Inside the Rewrite

Character Spotlight #3 – Asher February 20, 2010

Hey y’all, I know, it’s late, BUT I DID WARN YOU. Choir tour was awesome, by the way, thanks for asking. Noooow we’re going to talk today about Asher! Asher is a favorite character of mine, but he is one of my “floating characters”, or characters that don’t have their own story yet, but get plopped into one story or another until they finally find their niche. Asher’s still looking for his, but I’m going to give you his ‘SH 09-world’ (late 1880s/early 1890s) incarnation. Mostly because it’s the newest, and partly because it’s fitting really well so far.

Quick character description!
Asher is a completely normal human being! LE GASP. He’s the oldest (physically) of the people I’ve posted here so far at 26 years of age, although he looks younger. He isn’t particularly tall, but not particularly short either (about 5’8″) with short, straight, blunt-cut brown hair (and when I say brown, I don’t mean reddish-brown or copper or any of those colours you might be thinking of. Think of the brownest thing you know. Make it a bit browner. That’s his hair colour) and grey eyes like thunderclouds, irises rimmed with black.  He has a small, button-y nose and a soft mouth usually quirked into a half-smile set in a boyish oval-shaped face. He is in no way a big guy but he’s wiry and muscled, able to hold his own in a fight. He has long, thin, pianist’s fingers. He usually wears a raggedy third- or fourth-hand suit with a dingy might-have-been-black-once bowler hat pulled down over one eye. He has scars on his upper left arm and all over his back.
Charming and clever and more than a little bit cocky, Asher takes the view that you have to live in the present without looking too far back or forward. Because of this he will sometimes (read: often) take very serious risks without a care for his own safety. His charm and devil-may-care attitude get him both into and out of trouble on a regular basis, but by virtue of having survived all of his various scrapes without too much damage, Asher hasn’t really learned anything from this. He is almost always smiling, but there’s a sharpness and a danger running under his smile sometimes – this usually means that violence is about to occur. He also can’t bear to see a child being hurt.
Asher was born to a poor family in the slums of London. His father was a docks worker who wasn’t around very often, and his mother was a kind but sometimes inattentive woman. He also had a younger sister named Mary that he doted on (you just know something bad happens now, don’t you?). His mother also had a morphine addiction, which she borrowed money to support. Of course, the day came when the money was to be collected, but she wasn’t able to pay it back. She was brutally murdered, along with Mary, as a warning to the family. Asher and his father were forced to watch. Asher was seven. Mary was three. Asher’s father never recovered. He became an alcoholic and was abusive to Asher whenever he was home (which, thankfully, was seldom). Asher learned to fend for himself, and eventually ran away from home (he was 12). He started out as a beggar and pickpocket, ran with a street gang for a while, and eventually grew into a charming con man.
Asher prefers to work alone whenever possible. He doesn’t admit it to anyone (not even himself), but it’s because he never wants to have to watch someone close to him get hurt again. Asher carries a blackjack concealed in his right sleeve, a revolver in his inside jacket pocket, and a pair of brass knuckles in his pants pocket. He’s a decent brawler (more a dodger than a direct attacker), and prefers blunt weapons to bladed.
Fun facts – Asher is left-handed, but he had his left arm broken by his father as a child and it healed a little crooked; he still has most of his mobility, but his arm pains him from time to time and so he favors his right. Also, his bowler hat is one of the few things he owns that he came by honestly, so don’t touch it. You may be maimed.

That about wraps up Asher! One more to go… see y’all next week!