#especially for Danchou and Ladiva

[wyrmmaster]

Holy shit Nier's fun in Rising

We do a small* bit of juggling with Death

[icharchivist]

OOF.

Because Danchou hasn’t been doing okay and everyone, especially Ladiva, worries that Danchou isn’t telling them why, Phoebe used her dream powers as a primal beast to have Ladiva and herself peek into Danchou’s dreams.

Which turned out to be Danchou as a child, crying, while Vyrn is trying to be there for them.

this hurts so damn bad holy shit. I’m back at hunting Danchou’s father for sports.

[idelvanstrategist]

HC #002: Friendship

Suffering time! Under the cut’s gonna be a little bit discussing Cain’s relationships with others and is honestly gonna be the basis for interactions with Cain in a regular verse in a non-romantic setting.

I’m gonna start this off by saying the obvious. Cain is someone that is extremely outgoing, openly friendly, and fun-loving, even wanting to befriend enemies or at least pacify them rather than keep things hostile. Plus, he often has a willingness to hang out with other people and has a plethora of ideas on how he and someone else can have fun, regardless of their personalities. All of these traits would make it seem like Cain is quite popular and well liked.

And while that may be true, in actuality, Cain really doesn’t have anybody in canon. Though there’s definitely a lack of explanation in the entire second arc, we can pick up a few things about Cain and his social status. 

The only people that Cain is linked to in the second arc are Pholia, Leona and Reinhardtzar. Technically, he’s really not shown to have a strong relationship with anybody else before the crew comes along.

With Pholia, it’s an interesting relationship, but I wouldn’t call them good friends. Cain seems to be very mindful of Pholia’s wrongdoings and wants to protect the Idelvan people when Pholia announces her history to them, and steps down. Cain is sort of a buffer or a brace between Pholia and the Idelvan people because he’s extremely intelligent and known to be a very good speaker. However, Pholia really only seems to tease him a little, but otherwise doesn’t interact with Cain in a way where you would think they’re friends. He does things for Idelva and follows her orders for the most part, but their relationship seems to barely reach anything but business of the circumstances. That and, Pholia seems to think Cain can get a little boring (like in the granblue comics where she says his reports are really boring). But then this also makes me think perhaps Cain purposely acted a lot more formal than whimsical around Pholia...

With Leona... I don’t know, I kinda don’t consider that friendship. Leona brings up her concerns in No Rain, No Rainbow, and while they certainly care for one another, I think the key difference with this relationship is that they most likely wouldn’t be friends if given the choice. They seem to get along, and Leona feels as though she has to take care of Cain... But it also got me thinking... They didn’t choose to be close to one another. And if it weren’t for the fact that Abel was her fiance, and that Cain is Leona’s sister-in-law... They probably wouldn’t have been as close as they’re starting to be after No Rain, No Rainbow.

That leaves Reinhardtzar, who admittedly seems like a friend of Cain’s, but this happens during the time he meets the crew in the early-ish chapters of arc 2. There’s a lot of teasing, I feel, between the two of them, but I’d be willing to label this as a friendship though not developed.

When considering all this... It really should be said that Cain honestly doesn’t have a lot of friends. With these three key characters linked to him, and having nobody else even remotely close, the only other evidence we have on how people feel about Cain is his interactions with both the vandals and criminals of Idelva who respect his intelligence and way of speaking (but don’t consider him a friend and are rather hostile to him), and the general public who finds him a little boring and somewhat hard to talk to due to his ties with Pholia and him being a general.

Really, before the events of Arc 2, this 20 something year old outgoing and super whimsical man probably didn’t have *any* friends to speak to. Cain’s requests on holidays seem to hint towards him being extremely lonely. We know he’s self-loathing because he believes he killed Abel, but in recent holiday stories, it’s quite obvious he’s working to get over it and live a fun life that he believes Abel would want him to live. Cain continuously requests to spend time with captain both alone and with others. Cain does request to go out and taste food or go on common date activities with the captain, but also has requests to go to the beach together or a summer festival or prank the crew as a whole on Halloween. He wants to bond and make friends with the crew and is very open to the idea of meeting different crew members. He even goes to Raduga often, likely to get to know all the different faces of the crew and forge a bond with Ladiva and Jamil. 

But in general, Cain is extremely lonely. He only has Leona as family by circumstance (not by choice), and only recently, Reinhardtzar. He lost his brother, pretty much loses his purpose for staying in Idelva once the Otherworld plot resolves and Pholia steps down completely, and so he’s ready to give it all up to join the crew permanently. And he’ll never mention it unless you get very close to him. He’ll keep a smile on his face, a positive attitude and bend over backwards for most people in order to have a good relationship with them and hope one day he can call each person a ‘friend’ out loud and be confident when saying it.

I think that’s something that’s going to have to come up in some interactions here and in general. That Cain really does want to bond, and he’s very open to bonding in many different ways. He understands the shy-type people like Seox, possibly Jamil etc. and would want to work with them to be as easy and open as possible for them to set the pace. He would go wild with people like Danchou, Lyria or Lowain and just have a blast doing whatever the hell they wanted to as long as they aren’t hurting people. But he can also be extremely intelligent and insightful like with Katalina, Rosetta or Eahta. It’s partially because he’s somewhat desperate to bond with people and really wants to forge relationships. Cain wants to love and be loved (especially in a platonic sense), considering he really doesn’t have a ‘place’ he can call his own with people he loves most. 

As a last comment... I think a part of him would also want mostly sibling-like friendships. He really seems to be the little bro kind of guy that’s both energetic and pranky but also really easy to tease. He gets whacked over the head and teased in different comics, but is always smiling. And... Y’know... Maybe he wants to feel like he has real siblings again since... Yeah. Not as a replacement for Abel, but perhaps to remember how sibling bonds felt and how they’re comfortable to Cain, especially in replacing his deep loneliness.