TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Ashley's Story
(aka: The Girl Next Door 2025)

Go To

Ashley's Story (Web Video)
If Ashley's the cruelest girl you'll ever meet... consider yourself lucky.

Ashley's Story is a WarioWare Dark Fic by Void which takes a very somber spin on everyone's favorite Cute Witch Ashley. The first video, The Girl Next Door, starts like a normal session of Ashley's microgames in WarioWare: Touched!, but something becomes very, very wrong as the player progresses. The second video, Hocus Pocus, appears to do similar for WarioWare: Smooth Moves, but doesn't take nearly as long for the darkness to creep back in.


The series contains examples of:

  • Abusive Parents: Ashley doesn't have a happy childhood, to say the least, as her parents despise her for not being normal, resort to physical punishment, lock her out of the house, and downright reject her at the end. Hocus Pocus implies it further comes from their religious beliefs scorning the use of magic.
  • Addressing the Player:
    • After the game crashes in The Girl Next Door, the player restarts it and realizes that "Ashley's Song" changed for a vocal log where Ashley apologizes to the player for the things they witnessed, explains that she still feels her parents' presence to this day, and that she feels guilty for being alive.
    • After the game crashes in Hocus Pocus, Ashley's dialogue on the select screen is replaced by three dots, and when the player opens it, they have a message from Red who thanks them (using the save file name, Robin) for helping Ashley calm down during her panic attack and where he considers himself to not be the best help for her.
  • Art Shift:
    • The fanmade microgames have a Deliberately Monochrome aesthetic, with only Ashley, the flowers, and the parents at the end the Boss stage in The Girl Next Door being colored.
    • The penultimate microgame in The Girl Next Door where Ashley begs her parents to let her back in the house goes for 3D, while all the previous microgames were 2D.
  • Broken Record:
    • "Ashley's Song" repeats during two meaningful verses: "Oh no, not again" repeats the "no" before going for the rest of the song (implying it relates Ashley's first attempt at making witchcraft which had Gone Horribly Wrong), and "I changed my teacher into a spoon" repeats the last word four times (implying Ashley was actually traumatized rather than amused by this event).
    • Both "Intro_crash.mov" and "misunderstanding.mov" have a moment where the audio glitches before the game crashes.
  • Burn the Witch!: The root of Ashley's trauma is implied to be a non-lethal version of this. There are several hints, especially in Hocus Pocus, that Ashley comes from a religious household that scorned her magical prowess (calling it a "sin", churches appearing a few times, mentioning they tried to make her "see the light"), ultimately resulting in her possibly being beaten with a rock before her eventual fate of being kicked out of her parents' house.
  • Cerebus Retcon:
    • In the original game, "Ashley's Song" is a Black Comedy song about Ashley being a reclusive girl who uses her powers for her own amusement, and whose Badbutt personality involves not caring about girly stuff like playing with dolls or combing her hair: all of these elements take a much darker tone here.
    • The reason Ashley lives alone is not because of her witchcraft formation, but because she was banished from her parents' house.
    • The "Don't get caught" microgame looks like the "Gamer" minigame from Game & Wario, but without the Lightmare Fuel elements.
  • Cute Witch: Ashley is already this, but two microgames show her displaying more cheerfulness that you would expect from her.
  • Dark Fic: Curiously, the horror isn't about evil stuff you would expect from Ashley (like the infamous "I have granted kids to hell"), but more about what she endured in her original family before settling in Diamond City.
  • Disguised Horror Story: The Girl Next Door pretends to be a video about secret microgames hidden in Touched!, only becoming disturbing on the last three microgames. Hocus Pocus appears to open with a similar premise, but doesn't pretend otherwise, not only leading with a content warning but also altering the opening cutscene to make Ashley have a trauma flashback.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: At one point, the parents tell Ashley "We tried to show you the light". It's very reminiscent of a conservative family who rejects their kid's passions and orientations.
  • Dramatic Wind: After the game restarts in Hocus Pocus, a blowing sound replaces the happy music of the single player select screen.
  • The Faceless: Ashley's parents only appear as Sinister Silhouettes, implying she's so scarred by their parenthood that she can't remember them properly.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: The ninth microgame and boss level in The Girl Next Door are impossible to win, because they're based on Ashley's backstory. And in her backstory, she wasn't able to keep her parents from rejecting her and tossing her out.
  • Foreshadowing: The Girl Next Door has microgames that stand from the artistic direction of Touched:
    • While the first monochrome microgame is pretty tame (dragging forms in the right order), its color palette is very unusual for a WarioWare game, even for a character like Ashley; it shows that this copy of Touched! is not a usual one.
    • The second monochrome microgame involves covering a window with a sheet so Ashley isn't caught by an adult: the following microgames clearly show what this means.
  • Heartbeat Soundtrack: The sound of Ashley's heartbeat can be heard in Hocus Pocus as more of her memories are revealed.
  • Hell Is That Noise: In The Girl Next Door, "Ashley's Song" becomes more and more distorted as the player progresses, and it's reduced to a white noise during the Boss stage.
  • I Have No Son!: The boss stage in the first episode ends with Ashley being rejected by her parents and the game crashing.
  • Ironic Echo: Ashley's parents blame her for not being a normal girl who plays with dolls or combs her hair.
  • Kids Are Cruel: In Hocus Pocus, the player fails the minigame "Skip It", which glitches to a memory of Ashley as a child who fell on the ground, crying and bleeding, with two kids mocking her.
  • Named In The Adaptation: Ashley's last name is revealed to be Redmond.
  • No Name Given: Played straight in The Girl Next Door, but averted in Hocus Pocus, where the player is named Robin. Justified as Smooth Moves allows the player to name their save file while Touched! doesn't.
  • Obsessively Normal: The monochrome palette of the microgames implies that Ashley's parents wanted a "normal" daughter who would like girly things.
  • Ominous Visual Glitch: In the tradition of Analog Horror, all the videos display severe glitches.
    • The Girl Next Door starts with a few terrifying examples:
      • The "spoon" verse audio glitch comes with a visual of a spoon on the top screen of the DS alongside a message from a traumatized Ashley.
        I’m sorry
        I didn’t mean to
        I turned her back, I promise
        I’m sorry
        I’m sorry
        I’m sorry
        I’m sorry
        I’m sorry
      • When the player fails the "Get inside" microgame, the skulls on the door lack the glow in their eye holes for the rest of their screentime.
    • "Intro_crash.mov" starts like Ashley and Red's intro from Smooth Moves, but after they get to the Moon, Red disappears, the audio glitches, Ashley's sprite is replaced by her younger self, and the words "Disgusting Witch" appear in the background before the game crashes.
    • "misunderstanding.mov" puts back "Ashley's Song" into Touched and investigates on the "I have granted kids to hell" message. The moment the last word is pronounced, the audio glitches and a message appears on the top screen before the game crashes:
      I never said that
      I've never done that
      I've never done that
      I never said that
      I've never done that
      I promise I've never done that
      Why would I do that
      I never did that
      Why do people think I said that?
      I've never done that
      Why did I do this?
      Why did I make this stupid song?
    • Hocus Pocus goes harder with glitches:
      • "Shady Characters" changes the cylinder for a letter on Ashley's magic practice book thrice: normal, upside-down, and reversed. There's also blood on it.
      • After the clock is grated in "Secret Ingredient", the work table changes for a dinner table with Ashley's parents, and this instruction appears:
        Ask for forgiveness.
      • "In the Cards" changes the star for a church.
      • "Ringmaster" at the last moment before the instruction disappears, the text turned into:
        You monster!
      • During the "Spray It, Don't Say It" microgame, the words "Disgrace!" and "Useless!" appear on the screen when the player shakes the bottle, and when they fail to spray it, another message appears:
        What's wrong?
        Too weak?
      • In "Skip It", the ponytailed girl is replaced by Ashley and the yellow background by a school yard and two kids mocking her.
      • "Sticky Shift" only has a black background when the car goes away, and this message appears:
        I'm sorry.
      • "Cold Call" replaces the geisha by Ashley's father receiving a phone call about Ashley turning her teacher into a spoon: the word "Stop" repeatedly appears on screen, and it's the final minigame before Ashley's panic attack.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The usually stoic Ashley has violent reactions to her past traumas:
  • Strict Parents Make Sneaky Kids: One microgame involves hiding Ashley from her mother who's passing in front of the window while her daughter is reading a magic book.
  • Trauma Button: Sunflowers appear to have become one for Ashley. The microgame in The Girl Next Door where she makes sunflowers bloom is the last one before the game actively becomes disturbing, and when she accidentally makes a sunflower (changed from a simple four-petal flower in the actual game) bloom at the start of Hocus Pocus, she develops Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises as she remembers her parents berating her for her magic.
  • Troubled Fetal Position: Ashley is reduced to this in the boss stage of the first episode where her parents are coming closer and the player must drag them away.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid: When Ashley is reading her magic book, she's smiling, and when she successfully makes flowers bloom, she's more enthusiastic than anything you see in regular WarioWare games. It shows something's gone very wrong with her.

Alternative Title(s): The Girl Next Door 2025

Top