Kurama Headcanons You Never Asked For
...But I’ll now proceed to ramble about them in a 1500-word post because I’m in Kurama hell. Help. Someone help me.
General mythological background: Lore suggests that all foxes are supernatural creatures, but only when they reach 100 years old do they turn silver, acquire additional tails, and gain the ability to shapeshift (an ability many kitsune use to appear as attractive women so that they can seduce and rob unsuspecting men). Generally it is assumed that a kitsune gains a tail every 100 years, such that by the time they are 1000 years old, they are an omnipotent 9-tailed being.
It is my suspicion that in the first 100 years before a kitsune gains its second tail, there would be a period of vast intellectual and emotional development. I feel this way because myth suggests that kitsune have a huge capacity to be pointedly conniving and even malicious, but I would suspect that the common fox is not going to care about much beyond survival instinct. Thus, some kind of transition must occur to get from average-joe fox to ethereal magical being. I think very few kitsune ever live long enough to experience this. In fact, I think Kurama may have been one of the few kitsune who lived as long as he does.***
Regarding Kurama: He is born several thousand years ago as a regular fox and is not extraordinary in any way. As the years pass, he mates with lady foxes, has lots of litters of kits, and goes about his extremely average fox life. Then, after several decades, it occurs to Kurama that he’s outliving other foxes. He begins to have more and more complex thoughts about his environment and the world. He wonders about what exists past the forested mountainside where he was born/has lived his life thus far. At around age 50, he becomes self-aware. (Think of this much like a Flowers for Algernon type of situation, except without the disastrous end consequences.)
At this point, instinct is telling Kurama to continue to do foxy things, but his rationality is actually beginning to overwhelm that instinct. He’s getting bored, and that’s making him braver as he sneaks closer to humans and other animals in order to entertain himself by stealing food and other interesting objects.He wants a deeper relationship with his fellow foxes. He wants to show them things he’s noticed, important discoveries he’s made. Quickly these observations become too complex for his companions to understand. Kurama stops mating entirely, finding it to be both incredibly boring in comparison to more intellectual pursuits, but he also is beginning to feel it’s rather mindless and devoid of meaning anyway. He grows incredibly lonely, consumed by his own thoughts and without any companions to share them with.
Whenever Kurama turns 100 and gains the ability to change form, he was probably very excited and eager to pursue new adventures and solve new puzzles. I view him as being extremely intellectually hungry, hoarding any and all knowledge he arrives across and filtering it based upon what he thinks he’s going to need to survive. Makai is much larger than human world, and therefore has far more treasures which are far more difficult to steal than the ones in human world. Kurama takes up mostly-permanent residence in the Makai. He’s not actually interested in getting rich, he just wants to figure out how to break into every challenging place he can find. He likes exercising his mental prowess. It makes him feel powerful. Now that he can shift his form to something bipedal, capable of speech, and with opposable thumbs, he feels that others will take him seriously and that he’ll make many new friends to share these adventures with.
He is taken seriously. But not for the reasons he wanted.
His followers are only interested in getting filthy rich, but they’re too stupid to do it on their own. They do not care about the challenge of a well-planned and executed heist or the excitement of breaking a complex code. They are impulsive, impatient, and blood-thirsty.
Kitsune have complete flexibility in choosing their physical form. Kurama chose his ‘yoko’ form for the specific purpose of seeming beautiful enough to be underestimated while also being powerful enough to do serious damage to potential threats. Some of his followers fall in love with him or believe that they can rise ranks in the group by offering to sleep with him. Kurama grows increasingly frustrated with this behavior.
Over time, Kurama becomes more and more arrogant about his own beliefs and standards. After several centuries, he’s become such an elitist that he’s certain he’s superior to everyone else (super irony - thief leader thinks he’s morally superior to his thief followers). The fox ‘society’ he originated in was not malicious - they simply did not have that capacity. But Kurama wanted intellectual equals, so he left. Unfortunately he still hasn’t found anyone who can match his wits, but he does learn that with a higher level of intellect comes a higher level of morally-shady behavior. He feels wit will always trump violence, lust, and greed. The best he can do is keep pursuing his interests and attempting to foster his group of bandits into something he feels comfortable in and proud of. But eventually even he stops caring too much about morality, because violence sometimes seems like the only language that the bandits speak. He gains a reputation as someone who will fuck you over if you cross him. He does not tolerate BS in his group. You have to get what you want by using your head. Later, he begins to feel that if someone dies, it was because they weren’t smart enough to survive.
Basically, this is a tough world, and he has to adapt. And yeah, a lot of these assholes are stupid as fuck, but he's still lonely, and they make it slightly more tolerable.
Over his long life, Kurama grows more and more cold and morally-ambiguous, but still just as cunning and goal-oriented as ever. He has no patience for incompetence or foolishness and anyone in his group who exhibits tendencies toward either will face unfortunate consequences (Yomi being just one example). He does not become close with many (or any) until Kuronue. His compromising feelings of caring and friendship (or more, depending on the headcanon) toward Kuronue - and particularly his distress at Kuronue’s death - might have jarred Kurama enough to put a dent in his cool demeanor, leading to his ultimate capture and escape to human world.
***I read that when a kitsune is dishonest, they lose a tail. (x) Since Kurama is likely 1000+, he should technically be an omnipotent being by now. But he’s not, implying that he was dishonest a whole freaking lot. The longer you headcanon him being alive, the more humorous/depressing this becomes, since he only has 4 tails in the series. He was probably dishonest much more than his lack of tails would suggest, but I’m sure he got very good at telling incomplete truths (not technically a lie, but not the whole truth either) to the point that you can’t really be sure if anything he says to you is legitimate.
Additional thought: Imagine, before he turns 100, Kurama comes across a temple and befriends the humans living there. They feed him, and he keeps coming back. When he sleeps in the garden, all the flowers go into full bloom. The humans are convinced he is a lucky fox. They name him Kurama (’handsome rose’) and treat him something like a pet, even though he’s sometimes gone for weeks at a time. They tie a red cloth around his neck so that they can differentiate him from other foxes. In Japan nowadays, fox statues with red scarves around their necks are common. Imagine if Kurama started this. If someone at the temple gets sick, Kurama lays next to them while they sleep and by morning they are better. He cannot speak their language, but he does learn to understand it and comprehends entirely everything they say. When he turns 100 he takes human form, excited to have an actual conversation with them now, but rather than being overjoyed, they are terrified and believe he is a demon. ‘Youko’ (demon fox) is what they call him before they scream at him to leave the temple and stay away.
Additional, additional thought: Kurama feels perpetually misunderstood throughout his life. Nobody knows him for all of what he is. They know some small part of what he is and subsequently fear or admire him. He feels most creatures are shallow, with a few exceptions. Shiori, who is not shallow and who loves him dearly, also does not know who he is. but he cannot tell her the truth without facing the risk of losing her (or so he feels).
Ultimately, all of the above suggests that the Kurama we know now - frighteningly intelligent, yet warm and loving - is how Kurama began his life, too. Shiori just brought this out of him again. Shiori couldn’t have had such an impact on him if he didn’t have the parts there to begin with.
(Also, though it’s not really relevant to any of this, I headcanon Kurama as asexual. JUST.... you know, while I’m headcanon-dumping.)