Web Video / Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?

Ashly & Anthony Burch

Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?, aka HAWP, is a video series by Destructoid, (formerly) hosted on Gametrailers.

It is presented in short episodes, usually only a few minutes long. Any given episode typically begins with Ashly Burch's older brother, Anthony, asking his sister what game she's currently playing, whereupon she responds and the siblings (and sometimes their friends) conduct a skit/parody of said game. Said skit can consist of her acting as the game's characters, putting herself into the game's situation and acting completely unlike the characters (she'd rather play Connect Four with herself than fight the horde) or even just sitting and yelling at the game while she plays it.

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Tropes that apply to Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?:

• Adventures in Comaland: In the Driver: San Francisco episode, The Stinger reveals most of the episode to have been a coma-induced hallucination on Ash's part.
• All Men Are Perverts: Anthony and Papa Burch buying Bone Town.
• Ambiguously Gay:
  • Anthony, who gets married to Ashley Davis... and refuses to have sex with her, until she cosplays as Big Boss... and writes disturbing Gears of War yaoi after that.
  • In the Quantum Conundrum episode it's shown that his nightmare is his wife asking to have intercourse. His fantasy is a half dressed guy asking the same thing... And his wife watches.
  • Ash:
    • She's a fan of boobs—as seen in the "Noir" ^note (where she agrees to help Blavis because of her "half-decent rack"), "Lara Croft," "E3 Booth Babes" and "Chrono Trigger" ^note (typing out "80085" on a calculator) episodes, and is a major plot point in Season 4 finale.
    • In the trailer for her DLC pack for Saints Row IV, Ash is taken on a tour of Volition headquarters, spies a cardboard cutout of Shaundi, and takes it into the bathroom for some alone time.
    • Most of the Kerbal Space Program episode is Ashly expressing her admiration for Ashley Davis' ass using space analogies.
• And Starring: Ashley Davis always gets this credit, even though she appears in the larger majority of episodes by now.
• Armed with Canon: In the Borderlands 2 episode, this is how Ashly!Anthony celebrates that whatever he writes becomes canon.
  Ashly!Anthony: I can create universes with my motherfucking mind!
• As Himself: All 4 of the mains: Anthony, both Ashl(e)ys and Papa.
• Bait-and-Switch: In "Noir", Ashley recruits Ashly to find a man who is "a lover and a brother" to her. She's talking about her Mario figurine, not Anthony.
• Big Head Mode: In the NFL Blitz episode, Mama Burch said that she put in the Big Head code into the game when she was pregnant with Anthony and is still limping from it to this day.
• Bilingual Bonus: Anthony and Ashly's (in-universe) grandmother in Rayman Origins speaks actual Arabic at the beginning. She's even credited as Teta in the credits which is Arabic for "Grandma."
• Black Comedy:
  • The Katamari Damacy episode in which the punchline ends with "Sometimes life isn't funny".
  • The Monkey Island episode, where Papa Burch finds the airport massacre in Modern Warfare 2 hilarious. It would be a Dude, Not Funny!, if not for the lampshading by Ashly's horrified face.
  • The NBA Jam episode where the Burch clan are using a baby as a basketball. Gets even funnier when Papa Burch slamdunks the baby into a garbage can.
• Body Horror: Played with in the FEAR 3 episode: the only thing Ash finds scary is how Anthony's body becomes disfigured when playing AR Games on the 3DS with the AR card on his body.
• Boring Insult: Even while there's plenty of stuff to see and do on her trip to Volition's offices, Ash is quickly bored of everything before her.
• Breakout Character: Papa Burch increasingly gets more screen time than Anthony and Ashley.
• Butt-Monkey: Anthony is usually on the receiving end of this.
• Call-Back: The audio clip parody of Paul Blart: Mall Cop used in the Season 5 premiere shows up again in the Season Finale. In this case, it involves Ashly literally going back in time.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Ash herself.
  • Ashley Davis, who rarely seems aware of what's going on around her.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Played for Laughs. Ashly in particular tends to revel in violence for the sake of violence.
  Anthony (after Ashly makes Nathan Drake's head explode): WHAT THE F**K! He was gonna leave!
  Ashly: But then his head wouldn't have exploded.
  Anthony: That's the point! You could have gotten him to leave without using violence.
  Ashly: *beat*
  Ashly: But then his head wouldn't have exploded.
• Cool Old Guy: The siblings' father, Mr. Burch. He plays games just like his kids do, and resembles Big Boss.
• Crossdresser: Ash is fond of wearing suits (surprisingly, in "Noir", she isn't wearing a suit, but does have fake stubble), and dressed up as Francis from Left 4 Dead in one episode. Papa Burch and her sister-in-law Davis dressed up as, respectively, Zoey and Louis from the same game, while Anthony has dressed up as Sakura from Street Fighter.
• Curbstomp Battle: Anthony is on the receiving end of this from Ash, Davis and Papa in The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle Earth
• Deadpan Snarker: Papa Burch, full stop.
• Despair Event Horizon: Played for Black Comedy laughs in the Borderlands 2 episode when Ash!Anthony feels he'll never write a game as witty or hilarious as Portal 2
• Disproportionate Retribution: In the Adventure Games episode Marcus Fenix tries to kill the Burch family for calling him gay.
• The Dog Bites Back: The Yoshi's Cookie episode, where Anthony figures out that Ashly's latest fit of weirdness can be exploited by deliberately placing four objects in a row.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: In their (now taken down) Magfest 9 promo video, Ashley Davis mentions that John St. John will be there. Ashly Burch subsequently says she will rape him. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: In the Kirby Super Star episode, Ash and Papa get into a brick breaking contest for all the ice cream. Papa's own punch splits the earth so far down the middle it causes tsunamis across the world!
• Everyone Has Standards: Papa Burch may be a sociopathic Cloud Cuckoo Lander who regularly celebrates whenever one of his kids gets harmed or killed but he is disappointed with Anthony when he kills someone because they're brown
• Exact Words: When a fan asked them to cosplay Sakura from Street Fighter, they weren't specific on which one of them had to dress up.
• Fake Band: A literal one in the Rock Band episode, moreso by the fact that they don't even own Rock Band, but rather an incompatible series of instruments from different Music Games.
• Fan Disservice:
  • The Street Fighter IV episode has Anthony looking distinctly unsexy in a Sakura outfit.
  • The "Hot Slutz" episode has Anthony resentfully wearing a bikini; Ash decides he needs more cleavage, so pieces of paper are very sloppily stuffed into the top.
  • Anthony again in "A Death in the Family, part 2," where he's Princess Peach.
• The Gadfly: Usually people whose names aren't Anthony
• Gag Penis: In the Civilization episode, Ash crashes the game draped in an American flag and carrying the Penetrator
• Gender-Inverted Trope:
  • The entire Hot Slutz video uses this to underline its Aesop about how Sex Sells undermines gaming journalism.
  • The Tomb Raider review has Ashly kick Anthony off the chair and chant "titties titties titties titties titties," but this is Played for Laughs and largely serves as a segue to that episode's Aesop (namely, that nothing's wrong with the Most Common Superpower as long as it isn't the character's entire personality).
• George Jetson Job Security: Each Gearbox Software episode ends with Anthony getting fired for Ash's misdeeds, including leaking info to Kotaku, announcing free blow jobs, and punching the CEO of Gearbox in the balls.
• A God Am I: In Anthony's retelling of getting the writing job for Borderlands 2, Ashly!Anthony realizes that he's Armed with Canon.
  Ashly!Anthony: I can create motherfucking universes with my mind!
• G-Rated Drug: The Stardew Valley episode has Ash snorting up Doritos like it's cocaine.
• Gratuitous German: The Little King's Story episode has this, since it's also a Downfall parody.
• Groin Attack:
  • Papa Burch shoots Anthony below the belt in the Red Dead Redemption episode.
  • Ash punches Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford in the groin as punishment for the ending to Borderlands.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": In the Quantum Conundrum episode:
  Anthony: Yeah, but come on-
  Ashly: You lost me after "butt cum".
• I Love the Dead: In the Undertale episode, President Undertale makes it a mandatory law that all Americans date skeletons.
• It's Snowing Cocaine: In Game Analyst, Ash is a "Game Analyst" in the 80s who just dives face first into a mountain of cocaine... only to end up losing her job once it turns out the Atari is a bigger hit than the arcade.
• It Will Never Catch On: Game Analyst has Ash as one of these being so wrong about everything she says won't catch on, descending into further drug addictions played for laughs.
• Jerkass:
  • Ashly, whose antics generally involve someone getting hurt.
  • Papa Burch has some very dark tastes, and has a very low (and justified) opinion of his children.^note In-character, of course.
• Lecherous Licking: Beware: if you break the rules of Local Multiplayer Etiquette, Papa Burch will lick your face.
• Minecart Madness: One of the things Ash sells to the Mayor of the city in the Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze episode.
• Missing Mom: In a way. Mama Burch is just camera shy.
• Most Common Superpower: Discussed Trope. In their opinion, there's nothing wrong with fanservice, but a character needs to have personality traits beyond being sexy.
• Neck Snap: The Stardew Valley has Bobby Kotick!Ash deliver these to Anthony and another unlucky executive in a meeting to jump in on Stardew Valley's bandwagon. At the end of the episode, she does it to herself!
• Nintendo Hard: The Trauma Center episode includes a Take That! against Atlus:
  "I never beat Trauma Center!"
  "Nobody did, it's a fuckin' Atlus game."
• Noir Episode: The appropriately-named "Noir," the episode they did for YouTube Geek Week. The game they're spoofing ends up being Mario Is Missing!
• No Man Should Have This Power: The Chrono Trigger episode has Ash destroy her time machine while shouting this.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: The "Peachy" episode, which has Ash talking about why Princess Peach should have more respect as a character, reveals the reason she's able to speak so eloquently about this issue...is cause she drank dish soap and is about to have an aneurysm. She puts her keys in the invisible car, makes some vroom vroom sounds, then falls down.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: During Gearbox Part 2, as Brent lists off all the eclectic things he does, a big subtitle goes up:
  "ALL OF THIS IS ACTUALLY TRUE"
• N-Word Privileges: One of the rules discussed in Local Multiplayer Etiquette is don't be racist unless it's to your own race.
• Occular Gushers: The 2015 Emotional Challenge has Ash going through some emotional games. She ends up breaking down hard on That Dragon, Cancer.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in the The Sims episode. Anthony proposes to Ashley while his sister Ashly is in the room.
• Only Sane Man: Anthony, who plays the Straight Man to all of Ashly's hijinx.
  • Funnily enough, Ashly herself played this role when she was with Papa Burch in the Live from 3COM video.

• Ashly was unaware that squadmates could die during the Suicide Mission.

• Precision F-Strike: In the Adventure Games episode when Ashly gets sick of being berated by Anthony for her violent tendencies and him talking about Guybrush Threepwood she says:
  Ashly': "You know what? FUCK GUYBRUSH THREEPWOOD!"
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: In the Driver: San Francisco episode, Ash, who's in a coma, possesses Davis's body and has her transfer all her money to Ash's account, then makes her blow her brains out.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Ashly, whose wacky antics often involve brutality to her surroundings.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Papa Burch spending four hours to wreck Ash's Animal Crossing town. It only takes her an hour to fix the damage.
• Reality Warper: In the Quantum Conundrum episode, Ash uses it to great effect on Anthony by putting him in things like a cupcake dimension, AIDS dimension and even nightmare and fantasy dimensions.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Papa Burch has extensive knowledge of Twilight, and has great skill with "girl games".^note For instance, a Flash game about dressing up a boy for the prom.
• Running Gag: Plenty, such as Ash's habit of making gay jokes about her brother, and Papa Burch's utter unflappability.
  • See also: Jerkass above.
• Screaming at Squick: In the NFL Blitz episode, the group gang up on Anthony for having a big head. When he gets to asking Papa, he says he's like a bobblehead that he doesn't want to cum on. That gets both Anthony and Ash screaming.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When Anthony sees Ashley Davis strangling Ashly he slowly backs out of the room.
  • From the Mass Effect episode, we have this gem from Papa Burch:
    Papa Burch: This is not Fuddruckers, I was promised Fuddruckers, I'm going to Fuddruckers.
• Season Finale: Five to date, inspired by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, adventure games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game & Super Mario Bros., "gamer girls," and Chrono Trigger respectively.
• Shout-Out: In two different episodes (Yoshi's Island and Elite Beat Agents), Anthony can be seen reading the trade paperback (and trade hardcover) of Watchmen.
  • Anthony wears Captain Hammer and Anti-Skub shirts—from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and The Perry Bible Fellowship, respectively—in a couple of episodes.
  • In the Minecraft episode, Ash's player skin is Super Mario and Anthony's is The Tenth Doctor complete with 3-D glasses.
• Silent Offer: In "E3 2011, part II", Ash seemingly makes an offer to someone on a piece of paper. When he unfolds the paper, there is a childish drawing instead of the expected offer.
• Single Tear: Papa Burch cries a Manly Tear in the Viva Piñata episode.
• Something We Forgot: The Chrono Trigger episode has Ash going back in time to try and fix Anthony and Davis' relationship. While she invested in stocks for the future and messed around, she forgot to fix their relationship.
• Speaking Simlish: The Banjo-Kazooie episode where everyone speaks like this until the stinger at the end.
• Special Guest: Freddie Wong in the Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze episode as the "Hype Man".
• Stepford Smiler: Ashley (Davis). Played for Laughs as all she does is smile no matter what. Up to and including her 3DS being stolen right from her hands.
• Squick: In "Local Multiplayer Etiquette," Ash was about to shout about what she's gonna do to Anthony while losing, only for Davis to tell her to use her inside voice. After she whispers it, Anthony is quite disgusted!
• The Stinger: Most episodes have one.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Anthony is the straight man, taking games an important, artistic form. Ash is the wise guy, making cutting comments and jabs at whatever logical or interesting points her brother makes.
• Suckiness Is Painful: The Indiana Jones episode starts off with Anthony tying Ash down so she can watch the first three movies. Then Papa comes in and ties Anthony down and makes them watch Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which has the same effect as staring into the Ark of the Covenant.
• There Are No Therapists: Double Subverted in the Mass Effect 2 episode. Anthony calls a therapist for a session, but Ashly doesn't care and Papa Burch gets mad at him due to not going to Fuddruckers.
• Time Slows Down: In the Quantum Conundrum episode, Ash makes time slow down while she's playing the game. She takes this opportunity to put make-up on Anthony's face, then try out other dimensions.
• Too Dumb to Live: In the "Once Upon A Pixel" episode (which started the Spin-Off video series with the same name), Papa Burch tells Ashly and Anthony that he needs to go out, and is dropping them off at daycare. Anthony starts to protest, but then notices Ashly:
  Anthony: Ash, what the hell are you doing?
  Ashly: [sticking a fork into a plug socket] INNNFAMOUS!
  Anthony: NO!!
  [cuts to Anthony and Ash in daycare]
• Universally Beloved Leader: Undertale is this after being elected President of the United States.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Anthony accuses Uncharted 2: Among Thieves of being this to Firefly, and Nathan Drake of being an Expy of Captain Malcolm Reynolds.
• With Lyrics: From the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time episode:
  "E-po-na! Here's-your-song! Get-the-fuck right here!"
  "Zelda's haaat, why's it weeeird, she looks liiike a nun..."
  "Sa-ri-a is a kid, this is kinda vaaaguely pe-do-philic... and kinda gross..."
  • And again in "I Love Videogames", parodying the famous Discovery Channel ad.
• Women Are Wiser: Inverted. Anthony, the male of the duo, is morally superior to the female Ashly.
• Writer's Block: Ash!Anthony realizes that after spending so much time writing Borderlands 2, he doesn't know how to make a decent HAWP episode.

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