#☆彡 sʜᴏᴏᴛɪɴɢ sᴛᴀʀ ⌇ (HEADCANON.)

[heartillian]

BONUS WARDROBE/ATTIRE INFO!

this is a continuation of THIS POST so you can check that out too! i originally wrote way too much for the explanation part of the post so i decided to scrap it but i kind of liked what i’d written and i need to convince myself to stop chickening out re:posting personal headcanons about canon muses so here’s the info that didn’t make the cut! this was all the more specific stuff! it’s not super in-depth but it was still too much for the original post so now its found a second life as its own headcanon! ♥

Her dress sense kind of falls in a weird place in the practicality scale. Rinoa stays away from clothing that obviously hinders movement and makes things difficult. Unless it’s a special occasion (e.g; the dance/ball we see in the game), she avoids heels as much as possible and opts for a good pair of level-soled boots. However, she still loves a dynamic silhouette and enjoys things that drape and layer, even if it’s a little cumbersome. She likes shorts and mini-skirts, preferring to have her legs out and on-show. I imagine she would be quite happy with longer items too and she doesn’t oppose to covering up, especially in colder weather. In fact, I feel she’s happy either way but simply likes the sense of freedom and the ability to feel the wind against her skin that certain outfits offer. Strangely, although her favourite colour is said to be pink, she wears a lot of blue. I would not go as far to say it’s all she wears, simply because it’s what she wears in-game, and I do imagine her wardrobe features other colours, especially whites, but the light blue is a colour that suits her and complements her natural colouring. Because of this, she might be drawn to wearing those sorts of colours, perhaps often in the form of denim.

She’ll never go for anything too out there and over-the-top, mind you, and she likes to fit in as a normal person. Rinoa doesn’t go wild with her clothing choices as she ultimately wants to live like a normal girl and fit in with her rebel peers. The princess persona is only surface deep, beyond that she tries to keep the General’s Daughter side of things at a distance. She understands her privileges and background but she doesn’t rely on them or indulge herself in the lifestyle expected of her.

Obviously, formal wear is a different story altogether and she tends to go a little more upscale here. She also does away with any need for practicality. In fact, as we see in-game, she’s quite happy to go for a super short form-fitting dress with matching heels. Perhaps that’s its own form of rebellion, acting as she likes and solely because she likes it in spite of her father’s status. I would not say she is dressing that way in particular to spite him. Again, the rebellion is only in her doing what she wants. On the opposite end of the spectrum, she’s definitely a tank top and shorts (although she may substitute the latter for a good pair of fleecy trousers in the Winter) kind of girl when it comes to pyjamas.

[heartillian]

My Dissidia verse is going to come with a fuck-load of scepticism on Rinoa’s part tbh...i’m glad she’s in the game before I love her and she deserves more exposure from Square overall but it’s also weird that she’s there when she’s so...anti-war? Yeah, the game is very clear about Heroes vs Villains but I think that kind of flies in the face of what VIII is actually about. I’ll make a more in-depth post about this later (and I’ll reblog the post I made on my oc about similar stuff bc it wasn’t really about him and was mostly just general VIII meta). I understand that doubt is...a theme in the new Dissidia game but I’m going to speak about this solely from Rinoa’s standpoint as a plot-adjacent character. Disclaimer that I haven’t played DNT so I apologise in advance if anything I say sounds wonky but that’s why I’m basing most of this on what I know of VIII instead.

The fact that Laguna & Co. are presented as good guys in the flashback sequences despite being on the side you’re fighting in the current timeline kind of suggests to me that it’s not about which side is right (although the Galbadian Republic is absolutely flawed and not to be defended as a violent & aggressive imperial state) but that war, and those who rage it, are the real villains. Rinoa is presented as very much anti-military and she turns to SeeD because she wants to make a point about that very belief! I personally believe that Garden is also a sketchy system as its responsible for the raising of child soldiers and that’s messy in itself (but that’s what the aforementioned meta is about so I won’t get into too much detail here).

It just doesn’t seem true to her character for Rinoa to willingly get pulled into someone else’s war like that, not when the only reason she got dragged into the Sorceress War of VIII is because, arguably, it wasn’t really her choice. Naivety also played its role but I think she’d be far more distrusting of combat and war in general post-game. Of course, she’d fight anyway because Squall’s there and, if nothing else, she trusts him. I think that trust, and whatever bonds she creates with the people she meets in that setting, would be her primary motivations for fighting, along with understanding that the people she’s fighting against aren’t good people.

She’d also be very scared. Most of the other people summoned for this war are people who are well accustomed to combat, people who have military backgrounds (and I feel as though she’d feel a more ready and natural connection to whom this does NOT apply), but she’s a Sorceress. She’d assume that’s why she was chosen but that thought brings her little comfort. The whole Sorceress situation is scary and she’s still young. She still doesn’t understand her own strength and yet she’s being asked to use it to aid war efforts, something that betrays her personal belief. She’s being asked to use it by some mysterious overruling force with whom she is unfamiliar. I feel that there would be a lot for her to mistrust, particularly as someone who doesn’t have that sense of duty and commitment to somebody else’s cause. She isn’t used to blindly following orders just because she’s supposed to do so. She would trust the people around her and fight simply to support them but I cannot see Rinoa readily jumping into war without facing constant internal doubt.