Ashlyn Graves

[Cicada]

Name: Ashlyn 'Ash' Graves
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: John Endecott Memorial School
Hobbies and Interests: Music especially punk, guitar playing and song writing, horror movies, history and geography, trivia, leadership roles, volleyball, weightlifting, Muay Thai.

Appearance: Ash is 5’8”, and naturally tends to hold muscle on her frame, averaging a weight between 140 and 150 pounds with a lot of this being in lean and defined muscle, including her abdominals, due to relatively low body fat percentage. She is a top-heavy hourglass in profile, with broad shoulders and a large chest, and slightly narrower but still large hips.

Her facial shape is an overall circle, though she has a strongly defined, squarish jaw that rounds into her chin. She has a strongly defined nose with a long bridge. Her complexion is naturally clear, though she is prone to dryness on her lips and suffers period-related breakouts and scarring irregularly. Her eyes are the exact same shade as her sister’s, baby blue and naturally expressive. She wears her upper-back length dirty blonde hair in a usually straight ironed side-part, with loose layering. Her posture depends on her level of engagement: either being natural and confidently tall in social situations or more reticent and slouched otherwise. She has ear piercings, usually simple jewel studs, and a belly button piercing, either a plain metal stud or a faux black onyx jewel. Her voice is of an average pitch and full, she naturally projects and enunciates clearly.

Ash is most well-known to constantly wear one of three Endecott Memorial volleyball team jackets she owns, with a blue body, white sleeves, a gold trim, and a cartoon Johnny spiking over a net on the back. Besides this she usually wears casual clothes like jeans and cute fast fashion tops. She does not care for skirt pieces and rarely wears them, personally owning none. Her jeans tend to be plain in color, rotating pairs of dull blues and blacks. She wears slip-ons like Vans for comfort and convenience, reserving sneakers strictly for team practice and sporting events. She is ok with showing skin and wearing revealing clothes, but due to her dislike of her shoulder width she is more inclined towards certain types of tops like those with straps to foreshorten her broad collarbone. Ash uses makeup regularly, though more out of habit, as she defaults to natural styling that does not make much of a perceptible difference and is hesitant to be more experimental. She has some cheap jewelry for effect and flair, usually for her hands in the form of rings and bracelets.

On the day of the abduction Ash was wearing black skinny jeans and a white knit crop top under her volleyball jacket. She had a dark blue and white checker pair of Vans. She wore stud earrings and her black onyx belly button stud, along with a thick band gold ring on her right hand.

Biography: Ashlyn was born November 11th, in 2002, the elder sister of fellow John Endecott student Katelyn Graves by less than a year. She was born to a solidly middle-class couple in Brian and Michelle Graves. Brian was ex-military and had transitioned into civilian life by becoming an electrical engineer in Eversource, while Michelle worked as a laboratory technician in a local hospital. The two planned no further children after Katelyn was born.

Ash, even as a clumsy toddler, was highly social and unafraid of strangers which occasionally drew her parent's concern. Katelyn proved to be the larger problem that drew most of their attention however, as Katelyn missing developmental milestones led to a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder close to Ash's fifth birthday. Brian and Michelle did their best to explain to Ashlyn that her younger sister would have unique difficulties and need compassion and understanding, but Ash was fundamentally too young to internalize the idea, especially as Ashlyn herself had developed quickly with her language skills and was naturally friendly and outgoing thus making it difficult to put herself into her sister’s mentality.

Ashlyn developed at a regular pace and was quick to internalize and refine her tendencies as a social creature once she entered Kindergarten with guidance and learning experiences in the classroom. Beyond organizing group projects and play dates with her friends in school Ashlyn’s biggest hobby was reading. She particularly enjoyed nonfiction and would often take her turn with books her parents had gotten for Katelyn, rereading them regularly due to her fascination with history and maps. Though not as intelligent naturally as her younger sister, Ashlyn earnestly enjoyed learning, though her preferred style of picking up new information was often through rote memorization and a lack of context for the trivia points she picked up. Her parents tried to endorse her love of factoids, but they were unconsciously biased towards Kate’s simultaneous development of artistic endeavors due to being more stimulating and engaging, which rankled young Ash with its unfairness.

Ash and Kate had a difficult relationship. Ash was the one who took it on herself to be kind and compassionate and break up arguments among her friends at school, so Ash’s emotional tolerance was often burnt out given to her natural social sensitivity. When Kate entered elementary, she proved to be problematic due to the host of social difficulties her ASD gave her: she was bullied, ignored, and often had outbursts in class, which deeply embarrassed Ashlyn. Ash still lacked the maturity and empathy to understand Kate’s condition, so the two often had loud and draining arguments centered around Ashlyn trying to make her sister fit in better and act ‘proper’. Ash would at times explode herself due to her lack of patience meeting extreme resistance in Kate’s single-minded tantrums and Ash’s lecturing merely causing sensory overload and making Kate all the more upset. These moments of breakdown in Ash’s composure would result in physical abuse, with Ash hitting and manhandling her younger sister in an effort to get her to stop.

Even in quieter moments where Ash did not feel the internalized pressure to make her sister act right, she still continued to bear resentment against her sister, who seemed naturally more talented and whose hobbies more closely aligned with what their parents personally enjoyed. While Ash was only able to tolerate the outdoor excursions Brian loved, Kate grew to adore them herself and even got the attention of Brian’s friends for her growing interest in hunting activities. Ash, meanwhile, could only stay quiet and go along with the outdoor activities that she never particularly liked, but now felt increasingly trapped by as she was forced to watch everyone fawn over her younger sister. To this day Ash still remains unconsciously biased against outdoorsy activity despite her athletic nature, noticed by friends who invite her on outings that she’ll immediately and completely reject off hand.

Ash progressed through her elementary school years with good grades as she studied hard, maintained her love of trivia that translated to good test-taking skills, and arranged study groups and homework playdates, continuing to develop herself as a leader who was consciously alert of group dynamics and a people pleaser. Growth in her hobbies outside of school was more limited, with Ashlyn struggling with mental block due to her hangups with her sister. Michelle listened to classic rock and metal, and Ash through osmosis wanted to learn guitar. However, Ash felt that her hobbies wouldn’t be supported like her sisters were, and the degree of her upset over this was such that she suddenly quit the dance classes her parents had enrolled her in during the fourth grade after just a few weeks.

Ashlyn finished her last year of elementary school in the awkward fugue most tweens endure in those years, upset that the social groups she’d carefully managed and felt most comfortable and stable in going to be pulled apart by drifting into different schools, and uncomfortable with the effects of puberty on her physique. She began to be more secretive with her interests in history and trivia for a time, caving under pressure from the friends she kept closest to not come off as too much of a nerd. She began to excel in PE, motivated to work hard to feel some control over her changing body.

After she graduated, tragedy struck the family. Brian, Michelle, and Katelyn were involved in an automobile accident. Brian and Michelle both died in the hospital, with Ash not by their side as Michelle in a moment of lucidity had asked Ash to keep a grievously injured Kate company. The two siblings were adopted by designated guardian Amy Williams, their mother’s sister.

The impact of her parent’s deaths was incalculable in its effect on her psyche, for while Ash had been resentful she’d always truly loved her family in her own immature way. While Kate was the one more obviously suffering with grief and trauma, Ash’s own quiet struggle demanded therapy and intervention, despite her insistence that she was fine and her rejecting of a diagnosis of PTSD manifesting primarily as social paranoia. Ash, ironically, developed a strong working relationship with her new guardians, as she put on her bravest responsible face for them and helped them with Kate, who they were simply not prepared to deal with and often had to distance themselves from for their own mental health.

Ash, using what she learned from therapy and self-study of self-control and discipline as a coping mechanism, was no longer physically abusing Kate when Kate’s frustrating behavior caused Ash helpless rage. But Ash still had no real maturity or control of her raw emotions, and she was not above emotional abuse. She openly belittled and blamed Kate for causing their parents deaths and for being unlovable and a burden, all of which were things that deep down Ash believed more than she was willing to admit as she had indeed associated their parents deaths to their need to do everything for and baby their youngest child.

Ashlyn had difficulty maintaining friendships and became more of a bully, intimidating socially meek kids who she’d once been at least neutral towards and becoming more curt and aggressive with her language. Her grades slipped, and she became obsessed with dark fiction and poetry, writing long rambling essays to herself to vent that she’d hide away from anyone else in the family. The collapse in her performance ultimately led to consequences. She failed her mathematics and science track classes and had so many absences that she was ultimately held back a year, which would force her to repeat the eighth grade.

This failure shocked her into picking up her performance in class, but besides the extra effort she remained listless, unengaged with others, and belligerent for the remainder of her repeat year. The only subjects that gave her any solace were English, where her brooding and bleak mindset allowed her to explore a creative and analytical style ironically similar to the one Katelyn would develop in her own artistic endeavors; and PE, where she took to every sport with gusto, using an increasingly excellent physical capacity to work out the stress she felt trapped by, putting in more work than the rest of her classmates, with the class coach several times offering that she try out for teams. She remained disinclined, her sense of ambition virtually non-existent beyond simply not being humiliated socially by another grade repeat and finding outlets for her difficult-to-express anger and frustration.

The summer Ash was due to graduate into ninth grade, Kate attempted suicide. Her death was only averted by a stroke of luck that allowed the others in the house to rescue her in time. Ash had the several weeks of Kate’s being hospitalized and kept for her safety to reflect, to blame herself for her part in denigrating her sister and to realize she couldn’t even bring herself to be by her sisters bedside, for fear that the sight of herself would only crush her younger sisters spirit. That it took such an extreme event for Ash to develop any sense of perspective meant she also couldn’t quite cope with the consequences of her actions fully, and she would never fully be capable of admitting to herself her fault, subconsciously burying in large part her failures as an older sister and consciously vowing to move on and to be better. Her determination to live her best life for herself, to be better to Kate, pushed her to escape the mental funk that had consumed her for the past two years.

She started off by actively trying to be kinder to Kate, but only in an artificial way that she knew. Given that she couldn’t personally come to terms with her prior abuse of Kate she also couldn’t make that leap of good faith to sincerely acknowledge, and apologize to Kate and try to start them on a path to any real repair or healing. Kate’s remained passive, awkward, and intimidated around her older sister. Ash, on her part, began to make herself see Kate the same way her parents did and began to baby Kate: unwanted fussing over her, advice through the lens of extroversion and obsession with social nuance that Ash viewed the world with, so on. And Ash would also remain incapable of putting herself into her younger sister’s shoes and understanding her, and Kate’s behavior remained off-putting to Ash, at times drawing involuntary raising of the voice or other harsh responses that could trigger Kate’s memories of her prior abuse.

The one hobby the two sisters could mutually share and find common ground in their adoration of the horror genre. Neither Amy nor her husband cared much for the horror movies Ash would put on in the living room, usually gothic horror and thrillers but open to all genres. It was Kate who would sometimes join her, and the movies were the one thing they could generally bond over without difficulty, usually because they didn’t have to speak much to one another in the process.

As Ash began to further mellow out of her emotional low point she transitioned the more raw emotive works she’d written into an appreciation of horror works as a whole. More particularly, she was attracted to expressing herself in song. As she was determined to be more confident and not as self-conscious and passive aggressive, she wanted to return to the old hobbies she’d formerly had hangups about pursuing. She began to expand her repertoire of music, but picked genres that wouldn’t remind her of her deceased mother. Punk appealed to her as it was guitar-driven and she still wanted to learn guitar, but its DIY sound was distinct enough that she could feel it was her own discovered sound. Ash purchased a guitar and began to pluck at it during her last year of middle school. She was very private about it from the get go, however, as the process of songwriting made her feel more vulnerable than she was comfortable with expressing, often reminding her of the years she’d struggled with her mental health following her parent’s death.

Ash’s turnabout in behavior didn’t mature into her modern self-image overnight, and she couldn’t quite shake the reputation for brusque standoffishness she’d developed in her repeat grade years, especially as many of the friends who’d once been sympathetic to her and had followed her from elementary school would now be her senior until they graduated, changing the dynamic she’d become accustomed to and requiring her to make new friends from a year below her who only knew her as being surly and difficult to talk to. She consciously embraced this. It was readily natural to her anyways, given how she’d changed in the wake of her parents death, so it was easy for her to build a new persona around being more cynical, dark-humored, and bold than she’d been as a more simpering and fussy child.

In a way embracing being more of a straight-shooter as she stepped back into roles of being group leader and shot caller that were comfortable and familiar territory. She started small when she entered high school, assisting her PE coach that year and also often stepping up to direct teams she was in during class to victory. She found her new demeanor definitely produced results, her sharp and curt tendencies, while certainly not always pleasant for those who were socially sensitive, generally increased people’s perception of her competence and drive. She was listened to more, and thus incentivized to continue going on as she was. She could use her intimidating presence and behavior: to drive off annoying boys, which was a godsend for her as she generally disliked attention from them; and to produce results in class like good grades in group projects and the regard of teachers for her ability to make her own friends shut up and pay attention.

Ashlyn had renewed ambitions: she wanted to graduate in a good position to go to college, and wanted to excel in athletics. She credited sports in part for saving her when she’d felt at her lowest, and also thought participating more in that form of extracurricular would be her own lane that she didn’t have to feel she was competing against Kate for, given that Kate had no apparent interest in team sports.

Ashlyn hadn’t yet had an opportunity to try cheerleading and dance teams so she tried both, remembering how she’d wanted to be a dancer when younger. She ended up enjoying cheerleading more, as it allowed her to network more with the other school teams, which she was already doing from Freshman year onward. Her mindfulness and curt tendencies meant she was typically good at being an authoritative voice in fundraiser projects and the like, and more meek folk were either grateful or intimidated or some of both at once. She focused on her role in cheerleading, but was always available for pick up games in most other sports, where she had the physique and general know-how.

Her insecurities with her body did remain, but she was also determined enough to turn a negative self-image into a positive one by owning her general bulkiness. With her full-time immersion in the school athletics program she had plenty of friends to lift weights with, and she further decided to supplement her muscle building routine with martial arts training outside of school. She found focusing on fighting disciplined her and enjoyed how it cleared her thoughts and helped her maintain the focus and self-awareness of body and mind that helped her be socially successful. Ultimately however Ashlyn remained down on herself despite her concerted efforts to improve- she felt she looked ugly and out of place among the generally cuter and smaller cheerleaders she worked with. She put herself down about it to the point where she decided she no longer belonged on the team, despite evidence to the contrary. For the sake of their image and her own she left the team at the end of her Sophomore year.

She was far from done with Endecott’s athletics programs however, as she believed she had an obligation to the friends she’d already made to stay active, and she herself felt restless and directionless without something organized to focus her energy on. She tried out for teams over the summer and adjoining fall season and found that her physical prowess and discipline qualified her in the eyes of many coaches. She singled out volleyball specifically because it wasn’t as high profile a team, leading her to believe her presence would have more of a positive effect. She gelled with the team quick and fast, held a role as team captain in her second semester of Junior year, and still considers many of the girls on it close friends. Her tendency to assume command even outside of actual leadership roles sometimes wasn’t always well-regarded, and at times her behavior in trying to motivate the lesser performing members of the team would come close to bullying and emotional manipulation. While earnest and with the best intentions, Ash’s behavior in this regard showed the ways in which she hadn’t matured from her gross mistreatment of Katelyn, wherein Ash remained abusive with her tendency to be socially powerful when she could justify it to herself.

Her martial arts experience was picked up more recently, also shortly after she left the cheer squad. It was initially another way for herself to double down on turning the physique she had mixed feelings about to her advantage, but she found that she appreciated the experience above and beyond the aesthetics of the endeavor. She appreciated the meditative elements of sparring and of the more spiritual elements of some of the individual martial arts she gained insight into through the local MMA studio, and the serenity of practice was further amplified by the ability to take out the aggression and frustrations she sometimes felt in dealing with other people as she did so regularly in a repetitive, physical manner. MMA practice has had a significant effect on her for being so recent in her life. She drills everyday and spars whenever she can find a partner. Mentally she finds more confidence in her self-assuredness, though perhaps not the necessary self-awareness to go along with it, as her pursuit of self-improvement remains generally shallow and superficial.

Ashlyn’s modern reputation is generally quite positive in the sense that many of the people who she’s harmed with her over-aggression and relentless and unforgiving self-improvement mantras are those who wouldn’t be noticed anyways, least of all by Ash herself, who views her being so domineering towards the meek as strictly a good thing. Among many of the more socially adept and promising students of the school Ash is a community-minded girl who puts in a lot of positive-impact work and who is easy to get along with if curt and gothically morbid in the way she speaks. She gets good grades, organizes study groups, and can even be vulnerable and expose a more sensitive side of herself to good friends who are aware of her more sedate and nerdy hobbies like horror movies and trawling the internet for trivia in her free time. Certain hobbies she still keeps to herself for how personal they are, like her writing music. She also rarely dances nowadays, even at parties, unless with an intimate partner.

Her sexuality is homoflexible- she’s mostly been attracted to and dated girls, though her most stable relationship has been with boy and is still ongoing as of present. Her approach to relationships is casual and guarded, especially in her current long term relationship where both herself and Salem Fox actively consider the relationship likely to amicably end at any moment, with only some facetiousness on both their parts. It is rare even those she’s been intimate with have gotten to see the aspects of her personality she doesn’t pick and choose to show off.

Her performance in classes remains solid due to her diligence, and she has positive regard for most of her classes nowadays if only for appreciating that she can be successful in them and be rewarded with good grades. She hopes to get into a good university with her stellar resume of grades and extracurriculars, with a practical preference for a school in the University of Massachusetts system as she’s leery of the effects of the recent pandemic on getting an equivalent quality education out of a bigger investment in going out of state. She’s already cynically presuming that Kate will likely get into a better school than herself.

Her relationship with her adopted family and with Kate remains stable, with her adopted parents slightly preferring her personal brand of maturity and being more easy to get along with, and with Kate and herself remaining mostly awkward and emotionally distant as Ash remains unconsciously incapable of admitting the culpability in her sister’s unstable state of being. She was even somewhat more desensitized to Kate’s second go about at suicide, by this point believing on some level that Katelyn will never really go through with it, or at least being unwilling to seriously give thought to the alternatives to her assumptions.

Advantages: Ashlyn is a hard worker, with self-assuredness and determination that will be a boon in tackling the mental difficulties of adjusting to island dynamics. Ashlyn is quite fit for her age and has dedication to her martial arts training, which can produce combat advantages.
Disadvantages: Her cynicism and stubbornness are pronounced to the point where she may too easily give up on important survival tactics and alliances due to writing them or the people involved in them off. Her aggression may backfire on her readily in this same way, as she often feels the need to stick to her own instincts and is not generally capable of re-thinking her first impressions or backing off from challenging others given her own biases.

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Hey there Cicada, I'll be critiquing Ashlyn for her final go! She is temporarily DENIED and in need of some general fine-tuning as well as expansion on a couple of points and condensation of others.

First off, I'm going to make the general recommendation to comb the profile for tone, especially flowery language and sentences that run on overly long. There is a lot of description that goes beyond what is strictly necessary and thus lengthens the profile beyond what is necessary. I'll let you use your judgement on this, but basically, if you've got a sentence that has a lot of adjectives in it, consider how many of those adjectives you actually need here.

The name of the school should be listed as John Endecott Memorial Academy at the top of the profile.

On the day of the abduction Ash was wearing black skinny jeans and a white knit crop top under her volleyball jacket.

Is Ashlyn's jacket specifically of the letterman type, like fairly heavy and lined on the inside? That's what I'm envisioning from the description, in which case I think this is fine, but if it's a lighter jacket she's going to want another layer here for warmth.

With her listed birthday, Ashlyn would have turned 19 shortly before the senior trip.

Ash still lacked the maturity and empathy to understand Kate’s condition, so the two often had loud and draining arguments centered around Ashlyn trying to make her sister fit in better and act ‘proper’.

Rewrite slightly so that the quotes are not needed here.

Did Ashlyn's parents take particular notice of her poor treatment of her sister, or make the connection between Ash quitting or rejecting activities she was in due to her resentment of Katelyn? The former in particular is something that they would presumably want to put a stop to and which would be difficult to conceal from them.

I'd like to know more about Ashlyn's PTSD diagnosis after the deaths of her parents. She would be 10 or 11 at this point I believe, and children aren't really given the medical responsibilities or understanding to be able to "reject" a diagnosis; if she wanted to discontinue therapy under the belief that she didn't need it, that's something that her legal guardians would have to agree to. How long did she attend therapy, and what sorts of treatment was she given for her PTSD? Was it ever suggested that she and Katelyn could attend therapy sessions together, in order to be able to relate to each other and cope with their shared trauma together?

How did Ashlyn accumulate enough absences to merit failing a grade (aside from her poor marks)? Was she skipping class, in which case her guardians should have been notified, or just staying home with their permission?

Her sexuality is homoflexible- she’s mostly been attracted to and dated girls, though her most stable relationship has been with boy and is still ongoing as of present.

"Homoflexible" is a bit too casual and vague of a term here. You go on to explain what exactly is meant by that in the rest of the sentence anyway, so just cut that part.

Ashlyn's interests in history/geography and trivia don't get mentioned after elementary school. Does she still engage in these hobbies? If so, elaborate, and if not, remove them from the hobbies list.

I also wouldn't count "leadership roles" as a hobby or interest, since that seems to be more of a reflection of how Ashlyn prefers to interact with others than a specific activity or subject that she is interested in.

Muay Thai is also in Ashlyn's hobbies list, but in the biography she is stated to take part in mixed martial arts rather than Muay Thai or another specific style, so adjust that one way or the other.

Spelling/grammar:

Her voice is of an average pitch and full, she naturally projects and enunciates clearly.

You're missing an "and" here.

She had a dark blue and white checkered pair of Vans.

However, Ash felt that her hobbies wouldn’t be supported like her sister's were,

Ashlyn finished her last year of elementary school in the awkward fugue most tweens endure in those years, upset that the social groups she’d carefully managed and felt most comfortable and stable in were going to be pulled apart by drifting into different schools,

She openly belittled and blamed Kate for causing their parent's deaths and for being unlovable and a burden,

The only subjects that gave her any solace were English, where her brooding and bleak mindset allowed her to explore a creative and analytical style ironically similar to the one Katelyn would develop in her own artistic endeavors; and PE, where she took to every sport with gusto, using an increasingly excellent physical capacity to work out the stress she felt trapped by, putting in more work than the rest of her classmates, with the class coach several times offering that she try out for teams.

Okay, so the semi-colon in this sentence should be a comma technically, but I'm actually going to recommend cutting this down somehow or splitting it into two sentences, because it runs on quite long. This is a lot of words to say that Ashlyn enjoyed English because it gave her an outlet for her dark feelings and that she enjoyed PE for the ability to vent stress through physical activity and was good enough to try out for some of the teams.

for fear that the sight of herself would only crush her younger sister's spirit.

Kate’s remained passive, awkward, and intimidated around her older sister.

Remove the possessive/contraction here.

often reminding her of the years she’d struggled with her mental health following her parents' death.

In a way embracing being more of a straight-shooter as she stepped back into roles of being group leader and shot caller that were comfortable and familiar territory.

I'm not sure what this sentence is saying.

She could use her intimidating presence and behavior: to drive off annoying boys, which was a godsend for her as she generally disliked attention from them; and to produce results in class like good grades in group projects and the regard of teachers for her ability to make her own friends shut up and pay attention.

Get rid of the colon here, and replace that semi-colon with a comma. You could probably just cut the last part of that sentence too after "group projects".

The names of grades like freshman do not need to be capitalized.

Ultimately however Ashlyn remained down on herself despite her concerted efforts to improve- she felt she looked ugly and out of place among the generally cuter and smaller cheerleaders she worked with.

Change this hyphen to a semi-colon.

It was initially another way for herself her to double down on turning the physique she had mixed feelings about to her advantage,

Her relationship with her adopted family and with Kate remains stable, with her adopted parents slightly preferring her personal brand of maturity and being more easy easier to get along with,

That's what I have for Ashlyn on this first go. If you have any questions feel free to message me on here or Discord, otherwise post in here when you've made those edits and I'll take another look!

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This character biography has had no alterations for more than two weeks and has been put in the abandoned characters forum. This profile is eligible for resubmission by the handler upon alterations requested by the staff.