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[AVPen]

^ Not to mention the fact that the Alliance has been building other Normandy-class stealth frigates apart from the original Normandy SR-1/SR-2 since the Battle of the Citadel (which other species could have easily learned).

Modifié par AVPen, 19 mars 2013 - 06:29 .

[Iakus]

Megaton_Hope wrote...

As far as militaries letting civilians poke around their cutting-edge warships, well...fair point, but Ashley only expressed this about Garrus and Wrex specifically. Much the same way that Mikhailovitch does, when he brings up the issue of your alien crew members. (With the most indignation over the TURIAN. Because they almost destroyed humanity that time.)

It is odd that Ash doesn't mention Tali, though it has been demonstrated that she does take a liking to her (as does Adams) so I suppose they considered her harmless.  As opposed to a renegade C-Sec agent and a krogan merc, at least.

Liara likely doesn't get mentioned because, depending on the order in which you do your missions, she may not have been recruited yet.  She certainly sounds suspicious of her right after recruitment, though.

[nos_astra]

Cthulhu42 wrote...
That whole "stealing Normandy tech" theory was debunked a long time ago; I can find proof if you need it.

No, I read that but I headcanon it in anyway. 

I like Tali and I think it's a nice contrast to her general adorkableness. 

Modifié par klarabella, 19 mars 2013 - 07:06 .

[nani7788]

I've always saved Ashley, but she really annoyed me. Now I've saved Kaidan for the first time and I'm enjoying it a lot more. Ashley constantly doubted Shepard, so it was nice to see that Kaidan actually got over it and fully supported Shepard. I even took him on a few missions - which I barely ever did with Ashley.

[remydat]

I have to fight my urges to kill Ashley at this point. I romanced her or Liara in ME1 even though I wanted to romance Tali but Tali wasn't available. Then in ME2, I learn Liara cared for me so much she give me to Cerberus to be rebuilt. After that, I couldn't turn my back on her and so in that playthrough I ride and die with Liara.

Now let's talk about this trick Ashley. I suspect if Cerberus had said they could rebuild me, she would have been like f**k that I don't trust them, let Shep stay died, I will hook up with some douche and watch the Galaxy burn just because I hate Cerberus more than I love Shep. Then, once I do see her in ME2, this trick has the balls to say she doesn't trust me and refuses to join me despite our supposed love in ME1. Finally, she continues to mistrust me to the point that in ME3, I have to decide whether to put a bullet in her or not.

Maybe I would feel different if I didn't romance her and she was just a squadmate but I loved you Ash. I loved you and all the hate and mistrust you show because of Cerberus hurts. So yeah, I either put a bullet in her head or on a good day save her and then ship her a** off to Admiral Hacket to be a war asset where I don't have to see that mug of hers. And yeah, she does not get invited to my party at the Citadel. No sir.

On the bright side, I couldn't pick Tali in my Liara ME1 love interest game because Liara stuck by me and she is the reason I was rebuilt by Cerberus. So Ash being a disloyal chic allowed me to choose Tali.

As for Kaiden, he is cool I guess but he really only get's picked because since he is not a love interest, I can tolerate his mistrust a bit more. But Ash, I suppose she is a cautionary tale of why mixing business with pleasure is bad. I can deal with mistrust from a friend or coworker but not the women I share my bed with.

Modifié par remydat, 21 mars 2013 - 01:48 .

[Raikas]

JDeelane wrote...
. And her role in the Citadel is much-much funnier than Kaidan.

Eh, they both had good moments - I did laugh at the way she hangs all over Vega when he's being ridiculous, but I thought the bit where Kaidan calls Shepard an ass was equally funny,

Modifié par Hervoyl, 21 mars 2013 - 02:08 .

[Adoramei]

I like the immersion you express, Remy. I know what you mean.

I, for one, romanced Kaidan on my 1-3 playthrough. I would have gone with Tali or Liara, but I really wanted to play Femshep and the last time I played through 1, I romanced Liara and got the puppydog, "I.. thought we had something. I'm sorry, then.." from Kaidan. I actually felt really bad about it and I guess I warmed up to him. He's actually a really good guy. (My 1-3 game is currently the only one to go from 1-3. I had always just played 1 without enough time for 2. Or my computer would fry and I'd have to start over again. It happened to me twice. I've played through (most of) 1 more times than I'd like to count.

Now, admittedly, I knew about the reunion on Horizon, so I may have had time to prepare myself to accept the confrontation since I had seen my fiance do it when he accidentally romanced Ashley the last time through. (It was weird because he was trying to romance Liara, but Mass Effect flirting can be so touchy. Like, "Well.. I don't want you to die in a fire." And suddenly, they're declaring their love to you.) She blew up at him so bad on Horizon, he was like, ".... Yeah, get out of my face."

Honestly, I didn't feel as indignant after the Kaidan confrontation. It was more of a, "How can you trust them?" I was a bit annoyed at first, then he ended it with a, "Be careful." Softened the blow a bit I guess. Oh well. All based on our individual perceptions I guess.

[Made Nightwing]

I had to have a laugh the other day. I recently got a friend, a lawyer by trade who has a keen interest in politics, into Mass Effect. He came back to me after finishing ME1 and 2, and said he was looking forward to ME3. I asked him what he thought of Ashley.

He said, and I quote: "Oh man, she was great! All the other characters talk about their badass backstories, and they're cool, but Ash actually looks at the society around them and comments on it. I loved how she compares the Council to a human who sic their dog, humanity, on a bear when they need to, and how that's exactly what ends up happening."

I barely have room to speak as he enthusiastically explains in detail everything I've said on this forum since ME2. He was wondering why I burst out laughing after a while. His first time in the ME universe and he pretty much sees the logic behind her words, and doesn't disintigrate in a furious rant about racism.

[AVPen]

Hervoyl wrote...

JDeelane wrote...
. And her role in the Citadel is much-much funnier than Kaidan.

Eh, they both had good moments - I did laugh at the way she hangs all over Vega when he's being ridiculous, but I thought the bit where Kaidan calls Shepard an ass was equally funny,

And on the flip side, her "Citadel date" at the bar was an utter joke that was also little to no different from a non-romanced Shepard (as opposed to Kaidan, Tali, Garrus, etc., who's Citadel content changed significantly on whether Shepard was romanced or not).

Modifié par AVPen, 21 mars 2013 - 03:20 .

[killdozer9211]

I like Kaidan more than Ashley, he's a good friend to my paragade shep, the wise, tempered voice of reason. He also makes a good spectre because as a sentinel, he represents humanity's versatility well, at least in my mind,

Buuuut, seeing as he starts on the Normandy as an original crew member, it seems like shep and him already have a friendship to some degree. Then Ashley falls out the sky shortly after and joins the crew, it makes sense from a storytelling standpoint to kill Kaidan and let Ashley live. The conservative soldier with the accumulated survivor's guilt of two different near death encounters finally redeeming her family by becoming the second human spectre, while the guy who's too nice to be involved in something as dirty as war dies, embittering my shep with the loss of an older, more established friend than ashley. It just sounds better than

"Hey bro,"
"Sup?"
"This war's been crazy huh?"
"Yeah, remember that one chick that was in the squad for like two weeks?"
"Oh yeah, the jesus-y one? Hated our bro garrus? Got her whole squad killed and then nuked herself?"
"Yeah, that's the one. That family curse must've been real or something, man. Talk about bad luck."
"Word."

I think I think too much into this kind of thing.

[Adoramei]

killdozer9211 wrote...

I like Kaidan more than Ashley, he's a good friend to my paragade shep, the wise, tempered voice of reason. He also makes a good spectre because as a sentinel, he represents humanity's versatility well, at least in my mind,

Buuuut, seeing as he starts on the Normandy as an original crew member, it seems like shep and him already have a friendship to some degree. Then Ashley falls out the sky shortly after and joins the crew, it makes sense from a storytelling standpoint to kill Kaidan and let Ashley live.

Wow. There's something I didn't really think about, even though.. I mean, I was there. I DO think about how my Shepard would need to build trust with Ashley still, but oddly enough, I never really thought about the Kaidan side of it. The fact that they're already familiar with one another, at least to some extent.

killdozer9211 wrote...

"Yeah, remember that one chick that was in the squad for like two weeks?"
"Oh yeah, the jesus-y one? Hated our bro garrus? Got her whole squad killed and then nuked herself?"

Also, I like like to mention yet again that this is exactly how my Shepards feel about Ashley in 3. Except most of them (especially the ones with the War Hero profile, ESPECIALLY the Colonist War Heroes- of which I have two) also had a bit of a combative relationship with Ashley. I'd much rather prefer your exchange than the mentions of how sad my Shepard is that she's gone. I mean, sure, they don't want to lose anyone. But like I've said before, I think Shepard would feel worse about Jenkins. I mean,  he was some foolhardy kid, a starry-eyed soldier that, from interactions with Dr. Chakwas, is established as a real part of the crew. Kinda funny that my current playthrough (serious, reserved Infiltrator War Hero Colonist MaleShep) has actually been putting Ashley in her place a lot more than my last playthrough with FemShep.

It is kind of weird that in 3, it's assumed that Shepard's mourning the one lost on Virmire so much. In fact, they seem to mourn them more in 3 than they did in 1 when the would was fresh.

Modifié par Adoramei, 21 mars 2013 - 03:49 .

[Lazengan]

Ashley became such a huge ****

Kaidan meanwhile is polite, courteous, and friendly throughout the entire series, even as female Shepard dumps him

[LilyasAvalon]

Kaidan easily.

Whoever wrote Ash for ME3 should go burn in a pit somewhere.

[Imperator_Prime]

I've had a thing for Kaidan since I picked up ME1, and it snuck in to most of my 6 (so far) Shepards-- one pined for him, saved him and ultimately romanced him; one liked him, lost him on Virmire, settled for Ash until she lipped off at him and then developed feelings for Cortez; one femShep who liked him, got him, kept him; one femShep who liked him, lost him, rebounded to Jacob, and ended up hating men (and pretty much everyone else); one who sincerely liked Ash, lost her, likes Miranda now, and resents Kaidan over Ash; and one who was always into Liara and saved... er... I don't remember, I finished his ME2 playthru a while back and haven't imported him to ME3 yet.

Basically, I've never killed Kaidan out of a preference for Ashley-- it's always either i) to create a mourning, angst-ridden Shepard who had feelings for Kaidan, or ii) because Ash was with the bomb and my Shepard went back for tactical reasons to ensure its deployment.

tl;dr-- I have no affection for Ash :-P

[Adoramei]

Lazengan wrote...

Ashley became such a huge ****

Kaidan meanwhile is polite, courteous, and friendly throughout the entire series, even as female Shepard dumps him

Haha. Kaidan's breakups are.. really civil. I mean, Liara takes the cake for being sweet in the ME1 conflicts/relationships/breakups. Ashley gets to the point of insulting Liara. Kaidan remains focused on Shepard making a decision. The characters are so distinct and separate. It's great for the players to see that so it's easier for them to make a choice between who they prefer on their team.

Don't get me wrong. I hate Ashley. Her views are far from my own on several levels, and I have a bit too much respect for poetry to listen to her deadpan reciting. But that's what makes the game great. The characters elicit an emotional response for the player. I respect the differences, and we get a choice in who to save on Virmire. Not a hard choice for me. Even if I did a Renegade runthrough, I'd probably still save Kaidan. I mean.. he'd still be a bro, even if he wouldn't be the choice LI for a Renegade. I immerse myself, but there are parts of my own personality as the player that are too strong to count out.

But I still respect that people would prefer Ashley. With my experiences and preferences, emotionally, I can't see how anyone could, but cognitively, I understand why they would. We all overlook certain traits that others find unacceptable. That's what's great about having the choice. We're not all forced into one route.

Modifié par Adoramei, 21 mars 2013 - 04:10 .

[Made Nightwing]

Megaton_Hope wrote...

Made Nightwing wrote...

Now, first point. You say you support religious freedom, then call her stupid for being religious. That, my friend, is called bigotry. It likewise makes you guilty of the same thing you (mistakenly) accuse a character of, saying you're not prejudiced, then demonstrating prejudice in your next words.

She's not stupid for being religious. She's just stupid, and also religious.

Her whole "It's in my blood to be a Marine, therefore I am also suspicious of foreigners" deal is really trite.

For another example of stupidity, she quotes "Captain, My Captain" to a Shepard who has romanced her, referring to Shepard. While maybe I'm supposed to applaud that she's read some poems, it might be a little nicer for her to understand the ones she's read. (The "captain" is, one, explicitly deceased in the poem, and, two, refers to Abraham Lincoln. Neither of those things offers romantic overtones. Whitman also refers to him as "father" a couple times, so it's a little extra creepy.)

So, not only was Ashley not saying that she hated aliens, she was actually correctly predicting the future. She was not describing herself and her dog, she was describing HERSELF as the dog. And her line 'it's not racism, not really', was referring to the Council's attitude, not to her own. She was saying that THEY would look out for their own interests first, that EVERY species would look out for their own interests first.

And therefore, that humans should as well, anticipating that response from the other species in question. She's also pretty explicit in making use of pejoratives like bug-eyed monsters:



Around 40: "At least she looks like a woman," Around 56, "Under orders to make nice with the bug-eyed monsters."

She's also "concerned" about Garrus and Wrex:



Around 27: "Should they have full access to the ship?" followed by accusations of possible espionage or sabotage, although Garrus, at least, left his career in Citadel Security specifically to pursue Saren with Shepard.

Her xenophobic attitude is no fundamentally different from the explicitly racist Charles Saracino's, or the more veiled Elias Keeler's. Ashley is, of course, one of two crew members (the other being Navigator Pressly, who early on expresses concerns about Nihlus) for whom the writers carefully included disavowals of their earlier suspicions toward aliens in the second game. (For Ashley, a quip about how "We're all just animals.") Which means that the writers, of course, considered their earlier attitudes to be too extreme to be sympathetic.

Picture this, say the French get attacked by the Spanish. They ask the US for help. But, just by chance, the US has just been attacked by the Chinese, and are fighting for their lives. This is the situation Ashley is referring to, not a matter of race, but of NATIONALITY, a concept that people like you just can't seem to get through their thick skulls.

The nationalities in question are biologically distinct, and originated on different planets. The "races" in question are indissoluble from the concept of being a "race" separate from our own, the human "race." Which is quite a lot different in nature from prejudice against different breeds of hominid, although not more justifiable.

And just by chance, it turns out that her best friend is a quarian.

Racists love this argument. Some of their best friends are black! Somebody with black friends can't have beliefs which unfairly characterize black people as inferior.

Or like that time John McCain said he'd "hate those gooks till the day I die," and he tried to clarify that he meant particular gooks, not all gooks.

Right...I'd say between X and Adoramei, you've pretty much sunk that argument. The hater crowd thinks she's a stupid zealot. They've said it a thousand times, there's just no wriggling out of it.

Maybe you just have to be a soldier to get it, but from the amount of people who've understood it anyway, your argument fails again. My great-grandfathers fought the Turkish and the Germans for Australia in WWI, my grandfathers fought the Japanese for Australia in WWII. My father served, and I've been in the infantry for about five months now. Now, if you asked me whether I consider Australia's interest my own, I'd say yes. If you asked me whether I regard foreigners with suspicion, I'd say no. But if you asked me if I would take a bounty hunter and a former agent of China's security services and show them around a secure area and then leave them to their own devices, then I'd ask you if you were straying out of your freaking mind. To be allowed in this area I have to have passed a ferocious security check and been fully cleared. You want me to take these guys who've essentially just walked in off the street without so much as a background check and give them free run just because the CO says so? Well **** that, the CO can kiss my arse until these guys have had a full risk assessment, background, psyche, medical, and personality tests, and get a stamped security pass saying they're not going to squirrel away some tech for their buddies.

(Much like Tali does, because I call BS that the turians, the most xenophobic, security conscious species in the galaxy would EVER give their tech to a species that just stirs up trouble for them. Seriously, consider the general attitude of the turians you meet toward the quarians. Garrus expresses outright contempt toward Tali in their conversations.)

She understood the reference just fine. Which was why the reference wasn't particularly romantic at first. Whitman wrote the poem from the perspective of the devoted follower, sticking by the Captain right unto the end (in this case, the Civil War). It's an expression of trust. And until Shepard gets brought back by a super-evil terrorist group, she never falters. And that trust gets rekindled later on anyway.

Where does she say that humanity should sic the aliens on a threat? She just says that humanity needs to be capable of standing on its own, just in case they ever get abandoned. Preparing for the worst is a standard military strategy, which is why we kinda have to do all that training. Sure, we hope that we'll never have to go to war, but it's a lot more useful to have a small, dedicated fighting force that can be expanded on quickly in the event of a war, rather than no force at all and have to build from scratch. Kind of like how Australia seriously needs to stop planning its defence strategy on immediate aid from America, but that's a different story.

So? I had a few roommates during recruit training. We used to rag each other mercilessly. Trust me, you've never heard racism used until you're in a confined space with three other guys for too long. Here's a typical example:

"Herro Nguyen! How you famiry today?"
"I well thank you, you round eyed ****."
"How's the family dry cleaning business today?"
"Well thanks. How's your thousand brothers and sisters, you backwood's Irish bastard?"

And so on and so forth. By the end of our time together, we loved each other like brothers. I go drinking with them at every opportunity. If necessary, I'd die for them in a second. But that doesn't stop us using the most racist terms we can think of as nicknames. One night we drank so much that Nguyen decided that he'd get his tattooed on. He now has 'Squinty' embroidered on his back. His nickname for me is 'gweilo', a Cantonese term that can mean 'foreign devil' or some other, impolite things, depending on your translation. I start laughing when people suggest that there's malice behind it. The more soldiers insult you, the more they like you. If we don't like you, we just don't speak to you or about you, unless it gets brought up and we're questioned about them, in which case, we speak freely. But if you're an officer, in which case you deserve all the abuse you get Does Ashley dislike Liara? Yep. Does she make snarky comments about her? Yep. We ragged the civillian contractors on base as well when they started getting irritating. But I never felt malice toward them. Ashley's line later on, advising Shepard to go comfort Liara about her mother's death indicates that she sees Liara as a person, not as a 'bug eyed monster'. The principle of xenophobia is that 'they're not like us, therefore they can't be trusted'. Her dialogue indicates that she sees them as very much like herself.

See my previous points. To be granted access to the Normandy and classified Alliance equipment, Ashley had to pass a security check, there's no way around that. To be granted access to a military base, I have to have my pass on me, with a nice neat stamp that says I'm trustworthy. To get that, I had to provide character witnesses, detailed records of my movement and employment over the last ten years, and detailed references from my bosses in that time that say I'm not a sneaky son of a ****. And no, the CO does NOT get the final say in this, nor does he have the power to summarily issue passes. If my CO gets made a super-cop and does get to say who comes onboard, fine. I'm just gonna point out that he's a dumb**** for doing so.

The writers lost their balls. Ashley makes an accurate social commentary. Chris L'etoille specifically defended his writing, explaining that Ashley just sees the world with realism. She doesn't see the happy 'rainbows and butterflies' that everyone else in the game does. She understands that people, aliens and humans alike, are flawed, and that alliances can fail. Her entire speech is just an explanation of a strong independent Alliance that doesn't need to beg for scraps. Unless you think that the idea of humanity as a 'client' race like the volus is a good idea. Chris never apologised or modified his writing. He just got tired of BioWare and EA and moved on after writing Thane (whom BW also ruined without Chris). And Ashley condemned Saracino and Terra Firma in the strongest possible language. And no, you can't get away with saying that even racists condemn the KKK. The KKK are more like Cerberus in universe, a racist group that ACTS on that racism (conducting experiments on asari, and such).

Terra Firma are a legitimate party in-game. It would be politically and morally acceptable for Ashley to support them, just as it would have been possible for me to support Pauline Hanson's 'One Nation' party in game. They are racist, more or less, but they're not very extreme about it, just casually. If Ash was a casual racist, like you seem to think, then there would be no issue with her joining a party for casual racists. She does not, however, as she considers even this casual racism to be unacceptable. She favours independence, making allies without being utterly dependent on them.

Another laughable argument I saw was someone claiming she was a crazed isolationist. Calling an Ashley an isolationist is like calling your neighbour a shut-in because he doesn't come over and smash in your windows every five seconds. Or calling him arrogant and unneighbourly because he doesn't accept your offer to live on his front lawn for the rest of his life. This starting to make sense?

You still think this is about racism. When I say I distrust the Koreans, the Chinese and the Iranians, I'm not speaking about the people. I'm saying that I distrust the North Korean dictatorship, the People's Republic of China's leadership, and the Iranian leadership. Why? Because they are seriously not to be trusted. This doesn't mean that you shun them. It means that you take everything they have to say with a grain of salt, particularly since my nation has fought against two of them in the past, and will likely fight two of them again in the future if negotiations continue the way they're going.  At the same time, I have absolutely nothing against their common citizens or soldiers. They're exactly like me, despite a few differences in skin pigmentations and religious belief. Odds are that they get up, go to work, do their job to the best of their ability, then come home, greet their families and have dinner. This is so common that humans know it almost a priori, it's why we empathise with our fellow man. Ashley shows that she understands this when she empathises with Liara over the death of a family member, and when she empathises with Tali over being judged as an individual because of what someone else did.

Notice the word 'individual'. If someone says 'I'm not racist, but I don't trust the Koreans because they're a shifty and dishonest people', then they're a racist. If someone says 'I'm not racist, but I don't trust the North Korean government because they're a totalitarian dictatorship who are currently warmongering as hard as they can', then I'd say they're a political realist. If they said 'I think the North Koreans can be negotiated with if we show them we're not going to be intimidated', then I'd call them a political optimist. If they said 'I think we don't need to negotiate with the North Koreans at all, I'm sure their long term interests are peaceful, like ours', then I'd call them a political ingenue. When Ashley makes her calls on Garrus and Wrex, she makes both a collective and individual call on them. Wrex is a long term bounty hunter who is a security nightmare.

Ashley doesn't say 'Oh, we shouldn't let the krogan abotu the ship, because krogan are notoriously untrustworthy'. Neither does she say 'Oh, we shouldn't let the turian about the ship because turians are notoriously untrustworthy'. The Normandy was a joint project, but no doubt there were some things the turians kept secret about their tech, just as there were some things the Alliance kept squirrelled away. Just like the US continues to refuse to let we Aussies have full access to the F-35 tech, despite us being best buddies who've fought together in two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. If we don't have complete openness about this tech, which we paid for, despite all the blood shed between us, why on Earth would you expect anything less from speculative fiction about the future?

If you want to learn how to spot racism, then you should familiarise yourself with the works of Ahlwardt and Houston Stewart Chamberlain at the turn of the 20th century. These two are spine-shiveringly racist toward the Jews. Once you understand what true racism is, you won't waltz around calling political realists racists.

As to your final point: Except that you haven't yet been able to prove that Ashley holds any beliefs that make her friendship with Tali hypocritical. I've already proven that she makes no speciest judgements. She judges the governments who make policy (as any reasonable person does), and then assesses the individuals as she sees them. Wrex is a rogue bounty hunter, so she reserves her trust. Garrus is a former cop, former military officer, and still on speaking terms with people in both. But, you claim, they already know this information. So? The tabulated data on my rifle is available online. I'm still not allowed to go talking about it. Given enough time, you could probably get access to most top secret systems (provided you're a good enough hacker). Doesn't mean you can go giving away the passwords. Just because someone can or might get access to your tech is a BS reason to give them access to it anyway. Catty remarks against Liara are not evidence of racism, they are evidence of a dislike, a dislike based on the fact that they are both pursuing the same man. Take those remarks away, and your case has nothing. If she were judging humans as superior and aliens as scum, she would not be friends with Tali. She would not have encouraged Shepard to comfort Liara. She would not have apparently struck up enough of a rapport with Thane that she would be having a conversation with him when Cerberus attacked.

But, you have a point in that having alien friends does not explicity prove she's not racist, it merely makes it a strong possibility. But if she were a racist, why would she sympathise with the quarians to the extent she does? If she were a racist, why would she be so in awe of the asari's mightiest battleship, to the extent of defending it against Joker's snark? Why would she do this? Why would she say that? A thousand little remarks, actions and phrases that a racist person just would not make. Either you have no life experience, and take your opinions entirely from the internet, or you've never met too many racists. But I've seen far too many different opinions, personalities and perspectives to make a call like that.

Should you be able to greet everyone in the galaxy with open arms? Ideally, yes. But you won't live long like that.

I'll leave you with these final words. You say that since Wrex and Garrus fought against Saren they should have been automatically trusted from Day one. You say that since Shepard killed Cerberus soldiers, he should have been trusted from the first second. But as we've learned in Afghanistan, having someone fight on your side does not mean that they won't turn on you eventually. Stop making black and white judgements on the world, and you'll go much further.

Final comment: John McCain was repeatedly tortured, abused and degraded to the point of mental breakdown. When he returned from Vietnam he looked like a skeleton. Yet he managed to recover from that, with his sanity intact. He's allowed to say whatever the **** he wants.

[Made Nightwing]

Adoramei. If you've acknowledged that your argument is based on emotion, not logical analysis, then congratulations, you've just realised what we've been trying to tell you for a while now.

If one man says the world is round, and the other says the world is flat, then one of them is wrong. Such is always the case with two opinions. They cannot both be right. You say Ashley is racist, I say she is not. We cannot both be right. Your background and circumstances are similar to the man who has been told his entire life that the world is flat, and refuses to believe otherwise. (Note, I'm not saying you think the world is flat, or that you're scientifically ignorant, just that your circumstances do not lead you to an accurate assessment). This is because, while you have experienced racism, you have not actually observed the racist. This is where I would say I have the advantage in experience.

The type of people who join the army are for the most part right wingers. (Bear in mind, this is the Australian Army, which has significantly higher standards of education in its rank than the US). In that group of right wingers, there are the barracks bigots and barracks liberals. The bigots hate everything the people we fight. Their culture, their race, everything. The barracks liberals would be people in the same mould as Ashley, a group that I'd probably get tossed into. I've lived, argued and trained alongisde this type of person, and know how to spot the personality. Hell, Ashley would be the one that has penpals in China.

[Made Nightwing]

And with that, I'm off for another two weeks.

[goodventure]

I would like to try an Ashley playthrough simply out of curiousity. Everyone's saying that Kaidan got better writing than Ashley, but I did watch a few videos of Ash in ME3 and I sincerely liked a few moments. I... just can't bring myself to nuke Kaidan on Virmire, ever.

If I had to choose now though, it's obviously Kaidan. He is the first squadmate that appears (alongside with Joker) in the opening of ME1. Out of any recruitable party member ever, Kaidan has been with Shepard longer than anyone.

[andy6915]

@Imperator_Prime

"because Ash was with the bomb and my Shepard went back for tactical reasons to ensure its deployment"

Just to note, I think it actually makes more tactical sense to go after the person NOT with the bomb. Reason being, you're told that "once it has been armed, very little can stop it" which is to say that the thing is very durable and is pretty much not stoppable once armed. So it doesn't really NEED protection. However, the Salarians are with the other person and are currently getting overwhelmed. I know you save them either way, but it doesn't make sense how you magically save them after the scene with Saren even though they're not even in the same location as you.

So I see it like this: the bomb doesn't need defending because you're told it doesn't, but the Salarians realistically should all die along with the person you sent with them, so it's smarter to go after the Salarians to save them AND your teammate. Not to mention, you actually get a cool scene of the character at the bomb's last stand, but the one with the Salarians dies off screen (probably because they couldn't figure out how to show how your teammate dies but the STG don't).

[Modius Prime]

How can you say that Ashley is not a racist? Just listen to her words. It's been publicly displayed, instead of keeping it to herself. I don't care about her family history, blah blah blah. That's beside the point; it doesn't exclude the fact that she had an irrational hate for aliens in ME1 and defending racism is just ridiculous. Just look at her IMDB quotes. It doesn't matter if you've 'experienced' racism, racism is racism. How would you feel if someone had a premise about you before even meeting you, just because of your race? Actually, being prejudiced against a government means being prejudiced against the people as a whole, because the government represents the people. Ash doesn't dislike Liara because she likes Shepard. She baffles at the concept of an alien and a human being together and proceeds to sully Liara even further, granted she does mourn for Benezia. You're just covering it up with sprinkles. A cupcake is still a bad cupcake, even with the extra sprinkles. It just gives the illusion that it taste good, while in reality it is still that bad cupcake. This is how I view Ashley.

[nos_astra]

andy69156915 wrote...
Just to note, I think it actually makes more tactical sense to go after the person NOT with the bomb. Reason being, you're told that "once it has been armed, very little can stop it" which is to say that the thing is very durable and is pretty much not stoppable once armed.

Why does the one with the bomb not arm it and leave then? And where are the rest of the marines? And where is the transport that brought it there? Virmire only really works in gameplay. 

That said, for Bioware Kaidan is probably the one who is supposed to be left with the bomb and die there. That's why Ash volunteers for going with the salarians and protests if you try to have her arm the bomb (not her field of expertise). Once the bomb is armed it will totally go off (because geth aren't self-aware software that couldn't possibly bypass any sort of security protocol) and the salarians are obviously supposed to survive, too. 

I ignore this. If they give me a choice, I'll make a choice and happily resort to headcanon to justifiy it. I don't want to be forced to play a Shepard who will decide solely based solely on her feelings for Kaidan just because she's a woman while MShep gets to justify his decision with reason. 

Now that I think about it, it's pretty cliched if Kaidan and Ash are romanced:
- MShep saving Ashley and the salarians makes a reasonable tactical choice that happens to save his LI's life
- FShep saving Kaidan at the bomb site makes a purely emotional choice

Modifié par klarabella, 21 mars 2013 - 07:46 .

[nos_astra]

Modius Prime wrote...
How can you say that Ashley is not a racist? Just listen to her words.

I did. She's not perfect and certainly biased against aliens. Most of the time her arguments are pretty reasonable. 

She gets petty when she's jealous about Liara.
And the one line about aliens and animals is said to be a misfire that sounds harsher then intended without the right contacts.

[S.A.K]

I like both of them. But in the end, I am a guy and Ash is hot...

[Xilizhra]

Maybe you just have to be a soldier to get it, but from the amount of people who've understood it anyway, your argument fails again. My great-grandfathers fought the Turkish and the Germans for Australia in WWI, my grandfathers fought the Japanese for Australia in WWII. My father served, and I've been in the infantry for about five months now. Now, if you asked me whether I consider Australia's interest my own, I'd say yes. If you asked me whether I regard foreigners with suspicion, I'd say no. But if you asked me if I would take a bounty hunter and a former agent of China's security services and show them around a secure area and then leave them to their own devices, then I'd ask you if you were straying out of your freaking mind. To be allowed in this area I have to have passed a ferocious security check and been fully cleared. You want me to take these guys who've essentially just walked in off the street without so much as a background check and give them free run just because the CO says so? Well **** that, the CO can kiss my arse until these guys have had a full risk assessment, background, psyche, medical, and personality tests, and get a stamped security pass saying they're not going to squirrel away some tech for their buddies.

Well, recall that your ship is no longer working for Australia in any case; you belong to the UN, now, which is also much more powerful and important than it is in our own world. Also, all of Australia is potentially doomed if you don't leave quickly (video game timing notwithstanding).

Where does she say that humanity should sic the aliens on a threat? She just says that humanity needs to be capable of standing on its own, just in case they ever get abandoned. Preparing for the worst is a standard military strategy, which is why we kinda have to do all that training. Sure, we hope that we'll never have to go to war, but it's a lot more useful to have a small, dedicated fighting force that can be expanded on quickly in the event of a war, rather than no force at all and have to build from scratch. Kind of like how Australia seriously needs to stop planning its defence strategy on immediate aid from America, but that's a different story.

Precedent seems to show that anyone willing to declare outright war on one of the various galactic civilizations would completely ruin anyone who tried to stand alone. The batarians really just saber-rattle, but the rachni and krogan would have flattened any one other race. It's a poor strategy to rely on exclusively; cultivating allied relationships will have more long-term success.

And so on and so forth. By the end of our time together, we loved each other like brothers. I go drinking with them at every opportunity. If necessary, I'd die for them in a second. But that doesn't stop us using the most racist terms we can think of as nicknames. One night we drank so much that Nguyen decided that he'd get his tattooed on. He now has 'Squinty' embroidered on his back. His nickname for me is 'gweilo', a Cantonese term that can mean 'foreign devil' or some other, impolite things, depending on your translation. I start laughing when people suggest that there's malice behind it. The more soldiers insult you, the more they like you. If we don't like you, we just don't speak to you or about you, unless it gets brought up and we're questioned about them, in which case, we speak freely. But if you're an officer, in which case you deserve all the abuse you get Does Ashley dislike Liara? Yep. Does she make snarky comments about her? Yep. We ragged the civillian contractors on base as well when they started getting irritating. But I never felt malice toward them. Ashley's line later on, advising Shepard to go comfort Liara about her mother's death indicates that she sees Liara as a person, not as a 'bug eyed monster'. The principle of xenophobia is that 'they're not like us, therefore they can't be trusted'. Her dialogue indicates that she sees them as very much like herself.

It's possible to empathize with others while still seeing them as lesser and untrustworthy, or at least seeing their species in general as such and making singular exceptions. It's also possible for one's own prejudices to fade after actually getting to know the people in the prejudiced-against group, so you can make an argument either way. You cannot, however, ever make it past "I'm no fan of aliens."

The writers lost their balls. Ashley makes an accurate social commentary. Chris L'etoille specifically defended his writing, explaining that Ashley just sees the world with realism. She doesn't see the happy 'rainbows and butterflies' that everyone else in the game does. She understands that people, aliens and humans alike, are flawed, and that alliances can fail. Her entire speech is just an explanation of a strong independent Alliance that doesn't need to beg for scraps. Unless you think that the idea of humanity as a 'client' race like the volus is a good idea. Chris never apologised or modified his writing. He just got tired of BioWare and EA and moved on after writing Thane (whom BW also ruined without Chris). And Ashley condemned Saracino and Terra Firma in the strongest possible language. And no, you can't get away with saying that even racists condemn the KKK. The KKK are more like Cerberus in universe, a racist group that ACTS on that racism (conducting experiments on asari, and such).

Cerberus isn't like the KKK at all, it's far too intelligent and scientifically-oriented. I don't even think TIM himself is xenophobic, he just wants all the power he can get, and focuses on humanity because that's where his starting base is; Cerberus would be an anti-Council anarchist group had TIM been born in the Terminus.

Terra Firma are a legitimate party in-game. It would be politically and morally acceptable for Ashley to support them, just as it would have been possible for me to support Pauline Hanson's 'One Nation' party in game. They are racist, more or less, but they're not very extreme about it, just casually. If Ash was a casual racist, like you seem to think, then there would be no issue with her joining a party for casual racists. She does not, however, as she considers even this casual racism to be unacceptable. She favours independence, making allies without being utterly dependent on them.

A legitimate political party, yes... in the same way that the BNP, those Golden Dawn people, and nothing less than the original NSDAP have been. It really doesn't help. And they don't come across as being "casual" speciesists either, they're loud and angry ones. I suspect Ashley's opposition to them is largely due to insecurity.

If you want to learn how to spot racism, then you should familiarise yourself with the works of Ahlwardt and Houston Stewart Chamberlain at the turn of the 20th century. These two are spine-shiveringly racist toward the Jews. Once you understand what true racism is, you won't waltz around calling political realists racists.

This is extraordinarily silly. Racism comes in far more forms than the extreme variety. I have my own mild racist tendencies in some areas, though I contend this has most to do with my irrational hatred for one specific language and not about race as such, and I rather suspect you do as well.

Should you be able to greet everyone in the galaxy with open arms? Ideally, yes. But you won't live long like that.

Offer one hand, but arm the other. Ashley's never really done the former.

Final comment: John McCain was repeatedly tortured, abused and degraded to the point of mental breakdown. When he returned from Vietnam he looked like a skeleton. Yet he managed to recover from that, with his sanity intact. He's allowed to say whatever the **** he wants.

Does that include responding "No, he's a good man" to someone who asked if Obama was an Arab?

If one man says the world is round, and the other says the world is flat, then one of them is wrong. Such is always the case with two opinions. They cannot both be right. You say Ashley is racist, I say she is not. We cannot both be right. Your background and circumstances are similar to the man who has been told his entire life that the world is flat, and refuses to believe otherwise. (Note, I'm not saying you think the world is flat, or that you're scientifically ignorant, just that your circumstances do not lead you to an accurate assessment). This is because, while you have experienced racism, you have not actually observed the racist. This is where I would say I have the advantage in experience.

Actually, you can both be right, given that you're using different definitions of racism, though yours is really rather too restrictive.