#and it's so linda/ash/scotty core

[thelittlestspider]

the thing about ash is you could do a girl, interrupted storyline with him and there's nothing in canon to contradict it.

[cellard0ors]

Listen:

This is very niche and very me and my own personal headcanon for a character, BUT:

Ash Williams.

Hear me out: the events in the original Evil Dead happened. Ashley Williams - a romantic and a dork - totally wimped out (at first) when Scotty talks about chopping up Shelly, because she's their friend and - at his core - Ashley isn't inherently violent.

At this point, he's a sweet boy who just went up to a cabin in the woods to spend time with his friends, his sister, and his girlfriend, Linda.

He even has a sweet gift for Linda, a beautiful necklace, and he loves her, but then things fall apart in the most horrific fashion possible.

His sister becomes a monster, as does Shelly and even Linda. His friend, Scott, someone he thought he knew and could trust, his friend, shows his true colors - making it a point to tell Ashley he doesn't care about anyone or anything but himself.

Then Scott dies too and also becomes a monster just like the others.

And Ashley survives.

But also, he DOESN'T.

Because Ashley Williams died in the cabin and from there Ash Williams is born.

The opening of Evil Dead 2? It's Ash's reimagining of events. His friends weren't there, his sister wasn't there. Right?!? It was just Linda and him, wasn't it?

His mind is fracturing and his form of PTSD takes hold in the form of minimizing the damage of how many people died and how much loss he suffered, but kept the most significant loss in the form of Linda and the necklace - two big moments he can't forget, not ever.

The loss of his hand only pushes this further, as he literally cuts a part of himself off. From here he also begins to take on some of Scotty's final traits - he becomes callous and self-motivated, but only a touch, because while Ashley died, there are traces of him scattered in there, in the debris of who he is now.

Ash turns to sarcasm and humor as defense mechanisms. Drinking, drugs, sex, women - these help too. After all, his mind is already shattered and the only woman he ever truly loved he had to dismember, so, yeah best to use those to cover up any and all of his problems.

My point in writing this here, is that I think both Ashley Williams and Ash Williams, while one and the same, are in essence also two very different characters with very deep traumas and I find that that's often overlooked when we think of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi and The Evil Dead films.

Don't get me wrong - I love the camp and the silliness and the excessive blood and gore played almost for laughs just as much as everyone else does.

But I think it's also deeply fascinating and interesting to breakdown this iconic character and think about him in this fashion. At least it is for me and I was curious if anyone else felt the same.