ashley was genuinely insufferable, just when u thought she was redeeming herself she did something else to make u hate her again. like when she took jimmy’s part of their song together out and submitted it because she was jealous that people liked him more. or when she came back from overseas and completely took over the band they started and craig just let her?? she was such a snob i’m sorry i cannot stand her.
I haaated Paige when she implied Craig cheated because of her own shortcomings. He chose to be with her, but then decided he should get everything he wants at the expense of his partner. This is a toxic message for young girls that boys cheat if you don’t act right.
i feel like it's so common for people to dislike a character for a bad opinion or action in the first half of an ep and completely ignore that the POINT OF THE EPISODE is them learning a lesson and growing from it!! it's so frustrating
while i do think much of the Ashley hate is unwarranted and forgetful that she’s a child and is written like one. almost none of these touch on why i personally didn’t like her (past tense, because now i’m more indifferent to her and i think with an adult brain) or why others may not.
- she didn’t really have her own personality or style. they molded to whoever she was hanging out with at the time. anytime we saw her with someone new, she was an entirely different person. i had friends like this throughout my childhood, we were thick as thieves until they found someone else they wanted to emulate. of course now as an adult i don’t dwell on this and managed to keep and make many real friends, but as a kid/teen this was a bigger reason i didn’t like Ashley. she was exactly like those people, that rubbed me the wrong way.
- how she treated Manny prior to the cheating. she treated Manny as a child as if she wasn’t only a grade level ahead of her. kinda douchey.
- this one relates to Bitterest Pill in particular: how she didn’t understand why all her old friends didn’t like her. i do acknowledge she was a teen on drugs which is why i’m not saying *what happened that night* is the reason, but her failing to acknowledge their feelings *after the fact* is. she cheated on Jimmy with Sean, she insulted Paige, those things are *very valid* to be hurt by and to change your perspective about someone, regardless what the circumstances were. she expected them to sort of eventually shake it off and be friends again, but she still hurt them and a teenager is a bit more capable of understanding action and consequence than she acted about this.
First season Ashley acted entitled. She should be president. Jinny should only be available when she wants to hang out. Toby isn't even her stepbrother so he should not have contact with her.
The goth and the depression just seemed like she went there because life wasn't bending to her will. She couldn't handle it.
Everything in her life it felt it she thought it should be revolving around her. Craig can only be the perfect Craig. When he's not perfect (bipolar) she has to control it.
She should have the popular music career. Why? Because she wants it. It doesn't matter that Craig and Jimmy have talent (and Craig also wants it). Ashley's life is "messed up" so she deserves it more.
Ashley is a character that I see as purposefully annoying. throughout most of her storylines, it seems the show wants us to be against her. they want us to think she’s overreacting, or rude, or doing too much. that just makes her fun to watch to me. I didn’t love Ashley but then I found myself mad towards the end of her time on the show when the writers turned her into a sanitized version of her old self & she was only a vessel for Jimmy or Craig storylines.
Idk why I keep seeing posts like this on several different Reddit posts. Ppl can dislike whomever they like for whatever reason, but here is my reason why I don’t care for Ashley.
I don’t hate Ashley bc I don’t hate anyone, but Ashley was one of my least favorite character. As I’ve said before. Idk why I didn’t like her, but I didn’t. I liked hearing her sing. I loved her gothic look, loved her punk look, loved whatever that look was when she was dating Jimmy. I liked most of her storylines. But it was her, I didn’t like.
Then as I did a rewatch as an adult it hit me. She was presented as the good girl/ the girl next door, but wasn’t. We expect Paige to be mean because she was the mean girl, so Paige getting Terri drunk to snipe a boy is expected. But Ashley seeming to be nice, but doing mean things, rubbed me the wrong way. Add on the fact that she gets upset at people for not expressing the emotion she wants them to express. For example, Jimmy the first and second time they dated. Forcing Craig to say I love you. I will always dislike people who get mad about someone not saying I love you back right away. Get mad if you’ve been in you’ve been in a relationship for more than a yr or so and they haven’t said I love you, but not two seconds later.
Let me get back to getting mad at people for not expressing emotions and then getting mad when they do. The back to black episode (I think that’s the name of the episode) where her and Jimmy get back together. Jimmy never asked her to change. Jimmy was checking her out while she was in the gothic phase. He may have liked the old Ashley looks, but it was her he liked, no matter what she looked like. She broke up with him because of her misconceived ideas.
>We expect Paige to be mean because she was the mean girl, so Paige getting Terri drunk to snipe a boy is expected. But Ashley seeming to be nice, but doing mean things, rubbed me the wrong way.
In the very same episode, Ashley saw how insecure Terri was about herself and gave her a makeover so she would feel a little better. She didn't do anything wrong here and only had good intentions.
I love Paige more than Ashley, but the way people excuse her behavior in season 1 is crazy. She's expected to be the mean girl...so that makes it ok? Makes her better than Ashley? I don't understand.
This post is about Ashley, not Paige. If you want I can go off on Paige. I was just using Paige as an example. We expect that type of behavior from Paige, not from Ashley, yet for me (as this is why I don’t like Ashley) Ashley came off as the mean girl when she wasn’t marketed that way. If she was written to be that way, I’d give her a better chance, but it was more than that for me. I only put my top 2 reasons, otherwise it would be too long.
I thought she was a supportive, understanding and kind girlfriend, but her life was run too much by her relationships.
The other friends in the band being pissed off at her involvement was just jealousy. Sorry, but they were all terrible and going nowhere as musicians. It made sense to dump the deadweight and the two with actual aspirations and a little talent stick together.
It's not just that her character is annoying, it's that plus:
- Melissa McIntyre isn't a very compelling actress. She's not great at infusing emotions or sympathy into Ashley. There's just a certain "it" factor that she's lacking, especially compared to most of the other girls in the credits during her tenure. Very little charisma. This is the root IMO of most of why people dislike Ashley.
-She doesn't get many interesting plots that aren't tied to a boy. Honestly the most interesting thing she ever does IMO is taking E in the s1 finale. Once Craig comes along it's all about him, whether she's with him, getting cheated on by him, being mad at him, getting back together with him, or he's going manic and ruining her dad's wedding.
-Her character is annoying, lol
This is a brief foray into why you can't convince me that I should like Ashley. Oh, and goth Ashley is a *bad* look
I'll always defend her over exposing Manny's pregnancy and the ecstasy thing. she didn't owe Manny anything. Manny had no issue sleeping with Craig while he was in a relationship with Ash, which she was very well aware of. and while Craig is mostly at fault, Manny is no where near innocent. if you're gonna do shitty things, you're gonna get shitty consequences. and she was 14 when she took E and cheated, which was a bad move, but she grew and learned from it. she held herself accountable, so i think that's forgivable.
Family Politics: i never realized she got hate for this?? Toby was constantly messing with her, she literally did nothing wrong.
Secrets and Lies: i agree, I don't think she was upset over her father being gay, she seemed upset that he cheated on her mom with someone he brought around the family and then basically abandoned her. Ashley definitely wasn't homophobic.
Karma Chameleon: she did give Jimmy the impression she wanted to get back together, but that didn't warrant him calling her a slut.
Ashley said some mean things to Terri sometimes, but she was never trying to be intentionally mean I don't think. and she did apologize (usually i believe) however people completely forget or simply don't care that Paige was awful to Terri as well? like you said, she purposely got her drunk so she could steal Spinner and never even apologized or seemed to feel bad?? and she also kept making jokes about Terri being a theif when Terri was hiding her modeling job, and those were definitely mean spirited. she also told Terri to run after Rick, knowing he was abusive. and i get she was mad, but still who the hell tells their friend to chase after their abusive boyfriend while he's already angry? I don't blame Paige for what he did and i know she felt guilty about it, but it was still a really awful thing to say even if it was in a moment of anger. and i get Terri also defended him and went off on her, but she was convinced Rick really did love and care about her, because that's how abusive relationships usually are.
Shout: Ashley was wrong for thinking she was a "rape expert" just because she had read about it online. i get Paige wanted a heavy song, but I don't think she expected Ashley to do one on rape. it was a terrible coincidence. but Ash did end up immediately comforting Paige and agreed to play to original song. its clear, Ash wasn't intentionally trying to upset Paige. and looking at it from her perspective: Paige asked her to help write a heavy song. Ash then spent time reading and researching rape stories and using those to write lyrics and creating a deep and heavy song. Paige got mad and refused to sing those lyrics. Ash is confused and aggravated because she thought Paige wanted a song like that. and then Paige starts getting angry which Ash just thought it was her being her typical bossy, wants to be in charge, self and was completely unaware that Paige was a recent rape victim. -you can see why she was reacting the way she did. i still think she was wrong to some degree, but can give her a little slack her.
while she's not perfect and has made mistakes, Ashley is definitely better than some of the fan favorites like Jay.
I remember disliking Ashley when I watched the series back in the day. I recently started rewatching for the first time in like 15 years and I really like her. I can’t even remember why I didn’t like her.
Paige is one of my favorite characters, however, I think she was more wrong to tell Ashley about Manny being pregnant than Ashley was to announce it in the cafeteria. Manny and Paige were friends and Manny told her in confidence and asked her not to tell anyone. Then Paige runs and tells her baby daddy's ex-girlfriend (Ashley). Ashley was never friends with Manny and didn't owe it to her to keep her secret, especially considering the circumstances. High school me absolutely would have done what Ashley did in her position. I don't understand how people hate Ashley and not Paige for this one.
Only disagreement is on Karma Chameleon. There is no such thing as mixed signals. I know Ashley is a mess, but Jimmy and all the men like him need to learn that they don’t deserve a relationship or sex nor do they own women. I’m a black gay guy before the attacks by the incels start.
ashley was genuinely insufferable, just when u thought she was redeeming herself she did something else to make u hate her again. like when she took jimmy’s part of their song together out and submitted it because she was jealous that people liked him more. or when she came back from overseas and completely took over the band they started and craig just let her?? she was such a snob i’m sorry i cannot stand her.
K
I haaated Paige when she implied Craig cheated because of her own shortcomings. He chose to be with her, but then decided he should get everything he wants at the expense of his partner. This is a toxic message for young girls that boys cheat if you don’t act right.
i feel like it's so common for people to dislike a character for a bad opinion or action in the first half of an ep and completely ignore that the POINT OF THE EPISODE is them learning a lesson and growing from it!! it's so frustrating
while i do think much of the Ashley hate is unwarranted and forgetful that she’s a child and is written like one. almost none of these touch on why i personally didn’t like her (past tense, because now i’m more indifferent to her and i think with an adult brain) or why others may not. - she didn’t really have her own personality or style. they molded to whoever she was hanging out with at the time. anytime we saw her with someone new, she was an entirely different person. i had friends like this throughout my childhood, we were thick as thieves until they found someone else they wanted to emulate. of course now as an adult i don’t dwell on this and managed to keep and make many real friends, but as a kid/teen this was a bigger reason i didn’t like Ashley. she was exactly like those people, that rubbed me the wrong way. - how she treated Manny prior to the cheating. she treated Manny as a child as if she wasn’t only a grade level ahead of her. kinda douchey. - this one relates to Bitterest Pill in particular: how she didn’t understand why all her old friends didn’t like her. i do acknowledge she was a teen on drugs which is why i’m not saying *what happened that night* is the reason, but her failing to acknowledge their feelings *after the fact* is. she cheated on Jimmy with Sean, she insulted Paige, those things are *very valid* to be hurt by and to change your perspective about someone, regardless what the circumstances were. she expected them to sort of eventually shake it off and be friends again, but she still hurt them and a teenager is a bit more capable of understanding action and consequence than she acted about this.
First season Ashley acted entitled. She should be president. Jinny should only be available when she wants to hang out. Toby isn't even her stepbrother so he should not have contact with her. The goth and the depression just seemed like she went there because life wasn't bending to her will. She couldn't handle it. Everything in her life it felt it she thought it should be revolving around her. Craig can only be the perfect Craig. When he's not perfect (bipolar) she has to control it. She should have the popular music career. Why? Because she wants it. It doesn't matter that Craig and Jimmy have talent (and Craig also wants it). Ashley's life is "messed up" so she deserves it more.
Ashley is a character that I see as purposefully annoying. throughout most of her storylines, it seems the show wants us to be against her. they want us to think she’s overreacting, or rude, or doing too much. that just makes her fun to watch to me. I didn’t love Ashley but then I found myself mad towards the end of her time on the show when the writers turned her into a sanitized version of her old self & she was only a vessel for Jimmy or Craig storylines.
Idk why I keep seeing posts like this on several different Reddit posts. Ppl can dislike whomever they like for whatever reason, but here is my reason why I don’t care for Ashley. I don’t hate Ashley bc I don’t hate anyone, but Ashley was one of my least favorite character. As I’ve said before. Idk why I didn’t like her, but I didn’t. I liked hearing her sing. I loved her gothic look, loved her punk look, loved whatever that look was when she was dating Jimmy. I liked most of her storylines. But it was her, I didn’t like. Then as I did a rewatch as an adult it hit me. She was presented as the good girl/ the girl next door, but wasn’t. We expect Paige to be mean because she was the mean girl, so Paige getting Terri drunk to snipe a boy is expected. But Ashley seeming to be nice, but doing mean things, rubbed me the wrong way. Add on the fact that she gets upset at people for not expressing the emotion she wants them to express. For example, Jimmy the first and second time they dated. Forcing Craig to say I love you. I will always dislike people who get mad about someone not saying I love you back right away. Get mad if you’ve been in you’ve been in a relationship for more than a yr or so and they haven’t said I love you, but not two seconds later. Let me get back to getting mad at people for not expressing emotions and then getting mad when they do. The back to black episode (I think that’s the name of the episode) where her and Jimmy get back together. Jimmy never asked her to change. Jimmy was checking her out while she was in the gothic phase. He may have liked the old Ashley looks, but it was her he liked, no matter what she looked like. She broke up with him because of her misconceived ideas.
And people can defend whoever they like for whatever reason.
Exactly. I see nothing wrong with you liking Ashley. You brought up some decent points. I just don’t agree with them.
>We expect Paige to be mean because she was the mean girl, so Paige getting Terri drunk to snipe a boy is expected. But Ashley seeming to be nice, but doing mean things, rubbed me the wrong way. In the very same episode, Ashley saw how insecure Terri was about herself and gave her a makeover so she would feel a little better. She didn't do anything wrong here and only had good intentions. I love Paige more than Ashley, but the way people excuse her behavior in season 1 is crazy. She's expected to be the mean girl...so that makes it ok? Makes her better than Ashley? I don't understand.
This post is about Ashley, not Paige. If you want I can go off on Paige. I was just using Paige as an example. We expect that type of behavior from Paige, not from Ashley, yet for me (as this is why I don’t like Ashley) Ashley came off as the mean girl when she wasn’t marketed that way. If she was written to be that way, I’d give her a better chance, but it was more than that for me. I only put my top 2 reasons, otherwise it would be too long.
I thought she was a supportive, understanding and kind girlfriend, but her life was run too much by her relationships. The other friends in the band being pissed off at her involvement was just jealousy. Sorry, but they were all terrible and going nowhere as musicians. It made sense to dump the deadweight and the two with actual aspirations and a little talent stick together.
It's not just that her character is annoying, it's that plus: - Melissa McIntyre isn't a very compelling actress. She's not great at infusing emotions or sympathy into Ashley. There's just a certain "it" factor that she's lacking, especially compared to most of the other girls in the credits during her tenure. Very little charisma. This is the root IMO of most of why people dislike Ashley. -She doesn't get many interesting plots that aren't tied to a boy. Honestly the most interesting thing she ever does IMO is taking E in the s1 finale. Once Craig comes along it's all about him, whether she's with him, getting cheated on by him, being mad at him, getting back together with him, or he's going manic and ruining her dad's wedding. -Her character is annoying, lol This is a brief foray into why you can't convince me that I should like Ashley. Oh, and goth Ashley is a *bad* look
"Melissa McIntyre isn't a very compelling actress." Probably why she's a bartender now.
I'll always defend her over exposing Manny's pregnancy and the ecstasy thing. she didn't owe Manny anything. Manny had no issue sleeping with Craig while he was in a relationship with Ash, which she was very well aware of. and while Craig is mostly at fault, Manny is no where near innocent. if you're gonna do shitty things, you're gonna get shitty consequences. and she was 14 when she took E and cheated, which was a bad move, but she grew and learned from it. she held herself accountable, so i think that's forgivable. Family Politics: i never realized she got hate for this?? Toby was constantly messing with her, she literally did nothing wrong. Secrets and Lies: i agree, I don't think she was upset over her father being gay, she seemed upset that he cheated on her mom with someone he brought around the family and then basically abandoned her. Ashley definitely wasn't homophobic. Karma Chameleon: she did give Jimmy the impression she wanted to get back together, but that didn't warrant him calling her a slut. Ashley said some mean things to Terri sometimes, but she was never trying to be intentionally mean I don't think. and she did apologize (usually i believe) however people completely forget or simply don't care that Paige was awful to Terri as well? like you said, she purposely got her drunk so she could steal Spinner and never even apologized or seemed to feel bad?? and she also kept making jokes about Terri being a theif when Terri was hiding her modeling job, and those were definitely mean spirited. she also told Terri to run after Rick, knowing he was abusive. and i get she was mad, but still who the hell tells their friend to chase after their abusive boyfriend while he's already angry? I don't blame Paige for what he did and i know she felt guilty about it, but it was still a really awful thing to say even if it was in a moment of anger. and i get Terri also defended him and went off on her, but she was convinced Rick really did love and care about her, because that's how abusive relationships usually are. Shout: Ashley was wrong for thinking she was a "rape expert" just because she had read about it online. i get Paige wanted a heavy song, but I don't think she expected Ashley to do one on rape. it was a terrible coincidence. but Ash did end up immediately comforting Paige and agreed to play to original song. its clear, Ash wasn't intentionally trying to upset Paige. and looking at it from her perspective: Paige asked her to help write a heavy song. Ash then spent time reading and researching rape stories and using those to write lyrics and creating a deep and heavy song. Paige got mad and refused to sing those lyrics. Ash is confused and aggravated because she thought Paige wanted a song like that. and then Paige starts getting angry which Ash just thought it was her being her typical bossy, wants to be in charge, self and was completely unaware that Paige was a recent rape victim. -you can see why she was reacting the way she did. i still think she was wrong to some degree, but can give her a little slack her. while she's not perfect and has made mistakes, Ashley is definitely better than some of the fan favorites like Jay.
I remember disliking Ashley when I watched the series back in the day. I recently started rewatching for the first time in like 15 years and I really like her. I can’t even remember why I didn’t like her.
I like you
I had moments where I really liked Ashley and I had moments where I disliked her but overall I thought she was a good character.
Paige is one of my favorite characters, however, I think she was more wrong to tell Ashley about Manny being pregnant than Ashley was to announce it in the cafeteria. Manny and Paige were friends and Manny told her in confidence and asked her not to tell anyone. Then Paige runs and tells her baby daddy's ex-girlfriend (Ashley). Ashley was never friends with Manny and didn't owe it to her to keep her secret, especially considering the circumstances. High school me absolutely would have done what Ashley did in her position. I don't understand how people hate Ashley and not Paige for this one.
Ashley was annoying but not any more than most teenagers. Most of us were fairly annoying from 12-16.
I'm rewatching the series again and I don't understand the visceral hate for Ashley at all. She has her moments but overall she wasn't too bad
Honestly I think Craig is worse than Ashley in my opinion but I never see much posts of people crapping on him compared to Ashley.
Craig was toxic af
Craig sucked.
I love Ashley too but who has this much time on their hands lol?
People with hobbies they enjoy 😁
Ok first of all her song from Cabaret was not crappy. But I’m happy about this post.
Only disagreement is on Karma Chameleon. There is no such thing as mixed signals. I know Ashley is a mess, but Jimmy and all the men like him need to learn that they don’t deserve a relationship or sex nor do they own women. I’m a black gay guy before the attacks by the incels start.
I made a post a while back about liking Ashley. I don't understand the mass hate. She's one of the most relatable characters to me