a collection of my xenoblade 1 headcanons

• Shulk definitely sees Dickson as a father figure
• Dickson was away a lot, gallivanting about the Bionis, so Dunban shouldered a lot of the responsibiliy of caring for Shulk whenever Dickson was away -- this was how Fiora and Shulk became friends. as a result, Dunban kind of views himself as a parental figure to all three of the kids
• Dunban views Shulk and Reyn as his siblings just as much as he does Fiora; the three were near inseparable, after all!
• Dunban had had his reservations about joining the Defence Force -- not because he wasn't interested, but because he was worried about what would become of Fiora if something happened to him
• conversely, Fiora is adamant against joining the Defence Force, because she's experienced what it's like to almost lose a loved one in the line of duty
• Dunban's time in the Defence Force directly inspired Reyn to join up; as a younger kid, he would hang off Dunban's arm and trail him around like a puppy dog, badgering him with all kinds of quesions
• the barrette Fiora wears is a keepsake from her mother
• Fiora is good with kids
• Shulk doesn't know when his birthday is! since, you know, his family is dead, and he's too young to remember it himself. instead he celebrates it on the day he first arrived in Colony 9
• this makes him the youngest out of his friends. they turn 18 a little bit before he does, and relish in making jokes about "babysitting" and "taking care of the child". even Dunban joins in occasionally -- on their way out the door, he'll remind the trio to "have Shulk home by curfew" and for Shulk to "listen to the grown ups". Shulk does not enjoy this.
• as a child, Shulk had bad separation anxiety and was unable to be away from Dickson for any period of time
• because of the separation anxiety, young Shulk would have to accompany Dickson to the Weapons Development Lab. to keep him occupied, Dickson would hand off small pieces of scrap metal for Shulk to play with. eventually, he started forging basic puzzles and assorted things to fit together -- resulting, inadvertently, in Shulk's love of machinery.
• Dickson's a wanderer. he prefers wide open spaces to being cooped up indoors -- it's one of the biggest differences beween him and Shulk, and also one of the biggest points of friction between them throughout the years
• returning someone's body to the Bionis functions as the Homs' version of a funeral. afer Fiora dies, her body is taken by the Mechon, so her loved ones don't even get the closure of returning her to the Bionis. they still hold an honorary service for her, though
• it takes a while to fully clean Fiora's blood spilled through the Residential District, and repair the damage done by the Mechon. Shulk, Reyn, and Dunban avoid that area as much as they can afterwards
• Dunban and Sharla bond over having been active members of the Defence Force, and being older siblings -- having been on the frontlines, having lost friends and family, and bearing sole responsibility for their siblings at too young an age... how heavy a burden that is to bear.
• Shulk has notoriously poor health. he gets sick easier, and illnesses hit him harder than they do others. he's constantly cold, and his pulse is unnaturally slow. this is an unfortunate side effect of being dead.
• Melia is a terrible cook. being crown princess, she simply never needed to learn how. her cooking ranges from disastrous to inedible, to the point where not even Reyn can choke it down. Shulk, however, continues to eat unbothered, and when they question him about it he simply shrugs and says, "what? it's good."
• it takes time for Fiora to adapt to her Mechon body, despite the brave face that she puts on for the others. in time, she learns to appreciate the second chance at life it gifts her, and the unexpected benefits her mechanical body offers. however, the one thing that she never quite gets over is how this new body never needs to eat -- she can't indulge in cooking the way she once used to.
• Shulk hates the cold, and is deeply afraid of the dark. this may or may not be related to his experiences in Ose Tower as a child, and also makes Valak Mountain pretty much his least favourite place on Bionis
• Dickson's spike attacks exist because it causes Shulk and the others genuine emotional pain to fight him :))))
• following the events of the story, Reyn occasionally ribs Fiora, and Shulk in paricular, about the fact that they were gods
• Reyn joking about his friends having been gods is perhaps a way of coping with the fact that he, essentially, watched both his best friends die. he makes a joke about it at one point: "i better be the first of us to die, because i'm not watching either of you die again. once in a lifetime is enough." though Fiora and Shulk laugh this off at the time, it lodges a discomfiting thought in the both of them -- one day, one of them is going to have to live through the other's death, with no gods or Mechon to bring them back. it's a feeling neither of them ever quite manage to shake.