tsukkimin

There's something interesting that goes on in one of Abyss' late game conversations that I wanted to dissect a bit, hoping that maybe something in this is new and interesting to people, since I know there have been many similar deep-dives into characters in this ye olde fandom.

What conversation? I'm not talking Tower Troubles here or Ending Engst (or Spurious Spelling as I misspell 'angst' in the vague attempt to Add Alliteration), but it's not far off: it's Asch and Luke's confrontation in Grand Chokmah.

It all stems with these two lines:

When I first saw this scene, I think I was almost laughing. Because it's so immediately hypocritical on Asch's part that it leads one to think that the writers forgot what he just said. First he's saying things that in any other game would be a heroic affirmation, a friend's reassurance... and then like two lines later devolves into base insults.

But, the more I thought about it, the more it has to say about Asch, his worldview, and what he thinks of Luke.

Guy and Jade do a decent job of getting the gist of what's going on in the subsequent skit, but I think there's yet more to unpack.

While this scene is very much a reflection of the more or less static Asch versus Luke's growth in literary terms, Asch has a lot more angst going on inside than just being angry at Luke for straining against him.

It all stems from his behavior changes later in the game after he learns that he is going to die. All his vague comments about lacking time and other stuff like this:

...Paint a picture that Asch is rather struggling with his imminent mortality and is just desperately trying to kill Van and ~fix things~ before kicking the bucket. But he's upset about it - who wouldn't be? A seventeen-year-old young man in the making (even more so since Abyss defines adulthood at the big 20), dying because his once-beloved teacher decided he wanted to Control+C, Control+V him. There's still so much he might want to do even if he tries to pretend he doesn't care about his past anymore.

This all wraps around to those two lines again. In a very real sense, Asch is trying to prepare his family for a world where he's no longer around. That's why he's so dead-set on Luke being a replacement, a balm to soothe any grief he leaves behind, and why he's upset that Luke denigrates himself.

Asch wants Luke to be a perfect substitute. It's why he holds the contradictory attitudes at being upset at Luke thinking himself inferior and why he calls Luke the very same. Luke's personality is a divergence from his, his way of thinking is, his opinions are. This is a 'bad copy' of him, one he views as insufficient to leave behind. He can't ignore those differences that make him 'inferior' in Asch's eyes, and that includes Luke's inferiority complex.

Luke is not exactly an object in Asch's mind, a robotic puppet to use and discard as Guy and Jade believe, in the same way that Van did. Instead, he has graduated to the (still objectifying, mind you) role of a function. Asch doesn't want to die, but since that doesn't seem to be an option anymore, has decided that leaving behind a second 'him' so they won't miss him will just have to do.

It's his way of 'living on' in a sense, I feel, in that if Luke grows to do all the things Asch might want or dream of, well, that's kinda like Asch was able to accomplish all of that himself. He's trying to entrust his future to his replica because he's not going to live to see it himself.

As such, Luke has been elevated to a 'person' because he will need to be Asch, whom Asch of course understands as a person. Luke is just being the wrong kind of person since he's supposed to be Asch.

There's one last step further to all this, in my opinion - Asch doesn't just want to leave behind an identical him, he wants the idealized him. The perfect him. Hence his distaste for Luke identifying himself as 'inferior' to Asch - he's supposed to be the better one! He's supposed to be the one that's so good at being Asch while being even better that nobody will miss the more flawed, messed-up Asch!

In fact, presuming Asch has already talked to Spinoza, there's another reason why he's supposed to be better, as he believes Luke is draining him away physically. If he's going to drain him away until he dies as Asch believes, he better be putting that to good use.

But he's not: Luke is defective from his purpose, his function, because he is not being Asch. He's also markedly worse at being Asch, since Asch knows what Asch is like and Luke is not like Asch - he's inferior.

So there we have it, a whole ball around expectations and the failure to meet them. It's no longer just the hatred for what Luke represents for what was done to him, but there's a new element coming in the fact he believes that Luke is killing him without the decency to shape up to replace him. It's endangering his ability to live on as he wants, his ability to 'console' anyone who might care about Asch after his death, and it's all because Luke is not performing the most fundamental duty a replica has - replicating who Asch is and improving it.