why do you ship temehika

* spoilers for the entirety of octopath traveler 2! you have been warned

 

the main two reasons i ship temenos/hikari can be summarized into two points: the parallels in their stories, and their similarities with NPCs in each other's stories. 

 

story parallels

while only osvald's story is framed as a revenge story, there are several protagonists in octopath 2 whose stories explore loss and grief in different ways. i tried making a little chart comparing temenos, hikari, castti and throne's in particular, since they experience the most loss throughout their stories. as shown, temenos and hikari are similar in that their lives have been fraught with loss starting from events before their chapter 1's even begin, and they continue until the end of the game's final chapter with the deaths of oboro/kazan and arcanette/mindt. in contrast, throne and castti's stories are not outlined by their losses until the point where castti's memories return, and when throne realizes that everyone she's killed in her quest for freedom were her own blood relatives.

 

to continue about temenos and hikari, both of their pre-story losses (roi and kura/jin mei respectively) have significant impacts on them that last throughout their stories. for hikari, the loss of his mother also coincides with the first time his shadow self emerged, and his struggles with overcoming his shadow are central to his story and ending, not to mention jin mei's death directly affecting rai mei's decisions in ch.4. in temenos' case, roi's disappearance is the catalyst for temenos' doubtfulness of the church, and his role as an inquisitor was given to him as a result of that as well. and because of the mystery surrounding these deaths—hikari being kept in the dark about the true reason his mother was killed, as well as him being unaware of his own actions as the shadow possessed him, and temenos who was never able to find the truth of roi's fate—hikari and temenos never truly stop grieving over them, with their last moments together with their loved ones literally haunting their dreams.

 

both their stories start off with the deaths of their fathers (adoptive father figure for temenos), but despite their familial relationship with them, the consequences of someone as important as the king/pontiff being killed takes precedence which kicks off their journeys. neither permit themselves to grieve over these losses throughout their entire stories, and while castti's banter with temenos in his ch.2 touches upon this, hikari doesn't allow himself to look back at all until he is able to return to take back the crown. despite that i think it's important to note that hikari's crossed paths pt.2 is centered around grief, though even in that story hikari puts aside his own grieving for his friend to take responsibility for being the cause of tsuki's death by facing yomi.

 

temenos ch.2

 

throughout their stories hikari is also forced to kill ritsu, who refused to walk the same path as hikari because of their differing views, and temenos loses crick, who was led down the path of uncovering the Order's secrets by temenos' own journey for truth. both are situations where the protagonists' goals are brought into question of whether what they were pursuing was worth it, but is simultaneously a step towards their goals that they are unable to turn back on due to ritsu/crick's sacrifices. 

 

which ultimately brings me to the events of the final chapter, which would undeniably impact temenos and hikari the most despite everyone's stories and NPCs being involved. mindt and kazan being the only villains with a pseudonym just exemplifies how much time they've spent alongside temenos/hikari respectively and building up some kind of relationship with them... while i don't think temenos cared about mindt enough to consider her a friend (referring to his ch.3 banter with agnea where he says he has very few friends), her death also means practically every single NPC in his story has died (ort being the only exception but we hardly see ort and temenos interact...). hikari is faced with yet another betrayal, one that makes his victory over mugen and the reclamation of ku feel almost meaningless because mugen's coup was orchestrated by kazan in the first place. despite hikari reaching his ultimate goal of becoming king and being able to work towards forging ku as a nation of peace, he also ends up losing his entire family and most of his friends (again, rai mei being the only exception but she also ends up returning to stormhail instead of remaining in ku with hikari).

 

kazan and mindt's reveals are also interesting in exemplifying what is the most important for temenos and hikari... hikari considered kazan a friend, and his trust in him being broken is what leads the betrayal to hurt him. while temenos doesn't have much of a connection with mindt, what he values is the truth... and arcanette being present in his life all this time would have affected him in a similar way.

 

in short, from before their stories even began and up until the end of the game's final chapter, temenos and hikari's journeys are filled with nothing but losses sacrificed for their goals and values (the pursuit of truth and hikari's dreams of peace alongside his friends). they may have achieved their goals but at what cost...

 

similarities to NPCs

temenos describes himself as someone who doesn't have many friends, but from what we see in his story we can see he has... a type of person that he gets drawn to, whether it's to cover for their weaker sides (roi) or to attempt to correct their ways (crick). his skeptical nature arose from becoming a foil to roi's trusting nature, and from his conversations with crick about belief/doubt it's pretty clear that he's drawn to crick because of his similarities to roi. hikari has a similar character where he is often quick to trust others, even continuously choosing to trust kazan despite being tricked in the past because he knows his intentions to be good (which wasn't true in the end but i'm referring specifically to the events of his ch.2 here). the game also quite literally puts hikari and crick together in hikari's banter with temenos in his ch.2, and they're both shown to be the kind to protect temenos with their blades because they trust in temenos to find the answer he seeks. 

 

temenos ch.2

 

hikari, on the other hand, similarly seems to be drawn to people who can challenge him on some level. ritsu, his closest friend, was doubly his rival who also acted as someone who opposed his ideal world and treating everyone as a friend and equal. kazan, even before his reveal as oboro, is someone who doesn't shy away from using schemes and hiding the truth to get the results he wants, which hikari does not completely approve of but trusts him as a friend regardless. we also see hikari comparing kazan with temenos in his ch.5 banter, saying that they're both smart people who can be a bit strange and different from other people... we see that hikari puts his trust in kazan because he believes he's doing what's right, and is willing to use his blade for it like in ch.2 (which is also the same kind of thing we see hikari say to temenos in his ch.2 banter above!!). we also see that hikari can sense that kazan is hiding something from him, but chooses to respect his silence. with temenos being as repressed with his emotions and thoughts as he is i suspect hikari's relationship with him would be similar... 

 

hikari ch.5

 

and ultimately both of them end up losing these people dear to them and i think they would be able to find comfort in these similarities but also from being able to connect with someone else going through the same pain. because of this i don't really imagine their relationship becoming too close until later in the game's story but that's also a personal preference... 

 

that's mostly it for how i would explain the backbone for this ship (subject to change, might change/add stuff later) but i'll also add other stuff that i think is nice between them below:

 

• they're night path action pairs!! and because the night path actions are new to the sequel you can tell the game puts more emphasis on them... (the first game's 4-person tavern banters separated them by noble/rogue path actions, the sequel's did the same but only with the night path actions instead of the day ones) 
• both of them have light/dark symbolism... hikari's is obvious with his name literally meaning light (which btw is very cute in japanese because a lot of temenos' cleric skills directly call his name), his light/dark bloodline mix, and his latent power going from darkness' hold -> light's radiance. temenos is a cleric who uses light magic but in relation to roi/crick he occupies the "dark" side to their light... his talent is also named "moonlight judgment"
• i'm plugging MakiFigaro's fic here because it shows how temenos and hikari's stormhail chapters can be combined and i just think it's really really nice... obviously temenos' ch.3 stormhail is a big turning point for his story and when you combine that with the fact that hikari almost died in the snow there as well... auugh i'll let the fic speak for itself
• they're next to each other in the official OCTOPATH name order <3 this one is dumb but it makes me happy ok

 

thanks for reading if you read all that lmfao anyway temehika real. to Me