Pulled pretty much straight from hunterofevil, the Ratatosk journal I use for dressing rooms and the like. This was originally a personality section for a generic profile I typed up on a whim that turned into TL;DR. I might get around to doing the same thing for Emil someday if I can. This whole thing is really written about Ratatosk taken from sometime between Martel Temple and the end of the game, but I'll keep the stuff involving that because I'm lazy I sort of want to keep those points as a reference for potential character development while RPing.

Warning: spoilers, TL;DR, parentheses abuse, possibly unbalanced focus as I was swinging between "write write write" and "Oh this is TL;DR/too much quotation, let's shave some of this" who-knows-how-many times while writing.



Rough. Ruthless. If the "normal" Emil (for lack of a better name to differentiate) operates at a steadily increasing volume from barely audible to somewhere around average, Ratatosk tends towards full blast, though as time goes on he does tone it down a little. (This is his theme song. Fits him nicely and is awesome to boot.) He's cocky, he's confident, he's blunt, and he's got less disregard for safety than what might be considered safe. He gets angry or annoyed pretty easily, and he won't hesitate to let you know when he is.

He loves battle: in gameplay his Ain Soph Aur extension starts out with him laughing insanely as he summons up a bunch of power to literally throw at someone, and one of the differences between his fights and the "normal" Emil's fights is that during Ars Nova, a Unison Attack between him and Marta, a sort of exchange between Marta and Ratatosk goes "Please!"/"No escape [to the enemy]!" while the other Emil's is "Please!"/"No way [to Marta]!" He can go pretty berserk when he's mad--the first hint that Ratatosk Mode was more than confidence and a couple physical changes was when he kept beating up on a supposed Martel Knight who was already down for the count.

The "normal" Emil is more representative of Ratatosk's kindness, and he cares about others to the point where many wouldn't, like wanting to save the man who'd been trying to kill him because he considered the man a friend despite how long Richter had supposedly considered him an enemy. Ratatosk...doesn't care so much. Where Emil didn't want to kill Richter, Ratatosk was all for it when fired up. While fighting Richter at the Temple of Darkness Ratatosk was ready to risk the whole temple falling down on him and his friends just to beat him. (It didn't work.)

Interestingly enough, when Emil cooks he makes his food in nice little shapes--rabbits, turtles, doves, etc. Ratatosk's cooking tastes the same as Emil's (which is pretty good), but it looks like an inedible mess. Coincidence? Not so much.

On the other hand! The Ratatosk of pre-game was an angry little Summon Spirit who was ready to take out his rage on the vast majority of the world and considered people to be as insignificant as ants. By the time Ratatosk's personality is sealed off, while he's still pretty ruthless in comparison to kind!Emil he's learned to value human life more: when Marta tried to turn herself into the Vanguard to protect a threatened city, he told Tenebrae, "I'll forgive you [for stopping me] once we get Marta back in one piece. No, make that if we get Marta back in one piece and the citizens aren't hurt. Then I'll forgive you."

Why the change? Because in his time as Emil he made friends, something he didn't exactly have before and something he certainly hadn't wanted after Mithos's betrayal. In the ending, when Emil and Ratatosk's personalities merge to become who is presumably the original Ratatosk before he got betrayed and vengeful, he says, "How could I ever forget you? The time we spent traveling together was not time spent in vain." How much of this can be attributed to pre-ending Ratatosk is debatable as just before he was sealed he told the whole party he wouldn't hesitate to defeat them if they tried to stop him, but it's still worth a mention, especially since it's emphasized through the game that "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality" "Emil is Emil"--and so is Ratatosk, like two sides of the same coin.

The same goes for ending!Ratatosk's guilt over Aster's death and what it had caused to the point where he was reluctant to allow himself to live out a human life; the mun's personal interpretation, at least, is that Ratatosk actually does also feel some guilt over killing Aster by the time he appears again after being sealed away. Not overwhelming-to-the-point-of-virtual-suicide guilt like Emil, but he feels maybe he shouldn't have done it after all.

Ratatosk cares a lot for his friends and especially Marta, even if he's not exactly the romantic type. This isn't to say that he'd like to kiss her or anything, but Emil became a Knight of Ratatosk initially to protect Marta, and before finding out who he was Ratatosk Mode Emil considered that part of his goal: Collect the Centurions' cores. Protect Marta. Possibly get revenge on Lloyd Irving (at least, before he found out it wasn't Lloyd who killed his parents). While casually he treats Marta as just another person...well, post-battle conversations are pretty much the basis of this entire point, so I've started an (incomplete) collection here. There's a range of interactions there, including him getting flustered when Marta talks romance, admonishing her for watching him fight, and being concerned over her well-being. There's a fun bit of variation there I'm still finding new conversations on Youtube, there's that many.

At one point when talking to Marta he asked, "Marta, do you need me? ...So you don't mind if I show up again?" and another time, when discussing Rilena, "...I don't care who I am. I only care about protecting you. Nothing else matters." Before finding out who he was, Ratatosk Mode often believed that Marta preferred the normal Emil over him, which was cause for both hurt and anger, and maybe a sort of jealousy--more on that later.

Meanwhile, the other Very Important Person in Emil's life (i.e., Richter)...is not quite as Very Important to Ratatosk. In the main storyline, Emil admired Richter a lot as a mentor and the first person to "give [him] courage." For much of the game he didn't want to fight Richter, but did anyway because they needed to get the cores or because Richter was trying to kill Marta (or Emil himself), but Ratatosk was a different story. The battle with Richter at the Temple of Darkness is a good example:

Richter: Stop interfering. I don't want to fight you.
Emil: That's too bad! Because I can't wait to kill you!

(And a few minutes later he introduced the arte that killed Richter's best friend, too.)

In contrast, once Emil returned to his "normal" self he was immediately worried about Richter's safety, and relieved when he heard that Richter had survived.

Later on when Ratatosk did say something that could be interpreted as sympathetic to Richter, suggesting that he could want the power of Ratatosk's core to get revenge on people for their prejudice against half-elves like Richter, the whole party made a point of being surprised. As Sheena noted, "...You never stand up for Richter when you're in Ratatosk Mode." Ratatosk shrugged it off, since if he was Aster (as they believed possible at the time) and Richter had killed him then he had no reason to be sympathetic to him. Which then resulted in a back-and-forth personality switch argument between Ratatosk and Emil over whether or not Richter was a good person. Among other things. ("Who said you could come out?")

Unlike Marta and her 3423423 conversations, Emil seems to get only one or two post-battle exchanges with Richter (see the post linked above), probably since there's a grand total of one required battle with him as a party member after Ratatosk comes in and there's a much greater emphasis on the relationship between normal!Emil and Richter as opposed to Ratatosk!Emil and Richter. There isn't as much especially revealing material there as in Marta's (or at least that I've found), but what is there indicates a casual back-and-forth "Hey let's decide who's the better fighter" familiarity that isn't as apparent in the main storyline, particularly once Richter starts figuring out Emil is Ratatosk.

To summarize: Ratatosk does not see Richter in the same way the other Emil does, though he doesn't hate the guy either. He probably has vaguely mixed feelings about the guy, really, since on the one hand they've been sort of friendly a couple times and he'd be willing to admit it's partly his own fault Richter's doing what he's doing--and hey, Ratatosk is Emil too and the other Emil adores Richter--but then again he doesn't exactly appreciate getting killed (in the past or in the present), and whatever his reasons Richter is still for practical purposes an enemy to him.

Ratatosk looks down on the other Emil, who he considered to be a coward dependent on Ratatosk's power. In fact, that was one of the first clues Ratatosk Mode wasn't just a battle-crazy possessed Emil: "Why worry about this wimp's feelings? ...I'm talking about the "normal" me. He's a weak coward who takes his own insecurities out on you [Marta]. He's worse than a dog." And with the early emphasis on being a man versus being a dog, from the man Emil half-worshiped--ouch. This isn't the last time by any means, either; he’s made a few other derogatory remarks insulting his "normal" self or saying it'd be better if Ratatosk rather than Emil were the dominant personality, as when he thought Richter had killed Marta: "If I was always me, I never would've let this happen!"

Incidentally, while he doesn't really fit the literal definition of the trope Ratatosk made it to the top of the "Superpowered Evil Side" TV Tropes page with the quote "This is why I should be the one who's in control."

An interesting point I found while writing the application for Emil in thedollsyhouse is that to an extent, Ratatosk is afraid of not being strong enough to do his job or protect the things he'd supposed to. He half-broke down when he thought Marta had been killed in the Temple of Ice (after the initial "You bastard, how could you do that to Marta" rage and while blaming the normal Emil), and he never completely trusts Emil to be strong enough to protect her when he decides to stick to fighting and stop coming out otherwise. And why does he look down on Emil? Because Ratatosk thinks he's cowardly and dependent on Ratatosk's power, and kind, and to him all of those traits are signs of weakness.

If you take a look at where he's coming from, it sort of makes sense. He's the one keeping the demons out of his realm and if he messes up, boom. Demon invasion. Not being strong enough would kind of be a bad idea.

He's fully aware that people tend to like the kind, "normal" Emil rather than his Ratatosk Mode to the point where Sheena and Regal first described him as a big jerk before Marta jumped in to defend him. He didn’t say much because hey, it wasn’t in his job description to be liked, but it was shown later that this bothered him to an extent because he was Emil too and nobody seemed to fully understand that, instead taking him for granted while the "normal" Emil got all the love without doing any of the real fighting. Even Marta, Ratatosk Mode's staunchest defender, was on and off about this. Once he started disregarding Rilena's safety Marta refused to acknowledge him as Emil, and he got angry: "So even you would choose that coward over me. ...He's the one who asked me for help. I'm not giving myself to him anymore. I won't do it!"

Which didn't last long, because soon he was pretending to be his normal self to comfort a worried Marta because he thought she would only listen to the "normal" Emil. Ratatosk doesn't exactly hate Emil--it's just that he disapproves of the other's early cowardice and knows that everyone likes the nice guy over him. And it's not that he can't be nice, either; he did pretend to be the other Emil to help Marta, and later on he helped her gather the courage to face her father. It's just that he likes to be direct and to-the-point more, and forget politeness if it gets things done faster or better.

However, Emil's decision to bear Ratatosk's responsibilities and atone for Aster's murder himself has changed Ratatosk's opinion of him too--likely one of the reasons he's so calm and rational once he faces Emil again after having been sealed away (and it's implied that to him, no time seems to have passed between those events), along with being able to read Emil's mind, them being the same person and all. Near the end of the game he and Emil fight each other inside their minds, and depending on the outcome he acknowledges that Emil was right about kindness not being weak (if Emil wins) or that they really are the same person, and that he trusts Emil to succeed in what he wants to do (if Ratatosk wins). In either case, he recognizes that Emil does indeed have some courage in him.

Ratatosk's a harsh guy, but he's...well, he's not human, but he has his nicer moments despite having once tried to wipe out humanity and while his development isn't as radical as the "normal" Emil, who goes from aggravatingly shy to a strong protagonist (who still has his less-than-heroic moments), it's still very definitely there.