Zoey Ascher · 7:27am Nov 5th, 2019

Across every incarnation of Zoey that's existed across my stories (including before I even started writing on Fimfic!), one thing is always certain: she's childish as heck, and is pretty much guaranteed to be in her teens or younger.

Zoey started out as a joke character in Wielder of the Orb. No, not any of the versions that I've got floating around here on Fimfiction, I'm talking the OG Wielder of the Orb, the script-formatted garbagefire that I keep saying I'll post the entirety of one day but never actually get around to doing. Literally one of the first lines she ever had was a joke about a potato, before proceeding to carve said potato into the shape of a hot dog and eat it. Pretty interesting start, but whatever goes, I guess. She has a little sister named Lisa, though very little attention was placed on that fact.

Skipping around half a year or so ahead to my first story on Fimfiction, Wielder of the Orb: Of Magic and Ponies, Zoey is back again, and holy crap was she being shipped hard with Sammy, the main character. Once again, she's a very minor character who's pretty much only there to crack a joke, or in the case of Sammy, be a romantic interest. She didn't really have much of a basis in anything as far as her personality went, save for someone I knew in middle school back when the OG Wielder of the Orb was being written. In the pseudo-sidestory, "Of All Things", Lisa makes a return as Zoey's little sister, but once again is hardly mentioned beyond making a cameo.

Moving forward to her next incarnation as Gadget/Zoey Wayve in Lab Horse, Zoey finally becomes the main character herself! Much of the bad writing from Wielder of the Orb is stripped away entirely, and she essentially is written with the same mindset as me from when I was in elementary school, albeit being a bit of a smart-alec. So... yeah, she was kinda a genderswapped self-insert, in a way. Her personality more or less stayed the same, though it was toned down a little and made a little more logical, given how her entire existence before was a joke. Outside of that, she was pretty much still the exact same character, and even the "joke character" aspect of her stuck around in a way. Her last name as revealed by the third entry in the Lab Horse series, "Wayve", was meant to be a pun. Her father was named as Michael Rowe Wayve, which if said fast enough, sounded like "Microwave". All relationship she may have had with her little sister Lisa from before are cut off, and she is instead a single child.

Last but not least, her current incarnation in Pony-Me. Zoey this time around is much more respectable, with her last name changing to "Ascher", and her father turning from a corrupt man who didn't want her to a corporate CEO who just wants to try and make things a little better. Her "joke character" status is pretty much completely gone at this point, and her personality has been further toned down to just a general, upbeat positivity that you'd typically find in a girl her age. While she once again does become a side character, she is much more fleshed-out this time around, with her character actually being legitimately planned out for once rather than simply being thrown together using bits of whatever from my own personality and other people around me.

And now, here's the only reliable plan for her character! This is taken directly from Pony-Me's planning document, and is the only time she is ever physically described outside of using the various coverarts of the Lab Horse series for reference.

- Zoey Ascher – Tomboyish 12-year-old girl who likes tinkering. Visibly, she has shoulder-length, light-brown hair that’s almost always in a ponytail, blue eyes, and is about 4’8” in height. Though she is an intern at TechSIG, she only works the front desk, primarily as a greeter for people who enter the building. She still attends school daily, and for safety reasons typically has an adult supervising her when she’s at the front desk. She is of German descent, but may have a small amount of mixed Native American blood.
o Her father is the current acting CEO of TechSIG after Professor Argall’s and Samantha’s departures left a power vacuum.
o She is generally upbeat, likes anything chocolate, and often wears an oversized labcoat that her father gave her.
o Unlike her father, Zoey acknowledges Lisa’s struggle, and quickly befriends both Lisa and Samantha.