help ive fallen into nucarnival hell & cant get up

NU Carnival:

"Short version: CANON POLYCULE. And it's non-hierarchical! Canon non-hierarchical polycule!!! They're SO important to me. The game is a harem genre kind of thing but there's none of the jealousy and infighting that implies; at worst there's some frenemy dynamics because one guy is kind of a dickhead, and that's totally unrelated to the polyamory. The singular dickhead aside, everyone works so hard to support each other and lift each other up!! I love them!!!

Long version: BUCKLE IN. IT'S LONG.

NuCa is a BL porn game and so Eiden, the main character, has sex on-screen with all the other listed characters. If we're going by an extremely strict interpretation of canon, they aren't explicitly dating, in the sense that they don't sit down and verbally agree that they're romantically dating. However, anyone with a lick of sense and a smidge of media literacy will tell you that they're obviously romantic. In particular, Eiden's scenes with Yakumo, Edmond, Quincy, Kuya, Blade, and Dante often feel like direct reenactments of romance novel scenes. Eiden straight up roleplays as Dante's bride in a sex scene.

Of the remaining characters (Olivine, Garu, Rei, Aster, and Morvay), Eiden/Olivine is likely intended to be read as romantic, though they're a bit less romance-novel than the other Eiden ships. I personally prefer to headcanon them as queerplatonic, but submitted them as romantic because that seems to be the writers' intention. Eiden/Garu I personally don't consider romantic but someone else could reasonably read them as such, and Garu most definitely has a special level of devotion to Eiden; Garu calls Eiden his Master. Rei is a relatively new character (NuCa is also a gacha game) and so there's not yet enough material by which to judge Eiden and Rei's relationship; I submitted them as queerplatonic for simplicity's sake. Aster and Morvay have a deep devotion towards Eiden. They're familiars and, like Garu, they call him Master. It's something like a master/servant dynamic but they choose to stay with him out of their own free will.

For all Eiden ships, both romantic and queerplatonic, Eiden is central to each of their character arcs. In return, Eiden also gains a lot of emotional support from being in a found family polycule situation; he was an orphan and had no family, no close friends, and a slew of failed relationships prior to meeting the game's cast. Eiden used to be incredibly lonely and now he no longer is.

For non-Eiden ships with strong canonical basis, Quincy and Kuya have some kind of hundred-year situationship going on. They hate each other but they're also deeply connected to each other. 99% of the fandom agrees that they're twice married thrice divorced. Toxic old man yaoi.

Morvay and Aster also have something going on, as the only pairing that canonically has sex without Eiden involved. The exact nature of their relationship is also complicated and ambiguous, but I would describe it as straddling the line of romantic/queerplatonic/familial (submitted as married for simplicity's sake). I and others have called them husbands before. They're familiars, i.e. they were created by a sorcerer, and Morvay was quite literally made for Aster in the sense that Morvay only exists because Aster begged his original creator for a companion.

For everyone else, they're mostly canonically friends and any romantic/sexual subtext is weaker than the aforementioned ships. (Mostly friends, because some of them are more like frenemies.) I took the liberty of submitting some romantic/queerplatonic ships that are either extremely popular in the fandom or that I personally headcanon as such.

Special mentions:

Olivine/Morvay: Olivine is a priest, while Morvay is an incubus. Despite being so opposed on the surface, they're canonically great friends and go shopping for aphrodisiacs together. They're also both SUPER horny, super submissive, and both love sucking cock. Opposites on the surface but extremely similar deep down.

Edmond/Olivine: in a porn game where everyone is absolutely raring to bone down at the slightest excuse, these two are extremely well-behaved and polite lads who would have the most comically slow-burn, chaste regency romance. They would blush like virgins when their hands touch and then get fucked silly by Eiden later the same day. Edmond's even a noble and the game's world canonically has a social season.

Yakumo/Quincy: a rarepair in the overall fandom, but they're SO popular specifically on NuCa tumblr. quincamo nation where we at

Kuya/Olivine: not one I submitted as romantic or queerplatonic, because they're honestly more like. Frenemies with benefits. My friend coined milf-on-milf violence for them and slowly but surely it's been spreading throughout the fandom.

Blade & Garu: they're jam pie buddies… Jam pie being a cute mispronunciation of standby. It refers to the pre-canon period where they both spent years in an uninhabitable area waiting for their special someone, and since they were waiting anyway, might as well wait together. Their friendship is soooooo cute."

"Additional update to the previous submission: Garu and Karu are a system, and are commonly referred to as brothers by fans (and I believe there's one in-game instance of one of them calling the other a brother?) Who's fronting is denoted to players by eye color - blue eyes for Garu and gold eyes for Karu. The game's structure (event appearances, etc) treats them as one character so I previously didn't submit them separately for fear of making things too complicated, but then I felt bad about leaving Karu out so I'm adding him in now.

also look at The Chart (though its Aster/Morvay take has since been disproven by canon): https://www.tumblr.com/zerenovation/723328410773028864/in-case-youre-wondering-how-my-best-friend-and-i?source=share

man,, NuCa is just like. SUCH a good depiction of polyamory and relationship anarchy. Like I can't do it justice by just describing it, you have to see it to believe that a BL porn gacha genuinely does polyamory very very well. Canon polycule in my gacha game, more likely than you think. There's a good argument for headcanoning every relationship as romantic, but I think that's a boring way to simplify the polycule. They're so complicated and so horny and I love them for it."

Project Sekai: