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Random thoughts re: Tales of the Abyss playthrough
On Guy's introduction: He climbs in Luke's window, poses like a romance novel cover, and then swoops back out the moment someone might discover him there. I know it's hypothetically the impropriety of the gardener's son and the duke's son chilling in his room, but it sounds pretty risque. If you don't want people to think you're gay, Guy, you have to try harder.
On early!Luke: Let's get out of the way right up front. He's a dick, a huge brat, and an idiot. I think it's refreshing to see a character actually painted as such, and I enjoy him being an idiot and a huge brat. Lalala.
On Ion:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
libekory points out that Ion's English VA sounds like a Care Bear. Luke gets fussy over him because he's pitiful and wearing a dress, proving that he can in fact feel sympathy for other human beings every once in a while, if only by accident. I adore the fact that Luke's kind of protective of Ion. Ion is so pitiful he can't help it. XD
On encountering cheagles: I hate Tear's cute-thing fetish so much. It feels like something pastede on to a character otherwise branded "serious and mature" and "totally your mother" (appropriate? I swear her English VA also does Luke's mom's voice. brrr) to make her seem less harsh. Part of me wonders if I'd find Tear less hateful if I couldn't hear the voices -- I think her English VA doesn't suit her as well as the Japanese one, so maybe these "cutesy" things wouldn't feel like last-minute attempts to make her likable.
On Mieu: I'm less interested in Mieu than in Luke's reaction to him. XD Finally, a character who wants to destroy the cute fluffy things as much as I do! And yes, Luke is a dick to him, but he's a dick to everyone else, too, so.
On Jade: I just compared between my two games, and oh god. Jade joins your party at level 45 and then after he gets sealed his level goes down to match the rest of the party. In my like 60-hour game, he's still only level 44. I never got him back up to the level he was when he joined the party. ;_; That is so incredibly sad.
On Tear and thievery: In Engeve, Luke just starts eating an apple off a merchant's cart, not realizing that you cannot eat things that are not yours. The village has had a rash of thefts lately, so they communally decide that even though he's only been around for an hour and is wearing 1,000-gald ornamental armor that could probably buy the whole village, Luke must be the thief.
Tear decides to "teach Luke a lesson" about stealing by letting him get arrested for his ignorance. It's twenty minutes into the game and he's already explained to her three times that he's lived seven years of his life locked in a mansion and has never seen the outside world including that of the city he lives in but geez Luke, excuses excuses. The innkeeper gives them a night at the inn to apologize for his vicious slander, but Tear does not do the same.
Luke later tells her to shut up and obey him and Tear just sort of sighs. She apparently doesn't think bitchy backtalk is worth a lesson, but ignorance involving how normal people buy things should be punished via citizen's arrest.
But this all is typical of my problem with Tear's method of handling Luke -- ignore the important things, become a bitch over everything else. This is an authentic conversations Luke and Tear had early on:
Tear: I'm so sorry I got you into this...
Luke: Well, you should be!
Tear: ...I'm so sorry, it's all my fault.
Luke: ... *grudgingly* Well, it's not a big deal. Anyway, it's good to finally get out of that damn manor.
Tear: So, do you not want to go back?
Luke: OF COURSE I want to go back!
Tear: Then shut up and let's keep moving. You can waste time later.
Whine whine whine, and the moment he tries to make her feel better about it, she makes him out to be the whiny one.
I'm not saying that Luke doesn't deserve to get slapped in the face, I just think that Tear has this unfailing ability to do so at the wrong time. Don't slap him for his human moments! This is also the problem with the encounter in the village -- she lets him suffer for genuine ignorance, but when it's mean-spiritedness, she just doesn't say anything and lets him be a bitch.
Overall: I'm at the point where Jade is going to get sealed. I'm enjoying him more this time around, perhaps in anticipation of his being owned by Peony. It's a fun experience, but I've already had my first moment of aggravation regarding the world map. I hope this time it sucks less.
On early!Luke: Let's get out of the way right up front. He's a dick, a huge brat, and an idiot. I think it's refreshing to see a character actually painted as such, and I enjoy him being an idiot and a huge brat. Lalala.
On Ion:
libekory points out that Ion's English VA sounds like a Care Bear. Luke gets fussy over him because he's pitiful and wearing a dress, proving that he can in fact feel sympathy for other human beings every once in a while, if only by accident. I adore the fact that Luke's kind of protective of Ion. Ion is so pitiful he can't help it. XDOn encountering cheagles: I hate Tear's cute-thing fetish so much. It feels like something pastede on to a character otherwise branded "serious and mature" and "totally your mother" (appropriate? I swear her English VA also does Luke's mom's voice. brrr) to make her seem less harsh. Part of me wonders if I'd find Tear less hateful if I couldn't hear the voices -- I think her English VA doesn't suit her as well as the Japanese one, so maybe these "cutesy" things wouldn't feel like last-minute attempts to make her likable.
On Mieu: I'm less interested in Mieu than in Luke's reaction to him. XD Finally, a character who wants to destroy the cute fluffy things as much as I do! And yes, Luke is a dick to him, but he's a dick to everyone else, too, so.
On Jade: I just compared between my two games, and oh god. Jade joins your party at level 45 and then after he gets sealed his level goes down to match the rest of the party. In my like 60-hour game, he's still only level 44. I never got him back up to the level he was when he joined the party. ;_; That is so incredibly sad.
On Tear and thievery: In Engeve, Luke just starts eating an apple off a merchant's cart, not realizing that you cannot eat things that are not yours. The village has had a rash of thefts lately, so they communally decide that even though he's only been around for an hour and is wearing 1,000-gald ornamental armor that could probably buy the whole village, Luke must be the thief.
Tear decides to "teach Luke a lesson" about stealing by letting him get arrested for his ignorance. It's twenty minutes into the game and he's already explained to her three times that he's lived seven years of his life locked in a mansion and has never seen the outside world including that of the city he lives in but geez Luke, excuses excuses. The innkeeper gives them a night at the inn to apologize for his vicious slander, but Tear does not do the same.
Luke later tells her to shut up and obey him and Tear just sort of sighs. She apparently doesn't think bitchy backtalk is worth a lesson, but ignorance involving how normal people buy things should be punished via citizen's arrest.
But this all is typical of my problem with Tear's method of handling Luke -- ignore the important things, become a bitch over everything else. This is an authentic conversations Luke and Tear had early on:
Tear: I'm so sorry I got you into this...
Luke: Well, you should be!
Tear: ...I'm so sorry, it's all my fault.
Luke: ... *grudgingly* Well, it's not a big deal. Anyway, it's good to finally get out of that damn manor.
Tear: So, do you not want to go back?
Luke: OF COURSE I want to go back!
Tear: Then shut up and let's keep moving. You can waste time later.
Whine whine whine, and the moment he tries to make her feel better about it, she makes him out to be the whiny one.
I'm not saying that Luke doesn't deserve to get slapped in the face, I just think that Tear has this unfailing ability to do so at the wrong time. Don't slap him for his human moments! This is also the problem with the encounter in the village -- she lets him suffer for genuine ignorance, but when it's mean-spiritedness, she just doesn't say anything and lets him be a bitch.
Overall: I'm at the point where Jade is going to get sealed. I'm enjoying him more this time around, perhaps in anticipation of his being owned by Peony. It's a fun experience, but I've already had my first moment of aggravation regarding the world map. I hope this time it sucks less.
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I need to replay. ♥ Jaaaaade~ :D
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It's a fault I've noticed in a lot of writing where people can't really use sarcasm or write witty dialogue (hey, not everyone can) but they want to make that cool character that's kind of a dick. Only, they fall off the fence into plain unlikeable territory.
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But yeah, I feel like they're trying too hard to make her both. She's the Responsible Mature One, but also she's the Snarky Better Person. You can't be both. Especially not if your sense of timing is that off. XD KATE MARK II
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Initially, I wasn't all that fond of Tear. She sort of bored me. No, scratch that, she really bored me. Oh, the serious, mature, bitch? Oh, she likes cute things? Yawn, whatever. Give me Natalia or Anise now, plz. I liked Luke more, I liked that he wanted to stomp all over Mieu because oh how I cringed whenever Mieu spoke, in the beginning. Later, later, he grew marginally on me, but in the beginning, I'd try and play when no one else was around to hear him.
I don't hate Tear, I just don't ... care about her.
I finished the game tonight
Because I need to RP it.
Because of the line, "Sixty percent is Natalia, thirty percent is the replica, and ten percent is Van. Add it all up and that's all [Asch] ever talks about."
I half-think that 90% of the reason why everything Tear does gets on my nerves is because her voice actress makes everything she says either A) bitchy, or B) cardboard. Maybe if I heard the Japanese voice actress, I wouldn't find her so obnoxious?
But as it is I am writing a goddamn essay in Notepad about how painfully her characterization went awry. I like characters like Tear -- Rukia is Tear-like, Elly from Xenogears is Tear-like, I adore both of them! -- but everything about Tear rubs me the wrong way.
homg, i still need to restart it!
I also didn't care for her VA. I was able to find a site with some of the Japanese skits, and they are VA-ed, and I like her voice much better.
Yeah, I noticed the type that Tear was meant to be, and apparently succeeded in some fashion, as people do love her. But, I'd like to see your essay, because I've yet to bother wording why she rubs me wrong (in part because it's been months), and I figure I'll be nodding the entire time!
THIS IS THE SITE (https://mimizu.mine.nu:8443/).
It even has the cooking one! "Home cooking of Love". And, of course, the Lover's Quarrel bla bla bla
PLZ
" 'I'LL COOK FOR YOU ANYTIME.' "
"?!?"
They are so transparently obvious. And oh god I love it. I think I love every single incident of when one or the other starts reminiscing about when they were kids. Dude, I'd have fallen in love with that little boy too.
But the 60% is Natalia etc line still cracks me up. I love the Dark Wings now for feeding me Asch/Natalia, even after Asch himself interacted with Luke more than anyone else. XD "He's doing this for you, princess." Gah. My heart.
OKAY OKAY i'll start tonight
WHEN HE CATCHES HER. IT WAS SO HOKEY AND LIKE GEEZE NATALIA WATCH YOUR FOOTING BUT I LOVED IT and they reminisce about when he caught her from her window and i just melt lfmdslmadsldsa. Seriously.
Hahaha, I cannot believe that is a line and if I somehow miss it in my play-through I may have to kill someone.
VICTORY IS MINE
YES THAT IS IT EXACTLY. And they're like laughing and smiling and then he's like WAIT BUT I'M NOT HIM ANYMORE. TOTLY. and I'm like LIAR. And he was the one who taught her how to be an awesome princess lfsdjgdlfgj the skit where they talk about how she'd never been outside of the castle until he took her out and "made Baticul her castle", told her that she had to go places and do things to understand the people so she could rule them and I'm like, could this pairing push any more of my buttons??
You can't possibly miss it, it's towards the end of the game but it's unavoidable. The Dark Wings have nothing better to do with themselves than try to thwart Asch's suicide attempts by riling up Luke and Natalia? Whatever they do a real good job of it.
YEAH JUST GLOAT
The phrase "nothing better to do with themselves" somehow makes the Dark Wings ring a bit "Turk", however uh, inaccurate the relation is. I hope those italics are sincere and I can congratulate their thwarting efforts.
Re: YEAH JUST GLOAT
The Dark Wings were genuinely trying -- I was actually kind of touched, that despite just being hired flunkies, they really were trying to save him. I have consequently become more interested in them as characters, and plan to go back and do the Nam Cordoba sidequest that apparently involves them somewhat.
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Aw, aw, aw, aw, aw. And there they seemed to squabble so, but really they ... ;______;.
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They're both so tiny)no subject
TINY. ASCH AND NATALIA. lmdasklasdm i'm there)I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT LINE
YOUR ICON APPROPRIATELY DESCRIBES HOW I FEEL ABOUT THAT