#but the fact theres genuinely such bad real world politics behind it is what makes it SO fucking infuriatinf

[oflgtfol]

Diff anon here but yeah it’s weird because even in episode 1 Din was not that antagonistic towards IG-11 despite having no character devlopement yet, he was annoyed and sarcastic but he didn’t threaten to actually harm him before they found Grogu. He showed concern for IG-11 pretty quickly after he got damaged and even when he distrusted Kuill’s programming he didn’t spit in the droids face about it. It just makes no sense why two seasons later he’s suddenly treating them like dirt.

right like din was obviously unfairly prejudiced about droids since he let his childhood trauma color his view of them even into adulthood, but he wasn’t like, “i’m going to beat you the fuck up” level of prejudiced? he just didn’t want to be around them, he didn’t trust them, but he wasn’t ever violent about it

din imo is just not someone who lashes out in anger often anyway. the only time he was ever really impulsively violent was in chapter 2 when he saw the jawas trashed his ship and he just started shooting and he killed like three all at once. but i mean also, like, arvala-7 is a remote ass planet (moon?), and having your spaceship ransacked to nonfunctionality is basically a death sentence (this is something ive talked about a lot in the past how i want to see more of it in sw, how any malfunction in this super futuristic tech can still leave you stranded to die a very very lonely and mundane death. despite all this fancy tech you cant escape the cold unforgiving void of space; if your hyperdrive goes out, you are DEAD.). so even then it’s like, well i can’t entirely blame him for going in guns blazing to try to stop them from destroying his ship. but yes this was the only time it was ever truly impulsive and clearly out of anger, every other time he kills people he’s much more calculated and unemotional about it, like it’s just a necessity and so he has to do it it’s never anything personal. so the only thing that makes this scene an outlier really is just the fact he kills out of emotion

so even though his dislike of droids WAS personal, he still never got violent about it. as you said, he was perfectly fine with ig-11, he was just kinda like 🙄🙄 about it the whole time but that’s barely anything

and now in s3 he’s suddenly just like, assaulting them? threatening to kill them? especially in a fucking Bad Cop Good Cop maneuver? it’s just, i know he wasn’t nice about droids in the past, but it was NEVER to THIS extent, and it’s especially egregious considering he went through that whole fucking arc between s1 and s2 about becoming more okay with being around droids?? HELL, even in S3 ITSELF, din has R5 as a droid companion??????? if he hates droids so much to where he’s going to act like THAT in chapter 21 then why was he totes okay with R5 just a few episodes prior?

Also speaking of R5, where the fuck has he been this whole time these past few episodes. now that i think about it i genuinely cant remember. like did he just become yet another plotpoint left behind and forgotten

[graffitibible]

PLEASE dig more into the intricacies of ghoul and gogo's relationship I'd LOVE to hear more!!

OH THANK GOD, i have SO MANY THOTS about this relationship

im putting this under a cut because it got. ridiculously long lmao. im sorry you can indulge me if you want

one of the hardest things about writing ghouls pov is that he is, consistently, a ridiculously unreliable narrator. their awareness of themself and other people is on so many different levels of disordered thinking and his sense of self is so distorted by a chemical cocktail of neuroses, compartmentalized trauma, and a lifetime of severe self-loathing. they’re like ten layers deep into this mental bullshit and don’t have the tools to unpack it. whenever ghoul meets someone new, theres a fundamental paranoia and fear regarding what their motives might be in regards to him. thats why they approach everything with so much defensiveness and the general assumption that someone has an ulterior motive. this is actually pretty common coming from kids with roughed up backgrounds like ghoul’s. unprompted kindness absolutely terrifies him because they assume theres some kind of trick there - historically, all the people in his life who were supposed to be “safe” weren’t so this is one of the rules of the world that ghoul’s internalized as fact. and because ghoul is scared basically all the time they tend to grab that fear and channel it into being angry instead because that nets him more control of the situation.

basically: ghoul is two thousand tons of radioactive maladaptive coping mechanisms packed into a five foot two goblin who hates the idea of being scared all the time and has chosen instead to channel all that fear into being An Absolute Nightmare.

narratively, i needed ghoul to have at least one positive relationship in his life so that there was a basis for some good relationships in the fabulous four collective. i needed ghoul to have some kind of context of “this is what it’s like to trust someone, this is what it’s like to love someone so goddamn much you’d do unspeakable things to keep them safe, this is what it’s like to have someone in your life who has your back unconditionally.” granted, thats not how this relationship ended, but at least for a minute there, gogo and ghoul had each other’s backs. that was important because i needed ghoul to have some experience in navigating a positive relationship. 

it wasn’t originally gonna be newsagogo, but i did know that gogo was gonna cross paths with ghoul prior to their run-in with poison and kobra - this was something i settled on sometime while i was writing part two of “starry-eyed.” gogo was meant to be a) one of the ways to contextualize a lot of the Shit in the zones that ghoul didn’t have an opportunity to learn about on their own time and b) one of the key ways that ghoul gets to cement a real genuine sense of justice. prior to that, ghoul had this unfocused hatred of bli the way most people in the zones do but didn’t have a real big picture understanding of how best to chip away at that kinda construct. the closest thing to it was gangs that were super bloodthirsty and liked to hunt dracs for sport but these groups weren’t interested in dismantling the institution of bli, just the catharsis of blasting dracs to hell and back. so when i got to this run-in proper, there were enough similarities in their characters (both tech-heads, both with some deep-seated vendettas against bli, both prone to couching their Real Problems in humor and deflection, etc.) for me to go “hang on.....what if....” and i could kill 2 birds with one narrative stone.

that being said oh man i did not expect writing that relationship to hurt the way it did. 

because on a lot of levels, these two really got each other! ghoul can read gogo’s expressions and body language so easy. ghoul, like jet, is an extrovert; he recharges best around people they trust. gogo’s the same. like, one thing i feel like i didn’t do well enough in that chapter was cement that, objectively speaking, gogo didn’t strictly need ghoul’s help. newsagogo is fully capable of setting up and running that station all on their own. ghoul suspected this from the start, sure, but gogo has a good grasp of tech and could probably do most of the setup herself. BUT she offers this hand to him because she doesn’t like running this station alone. she likes people and likes being around people - hence why she’s so desperate to get herself really networked into the desert and capable of calling up other dj buddies of hers. it’s pretty common practice for a dj to have a partner or team to back them up (in case they need a runner, in case they need to pack their stuff and go, in case they need someone to spot them, etc.) so gogo was in the market for that - and ghoul was a good candidate. a tech-brain, someone good with radios and obscure gear? that’s ideal runner material, and gogo doesn’t have to do this shit on her own.

and newsagogo was a really good influence on ghoul in a lot of ways. she’s the first person to go “hey let’s just do shit for fun” without any ulterior motive. takes them out drinking for fun, likes to drink soda on the roof for fun (this did not always end well but the intention was in the right place). that’s a new thing for ghoul, who’s always felt fundamentally unwanted. in every group and crew and relationship he’s had prior to this one, there was always the undercurrent of “they’re using me. they’re using me and once they’re done using me they’re gonna ditch me or kill me.” so while gogo’s doing these casual bonding activities ghoul is like WHAT IS THE ULTERIOR MOTIVE HERE and their paranoia is eating away at him and theres really honestly no other shoe that needs to drop here but thats not something that registers on ghoul’s radar.

even with that rocky start ghoul was picking up a lotta stuff from gogo, like that aforementioned sense of justice. and it was with a positive relationship like that one that i could bring out just how person-oriented fun ghoul is. like, the way i write the fab four, someone like party poison is task-oriented. fun ghoul (and jet star, actually) are both person-oriented. that’s why fun ghoul becomes so ride-or-die for newsagogo. this is actually like...their default state of being if allowed to get close to people lol. fun ghoul has a distorted sense of self that causes him to rank their own safety and self-worth way below everyone else’s along with a default propensity to love people...deeply. ghoul loves people ungently. they love people with everything they are. will easily put himself in a position to die if it means that the people they love are safe. part of this is setting up just how easy it was for the fab four and ghoul in particular to make that suicidal, sacrificial call in “SING” but part of this is just who fun ghoul is as a person. so when gogo gets hurt, ghoul goes ahead and conjures up every scrap of leverage he has against tommy chow mein and basically sets it on fire because that’s what ghoul loving someone is like. it’s ghoul trying to take apart anything that threatens the people they give a shit about and being wholly capable and willing to set himself on fire to keep the people they love warm.

they complimented each other incredibly well in a way that surprised me. like, ghoul gets people in a way gogo doesn’t, and vice versa. gogo has the attack plan and knows how they intend to set about dismantling bli with careful, calculated movements, but ghouls the one that suggests “hey, you know that if youre a dj you actually have a lot of political capital in the zones, technically??” like not with those words but thats the basic gist behind what they suggested. prior to that it didn’t occur to gogo to use DJing as a route to get what they needed but DJs have a lot of clout in the zones with the right crowds and ghoul’s hunch turned out to be correct. gogo’s the person who can do the face-to-face interactions in a clear and concise way, who can sell good headlines on the airwaves, but ghouls the one who comes at those interactions with the requisite suspicion to realize when things could be off - it’s that paranoid initiative that saves gogo’s life when that bomb goes off.

ofc once ghoul realized that they gave this much of a shit about newsagogo he immediately tried to stop thinking about it because this kind of unconditional caring for someone? that’s brand new. and it terrifies the shit out of him. because all of a sudden, ghoul doesn’t have the handy back door that they’ve always had. if shit really gets bad, he tells himself consistently, they can just leave. they can ditch whoever they’re with and it’ll be fine. but when ghoul gives this much of a shit about someone, the idea of leaving feels like trying to carve your heart out with a spoon. every time gogo expressed this casual affection ghoul does his best to brush it aside or willfully forget it - but they dont, really. subconsciously that’s always there. and no matter what kind of bad blood manages to end up between them, ghoul can’t forget that this is the first person who he actually wanted to call a friend; they keep that pendant gogo gave him for the rest of their life.

but ultimately, the pair of them fell apart because they both grew in such a way that they couldnt be in each other’s lives forever. gogo prioritizes the cause over her interpersonal relationships; that’s just the kind of person they are in this stage of rebellion against bli. gogo can look at her personal happiness and acknowledge that something like that is secondary to their goals. war is about sacrifice and gogo understands this. newsagogo knows that she might not survive to the end of it, knows full well that their agents might not survive to the end of it, and has accepted these consequences. losing some of their agents doesn’t shake gogo the same way it does ghoul.

because ghoul’s the kind of person who can’t accept that. this is the first positive relationship he’s had in their life and he doesn’t wanna lose it. he doesn’t wanna lose newsagogo over a big blanket cause. the seeds for that kind of “will die bleeding for this cause” are there, but ghoul is a socially-oriented person and very person-oriented in general. and fundamentally, fun ghoul is a deeply compassionate person who can’t help but empathize: the micro will always supersede the macro. it’s easier for ghoul to charge into battery city to save a little girl than it would to charge into battery city for a vaguely defined reason that might further a broader cause.

unfortunately, because gogo and ghoul had two such different approaches to this and because ghoul is a volatile person, they did that thing where uh. again, this is pretty common in abuse survivors, but ghoul did that thing where he detonates their positive relationships because this was always a foregone conclusion to someone ensconced in so many paranoid maladaptive coping mechanisms and at least this way, with ghoul going off, the relationship gets to detonate in a way that ghoul can control. a lot of those moments where ghoul acts like an absolute little nightmare have to do with that notion of control; this way, fun ghoul gets to decide when and how the relationship ends and for someone who did not get a lot of control over anything in their early life, this is how he compensates.

i wrote this fuckin. tragic “friends who drifted apart, who didn’t see the cracks in the foundation of their relationship until they were using them to splinter themselves away from each other” with no basis in anything canon and fucked myself up over it and why did i do this?

this was an essay and a half but yeah feel free to yell at me about newsagogo and fun ghoul cause THATS a niche fucking friendship i didnt expect to mess me up the way it did

[kurainburdened]

👫 ft. saizo KJNHM

bHey guess what you asked for saizo but youre getting like everyone

Knock of Sasuke Saizo

Lol I like to bully him,

His is funny because it’s so completely one sided right now, if only slowly pulling results. But lets see what I can do with the local tsundere ninja, as the company liked to call him

Maya and Saizo are two complete opposite souls pulled together by circumstance. Maya is overbearing, fun loving and silly. Shes finally out in the real world and poor Saizo has to pull on reigns to keep her from doing anything too crazy. That’s already a big job for most people but for someone like him? Well it’s easy to see how their relationship got to how it is.

But Mayas genuineness does indeed begin to wear him down. She goes out of his way for him. After all, job or not, he’s still risking his life for her and she wants to do what she can for him even when he’s being a huge meanie! The more he tells her it’s impossible for htem to be friends the more of a challenge she takes it as. And she wont stop until theyre best buddies!

I like to imagine a scene where someone is trying to kill saizo who can barely move from the fight and Maya stands in between them. The person cant kill the kurain master because shes useful so they at least try to fight her enough to deter her but she keeps getting back up.And shes getting in really bad shape, she can barely stand but she still pulls herself in front of saizo. Like yes she’s weak, yes she doesnt know the firs tthing about fighting but she will NOT let anything happen to him if she can still move. Of course in the last second the cavalry comes. and Saizo probs gives her a thorough scolding.  

Now for some fun hcs!

Maya ends up trying to learn how to defend herself and to his surprise she actually has an aptitude for the sword. Something no one saw coming and something only a trained ninja could even recognize. She’s not so good with her feet so it’s kind of hard to tell for most people. She also has good instincts and after quite a bit of time, He actually gets her to be pretty good! The two can gave some good fights, tho of course Saizo still dwarfs her but Maya has fun fighitng him. YOU CAN BET that once she starts getting some level of good she’d try sneak attacking him. It wields some painful results at first, but after  bit he becomes able to send her presence specifically so she doesn’t get as hurt. The first time she genuinely is able to sneak up on him she’s so proud of herself. That is, if that happens. But it’d be cool if it did.

Sakuhito

So I hc that Maya ends up finding out about sakuhito the same way it goes in the prologue. Though it takes longer after meeting them for her to revea that. She kind of plays around with sakuhito for a bit. She’ll muses loudly like ‘huh thats funny thats different from what you told me before. Thats sooo strange. Whats going on here,’ she sees him sweat and desperately try to cover it up for a bit  before kind of letting him off the hook and shrugging like ‘ah well must be my imagination. anyway!’ and changes the subject quickly. One day shes finally like ‘so who are you? cause its definitely not the emperorer’

She gets what it’s like to be in big positions of power so she plays with him a lot. Tries to get him to loosen up. This mostly takes the form of her playing little harmless pranks on him. Something to make him smile. As well as give her a good laugh. You can bet she sets up a banana peel in front of him. It’s all in good harm and nothing harmful and nothing that would put his position in danger

When theyre alone Maya teaches him fun kid things. She excitedly recounts all sorts of fun tales she’s heard, complete with reenacments that sometimes gets herself hurt during the action scenes, sometimes sakuhito. She doesnt care. Maya is probably alot more daring around him than anyone should be allowed to be in front of the emperor but it always works to her favor. All she wants is to get his mind off all the big heavy stuff he has to deal with in the outside world. When theyre together in her room, she wants him to just feel like sakuhito.

I feel like this might result in him feeling the need to distance himself because she ends up being able to tear his mask off a lot easier than she should be able to. And he has a job to do. He cant let anyone know of his presence but maya is absolutely RELENTLESS.

Maya and Sakuhito are very similar in that they have theyre fun childish sides but this never means that they are people who shirks their responsibilities. Which I think is a big comfort for Maya because I like to imagine in the presence of other people they’ll be all stiff. Maya and Sakuhito bow deeply to each other and are like ‘It’s an honor to meet you Emperorer Kuze’ ‘Yes as with you oh powerful Kurain Master’ and they’ll glance up and theres this small smile and glimmer in they’re eye and they share a giggle before coming back up. Them talking to each other politely feels more like a game of pretend, compared with others when they’re playing their assigned roles.

Now time for fun hcs!

I like to imagine if they’re stuck in a gathering of important figures, Maya and Sakuhito will find themselves together and they’ll look like they’re having important conversations, and sometimes they are but others Maya’s just cracking jokes with him in a hushed tones. Sometimes Sakuhito has to start into a coughing fit to hide a laugh.

Of course Maya doesn’t do this all the time. She has a good sense of responsibility and time and place, but there’s also something fun about sharing in these secret conversations. It’s a feeling akin to passing notes in the middle of class with a close friend.

These two have conversations thats just two people of similar personalities and backgrounds who can connect and understan each other in this way that not a lot of other people can They have a lot of fun and when they’re together they can just be themselves. And it’s a bit of a relief from their usual lives. They give each other a place where they can be themselves.

I like to think that they’re kind of like each others safe havens. Like theyre home when they’re with each other.

These two get so good at reading each other so if something happens in a room, they literally just have to make eye contact and immediately theres this understanding. They can make hand signals that no one else understands but them.

Ohh Maya gets kidnapped and she sends a letter thats supposed to make sure no one suspects anything but later when Kuze is relaying this to Sakuhito Maya says something odd that makes Sakuhito raise an eyebrow. Like it’s something small that no else would think twice about but he just KNOWS and he takes a look at the letter and it makes mention of a story character who gets kidnapped, And its one of the stories she had told him about and hes immediately like. MAYAS BEEN KIDNAPPED. and everyone else is like. isnt that a jump? but he just KNOWS. he can tell from just these small things that somethings wrong and theres something in his gut that just makes him so sure of this

oh man i want modern au for all your muses i just tried imagining modern sakuhito but idk how thatd even translate

Munenori

I feel like she tends to do the same for munenori that she does for Sakuhito but rather than it being a concentrated effort at first, with like a purpose she just can kind of naturally be herself. I think that has to do with the fact that Munenori isn’t pushing himself like sakuhito is to keep up the mask of someone that is just the opposite of himself.Her relationship is something more relaxed where she just is herself and munenori appreciates it

I feel like this relationship is very mutual in that, Maya really loves and respects him. She respects how dignified he is. How he holds himself as a leader and how he leads. She’s fascinated by him because he doesn’t treat her like others do and he seems to genuinely enjoy her presence rather than just putting up with her. There’s this natural pull she feels where she wants to learn more about him. In turn munenori appreciates how shes never let the power she has get to her head, rather it’s not in her to ever let her power control her like it has others. She’s so genuine and has this aura of fun about her but also never shirks her own responsibilities. I also feel like he’ll be one of the first to realize her tactical abilities and that she’s much smarter than she or anyone will give her credit her. Like this relationship is built on a lot of mutual respect.

When these two are together I like to imagine it’s more like two like minded people with differing energies that come to converge when they’re together. It’s a friendship that on the outside looks so strange but for these two it’s so natural. They’re like minded enough to enjoy one anothers presence but different enough for them to be able to learn and grow from being together. The ways they differ allow for them to have these interesting conversations. While they don’t agree on everything they can usually walk away from disagreements feeling like they learned something. I guess if I had to describe it, you wouldn’t ever imagine it but their brains are kind of on the same wavelength. Like they can just enjoy each others presence and grow from each other, but when things get bad, something happens with the war, they stand on equal footing and can help support each other. Give insight that the other lacks

Roberto

Her relationship with Roberto is interesting because he meets her on much different circumstances than she does with the other two. Maya is trying to really embrace her responsibility and in doing so leave parts of herself behind. It’s not like she’s all business all the time but there’s not as much room to be herself. That’s why Roberto is someone she really connects with. He brings out this side of her that’s shes trying to lock away and just the mere presence of him is making that impossible for her.

These two are people with similar energies who feed into each other. When they’re together it can be explosive chaos because there are ZERO brakes. Interestingly enough it’s usually maya with the reservations. Because she’s here to work. She’s here to study. Yes she has fun, yes she can be silly, but she can’t be her usual rule breaker self when she’s here. She wants to be respectful to the kingdom that allowed her to study under their royalty. So she can’t exactly go around burning the place down.

That’s why Roberto is kind of like her kryptonite. He so naturally and effortlessly pulls her entire personality out where she likes it or not. That’s kind of good but kind of bad. He encourages those impulses that usually most people would tell her no. It’s good in that Maya has more room to breathe, but sometimes he encourages her to do things she shouldn’t. But I think because he’s encouraging this side of her that everyone tells her is bad, she feels more like she can trust him. Like she can entrust this side of herself to him.

Now for some fun hcs

Maya and Roberto get so good at avoiding guards it’s like a game of hide and seek. They end up becoming really acquaintd with all the nooks and crannies of the palace. They end up exploring the castle more thoroughly and even find hidden passageways and they explore a lot together. Like they have all these cool adventures.

[tumblunni]

hey uhhh YKNO WHATS GOOD brainstorming potential headcanons for a character you know NOTHING ABOUT

i guess its less headcanons and more like.. wishes? hopes? what i think would be cool to do with this dude and like ALL I KNOW is that he is a cool dude and apparantly he doesnt have a backstory or sympatheticness SO consider what if he did and maybe thatd be cooler. like dude he owns THE SINGLE BEST BOSS BATTLE THEME IN ALL VIDEOGAMES EVER and that is ALL I KNOW ABOUT HIM and i just want him to deserve it, yo. also if he turned good i could be his friend and some of the badassness would rub off on me

ANYWAY

COOL SQUID PRESIDENT

i would vote for this man as squesident

seriously the design is SO GOOD!!! how did they manage to get such a cool colourscheme out of his entire Thing being that he has no colours?? like damn i like white being used as an evil colour for once, thanks. it symbolizing emptyness and emotionlessness is like BIG YES and i really hope thats what they were going for cos apparantly the wiki says that all the yokai who join his “we should never be friends with humans” gang turn colourless to match? but like the dude himself is less plain white and more very light shades of blue, grey and gold. MAYBE REFLECTS THAT HE IS A MANIPULATIVE DOUCHE WHO MAYBE DOESNT REALLY CARE ABOUT YOKAI AND JUST WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD PERHAPS dammit why does everything about him scream “great 100% evil guy who is very scary” when man I WANT TO LIKE HIM, DAMMIT!!

ALSO SERIOUSLY the visual effect of the wild spirally red yellow eyes against an otherwise “peaceful” colour whose entire point as an evil is “peaceful” taken to a bad extreme. it REALLY immediately sells that “tries to pretend to be calm, collected and fancy but is actually an angry mofo at heart” vibe i got from his theme song??? I REALLY HOPE THATS ACTUALLY HOW THIS COOL BOSS BATTLE GOES DOWN cos man the best villains are smug asshles who Always Win and then when you FINALLY win you get that much of a better ending!!! but AGH another part of me is like “i hope im wrong because he looks like a Cool Dad and i want him to be good”. Maybe his true design concept was to betray me personality with using all his cool dad power for evil...?

ALSO im not gonna spoil you guys on it cos it is JUST AS AMAZING AS HIS SONG but i was toooootally right that he has some sort of super intimidating second form and its got THE COOLEST DESIGN EVER HOLY SHIT! and also apprantly there’s a recoloured bonus boss called Minister Squisker who’s like a colour swap in a really creative way?? it swaps him being all “blank” themed with scary bright eyes and instead his entire body is a wild ye olde mythological illustration style paint job in every colour ever. okay COOL HEADCANON NUMBER ONE thats actually the regular colour of the species and mckraken is the white sheep of the family lol

also UHHH i dunno it seems kinda weird to me that theyd have this dude running a goddamn political party about humans being bad yet he doesnt seem to have any motivation whatsoever for it? unless it really is just supposed to be ‘he only pretends he wants to protect yokai from humans so he can manipulate and rule the yokai’. but like HYPOTHETICALLY in some universe where he actually lives up to his Grumpy Dad Who Has A Hidden Soft Spot potential, maybe he has an understandable backstory that raises legitimate concerns about how humans are destroying the natural and mythological and forgetting their roots, or other reasonable reasons why yokai could think humans are dangerous and all. i mean we ARE dangerous, we’re just a wide group of people that contain evil bastards and also good people, yknow. And thatd resonate well as a plot probably, cos well the whole point of the series is “in real life ur scared of yokai but theyre actually all goofy pranksters who will be your best friend forever”. Both sides being afraid of each other could lead to some good plotness! and it could be really effective and sad if after hours of joyous childhood wonder the protagonist bumps into the first yokai they couldnt befriend. the first one thats scared of them. the first member of this weird colourless political party who accuses them of committing crimes against yokaikind, of obviously only enslaving these yokai friends cos you have an ulterior motive, just like all humans! it could be effective if its something that shakes up the whole way you saw the world and establishes that hey its not all fun and happiness, and there’s some people you are powerless to convince. maybe even some people you are powerless to save...?

ANYWAY possible idea for ‘what if the dude originally had a sympathetic motive but it got twisted over time and now he’s just a fuck BUT maybe he could still be redeeminated someday ok thanks” What if he’s the spirit of.. like.. ocean pollution? Like there’s some yokai who are ghosts of a mortal person but theres some that are just nature spirits or personifications of concepts. What if he’s the personification of the dying screams of all the wildlife killed in a particular tragic oil spill? hence squid = thematic, and blank white colourscheme = even more thematic reflecting the stain the oil would leave on a pristine ocean and also the blank emotionlessness he was left as after witnessing that tragedy. Cos like his entire Purpose would have been born out of avenging anger but i mean he was just a kid, the only one left alive on a ruined beach and seeing just how powerful humans were and how pointless it would be to try and fight them with his weak power. like he was born to avenge all these souls and he just keeps failing!! his entire reason to live and he’s just too small!! so he ends up becoming bitter and cynical and learning how to use his silver tongue to manipulate others into becoming his weapons, and he vows that someday he’s gonna come back when he has the power he needs to complete his mission. and he’s just forever had this anger seething inside that he’s been unable to get any catharsis from, so when his cold and collected persona cracks he’s really damn scary with all these years of a man who’s grown old fearing he’ll never be able to avenge his ocean friends and just AAAAAA! itd be really good cos itd be a way he could still be intimidating and high stakes as a boss fight but also sympathetic!! also it could make sense why he’d only be redeemable after defeating him? like this entire time he’s been hidden behind a million layers of politics and minions and stuff and its very easy for him to not see the reality of the fact that he’s terrorizing human children just like how humans scarred him as a child. so like his whole big second form transformation super anger mode time would be sort of a last ditch attempt to deny what he already knows, the doubts that have been eating away at his soul now he’s getting close to the end of his life goal. but also like.. he doesnt even know who he IS, under the lies! its been his entire purpose for existing. like he probably uhh.. didnt have much plans after his victory. he probably wouldnt have much will to live left. so yeah you basically beat up this guy’s emotional walls and make him face the face of the people he’s been hurting, when he’s been trying to avoid it for so long. and he gets to see how much all the other yokai genuinely trust you and how much youre personally sacrificing to protect them so maybe you really arent just lying about being a good person...

oh also i was thinking about the inherant hypocrisy present in the fact that this guy is a big spoopy REALLY WELL DESIGNED squid monster that spends all his time in a depowered humansona instead, despite his whole Thing being hating humans. and, yknow, ‘i’ll solve this using a carbon copy of human politics instead of any more traditionally magical way of fighting the humans’. Yeah. So THEORY of SADNESS maybe he like never actually met any other yokai for a long time? I dont think it really makes sense that he’d be hypocritical because he secretly likes humans or something, that wouldnt jive with this backstory idea. So im thinking another explanation could be that he genunely doesnt know much about yokai culture? Like cos of his backstory he just poofed into existance on this destroyed beach in the human world and spent the first few centuries of his life completely alone except for the terrifying monsters that haunted every second of his life, and the knowledge that it was his purpose to defeat them but he didnt know how. And he was a nature spirit of the sea but his sea was empty of everything except death, so he couldnt even hug a cute fish sidekick or something- OH GOD WHAT IF HE DID HAVE A CUTE FISH SIDEKICK AND IT DIED COS OF HUMANS!!! very tiny sad squid monster child holding a dead pet, oh god why did my heart did this to meeee!! so yeah he didnt even know he was a yokai or wtf yokai are, he didnt know anywhere outside the tiny rock pool he would hide in on this barren beach. And then someday he gets found by an older yokai and adopted and like he feels like he owes them so much cos they gave him a reason to live, and a connection to the nature that he was supposed to protect, and.. well.. any companionship at all ever. So thats how his directionless “humans are bad” turned into “yokai are good and i need to protect them from humans like i failed to protect the beach” which turned into “i need to get more power to do this” which turned into manipulating other yokai and seeing them as nothing more than tools to take down the humans, his revenge consuming him until he barely remembered the reasons he originally wanted to do it...

and blablabla thats where we bring in the recolour bonus boss also, and say thats the nice grandpa figure who adopted him when he was all lost and trapped in the human world. and cos he was sorta adopted into nobility thats why he’s so over the top with his pompousness, its like a hint of IM LOVV MY GRANDEPA shining through his grumpface. ALSO maybe a sad situation where the gramps saw his kid growing up into this scary extremist and he tried to reason with him that humans dont need to be destroyed and that led to them fighting and him getting sealed off in recolour bonus boss land. and mckraken sees it as the biggest betrayal of his life and it totally threw him off the slippery slope to feel like the one man he trusted the most was a traitor to yokai all along. but even at his most evil he couldnt bear to actually kill his beloved gramps so he just imprisoned him and tries to stop thinking about it but like THE CONSTANT SPECTRE OF THE GUILT HANGS OVER YOUR HEAD THAT YOU DID YOU GRAMPS WRONGGGG So yehmaybe protag could find the gramps guy and hear about the sad backstory via him and then defeat mckraken and make him realise he was wrong and he apologises to his gramps and atones and all the humans and yokai are friends again and BUNNI CRIES FOREVER the end

cos seriously man this guy’s design is too good to be wasted on a hateable!! srsly he’s like that archetypical goofy big beard chubby pirate dude BUT INTIMIDATING AND BADASS AND COOL FASHION AND DAVY JONES SQUID BEARD SQUEARD I LOVE HIM he is too round to be 100% evil

*slams fists on the table* IF YOU DONT LIVE UP TO MY EXPECTATIONS I AM GONNA CRY

aaa i need to stop just sitting here theorizing about this game and actually friggin play it lolllll