NannyCanes' Art Blog

Since I was working with Lokee, and knowing that the guy has a tendency to be flanderized at many of the tables he's played at, I elected to approach him from a slightly different angle: bringing in a psychological element to his monstrous transformations. Canonically, Lokee only has three forms: Imp, Tiefling, and Demon. The story behind it is long, and quite frankly better suited for my friend to share or link to himself lest I get half of it wrong, but I can at least try to summarize as is relevant.

Lokee's penchant for confidence tricks and gassing himself up to be far more majestic than he is comes more from a place of insecurity instilled in him from a young age, where childhood neglect was blamed more on the nature of what he is than it was upon his mom's struggle or inability to parent properly. Because of this, he grew up believing that he didn't deserve anything good, that if he were given what he needed or wanted, he'd inevitably spoil it for everyone, including himself, leading to a lot of self-sabotage. Because of all of this, I figured he keeps himself in a state of 'equilibrium' when it comes to following the principle of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Long story short: the more needs he has met, the bigger, stronger, and more capable he becomes. However, because of the perception of Tieflings he grew up with, Lokee came to see his bigger, less human forms as corruption, as the consequence of greed, and therefore as 'bad' things, that his mother neglecting him actually was her keeping him human and humble. When things are going too well, he'd panic, sabotage his luck, and revert to his smaller sizes, but too small and Lokee becomes weak and vulnerable to his environs, and so has to pander to people's propensity to fawn over cute things to get himself back on track. His mental state and humanity doesn't actually change or lessen depending on his shape; the mind remains intact, he just is happier generally with each larger size, so he doesn't become the evil, heartless, greedy demon that people thought he would.

With this version, Lokee's biggest obstacle is unequivocally his need to please others more than his need to take care of himself. Whether that's different from the canonical version or not likely depends on the iteration which you're comparing him to.