As I dispatched my feelings on Tales of The Abyss earlier, @adda-j wished for my thoughts on a few other characters, specifically Organization 13/2 The Six God-Generals and Master Van.
For those not in the know the Six God Generals are our quirky mini-boss squad of this story thus far, and Master Van is the mentor figure of our nominal hero Luke Fon Fabre.
Unfortunately I am not far enough to have any strong opinions on a lot of them. They’re just sort of generic antagonists right now.
Sync is kind of an over confident brat, Largo is just sort of big and there.
Arietta is just a meek version of Anise: a little girl with great magical power in an unusually high position. I will say that the game did me dirty on drawing her ire.
There was some Ligers terrorizing some locals and the game gave me no choice but to kill the queen. Like, game was talking about the choice of killing or not killing the liger queen but I, the player, had no actual say in the decision. Just got to watch Luke agonize over it before having to actually do the deed.
In fact I wanted to talk about it ages ago, I didn’t want to kill her at all! And now Arietta hates us because she can talk to animals and was raised by Ligers! I’m just as mad as she is and I’m getting blamed for this! It’s not cool!
Okay, that rant out of the way, I love Dist. Dist is hilarious. He is this big over the top dude who fancies himself a brilliant mad scientist super villain without an ounce of irony, and no one is having any of it.
He’s going around in his floating chair with his smug lean, hair covering half his face, and glasses illuminated in the light, and no one cares. It’s beautiful. And he’s so bratty about it, it’s hilarious. Of course Jade has thoughts on this guy, and they know each other, which makes it all the more delicious. I can’t wait to see Jade interact more with this loser.
I guess this just leaves Master Van who I pegged as a traitor very early on. He’s a stern but reasonable and caring dude who seems to want what’s best for Luke. He’s very convincing, and maybe some part of him does actual care for Luke.
But also, like, I could sense a betrayal coming as soon as he was introduced. I don’t know when it’s coming, I could be totally wrong. Or hell, I could be half right and he comes back to the hero’s side after the betrayal. Maybe it’s a Kratos from Tales of Symphonia thing where your choices determine whether he stays with the bad guys of joins you.
The point is that I almost trust him. But what’s worse is that Luke trusts him, which means that character-wise it would be an emotionally devastating turn.
You know, I was extremely convinced that Luke had a crush on Master Van. Jury’s still out on that but the writing really really emphasizes how much Luke likes and wants to be around Master Van.
What really sold it to me is that Master Van wants to take Luke far away from here and Luke’s enthusiasm to leave behind his friends, family, and comfort to get away from it all with this tall dark confident dude who has been teaching Luke life lessons and how to fight and stuff.
If the game series wasn’t so hetero I would almost say it’s not subtext, it’s just text.
Of course this queer reading of the text would also need to take into account that this older dude Master Van wants to spirit away this 17 year old boy who only has half his memories. So that makes Van a potential predator taking advantage of Luke’s obsessive admiration.
So that’s two readings that I’m not sure how to feel about.
I just know there are too many unanswered questions about the mystery of Luke’s childhood kidnapping and memory loss and Van’s mysterious involvement so whether Van’s intentions are benign or part of some bigger malignant conspiracy are still entirely up in the air.
But I do think that the writers may have wanted us to see Luke’s interest in Van as admiring a really cool fatherly or uncle-like figure and may have over done it so now it looks Luke just really wants Van to sweep him off his feet and tell him what a good boy he is.
