I think we already know who Ashley is as skater and how she did at Worlds is more or less what she is capable of.
As we've been talking about in a couple threads now, I believe Ashley's potential is better than what she has shown. Her expressiveness is the best of anyone, but the programs hold it back. She needs programs that have fully defined concepts and passages of choreography, making every movement perfectly evocative of the music.
For example, let's look at her 2016 Worlds SP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy6VWa85UsI
What does the flying sit in this program have to do with the music? Nothing. The combo spin is not very good either. We saw at Team Challenge Cup how she added clapping movement into her camel, a perfect improvement, but that intermediate "twisted" position she tries to do is flat-out ugly. You can't do moves like that. The last part of the spin ignores the lyrics of the music as well.
So how do we fix these problems? Firstly, in the section where the flying sit currently is, remove it and add more choreography. The last part of that choreographic section will be a difficult entrance into her combo spin. With this level feature for the combo spin, she can remove the ugly intermediate position that she currently tries to do, and there's now also more room to start the spin 1 second earlier, exactly in time with the music change.
Since the combo spin with this alteration would now end much sooner and transition better on the foot change, she can now pull up into that final upright position with more speed and use her arms to interpret the next lyric of "the beat" and then end the spin and do choreographic movements to the section of the music that is now going "yeah baby, that's right, I like it". That is SUCH an important part of the music to play with and project to the audience, but in her current program it's just wasted by the spin.
After that section she can then go into the flying sit we removed earlier, starting it right when the lyric of the music goes "Woo!" This would be brilliant interpretation, the flying entrance reflecting that lyric, and then the sit spin itself being exactly in accordance with the music change which has now happened. Her change of position in the sit spin would even hit right on an accent of the music that you can hear at 1:33 in the music.
So now we have a brilliant, complete first half to the program.
From that point there's plenty of time to build up speed for the 2Axel, exactly where it currently is. You have to alter the current choreography to get there but that's not difficult; you're just taking out a couple of the random hops she has and that's perfectly fine because there's still enough time to get some expression in before the jump. We already put more choreography into the earlier part of the program anyway. After that 2Axel comes the solo Triple jump and for some reason at Worlds she removed preceding footwork going into it. She did put in more movement on the exit, but it doesn't make sense to remove that required preceding footwork and throw points away there. The section of the program leading up to that where she sticks her finger at the judges is quite unnecessary anyway, it would be better if the program had more dance and seamless quality into the jump.
Then the last problem with the program (aside from a couple required movements in the footwork that sadly can not be changed because of DUMB RULES) is how it lacks a real ending and the final spin feels compulsory. She just falls out of that layback and rushes into a final pose, a little behind the music. This is NOT how you are supposed to sell and complete a program. The layback needs to come earlier, without that silly half-illusion entrance she does (we already used the "difficult spin entrance" level feature earlier in the program anyway) and there needs to be choreography at the very end to complete the concept and finish exactly in time with the music. The layback should commence when the lyrics have re-entered the program right before 2:57, starting with a classic layback position and then pulling the arms in to do a speed increase, followed by the other position changes as usual. Then after the spin is over she can do a couple dance steps and sassy posing, ending exactly with the music.
But I think that is a disservice to skaters like Mao and Carolina who despite their inconsistencies are among the best well-rounded skaters as well. They had their issues but...I don't know how to phrase this or clearly say what I mean... Mao and Caro seems to be more natural skaters. Mao especially, watching her skate is like watching fish in water. That's where she is meant to be. And Caro has beautiful jumps she just struggled mentally. Under rotations or not, landed or not, it boggles my mind that Mao is still out there doing triple axels more than a decade later. Kwan and Kim at their peak can sell a program like nobody's business...
