YIPPEE this one's fun let's goooo

fogaku caiowe is. honestly kind of a fav because cain is lowkey being a freak about it FHJDFHJ like. imagine. cain has like what i think it's 1.5 million followers and he went out of his way to note that this one specific hater follows him...and decides it must be because his hater actually likes him... like when you read the card story he plays it off so naturally but if you think abt it for more than ten seconds it's like Hey Wait A Minute. owen, a completely regular tsundere, unaware he's caught the eye of a very popular yandere. watch out buddy

as for how my yume would fit into fogaku............it honestly . probably wouldn't actually GHJSHG i dislike having my inserts be "human" just in general but i also like. straight up didn't actually attend high school for more than 6 months (pulled out for health reasons) so if i was going to insert into this verse at all it'd basically just be the caiowe dynamic but with more steps so i'll just leave those lovebirds to it

pararoid caiowe!!!! we all know and love them. getting to experience a more "pure" owen is always fun, but . god pararoid cain was my first cain ssr and it was another one i got on the first roll of the banner so i feel vaguely sacrilegious saying this but pararoid cain is kind of missing the sharper edges that i enjoy in canon cain. him faking accepting a bribe kind of ruled though i won't lie and i also love that he's more willing to be direct abt the fact that what he does is for his own sake to adhere to his personal shape of justice (even if it means he kind of rejected owen's fantastic setup for a love confession. god)

i like reading pararoid caiowe stuff but like i said since cain kind of lacks the insane person quality i like in him in canon i'm not, like, super invested in it or anything. and while i was typing up this whole pararoid paragraph i was thinking abt how my yume would exist in vollmond city and to be completely honest i'm just picturing myself as a potted plant assistroid. won't die even if you forget to take care of it but if you don't it'll still look all drab and dry and dying so if you DO it'll perk up and be nice and green again. has a programmable Nice Scent for when it's healthy. it does also have a personality and can take a human form but when owen's like Hey you told me you didn't Have an assistroid what's it look like what's its personality cain's like Let's not worry about that! (it's very sweet towards cain but after the incident cain doesn't invite anyone over anymore. he's considered getting a replacement personality chip but that's Expensive, and he tried to get rid of it once but when he woke up it was back in his apartment so. it's just there. watch out, cain)

i actually haven't read gekka youi-tan so i haven't formed an opinion yet since fanworks are not really a good indicator of what goes on in any of these. i also don't know any plant youkai off the top of my head. sad!!!!!!!!!!!!!

squama au caiowe is kind of bittersweet to me bc i still fondly remember the rush we all had when we were presented with the possibility that it was CAIN who took OWEN'S eye this time only for it to all come crashing down. i guess it's too similar to like, kind of surface level readings of their canon relationship for me to feel very strongly about it? willful tsundere owen who won't admit he likes cain vs cain who is oblivious and is just trying to help. ehh

i'll freely admit that my yume in squama au would actually not be a squama but instead a good old fashioned people eating mermaid that cain saves from having accidentally beached itself or something and now it follows cain and arthur's ship everywhere it goes. it's considered an unofficial member of the crew. they just kind of look away from the blood in the water when someone on the other side of a naval battle goes overboard and into its jaws (everyone on their ship is Clearly Marked so that it knows to not eat them, but there have still been some close calls) (burial via feeding to the ship mermaid if they don't have anyone back home sounds like a prospect at least some members of the crew would want to go for once they're dead also but i just like thinking abt death rituals in general)

ANNNND ALTEREGO AU!!!!!!!!!! i think alterego caiowe has potential to be fun, esp if cain found out how the alteregos work re: why owen has that special gold eye now. i bet they enjoy fighting each other........... i don't know if this owen has a reason other than the eye to fixate on cain though. it Would be fun to have cain pursuing owen though don't you think

my yume in alteregoverse... would be an innocent bystander that died purely on accident because of cain, whom he then desperately brought to snow and asked to please let him revive them because of circumstances. it'd sort of be like one of those arranged marriage aus except it involves accidental murder, a technical zombie, and navigating how much of these feelings are real and how much of them are just guilt. it could be fun!

OUGHHHH RIGHT IT'S SO SO SO SO GOOD. that's what i love most abt alterego cain like he doesn't have his trained-since-childhood chivalry and knightlyness to hide behind the way he does in canon. it's honestly interesting seeing him in such a similar position as he has in canon except for specifically without the knight aspect. like he's still serving someone he considers his savior after having fought as a hero for the people, the basic outline is the same as his relationship with arthur, but i guess the primary difference is like...alterego cain doesn't feel as beholden to social status as canon cain. like canon arthur keeps saying he wishes cain wouldn't treat him as his lord but as his friend, whereas alterego cain............ well he doesn't treat snow like a civilian, but there's less of a sense of there being an insurpassable boundary separating the two of them. he's a little more relaxed, i guess you could say?

my favorite favorite FAVORITE part of alterego cain is exactly what you point out: his willingness to kill but also protect. to blindly follow snow even without clear instructions on why he's following him. these are actually things canon cain is 100% willing to do for arthur, but in alteregoverse he's so...open? about it? he doesn't have the knightly facade he can hide behind, plus the fact that arthur would typically disapprove (which doesn't even stop him at certain points. i love pointing out knight event and cain's willingness to kill hector, a teenager he knows, if that was what things called for), so he just doesn't hide that at heart he is willing to trace the clear, ruthless line from a to b in the name of the person he'd decided to give his life to.

moving AWAY from cain dissection for a second though i actually really DO love his dynamic with snow. i love love love that snow is willing to share white's secret with cain instead of just getting rid of him on the spot. i love that snow trusts cain with white in general!!!! i love that cain is white's playmate and babysitter and helps him take his icky sleeping pills and that snow trusts him to do all of that faithfully and carefully and safely even though he already lost white once already. that's an absolutely huge gesture from someone like white, and cain dutifully and happily ensures he won't let his master down. i like them so much

i'm nnnnot really a fan of cain and arthur's dynamic in canon specifically because of the fact that arthur refuses to see the ruthlessness that cain does in his name, but here snow is perfectly well aware of it and in fact values that ruthlessness, so. i admit i like alterego snow and cain's dynamic a lot more for having that important variation

no one HAS so let's freaking outline this sucker. first we need to look at What Needs Fixing, which is cain's insane circular logic that has him thinking that he's disposable, and that being disposable is a good thing to aspire to. it's the fact that he thinks this is a Good Thing that is what mostly needs to get fixed; it's very difficult to break people out of unhealthy mindsets that they're dead certain are Good. like, with a lot of depression-based mindsets you think stuff that's terribly unhealthy about yourself but you Know it's not good, right? cain isn't like that at all, he genuinely thinks that all the terrible things he thinks about himself are not only Good but Necessary. and there's nothing more dangerous than a zealot, as they say

so! cain's already been through one life-shattering event (owen stealing his eyeball, but actually specifically owen outing him as a wizard is what did more to him than just...owen taking his eye) and because he is a deranged person, he is grateful to owen for completely upending the life that he'd very carefully built for himself over the course of his entire life. this is because cain knew that constantly lying about himself was a Bad Thing To Do, and now that he doesn't have to do that anymore, he can live a freer life, more true to the principles that he stakes his identity on.

breaking apart the aspects that he considers Good is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult than just ripping his eye out. it needs to be something that is not only life-shattering, but also completely his fault. he can't have anyone but himself and his twisted-up ideals to blame for it. the incident with owen happened because of owen's nature as a northern wizard and because of his mother's insistence he lies about himself, two things that ultimately have nothing to do with cain himself.

which is why i think cain needs to finish slipping down into his darkest impulses, the ones where he ignores his morals and what the people he love would realistically want him to do so that he can do what He thinks is Right for Them. what i'm saying is that putting arthur or owen in a cage and then that OBVIOUSLY blowing up in his face could fix him

...and it would specifically fix him because arthur and owen will hopefully still want to love and care about him even after it getting shoved in their faces how unstable cain actually is. owen has already mostly crossed this bridge--in the whereabouts of the left eye, when faced with the idea of cain being less than ideal, owen almost ripped cain's eye back out, but in ms2 when faced with the reality of cain being less than ideal, he immediately went off to find arthur to get cain back on track. arthur...is still not quite there, but if he can navigate oz being the world's worst war criminal then surely he can also deal with cain putting him in a cage. right. right

we have a beautiful fully functional yandere4yandere relationship where we're both getting to live out our greatest desires (for him, being someone's Single Most Important Person who will always rely on him and getting to protect and take care of them the way he wants to; for me, getting to live with someone who i know is never going to resent me for all the things i can't do) (these two aspects fit together very nicely, don't you think?)

for all that i talk abt ways for cain to get fixed and healthy-fied, that's not a job i think i can fulfill. i simply don't have the right personality for it, nor the stamina for it thanks to my ten million problems disorders in both my brain and body. but i can make him happy by being weak and delicate, and i AM weak and delicate, so why mess too much with a good thing?

i can embrace all of him, good and bad, and he can do the same for me, and that's good enough for me!

YIPPEE cain-faust is actually one of my number one I Wish This Was A Relationship Cain Had For Real concepts!! they have a whole lot in common what with them being ex-central military figures that go out of their way to talk as little to others about themselves as possible, and i think that cain having someone who can like...understand what he's doing without also trying to pry more out of him (the way owen does) or disapprove of it (as arthur and akira do) would give him a space to just freaking relax for once in his god dang life

there's a home screen line that talks abt how after the big catastrophe that was the calamity night just before akira arrived in their world, cain checked up on faust every morning to make sure he was doing alright. and while less common, faust comes to check up on cain when he misses breakfast, and i think it's a very simple and sweet expression of sympathy that allows both of them to have their boundaries respected while also like...being seen for all of themself if that makes sense, and that's something that's very important to me in relationships of any kind

there's also my whole alecfau rpf cain headcanon but like. you know

YES I THINK THIS WOULD BE SOOOOOO FUN... there's SO much space irt owen's revivification that i think could SUPER get explored and is. not getting explored. for instance we don't even know the specifics behind HOW he revives. mhyk isn't shy about the occasional bout of ultraviolent gore so i wouldn't be opposed at all to owen undergoing some extremely horrifying death so i can find out exactly how it goes

but the prospect of people coming back Slightly Imperfect is one i loooove playing with. i'm ABSOLUTELY gonna be thinking abt this one for a while. and if i ever end up writing a fic about it you'll get to know it was because of you specifically for putting this idea in my brain

let's PARTY i'm kind of...iffy? abt how akira's relationship w/ cain is written but that's mostly because akira, despite being a fully fleshed out character unto themself, is still kind of...left intentionally vague so as to act as a self-insert for the player and i often get frustrated by things like that because of how much i love doing in-depth analysis (as you can. tell

but ANYWAYS. despite the disclaimer i put up there, i have overall a mostly positive impression of their relationship! akira is the only member of the cast other than owen to actually take note of how much cain is struggling; the anni4 card is a beautiful reminder of that fact! my criticisms of their relationship honestly just mostly come from the fact that akira's lack of agency as a character, due to their existence as a self-insert, means that they're never going to rock cain's world the way i personally think needs to happen for him to Get Better. knowing too much about story structure and that there's a certain base "status quo" that's never going to be shaken in live service games has done nothing but contribute to my own agony

mhyk DOES do a lot more than i expect it to in regards to shaking up that status quo, though, so maybe i'll be pleasantly surprised! which is how we come to the next point: in the cain villain arc that i love talking about so much, cain caging akira is probably the most likely of all his potential targets, but he also...keeps a specific amount of distance from akira that makes me think this is somewhat unlikely.

i have a Whole Bunch. of his cards now and i love listening to all his home screen lines/reading card stories/etc and something he's very consistent about whenever he says something that leans closer to affectionate with akira he like...then immediately backtracks by going "but that's only because i'm a sage's wizard" instead of letting his statements stand for themselves. for instance his 3rd bday card (the set where everyone's in the pretty greco-roman inspired costumes!) his homescreen line has him asking akira (the player) to stay with him until the date changes...and then saying that he values time with akira because he's a sage's wizard, not for any other reason. which is a little bit sad to me

i think that akira and cain's relationship is one that deepest exemplifies how cain actively refuses to build close relationships with people even when he wants to. he wants akira to rely on him and says as much on a pretty regular basis, but he never returns the favor by letting himself rely on akira. i think it's the relationship of his i'm most melancholy about to be honest, if only because we get to see so clearly how he's deliberately keeping akira at arm's length instead of building the deeper relationship that he clearly wants to have, and that's a barrier that's...really hard for me to figure out how to cross when writing his relationships with others in a way that still preserves everything else about his character considering how central it is to him as a person

...........which is why i think something really big needs to happen that completely explodes everything about his life. but hey!

thank you!!!! :D i'm having a lot of fun getting to ramble abt him so i'm glad people keep giving me the opportunity to >:3

time to get into the MEAT though. i actually think arthur Is aware of cain's yandereisms, but he's...well. he doesn't approve of them, but he also doesn't understand where they're coming from, and so all of his attempts to steer cain away from them end up reinforcing them instead. and that's noooo good for either of them in the long OR short run

this one involves a little bit of actively cutting apart some scenes so you'll have to bear with me. the first is ms2 17.7, or when owen first tries to talk to arthur abt the stuff that cain's doing in western country. this is where we get arthur's legendary "If he does not wish for me to see him like that, then I will not. All I can do is trust in Cain and wait for him." line where he uh, sure does directly say that he's not going to look at cain's negative aspects. more on this scene in a little bit but i want to also draw a line between arthur saying this and how elsewhere he repeatedly says cain is Perfect, and especially how in the arthur+faust magazine interview he says that cain is already a wonderful person even without arthur himself being there.

...buuuut back to ms2 17.7 for now! shortly after arthur says that if cain doesn't want him to look at him he simply won't then is when owen mentions that cain is doing All This Stuff in arthur's name, which is also the point at which arthur goes woah, no, you're right we do actually need to stop this. which is something i honestly find outrageously frustrating like if you object to something being done in your name surely you'd object to it being done in general? i don't understand why arthur's fine with it in one case but not the other, especially when he knows it means cain's going against his own heart either way. NOT the point rn though so let's move to the next point which is that arthur says that this isn't the first time cain has done Stuff Like This Ostensibly For Arthur before, a line that does not get dwelled on but is one i DESPERATELY want elaboration on

so yeah, this is a pattern for cain, and it's something arthur is aware of and objects to, but only when it's pointed at him. if it's not, arthur is content to avert his gaze and continue to say that cain is perfect and without reproach which absolutely drives me up the freaking wall and is easily my least favorite part of the relationship they have with each other. seeing people talk up the "devotion" they have for each other when they only choose to look at each other's most superficial positive characteristics and have their entire relationship hinging on being able to maintain that image of each other (cain also does this! he also says that he can't handle the idea of an arthur that isn't his savior!) and that's not devotion, that's not even genuine love. and because neither of them make that effort to see deeper into one another, arthur doesn't know how to actually get cain to be a little healthier in how he expresses himself, which is how we got ms2 21.7, wherein arthur's attempt to tell cain that he doesn't have to try so hard to be important to him does literally nothing but reinforce all of the twisted up, unhealthy circular logic that cain is operating on. whoops!

so ultimately what i want, i guess, is for cain to do something that completely screws himself over. i want his personal status quo to change in a huge, massive way because he screwed up and took things too far and has to face consequences now. neither arthur nor owen are going to accept his yandereisms with open arms (not like i would................i would accept them................) and i really, really want him to try to pull something and for it to blow up in his face. i genuinely don't see him getting to be like. genuinely, actually happy until his life gets irrevocably ruined in this specific way, and that's ultimately what i want for cain more than anything