I had never posted on Dreamwidth until just now. I accidentally posted the following as a parent-level comment intended for here. Sorry for being annoying and goofing this up!

Oh. Wow. What if his life's ambition as a child had been to become a private detective? And then some douchebag was like "hey kid, you're blind! You can't be a detective!" So little Richard is like "just watch me! I am going to be the BEST CLUEFINDER EVER!" So he hones his skills and senses out of spite. He actually goes for it, but he's so good that he gets in over his head with the mystical version of the Yakuza or something and they are all like "get rid of this dick. Scare him off." Then come the evil ninjas that murder his friend and he gets caught up with the ninja war and becomes a jaded blind sword-wielding asshole, which sort of derails his childhood career aspirations of being a private dick. Obviously he ended up a dick anyway, just a different kind of dick.

When I saw him in the show, I was like "what the fuck happened to you, man? Your life story has got to be a downer for sure!"

I got kind of carried away there, didn't I? I couldn't resist the pun-bait. I had to take it way too far.