#shivapvoid

kana was born in a remote village in othard as the youngest of three, with one older sister (aiko) and then their brother (daichi) as the eldest. aiko died when kana was still a toddler- not in any elaborate plot-related way, just an inexplicable accident or illness i haven’t 100% fleshed out yet. the important part of this is moreso the fact that the trauma of losing one of their kids 1) made kana’s parents VERY anxious and overprotective of her to the point of smothering and 2) left kana constantly comparing herself to the now unassailable image of her sister as a perfect child that she could never live up to. this second part is important for later

her brother was always set on becoming an adventurer and getting rich so as soon as he came of age he left the village to do just that- their parents weren’t happy about it, but he was bullheaded enough about it and insisted it was for the good of all of them, and he got a bit of leeway as a big masculine guy that they let it happen. once he left, though, this meant kana’s smothering got even worse; any talk of kana wanting to even just leave the village at all was swiftly stomped out

kana was NOT happy with this. she was desperate to find out more about the rest of the world, she didn’t hate her village exactly but the idea of being stuck there for the rest of her life was torturous, particularly with the garlean empire always hanging over their heads (the empire hadn’t directly impacted their village much compared to other places because it was small + remote but the threat was always there). so she secretly saved up money, studied hard and kept an eye out for any way to get a bit of freedom, and eventually managed to sneak out on a passing trade caravan, leaving a note to her parents to say she was going to study in the city

she ends up in kugane, where she studies and scrapes by on part time work for a bit until through a convoluted series of mishaps and an encounter with k’rhid tia she eventually found herself on a ship to limsa lominsa and sponsored to study with the arcanist guild

this feels like an absolute DREAM. limsa is huge and bustling and full of so many people, there's things to do all the time, no one knows her so she can be whoever she wants. she gets to learn new things and turns out she's good at them! she gets a little bit overexcited about all of this. picture that girl everyone meets in freshers week at uni who's like, a really nice person and all but it's very clearly her first time living without her parents and she isn't really capable of restricting herself with anything yet and probably hooks up with too many people

all this means that when the events of arr start and she gets recognised by the scions of the seventh dawn for being God's Specialist Little Warrior, she's still in that honeymoon giddiness phase with adventuring and is mostly just happy to be involved. she gets sobered up a bit when serious stuff starts happening, but she's generally still quite eager and peppy until the bloody banquet, which is when it REALLY sets in that this life will have Consequences

anyway i'll save you from a rehash of all the expansions but other notable points:

she gets on well and flirts with g'raha when they first meet in the crystal tower raids but nothing actually happens between them then. kana is a bit disappointed about this and upset when she seals himself away but figures her crush was unrequited so she tries to move on from it and respect his decision. she is very mistaken about his lack of interest and g'raha will stay awake for many many nights as the exarch lamenting the fact he didn't do anything when he had the chance. i wrote about this for an ffxivwrite entry before actually

kana and haurchefant also initially meet when she's still in peak Giddy Flirty Adventurer mode and they hook up pretty quickly. this transitions into a sort of friends-with-benefits-that-could-maybe-become-more, they're very sweet on each other especially when he shelters them post-arr. haurch is pretty transparent about being interested in a proper relationship but kana is reluctant because of the whole adventuring business, figures they have time to work out what to do. the vault happens. turns out they did not have time. this will haunt kana basically forever and she takes this as a hint that getting involved with people will lead to them dying/getting trapped in crystal towers indefinitely so she takes a step back from literally everyone emotionally after this. oh also this is when she swaps from summoner -> dark knight as a main job

she basically dissociates for most of stormblood. does not enjoy being back near home even if she obviously believes in the cause of fighting against the empire. she does not visit her family but she does start writing letters to them and sends them money. she avoids mentioning the whole 'warrior of light' thing

she actually naturally has light pink hair but over the course of shadowbringers it gets bleached to white from the light corruption and never recovers

finding out about the whole azem thing initially really fucks her up a lot, both because of all the emet-selch stuff attached to it, but on a wider scale because it ties back into what it always feels like it is for her: people don't see who she actually is, they see who she SHOULD be, whether that's her dead sister or the warrior of light or darkness or azem or WHATEVER. and no matter how much she achieves, she feels like she'll never be able to live up to these mythologised figures behind her

for this reason she also really connects with ryne's whole struggle with the minfilia thing and gets into a fist fight with thancred at one point over his bullshit in shb. they have drinks over it later and reconcile dw

she's besties with lyse and pretty sad when she leaves the scions because she liked having another girl her age to talk to and they naturally drift apart a bit once they're not working as closely together. they still exchange letters but yknow it's not quite the same

she writes in her journal religiously to keep track of everything that's gone on in her life and try to process how she feels about it. she initially just writes these as generic 'dear journal' entries but after shb she starts to address her entries to ardbert instead. she misses him a lot all the time

she picks up dancer after endwalker in an attempt to recover some amount of joy after The Horrors. she likes it!

shb+ew didn't give kana enough time to emotionally process the whole ancients situation so i wrote 50k words of her processing it post-endwalker instead. (slaps roof of wol) this baby here can fit so much unresolved grief