#TUMBLR WHY DHAJKSDHJKASDHK

[sharky857]

"Why yall like Hassian so much?"

The title is a half-quote of a question dropped on Palia Discord, and of course my hands started itching.

Not because the question ticked me off.

It's because that simple question alone set my brain on "I will be brief" mode. And the "will be brief" mode is always, without fail, this one:

WIthout further ado, here's my widdle essay, copy-pasted from the notepad file as it was intended to be shared on that server at some point (so if there's any weird self-censoring like "strong dislike", you already know why).

This is gonna be very much spoiler-y in a lot of points, so if you haven't reached max friendship + romance and/or don't like spoilers in general, pls skip this ramble.

That being said…

Having reached max friendship and also romance with Hassian, I see his being overall "cold" (or "sour", as someone else in game would define it) as some kind of psychological defense/self-preservation mechanism.

When you reach enough friendship with him, he will openly confess/admit that it's not like he doesn't like humans, but he is wary of them. He admits to be like that towards anything new/unknown, and humans are, in fact new/unknown to him. He even has a random dialogue where he actually thank you for giving him a chance to know humans better through your (friendship) bonding.

According to other dialogues, Hassian is also seen playing cards with Auni at the inn, and quite often too, apparently. This is met with mixed reactions from a few of the other locals: Reth makes jokes about it, saying that he always thought that Hassian would come at the inn only to see how other people could disappoint him (or something on that line), Nai'o is straight up worried that Hassian could be a bad influence or something on his little brother, and Sifuu has a more indirect line about it, saying that Hassian has a liking/soft spot for animals and children (which gives her a glimmer of hope that her sone, one day, might settle down and start a family). This is a first clue that Hassian is actually a gentle soul.

In regard of Reth's aforementioned remark, I have this feeling that this might have something to do with the way Chapaa are generally viewed by the locals. Everyone sees them as cute & cuddly & fluffy animals (you even have Tish straight up cooing about them, in one of the Maji market-related dialogues), despite how Chapaa have come to be in the valley and the consequences. Hassian will tell you that the Chapaa are not a natice species, but have been introduced at some point by Kenli, with the intentions of breeding them as pets. But the Chapaa at some other point escaped into the wild, where their population started to grow uncontrollably; the fact that they lacked (and still lack, apparently) natural predators means that Chapaa are now an invasive species that need some sort of "pest control" system. But apparently Kenli has been refusing to take any action of sort in this sense because "but Chapaa cute :(" reasons, while every other villager seems to have a similar line of thought about those critters, leading Hassian to take matters into his hunter-hands. This would explain why Hassian seems to look at everyone in disappointment when he drops by the inn.

Another clue that Hassian is more than meets the eye lies in a random dialogue of Auni, when you reach enough friendship with either that child and/or Hassian; our mail boy will kind of break confidentiality with you and tell you that Hassian always gets romance novels delivered from the library all the times. He also says that they are "very mushy stuff", which confirms that Hassian may be actually quite a sensitive person. This trait of Hassian is also confirmed by other things/dialogues. For starters, he writes poetry (or at least he has tried to, at some point), and you can even see some of those writing by yourself in his grove, upon finding a book with torn pages (he didn't rip them btw, it was some Chapaa's fault). At the beginning of that side quest, Hassian will try to deny the book is his, despite... ye know... his name is right there. And at the end of the quest he will asks you not to mention that book to anyone, because he has "a reputation to uphold".

You can also get some more clues upon finding an abandoned letter in one of the camps in Bahari (somewhere in the northern half, more precisely). That letter will also reveal that Hassian and Tamala had a short-lived affair (that letter is also the ultimate reason why I "strongly dislike" Tamala's guts with a passion, for the records).

Tamala and Hassian's story could be also the reason why Hassian is now even more prone to not let his feelings on. According to what I could grasp about this ordeal, one day Tamala spotted Hassian "snooping around" her house (he was just minding his own business, hunting and also selling some stuff). It is unclear which one aprroached the other first, all we know is that Tamala bought a Sernuk rug from him, then asked him to enter her boudoir (aka: her bedroom), unofficially to ask for his opinion on where it could've been placed. Officially… completely unrelated things happened. Tamala never says what, exactly, but the way she tells that bit leaves very little to one's (naughty-naughty) imagination. And apparently, Hassian instantly fell head over heel for Tamala, but it looks like Tamala never made her intentions clear from the very beginning; the whole time, Hassian probably thought that her intentions were serious, while Tamala was in only for "some fun". It is also implied that Tamala herself may ahve pretty much treated him like her personal "toy boy", while Hassian kept on misinterpreting all that as her way of courting a suitor back, to the point that he presented her his own pin; if you romanced anyone in this game, you know what a big and important step this is considered. This is apparently when Tamala finally decided to dump Hassian; her random dialogues say that she broke with him when he tried to talk about a marriage, while Hassian's dialogue (at the end of his max romance quest) seems to add some more details to that, saying something like "I thought you would've come back to throw my pin in my face". Now: think about what a pin signifies, keep in mind what big deal these pins are, now imagine someone straight up throwing said pin back to the sender's face while telling them to pretty much F off and never come back. That ought to cause some damage on an emotional level. Even Sifuu herself, at some point, confesses with you that she was worried that you would "pull a Tamala" on Hassian (not to mention: Sifuu is still also all set on wanting to kick Tamala's rear, after all these years), but she is also glad that, with you, she had been wrong.

As cherry on top, Hassian might have unprocessed childhood trauma, which might lead him to constantly keep his feelings in check (and being awkward when trying to disclose them) as well. At some point we get to know that he had two moms: Sifuu and Taylin. Hassian was clearly more attached to Taylin than Sifuu, and even after all this time the loss of "momma" still stings real bad to him. When Sifuu made him proof-read her own autobiography, Hassian simply flipped because of what he sees as complete lies on how "mother" and "momma" first met, considering that altered story as an insult to Taylin's memory (whereas Sifuu was only trying to spice things up for artistic reasons). Some time after that thing with the book, when Sifuu asks for his help to clear Taylin's belongings, Hassian do agree that they both needed to finally move on and and also tried to help his mother, but soon he found out he couldn't bring himself to do it.

The loss of Taylin could mean that Hassian is now subconsciously "afraid" to love someone as much as he loved "momma", probably fearing to suffer that same pain all over again. And the ordeal with Tamala might have left him extra wary of disclosing his feelings as well, which would all bring us to his aloof and seemingly cold demeanour in game.