big bad bug.

Growing up, Guzma ran into a lot of problems. His father's expectations of him were high, and the punishments for failing to meet these expectations were extreme. His mother remained complacent in her husband's abuse of their son, something he'd eventually grow to resent her for. He sought approval, and didn't often find it. Even when he took on the Island Challenge, he failed, and was forced to go home to a disappointed father.Guzma's reputation as an aggressive, violent person started as a defense mechanism. It didn't help against his dad, but he was already being bullied fairly often, and it did help with that. Kids were less likely to pick on the scrappy bug nerd when the scrappy bug nerd would start throwing punches if you looked at him wrong. But, it also backfired a bit. Nobody was willing to get close enough to him to realize that something was wrong. If he came to school with bruises and scrapes, it was automatically assumed that he'd gotten into a fight, that he was the aggressor. And he actively pushed away anyone who tried to get to know him.He wasn't willing to accept any help that was offered. He was generally scorned by the people around him, and so he simply didn't trust them. This especially came into effect when he started his Island Challenge. He was so proud of himself. He worked so hard, he wanted to be captain. That was the best award he could've ever been given. But then he failed. He couldn't complete it, so he wasn't allowed to be a captain. And his dad was angry with him. And Guzma was scared. He was terrified. But he had his own pokemon now, and a Golisopod can be awful scary when it wants to be. So Guzma's dad got what was coming to him, and Guzma ran the fuck away.And where did he end up? In a new group. Not Skull- This was a group under the Kahuna before Nanu. Guzma, in a way, got what he wanted. Approval. Of course, not everyone's approval, though. Tapu Bulu ended up rejecting its Kahuna for whatever reason, and striking that group down. Guzma lost the one group of people he had that he'd finally been accepted by. And he was pissed. So, he started Skull. He built his group up again, new. He leaned into the cruel, scary reputation he'd made for himself. And for the most part, they weren't actually that bad. Sure, they stole, they threatened people, but they needed to feed themselves. They were the people who couldn't get jobs, for whatever reason. Who were thrown out of their homes. Who needed someplace to go, but weren't accepted anywhere else. This was the place they were accepted. And that continued for a while, until Guzma got involved with Lusamine.Lusamine needed someone who could do her dirty work. She needed someone to take her blame. And she found that in Guzma. He already had a reputation as a thug. So, she started to get in contact with him. She gave him that approval that he sought so desperately. She used his childhood for her own purposes. When he told her about how he failed, she told him that she was proud. When he told her that his mother never did anything to protect him, she told him that she would. She gave him things he needed, money and food and clothes and medicine to provide for his team, and he was so desperate to keep her. It wasn't necessarily romantic, but he did love her, and she used it entirely for her own advantage. And once she had him solidly stuck in her trap, she started pulling strings. She removed the exits. If he needed a few days, she would threaten him with taking away something, or to step back. And he needed her. So he did what she said. Especially considering that she was a smart woman. She never made it an explicit threat. She kept it strong enough that he would panic, but hidden enough that he wouldn't catch on to what she was doing.And this really hurt him, especially after the events in Ultra Space. He had been betrayed, and the fact that she never actually cared about him was shoved in his face. And that, combined with Nihilego literally possessing him for a moment, is why he's so freaked out by the idea of something controlling his mind, now. It's happened to him twice, though the how of it was different.