Tin Foil Skirt and Thigh-High Boots - Ashley Williams Thread

Oh I don't mean them. I just mean the VS along with the ME2 characters. The rest of the ME3 crew was paid attention to too much.

I like Garrus, for example, but he went from introverted calibration guy to chatty cathy. And all this talk about "word budget" must've been spent on him and Liara. He has like 3 or 4 variations of comments after every mission. That's just unnecessary. I don't care how popular a character it is. They should've maintained the integrity of the bigger picture better. The beauty of these stories is being your own director and crafting them in different ways. That means the characters should all be worthy for this, if you so choose.

Ashley - a sexy space racist. Tho I never thought of her as racist. More like alien sceptic.  Which made sense considering her beliefs and story of her family. 

She isn't a racist, she is a realist.

What she says about sacrificing your dog is practically prophetic, as the Council in ME3 flat out tells you they aren't going to help Earth because Reapers focusing on it will buy them time to take care of themselves.

He did join this forum

Ash is not a racist.


I found this rather long blog post by a former bsn prime member and Ash fan. He wrote it during the me3 ending controversy. I don't agree with everything he says but it is an interesting read, imo. Especially if you were an Ash fan on the forums back then.

My time as an Ashley fan in Mass Effect. Written by themightyvrex.

themightyvrex.wordpress.com/my-time-as-an-ashley-fan-in-mass-effect/

Thanks for sharing that, very interesting and insightful.  A very long read as well, took me almost an hour, but as the writer states 'I started it, might as well finish it'. And also because I don't want to comment on something that I've only read halfway or so. Speaking of which, he could have reduced it by half. 

Nevertheless, worth reading it all. Most of his opinions and arguments I share and it's nice to see some new ones. It has sometimes been hard romancing Ashley, not because of her, but because of everything surrounding the romance and story: her writer leaving, Horizon, unwarranted criticism/hate from other players in the community and other media, lack of dialogue in ME3, inconsistencies or lack of continuation from ME1, the focus on Liara, the Udina encounter, etc. They could have done a lot of things way better, but in the end, no regrets, Ash was worth it.

Oh, speaking of the length of his blog article. In the Ash group, Vrex was famous for his 'wall of text' posts on the forums.

How ME3 should have ended

Thank you for sharing it. It has been indeed a long and interesting reading. I really apprecciated how the arguments were generally well put and I agree myself with many of them.
I have to say the post made also me realize how "lucky" I have been in having played ME2 and ME3 so much time after their release,without having been "exposed" in that time to any internet discussion about the games. I realize now I spared myself a lot of pain as an Ash fan.

On the other side, having also been unaware of the games'plots also, I still faced some of the more controversial points of the story and feeled some of the emotions which are described in the post;
the disappointement for the Horizon encounter, only partially mitigated by the following mail (and here also goes my personal thank you to Kimberly Brooks for her recorded reading of the mail, an awesome performance for me),
the mixed reaction to her redesign on ME3 (I still prefer her with the bun ... and I know that's a mod to get that ... just I do not like mods that much),
the delusion about her being hospitalized for a third of the game after Mars,
the poorly dealt Citadel coup (on that subject I recommend you on Fanfiction a story written by P. Domi - "Spectres and assassins" - where I consider he really well analyzed and described Ashley's feelings and thoughts on that coup. Probably most of you have already read it, but in case you didn't well give it a try)
the lack of dialogues,
the ending (and I consider me lucky in having got directly the Extended Cut version) 

still it has been a damn good ride, one I continue doing every time I start a new playtrough of the series.

Just a few more things. Referring to what also is said in the post about ME2, you can find here below a picture of the person Shepard has on his mind just before going trough the Omega 4 gate on a siucide mission ... the one he really cares for



.. and in case you are curious, Vincent Shepard destroyed the Collectors Base

And in conclusion, as many of you has already said ... well ... yes .. Ash is worth it !!!!
 

i.imgur.com/Q9DmN.jpg
I'm so sad they cut this scene from final game. Tho I can see why, they didn't want to open conversation about afterlife in ME universe.

The scene is longer since there's paragon and renegade lines which the slides didn't include. I kinda wish I could trade that scene with the drunk scene. There's an alternate scene with Kaidan about him processing his rage about the reapers, delayed grieving perhaps after his father's death.

Thanks for the link btw. I skim most of it but it was really interesting.

I was checking that thread and did see some of his posts, also saw you've been active in that  'The 'official' Ashley Williams support thread 1.1' for a long time as well, dedicated
Also noticed I only joined it in july 2013, although I joined the BSN forums a year earlier, bit weird. Perhaps there was a thread before that?

I've been a bit lucky I guess, in that I discovered the series quite late, when all the games were already released. So there was no waiting and hoping for more Ash content in ME2 in the time between ME2 and ME3, like Vrex mentioned in his article.

A colleague recommended the games to me about 5 years ago or so. I found ME1 hard to get into because I wasn't used to dialogue heavy games and wasn't a big fan of the Citadel. The Kotor games don't come even close to the amount of dialogue that the ME series have, if I remember correct. Anyway, when I started ME2 things started to click with me, hooked ever since.
I think I have close to 700 hours in the trilogy, although quite a large part is from MP.