five, namely, on Chuck’s particular brand of performative toxic masculinity, and how much of it, especially when they were teenagers, seems to be based around not being Dominic.

So the thing that started me thinking about this was ruminating on how Chuck is the person who stands out as the least integrated into the actual friendgroup. It’s interesting -- out of all of them, it honestly seems like Chuck had the most to lose from alienating any one of them, because he’s the friend none of them would be friends with if they didn’t have to be.

Dominic and Sol are best friends, Sol is dating Isabelle, Angela wasn’t a part of their friendgroup to begin with, and Matt and Dominic had become closer friends because Sol was spending more time with Isabelle. Chuck is the only one of them whose presence doesn’t have an explanation beyond the obvious: he likes the same things they do. Archetypically, he’s That Guy in gaming. He’s the guy who comes for free pizza and the chance to vicariously beat shit up and steal things. He’s the murder hobo. By contrast, while the rest of the group approaches the game with varying levels of interest (note Isabelle, who Ash immediately assumes doesn’t want to be there and kind of mentally slots into the role of Dungeon Master’s Girlfriend, though more on Ash and Isabelle’s...fraught...relationship should probably be its own post) they all seem to take it seriously enough. He’s the only one who doesn’t even bother to create a real character, just a selection of stats.

Kieron talks in the backmatter essay in Four about the kinds of friends you make while gaming, the people who become life-long companions and the people who fade away once the time and place shifts. Chuck seems like that kind of friend to the rest of them, but where they never got the chance to grow out of their friendship with him, nor he to find people with personalities closer in line to his own, because they got sucked into an rpg and got stuck with a trauma-bond that means even if they hadn’t been summoned back, he’d still be an indelible part of their lives and an influence on the adults they all became, instead of just a guy they hung out with because he was the other role-playing nerd in a tiny Midlands town, before the internet and the rise of the geek cultural majority meant teens now have their pick of players. 

So back on point. Dominic was the weird, quiet, kind of femme-looking even then boy with the nerdy special interest who kind of seems like his first instinct towards hostility is to freeze (see, his stuttering reaction to Isabelle at the beginning of One). Chuck is loud, aggressive, often-deliberately mean-spirited and even studiedly careless, traits that his character class then rewards in DIE when it becomes a matter of survival. Chuck and Dominic couldn’t be less similar.

Ash has some harsh retrospective things to say about the both of them lusting after Maria Wardol, but unlike Chuck, even as a teen Dominic has a level of self-awareness that belies the “mostly-straight teenage boys” stereotype. Straightforwardly, Dominic Ash might be read as a semi-closeted bisexual man who as a teenager used his character to explore gender and sexuality in the liminal space roleplaying offers. I personally think there’s a chance it’s a little more complicated than that, but even if that is the entirety of the matter, it’s an important part of Ash’s identity. It’s not simple. Ash is a whole person, and one who chooses to reveal that identity only in fragments, fully aware, as narrator, of the readers’ gaze and potential for judgement.

Chuck, like Ash, seems at times (ironically) hyperaware of the potential for others’ judgement, so he wraps himself in layers of straight boy carelessness. He can be the class clown, as long he’s not the bullies’ next target. Dominic clearly didn’t escape anyone’s notice as the victim-of-choice for peer abuse, and Ash gets multiple chances in the narrative for mordant reflection.

Chuck continues to add to the distancing affect by casually mocking Ash in-game, (see the comment about her bust in Five) and while clearly by now they’ve all acclimatized to to each other’s appearances I suspect more flashbacks will come up that offer insight into the others’ reaction to Ash as teens with an early nineties context finding themselves in DIE for the first time.

...Something tells me their reactions then were decidedly less accommodating.

How this attitude affects their current relationship and how much either of them is consciously aware of it remains to be seen, but it’s telling that the two defectors are the two with the fewest and weakest bonds within the group, and both of them are at personal conflict with Ash specifically in ways that have their roots not just with her behavior in the present -- reprehensible though it at times has been -- but with Ash as a person and a constructed identity, which stems from their original time together and is rooted very much in their feelings as sixteen year olds, rather than adults.

[rawrtigerrawr]

not sure if jess posted these, but here ya go! i should get on telling you about my conversation with him the night before at a party. also all my celeb encounters!