Now I understand that each of the fan base has a different reason for disliking or liking ashley williams, but I used a few tricks to come to my conclusions. However, I could be completely wrong,
First up, Religion:
In Mass Effect 1 the player is given a host of imformation regarding religion in the galaxy. Codex entries are dedicated to analyzing each major species religious convictions and divergences. Liara often exclaims with the line "By the Goddess" in various situations. So then, why is it Ashley that gets the hate? Why does ashley get called a zealot when, aside from one or two conversations, it never comes up?
In Mass Effect 2 you not only have a warrior Monk on your squad in Samara but also a religious assassin that prays to polytheistic deities during missions. The player is exposed to much more religious content in ME2 yet these characters almost never receive hate specifically associated with their religion. So why the disconnect?
I see two possibilities. First, she is the only one with a recognizable religion, despite the fact that she never states whether she is jewish, christian, or muslim. We are given the fact that she is monotheistic, she refers to the deity as God, and that she believes in an afterlife but that's all. But I believe that this familiarity to existing religions strikes chords within people who in real life know people that embody that sort of religion for them and thus there is a personal connection to things completely unrelated to the character.
Second, and this is the one I personally feel, Ashley is the only character that forces the player to judge the validity of her religious beliefs. Liara never asks you if her religion is alright with you, neither do Samara or Thane. Ashley does do this in one of her conversations and at least for me, it turned me off to the character slightly.
People judge others all the time but they don't like being put on the spot to do it to someone's face.
Now on to Poetry:
Now I can totally understand why some people find Ashley's poetry reading endearing and a positive quality. However, many others find it abrasive and slightly annoying because they don't enjoy poetry. Most students where I come from who have to do poetry in high school (secondary) and college find it pretty useless. Why waste time and effort analyzing a poem to find hidden meaning that in many cases was not intended by the author? That is our only exposure to the medium.
While many find poetry interesting and fun to analyze, others don't and thus having poetry recited to you by a character just feels unpleasant. There's also the elitism factor of poetry and literature. I would have to say I find that more abrasive as it was mildly fun to annoy my teachers by constantly finding symbols of death in everything.
Finally, Racist Ashley is Racist. Right?
This would probably be the single most common reason that players and forumites don't like Ashley. I'll state my postion right now: I don't think she's racist, however she doesn't do a terribly good job of convincing us otherwise. Mostly it's just inferences and implications.
Think about the popularity of certain characters for a moment. Wrex and Garrus literally are two of the most popular characters in the entire series. And what two characters does Ashley specifically name when she brings up the topic of aliens on the Normandy? Vakarian and Wrex. See the correlation there?
She specifically names two of the most popular characters when she talks about restricting access. Funny part is, of all the people she should be worried about, Tali is at the very top yet she never mentions her. A second class citizen learning the ins and outs of the normandy's prototype drive core and stealth systems? By her logic a recipe for disaster.
Now, I think the writers did a pretty bad job of winning the player over to her side after that very first impression of the conversation. Perhaps they underestimated just how popular those two would be, which is totally reasonable, but whatever the case, Ashley only goes on to explicitly state what she isn't. She says she isn't racist, she says that the Terra Firma party is a pack of xenophobes, implying that she isn't, and she tells you the story of her father but the character's stance is pretty much left up to interpretation.
That is bad because of the first impression she made. Without the character correcting the first impression completely, it is inevitable that players will latch on to that part of her dialog.
Think of it this way, if a person came up to you and said something about the War on terrorism that you vehemently disagree with, you're less likely to listen to their rationale. Of course the wise person doesn't judge based on first impressions, but not everyone is wise.
In Conclusion:
That is my detailed explanation for why people dislike Ashley. The purpose of this post is to help Ashley fans who are struggling to understand the arguments about their favorite character's faults and take a fire hose to the flame wars.
EDIT: I almost never do this, but this time I needed to correct myself. What I have stricken out is not true. Over the course of writing this OP and then thinking about it later, I came to the conclusion that I no longer agree with my previous statement. I do not dislike Ashley's character because of any of the above reasons. I did, but I no longer do.
Just felt like I should clear that up.
Modifié par GuardianAngel470, 07 mai 2011 - 12:54 .
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