Fandom Misogyny Victim Tournament
Round One, Bracket 3
Ashley Williams (Mass Effect) vs. Kennedy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Ashley Williams
Kennedy
Propaganda below the cut:
Kennedy:
hated for Not Being Tara and being ~soooo aggressive~ pursuing willow when at the end of the day she's simply a different woman! and the horrible killing off of tara wasn't kennedy's fault
she's confident as hell
Ashley Williams:
Double standard: Mass Effect is a series about many alien species working together, and therefore the topic of xenophobia and space racism are getting brought up a lot. Such beloved male character as Garrus and Wrex get a pass for their instances of bigotry (towards salarians, for example), and Shepard calling one species "stupid jellyfishes" is a favorite fandom meme. Meanwhile Ashley makes a few distasteful remarks of the same genre and not only does that get her branded as the "space racist" of the cast, but also causes a lot of people to gleefully proclaimed that they killed her off in their playthrough like that's a good and deserved thing. Of course, the real reason is because Ash is a woman who is also a soldier who does not take your (main character's) crap, which automatically makes everything she has to say and every flaw she displays a million times more condemning and death-worthy than whatever the favorite fandom blorbos do.
Ashley is a soldier whose loyalty is to her people and her duty first. Military glorification aside ('cause that is the entirety of Mass Effect), that is the most noble type of a soldier to be. She does not sell out her principles, even for Shepard, and she's risking her life for her convictions multiple times throughout the series. She also goes off on a radical pro-human rally at the Citadel and is genuinely horrified by the sentiment of them all, and it takes her less than one game to become genuinely worried for Liara after the latter's mother dies. Her flawed perception of aliens is a point for character growth - which a lot of aforementioned characters do not do, by the way. She's a strong, responsible older sister and as older sisters often do she carries the weight of their family "curse", ready to heroically give her own life to cleanse it. Questionable, yes, but does give her certain honor, if not a ticket to therapy. Her readiness to point a gun to anyone in the name of protection, including Shepard or another member of the crew, like Wrex, is a point of admiration (again, as long as we operate within the series' premise of "Alliance soldiers good"), not contempt.
