SOME ZUG HEADCANONS!!!1!!1
Hello sailors! Coming at you with some head canons for my favorite little freak. Some of these headcanons are just for Human/humanized and some can also be applied to his normal appearance in the show itself. For the strictly human headcanons there be a (H!), headcanons that can apply to both will have (Both), and strictly boat headcanon will be (T!).
Also some of these headcanons are somewhat ripped from a fanmade tugs episode on YouTube called Flooded by BadManoredProductions. It’s a pretty neat lil video and I like anything that gives Zug some more depth :)
.(Both) Zug has been in 3 other fleets before landing at the Zeros. The 1st was in Estonia and was fired him because they didn’t need him, the 2nd was in England and was shut down due to some really illegal activity taken place, and the 3rd fleet was the Flake Fleet which was in Healand (this one was directly taken from the Flooded fan ep I mentioned) and had to left Zug go due to the Captain not being the best with money.
.(Both) Zug is Estonian-Hungarian mix! Since the wiki describes Zug’s accents as Estonian but he is seem to be based off Peter Lorre who was Hungarian, I just decided to combine those two things because… it makes sense to me :D
.(T!) Capetian Zero only got Zug from the Flake Fleet since he was looking for a switchers for his team and Zug’s name fitting his very specific naming scheme he had with the rest of the fleet.
.(Both) The Flake fleet was the only fleet that felt like a family/friends to Tug. Sure, the Zeds had their moments, they keep Zug alive for this long, and Zip is nice/pretty good to him but the Flake fleet… they were just the first group of tugs that he could be a different part of himself around, you know? Not always having looking out for his own survival and such. He doesn’t miss the first two fleets though. They either ignored him, treated him coldly, or actively were just unpleasant to work with.
.(Both) When Zug first was recruited by the Zedstacks he try to write to his friends back at the Flake fleet every once and awhile to keep up with them but sadly in the past couple of years… he stopped. It’s a mixture of reasons why: Zug is a busy tug and sending out letters/making phone calls constantly would cost him what little money he has in his account.
But also, Zug doesn’t know what he should even write about. He can’t tell them about all the trouble he’s gotten into or any of the shady going ons with his crew. Not that’s he’s ashamed of his work, he isn’t, but he doubt that Captain Flake or the rest of crew would be proud of him. Zug has many rough drafts of letters he has written up on the middle of the night that he’ll never send.
.(Both) People tend to think Zug is older than he actually is mostly due to his eye bags and wrinkles. In my headcanon he’s only like 27-28 years old, compared to Zip who is like 22-23. Zug’s eye bags are due to a combination of genetics, stress from work/life (I mean do you see what who he’s working with), and life long insomnia. My boy can’t get a wink of sleep most nights and that has lead to him occasionally falling asleep/passing out on the job.
.(H!) Zug’s insomnia is definitely a problem outside of his health. He tries fight through passing out on the job to seem tougher and tries to find a place to crash if he can’t. One particularly rough time he couldn’t keep himself up and almost fell off the side of the port into the water. Luckily for him, Big Mac was around and working with moving boxes, noticed something was wrong before dropping what he was doing, grabbing Zug the scruff of the neck and pulling him onto the dock.
Zug hated being reminded of that moment, it did get him in trouble from his captain and crew, he did very silently and reluctantly thanked Big Mac.
.(Both) Zug has now also been forced to do night delivers also. Captain Zero sees it as him using Zug lack of sleep schedule as a profitable and useful. Zug see it as torture.
.(Both) Zug has reeeaallll mix feeling about the night shifts. On one hand he like them, their peaceful, no ones yelling at him, and he can occasionally can over hear/see some nighttime gossip around the port.
On the other hand, he hates how eerie some areas of the port can be and has become someone superstitious (despite him actively saying that ghost aren’t real and all that out loud). And he will flee on the slightest sound or movement from the corner of his eye. Especially on foggy/stormy night. Those are the worst. After the events of Pirate his paranoia has gotten worse.
.(H!) Zug has longer hair then most on the port, it’s a bit pasted his shoulder. He keeps it up in a small ponytail with a leather band hair tie that was gifted to him by the other switcher on the Flake Fleet. The hair tie has a little snowflake emblem stamped into it. It’s one of the few things he has left from his old fleet and one of the only items he really cares about.
.(H) Zug was bald at one point in his past. Mostly against his will. His second fleet needed all their employees to be bald or with little hair so it wouldn’t end up at a crime scene. The police could potentially find it and bust their entire operation. Zug never wants to be bald again. His head was so cold :(
.(H! but also could potentially be true for his Tugboat form in some aspects.) Zug doesn’t have a lot of physical/material goods in his living quarters. Due to him moving around from fleet to fleet he never has enough time to really collect anything.
.(H!) Zug doesn’t partake in smoking, one of the very few on the port that doesn’t. He tired doing it when he was younger to fit in to the other sailors but good did he not enjoy it. Never touch the stuff since. Plus, he already has little lungs and basically already had his fill of smoke due to second hand smoking. (His ass may have some asthma at this point.)
.(H!) Big City Port like most seaside places has a lot of seagulls. Zug usually shoos them or tries to scares them to be funny or because he finds them annoying. But, there is one seagull that he somewhat gets along with.
A real mangy one with one eye, infamous around the port for stealing food right out of people’s hand and having a nasty peck. Zug has formed an uneasy alliance with this one seagulls, occasionally throwing bits of his sandwich near it during his lunch break. And if he’s alone during this break he occasionally talks to it. The seagull hasn’t stolen his food or brother him much after. (If he wasn’t lazy or tired from work he was considering training it to do his bidding but that’s a lot of work.)
.(Both) Zug cannot stand hot weather at all. Though, he struggles with both extreme cold or hot but he can tolerate cold more. During Heat Wave, Zug trying to find shade anywhere he could, dry heaving, feeling himself absolutely melting.
.(Both) Zug doesn’t like or respect any of the Star-tugs, that’s a given. But he does like Sunshine (who doesn’t?). Mostly due to the events of the episode Trapped. Zug will still tease him and cause him trouble but out of everyone in the port besides Zip, he wouldn’t mind hanging out with Sunshine. Short people solidarity ✊
.(H!) Zug has some pretty good lock picking skills. Though if you start to rush him or make him panic he will start fumbling and messing up so bad he can’t recover. Bro needs to be locked in.
