was talking with @justmerriannstuff and decided to finally write down all my maui and tamatoa headcanons (friendship and small individual stuff) so here it is! enjoy!

• when tamatoa meet maui, he at least was around the size of a family van, maui found him while tama was buried under the sand as in “oh hey little buddy” until he rise up like “oh hey not-so-little buddy”
• it was that or maui fished tamatoa by accident when trying to fish islands
• they are around the same age, which by how they act and by immortal rule is already pretty vague
• they are basically college frat boys from the sea, the kind that greets each other by a gleeful HEY MAN HI and a sucker punch to the guts also the type that says no homo even when you see them lounging over each other
• playfighting for basically any reason, feeling down because of no adventures? fight, feeling joyful because of successful quests? fight, just down for it? PLAYFIGHT
• they also like dissing each other for fun, but have a PASSION for dissing other people together
• tamatoa could talk as a human, but was probably a wrecked and butched up version of it mix up with any crab idiom he already had, maui tired teaching him a bit more but nothing really came out of it, until one time he came from one of his quest, he found tamatoa already speaking good english and GREAT FRENCH
• maui and tamatoa would go on an adventure together a lot, for both the glory and the loot! tamatoa started taking loot and treasure in quantity so he could LATER ON chose what he really liked from it to put on his shell to commemorate that adventure, that’s where it started to accumulate at his cave, and he did like it a lot but was not utterly crazy over it, that happens later
• tamatoa lost his leg BY ACCIDENT on one of their playfights, Maui got so nervious that he ran away rather than comfront the problem
• once tamatoa was left alone at his cave with his now cut leg, other lalotai monsters that wanted payoff from the duo, or just maui, tried to get at tamatoa for that now that they knew he was hurt and maui out of the place to wreck him, and likely trying to eat him, which basically was what started to make him more violent and murderious in general
• (violent sure he probably already was as much as maui but murderious was indeed a way new thing)

more below!

• anyways all this stuff did embitter him quite a lot more than just maui accidentally doing the leg thing, so he started to concentrate only on his whole SHINY look
  
• he keep his old trophies but ultra hidden
• tamatoa didn’t changed shell to regrow his leg for the bitterness!! so much issues dragging there buddy (I feel also he did manage to grow up somehow, don’t mind the whole biology agaisnt that, he is a talking crab!)
  

• while hiding from that shame, maui also took chance on going after the te fifi’s heart since already was on his to do list basically
• maui’s hook end up at lalotai becuase it seem that lalotai might be able to cover most of the sea floor by magic, so godly magic items might be able to just enter too
• once tamatoa knew that the hook was there (while a bunch of monsters/minor gods/other demigods?? fighting over it) he went right to reclaim it with extreme force (he wrecked at least a dozen of dudes on it)
• (maui 100% knew that if someone must had his hook it was tamatoa, his hook that got lost at the freaking SEA, guy knew that crabcakes wouldn’t let anybody have that if knew it was there)
• tamatoa acted about like “my trophy from my most hated rival” who I miss with my dearly soul oh god but i still gonna dance over him when i see him agian becuase also fuck him
  
• tamatoa didn’t spend 1000 years alone on his cave, he did becoem pretty popular at lalotai for being an unstoppable force when he wanted, he probably have a few monsters acquaintance and some couple of dozens of admirers (as in cultish followers of the giant shiny crab)
• there is at least an island in which his legend indeed is know and he is pretty popular, and is in the way of the super tragic broken friendship he had with maui, is super dramatic and sad
• after movie once things get solved between he and maui, they get back at wrecking up others all day everyday and basically being awful together again
• they both basically become the worse older brothers that moana never asked for, they give her awful advices but done by heart
  
• maui help him do soem sort of “giant necklage/chain“ by tying up some of the old trophies tama got from their past adventures together but also a dozen of his new shiny stuff at his shell, so none is gonna get off once they go on adventure, becuase he does love that now and can’t help it, so basically giant friendship bracelet for his shell

also I do think he can breath underwater and swim even if bad and slow, you can’t just be a sea monster and not be able to actually be on the sea at all!! he is a giant talking crab, not all the whole deal gotta be biologically accurate!