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Maskydoo — Mass Effect: Hide And Seek P2.4
Published: 2014-07-25 13:00:01 +0000 UTC; Views: 18640; Favourites: 156; Downloads: 0
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UPDATE: This version of the comic is scrapped for now. However, I will be revisiting it later, starting over from the beginning.Mass Effect: Hide And Seek Pages:
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Holy crap, a page that actually went up when it was supposed to. That never happens.
Edit: Dang it. It's only after something is up that I notice mistakes. Dang it. Dang it. Annoying.
Edit 2: For some reason, the morning this was scheduled to post, I kept having dreams that I would check my phone to read the comments, only to find people talking about nothing but how much they hate the page. In my dreams, I never responded and left the comment be, wondering why they bothered to comment at all if they weren't going to offer anything useful.
Edit 3: Made those changes.
To make this, I used character models in XNA Lara and screenshots from the game. Drawn and colored in Adobe Photoshop on a Wacom Bamboo Create tablet.
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Comments: 82
I didn't like Ash either, when I first played ME years ago. But I thought about it and realized that it was only after playing through Virmire the first time that I decided not to like her. I realized that I only didn't like her as a way to justify killing her, rather than anything to do with who she really is.
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I didn't liked her attitude towards all aliens.
Even if I don't remember who died first time I played the mission on Virmire
I have to admit that it was strong stuff.
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I don't think her attitude about attitudes was actually what people make it out to be. She had concerns about Shepard just randomly picking people who were neither part of the alliance nor even human, and brining them onto a ship with top secret material, without ever so much as a background check. In the real world, that would be a HUGE no-no. I think her concerns were legitimate.
Then later she says that she believes the council will ultimately abandon them to save their own face, leaving them to the "bear" of her analogy. She was saying that they wouldn't be doing it out of racism, but because they would naturally favor themselves. They would abandon humanity just like a human would abandon their dog. And she was RIGHT, because the council was constantly screwing Shepard and humanity over, even into the sequels.
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Sorry for the late reply.
Maybe you're right. I think in ME1 my dislike wasn't that big.
It was really bad on Horizon. When she met Shep again and her attitude was crap in my eyes.
And regarding the council she was unfortunately right.
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Not only are their expressions awesome, you got their mannerisms down pat (at least, as we see in the later games)!
I can just imagine Ashley's daughters, grown and ready to face the galaxy. They somehow end up working with Wrex to kick butt. He'd enjoy the "different flavor," of fighting with his old comrade's girls. That'd be so frickin' awesome to watch!
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You... just gave me an AWESOME mental picture! If I had any points, I'd offer to pay you to draw that.
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Maybe it's a good thing you don't, then. I'm a stick-figure kind of girl, unfortunately If I could draw, that's definitely one I would draw for free. It needs to be done!
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Deviantart couldn't handle that level of awesome.
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Jajajajajajaja I just LOVED the way Wrex yells about raising strong female warriors and Ashley is all "Damn STRAIGHT they are going to be warriors!!" I love the expressions and the colors, please dont stooop!
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Thanks.
I hope to get my next page up soon, but I've been kind of distracted with video games again so it's very late. :/
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You have captured Wrex and Ashleys expressions perfectly!
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haha, so true Ashley ^^
I almost regret that I choosed you to the death...
good comic, keep it up
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*sigh* I really miss this Ashley... I liked her a lot in ME1.
Nice comic
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This looks great, a proof that you have improved a lot with these pages keep up the good work!
Finally, someone who also likes Ash instead of just showing her as a xenophobe, annoying kind of a person, you are showing her as an actual interesting character this is great!
I always thought that Wrex acted a lot grumpier and less talkative in the first Mass Effect game so I'm not sure if his behaviour showed here would match with Wrex's personality in the first game but this is just an opinion.
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You're right. He is acting more like he did in later games. I couldn't really do much with him otherwise.
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Yeah that reminds me when I was playing ME1 for the first time, Wrex died in Virmire by Ashley's hands, in any case, I find your version very interesting
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LOL I never kill Wrex. He's just too much fun.
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Well, I didn't want him to die I was just unlucky (things happen) and I agree with you he's too much fun!, citadel DLC feels different without him
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woaw...this is absolutly awesome
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Yeah... this is more in line with how he acts in ME3 than ME1
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this........this makes sense and is non-lores so hard.....i just have to love it. HUZZA!!! WILLIAMS AN REX SHIPPING! IM ALL FOR IT!!!!
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That's very nice how you managed to show both sides of Ashley, the woman and the soldier! 
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Thanks!
She is female and a solider, yes. Is Kaidan two-sided, a solider and a man? I say that indeed, he is, among many other things. Sometimes I wonder if anyone would even think of it that way. We kind of expect men to be all kinds of things and rarely think that any of those would be incompatible. But when it comes to women, it seems many writers don't know what to do. If they aren't some stereotypical house-wife, writers often try to give them some other defining trait - but they often only really get one. I often see "strong-female characters," but I rarely see "strong characters, female." It's like people cant think of women as being as complicated and multi-faceted as men. Even women seem to have trouble writing women. I have made it my goal to write characters as if I don't even know their gender, unless they're having some very gender-specific conversation. Everything Ashley has said could have as easily come from a man.
I'm actually a US Army veteran myself, and, in case it wasn't already known, female. I've served with many people over the years, men and women, and everyone is different - even among soldiers. Kaidan Alenko will have a different answer to this question when he is asked, and Commander Shepard, when she appears in this comic in a few pages, will have her own answer as well and it won't match Ashley's. This is actually kind of the point that I'm trying to make with these pages. I'm still trying to set the scene for the pages to come, so this seemingly pointless conversation serves to demonstrate how different these people are despite being of the same profession.
Anyway, I'm remembering Ashley's famous quote from the first game: “Just because I can drill you between the eyes at a hundred meters, doesn't mean I can’t like sensitive stuff.”
Ashley is so much more than just some 2-dimensional brute with a gun who just happens to have boobs. That's what I like about her. She is well written in the games. So I try my best to handle her as the complicated and interesting character that she is.
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You're welcome! And sorry for the late reply!
That's quite an interesting point you've raised and I think you're right about it: there's a lot of one-dimensional female characters out there, proving that apparently it's quite difficult to write a female character who happens to be realistically complicated! Makes one wonder whether authors actually write their female characters that way on purpose, maybe to make them "easier" to understand than their counterparts in RL (joking of course! 
Anyway, I think you've done a very good job with Ashley here, she doesn't feel like a one-sided woman and I get the feeling that your own Army experience comes in handy for writing her so well!
BTW, just noticed there's a new page of the comic available and that's also very good! I really need to start following this on a regular basis!
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Anita Sarkesian had a great video about Ms. Male Character about how female characters in games are often just deviations on male characters, with their only defining feature being that they're female. About half way through her video, she talks about the koopalings in the Mario Bros games. Each of the koopalings has some creative design and unique traits that set the apart from the other six siblings. Six of the siblings are male, and each has a different personality from the others. The only female coopaling, however, has no unique design other than gender totems (heels, jewelry, use of pink) and her only character trait is basically "she's the girl one." That's it. I'm not sure how accurate Sarkesian's analyis of this is in this case, because I'm not familiar enough with Mario to know much about the koopalings, but I have seen character design similar to what she has described. All of the male characters were different, some were smart, some were manic, some were brutish. They were all male, but not defined as male. But the female coopaling is just defined by being female. As if males could be any number of things but females are only ever one thing. As if maleness was a default, but femaleness sits among character traits as a deviation on the default. It's weird. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYqYLf…
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I always liked Ash as well.I always saved her because she is pure murder on the battlefield.I think almost all female characters(if you can include Asari) in Mass effect are pretty well written,and usually pretty complex as well.Being female is hardly enough to describe Liara, Samantha, Miranda,Samara,EDI or Tali...And don't even get me started on Jack...
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I always kept Kaidan. He didn't have Ash's stats, but what he did have was variety of ways to mess someone up.
For a while, after playing Virmire for the first time, I developed a problem with Ash. In re-plays, I wouldn't use her all through the game, all because I knew I would have to let her die later. To justify that, I did what other people did, and found dumb reasons to hate her. It wasn't fair, and I'm glad I grew out of it. She's really a good and interesting character.
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It never occurred to me that these two would have much to talk about... but they would have similar, awesome parenting styles, if either of them ever got around to havingg anyone to parent.
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Glad to see someone respects Ashley. And you nailed her perfectly here
(You and Ersbeth need to teach me the secret to your success, I'm a failure at drawing 
Oh . . . and one last thing:
: Shepard!!
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I like Ash. I think people demonize whichever party member they kill so they feel better about having to kill them. :/
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I didn't demonize over the party member tho. but then again. Im a bit weird. I just thought it was sad. and took a few beers to his honour.xD
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Oh I don't mean that you did, only that some people do and I think that's where some character-basing comes from, and sadly I've been guilty of that myself.
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Agreed . . . though I felt sincerely bad for Kadian, thought I could save them both
Out of the entire trilogy . . . the only character I don't give a dam about is Allers . . . my Sheps' want to shoot her in the face
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Supposedly, somewhere in development, it was planned to be possible to save both, although I don't know how. There in an unused audio file on Youtube somewhere.
I never had a problem with Allers. Actually, I don't think I really had a problem with any of the characters.
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Oh, hail women power! (sorry, I tend to get carried away lately when this topic arises).
This pages keeps the same level of quality you've give to the previous page and I will not stop saying that I'm delighted to see this improvement! Your use of texture is rather accurate (aren't they hard?). And of course William's women are not to be treated as only ladies in despair...
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Thanks!
As for textures, I have to admit that I'm using Photoshop filters to achieve that effect on Wrex's armor, his skin, and the background. Ashley's camouflage pattern is actually taken from a stock image I found on Google and then edited to suit my purposes. Although, the lines on the sides panels of Ashley's uniform, in her hair, and on the gray under-armor bit of Wrex's outfit are always drawn by hand.
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No problem!
You're doing a great job, and that's what filters are made for, aren't they? And the same goes for textures.
You're really improved on those lines! When do you expect to post the next page?
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Thanks!
I'm trying for a new post every Friday, since DA now allows scheduling. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to actually keep that schedule up, but next week will go as planned. The next page is actually already done and has been since Saturday. It's scheduled to go live on Friday at 0700 US Mountain time zone.
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