SMAAAASH!!

Beginnings

He stared down at his lifeless corpse, a muted kind of surprise coursing through him. They say that before death, your life flashes before your eyes, but here he was: already dead, and yet the memories were still coming to him rather slowly. He remembered his family. They'd always been less than kind to him, to put it nicely; too many days gone ignored and forgotten at best, screamed at and hit at worst. Too many nights spent having sleep for dinner. He remembered playing Earthbound for the first time, and how it shaped him into who he was today, literally and figuratively. He remembered changing his name, and how he quickly became attached to video games as an escape from his reality. Maxwell had died: Giygas now stood in his place, and now he stared down at the unmoving body laying on his carpet. Maxwell really had died.

EarthBound

Giygas looked at his bed. Moments ago — really, it could have been hours, and he wouldn't have been any the wiser — he had thrown a box onto the sheets, bursting with excitement as he scrambled to tear open the package. He had been waiting perhaps forever for a Nintendo Switch, and now it was here: he threw packing components to the side in a rush of emotion, hands working at speeds he could hardly imagine possible. He gripped the power adapter in a shaking hand, pressing the prongs into the outlet — he felt the world around him grow fuzzy in an instant; a flash of light blinded him — and now he was here. Standing idly above himself. As a ghost, he stood still over his torched body, unsure what the next course of action was. Surely, someone would find out... but what did that matter anymore?

Lullaby

He had half a mind to do something with the body: to pose it menacingly, or do something that might scare his family, just to get back at them. Instead, he settled for tossing the body out the window — it was far heavier than he had anticipated, barring him from doing something stupid or funny with it, unfortunately. He packed his valuables into a backpack (admittedly, it wasn't much) and he stepped out of his house with a newfound confidence he had never quite felt before in his life. Years of anxiety and anguish were over: in the afterlife, he could be someone new; he could start over as Giygas and live the life he'd always wanted. He stayed at a hotel for a day or two, getting used to his new sense of freedom. As he left on the third day, he passed a newspaper stand sat idly at the entrance to the lobby. On the front page was an obituary for someone named 'Maxwell', found dead in a bush at the side of his house. He let himself laugh — perhaps too loudly, earning weird looks from passersby — and tossed it into his backpack with a smile. That day, Giygas left Lakewood imbued with an electrical joy he'd never felt before. Not even life could stop him anymore, and as he approached Gale Hill, he began to imagine all the things the afterlife could have in store for him.

• He named himself Giygas after the final boss of EarthBound, thinking it would make him sound tougher. ...It didn't.
• His favourite Earthbound characters are Ness and Jeff Andonuts.
• His favourite food is an egg and cheese bagel. Ham is a nice touch.
• As an unfortunate circumstance of his death, Giygas has a stutter. Go figure.
• As a ghost, he can shapeshift into whatever form he wants, whenever he wants.