@oogaboogaspookyman no you're correct I think and that's kind of the way I see him in general (partially headcanon, but partially canon interpretation). I think I posted something after Meet J about how I felt so vindicated it confirmed that N was just as brutal a killer as V and J, contrary to a lot of fanon that frames him as being guilt ridden the whole time (or takes J's insults about being useless at face value like she's not lying out her ass all the time lol)
Was chatting about that to my sibling who brought up a good point that in all honestly, N had the potential to be the most brutal because where V and J remember they were worker drones, and their horrific history, and them carrying out their mission is not entirely voluntary, giving them way more of a burden of guilt and grief and traumatizing memories they have to suppress (after all, even V's sadistic personality is something she leaned into to cope with the hell she was living in)... N did not remember or know any of that. He doesn't know he used to be anything else but what he is, he doesn't remember living amongst other worker drones in the past, he only knows he's there to do a job, which coincides with satiating a hunger he doesn't know the implications of, and the only meaningful bonding he gets to do with the only 2 people he's allowed to "know" as people is doing said job and satiating said hunger.
V ripping out some guys entrails and feeding them to him is a result of the mask she's been wearing to really become a killer and stuff down the sweet girl she used to be; N getting excited about a card game he wants to play and then remembering he's there to murder everyone and then doing it without remorse is all real. It's the combo of him being a person who's sweet and playful and the nature of a predator that he has no reason to believe is some unknown evil an outside entity planted in him.
This, in my humble opinion, is why it's so easy for him to flip sides and remain in cute and nice mode. If he no longer has the job to commit to, and his wants and needs are otherwise being met (companionship and we can assume he's eating off screen otherwise he'd y'know die), then ok! This is what he's doing now. No act to drop, no guilt, just switching from one state of living to another.
The whole golden retriever motif with him works great in this regard because while that dog breed is famously considered one of the most docile, gentle, family friendly dogs, they were originally bred though as gun dogs, and their "gentle mouths" made them superb retrievers as they could carefully bring back game undamaged.
A golden retriever doesn't know any moral implications of what it's doing. It doesn't feel bad for the duck the hunter kills and tells it to retrieve. It doesn't feel guilt over eating meat. When it lives with humans, its survival needs are met, it doesn't need to act on any instinct to run into the forest and kill prey. But if its needs weren't met, if it was lost in the woods, even the friendliest dog on earth would still know how to grab an animal and violently shake it until its neck snaps. I mean it shows you all the time when it shakes a toy, and it loves when you take the other end of the toy and together you play the game where you practice brutally mangling a small animal (and if you don't know that's what you're playing, it doesn't know that either!)
It's not evil for being a carnivore or having instincts and ability to kill, and even though you know it has them, you still let it sleep in your bed and play with your kids because you've trained it for the job it has (whether it's a house dog and it's job simply is to be everyone's friend, or a service animal, or a hunting dog) and take care of it well enough it sees you as a companion and not enemy or food.
For a dog there's no hard line between love and instincts because they're intertwined and contextual. And that's kinda how I see him, y'know? He has the sapient capacity (drone AI being virtually indistinguishable from human intelligence) to learn information and feel abstract emotion and therefore on some level I think he could feel bad or guilty about past actions but I don't truthfully think it could hit him the way it would V and J. Those two, their experience with being DDās is way more holistically vampiric where they remember they were once "normal" and now they are supernatural beings forced to feed on their own kind. N's more like... A werewolf in perma werewolf mode.
I think any self loathing that manifests feeling "evil" isn't a guilt that was always there, but a fear of doing wrong by the people he values present day and desire to protect them (and the thought of him being the thing they need protection from is distressing. Which is what Cyn (in the music vid) targets in his psyche. I think someone else needs to be the one planting those self doubt thoughts is the thing because otherwise, he simply knows himself to be a good person as much as he knows he's... A domesticated murder drone, haha)
All this to say I think that's why I see him having a lot of fantasies about his partner that range from saccharine to downright violent, and I think anything that would stress him out about it isn't the feeling like he'd lose control, but a fear that if the other person knew, they'd be afraid of him. And that's also why I love the idea of Uzi being really into that side of him, because it means he, as a whole person, is being loved and trusted, not just the parts that most resemble a normal worker drone while the murder drone stuff is bad and scary and it's a burden for him to hide and her to pretend doesn't exist. Nah, he is an absolutely wonderful person Uzi would trust with her life exactly the way he is, including the knowledge that 20+ years of killing and eating people was like a fun game to him. It's a little bit scary to think about, but at the same time it's like... Those 20+ years of carnage didn't change his capacity for love and compassion either, that's how strong that side of him is.
