#i miss my old blog it had thousands upon thousands of words about that headcanon and it was all before/during my evaluation for the disorde

[thorntopieces]

returning to an old fandom is so odd (i've already said this before) but i see how the headcanons i helped solidify are now so solidly embedded in the fanon that other people write them too. it's so nice to see

[saecris]

✒︎✒︎✒︎✒︎

SEND ME A ✒︎ FOR A RANDOM, DUMB, POINTLESS FACT ABOUT MY MUSE.ALWAYS ACCEPTING.

ren is one of the worst people to watch horror movies with if you’re into it for the immersion. ren did not watch a lot of films or absorb a lot of media growing up. he was sheltered, and dedicated a lot of time to study and his suitor duties and training. this didn’t leave a lot of leisure time at all. but he is intuitive, has read cinema studies books for fun and boredom. new friends eagerly show him their likes because he is very impressionable and willing to absorb new information. media is one of the easiest ways to do this, and thus by now he’s picked up on a lot of thematic elements and tropes that come along with horror and mysteries.

ren discusses movies while he’s watching them. he nit picks and points out flaws. he’ll remind you of said flaws if they’re continually brought up. he will use his deductive knowledge of both real life and cinematics to guess the ending halfway through and it’ll be annoying because he’s right most of the time. it’s not a fun time if you’re there to just enjoy yourself, and he has gotten popcorn thrown at him for this very reason. the funny thing is, ren is actually scared of horror movies the higher quality and the better the narrative is, because he’s very superstitious— but i’ll get to that headcanon in a moment.

JAUNE: REN, YOU'RE RUINING THE IMMERSIONREN: YOU KNOW THE CONCEPTUALISATION OF SATANISM IN REGARDS TO OCCULTISM AND WITCHCRAFT IS A GROSS MISCONCEPTION FROM YEARS OF HISTORICAL INACCURACY—NORA: GOD, SHUT UP

EVERYONE: *SCREAMINGREN, DEADPANNING: GREEN SCREEN

tl;dr: ren is not that fun to watch horror movies with.

ren’s upbringing was not a normal one. he has headcanons pertaining to very magical aspects of both his upbringing and his lineage. he’s a dragon, it’s not as if there aren’t magical aspects to his mythos. and this headcanon was around before volume three and actual magic was confirmed by ozpin. the original semblance set for him was mana manipulation, the ability to harness the energy of the earth most used for aura and dust. an aspect of this was spell casting. his semblance has been debunked since volume four, but i have always combined ren with mythic—based headcanons to manipulate elements of rwby i felt were coming. ren was raised after the death of his family around a lunar witch cult, taught by one of these witches, was headcanoned to be blessed by either the current, or the last spring maiden before he was born, therefor owing her his life.

he is no stranger to magic. ren believes in a lot of supernatural entities, deities, and the like. although he does become sceptical about ideals like the tooth fairy and santa clause, ideas that are heavily commercialised. his family was heavily religious and upheld a lot of old traditions, growing up in a part of mistral where moon worship was normal. he is ridiculously afraid of offending spirits, ghosts, demons, because these that were scary stories as a child became real upon encountering witches. his incredibly strong sixth sense makes him paranoid of seeing and sensing ghosts. because of his upbringing, he has a lot of habits that his family taught him, and even though ren is a very logical and analytical person, he still upholds a lot of these traditions, and most of them are scientifically unsound wives tales.

ie. if you sleep with your hair tied up and wet, you’ll die. don’t use scissors during february. don’t wear pearls on your clothes. he wears red string of fate bracelets with those closest to him for good luck. when you pee in the woods, say “excuse me” so ogres/ dwarves/ supernatural entities will not curse and attack you. don’t laugh and cry at the same time, or else you’ll grow white hair on your butt. throw salt over your shoulder if you spill it to negate the bad luck. don’t break mirrors. don’t open umbrellas indoors. collect four leaf clovers. lucky number is 8. unlucky number is 4, etc. BELIEVES FORTUNE COOKIES AND THE HOROSCOPE READINGS ARE REAL. believes in palm reading, tarot reading, rune reading, etc.

tl;dr despite believing heavily in science and logic, you could not pay ren a million lien to walk under a ladder.

i speak a lot about how manipulative and terrible the lie family is. and they were, they were greedy, snide, power hungry individuals on an average. there were good sides to them, they were occasionally just, cunning, ambitious, good leaders, all practical, highly intelligent people. and there were a lot of them. but in a place so fraught with negativity, there was little good influence that ren could base his personality on. one such touchy subject in the lie manor was marriage. there were many arranged and unhappy marriages. if you weren’t strong enough to become a huntsman or huntress, you became a suitor, and were married off into a different family, shipped off to a different part of remnant. you married into families with wealth, and influence, and were moulded into a perfect husband/ wife for your fiancé with little thought given to your own desires. marriage was quite literally treated as a commodity, and often, a punishment.

one of the only good experiences he witnessed with relationships was that of his mother and father. zhilan and li were very much in love, even though throughout ren’s life zhilan did not get to see a lot of li. and ren did not get to see lot of his parents. she was a doctor, and li was a huntsman. but ren saw how much they’d dedicated to each other when they could be together. they were together, despite the fact that ren’s grandfather did not approve of their marriage. so they never got married, and ren was born out of wedlock, but li still visited and a lot of ren’s other family members and cousins loved him. his parents performed all the romantic cliches, fortunately they were not together enough for ren to take that for granted. they had plans to elope and take ren with them to oniyuri where they could live peacefully and finally get married, which was when ren’s father li either went missing or died ( have not figured that out yet ).

the headcanon is that all of ren’s romantic traits come from his parents. his endearments of qīn, ( bae ), qīn’ài de ( darling/ dear/ dear one ), bǎobèi ( babe/ bae/ darling/ treasure ), tiánxīn ( sweetheart ) are all mirrored mannerisms from what he observed of his mother and father. it is because they did not get married, and that ren had such a bad experience with his own arranged marriage, that he has developed such animosity to the concept. ren’s father called him hǔzǐ, which translates to “tiger son”. in the very early stages of this blog, i was deliberating making ren a tiger faunus for his alternate verse. ren would probably mirror this if he were ever to consider having his own children.

tl;dr: ren’s parents are the reason that he feels so much animosity towards the concept of marriage, while simultaneously represent everything he believes about true love.

going back to the “ren is a logical person” theme,, he uses the figurative on-a-scale-of-one-to-ten phrase a lot. for someone with the semblance of emotional manipulation, he has a lot of trouble articulating how something feels. he doesn’t know exactly how to scale something with words alone. does it hurt a little? does it hurt a lot? saying something is ‘in the middle’ is not enough information for him. this boy needs instructions to function. although emotions are not easy to navigate, numbers are. formula and numbers make sense to him.

REN, HOW MUCH DOES IT HURT?REN: I— I DON’T KNOW!

REN, ON A SCALE OF ONE TO TEN, HOW MUCH DOES IT HURT?REN: UH— A SEVEN— NO, AN EIGHT

he doesn’t only use it for pain though. he uses it to measure emotions ( “on a scale of one to ten, how mad are you right now?” ), needs ( “how much do you need to use the bathroom, on a scale of one to ten?” / “how hungry are you, one to ten?” ). his reliance on numbers is not limited to this. it is the easiest way for him to assess his emotional state. ask him how bad things are up there, it is easier for him to give you a number, than a feeling. the easiest way for him to calm down in the middle of a mental breakdown? make him count how many fingers you’re holding up. make him count down from twenty. hell, make him say however many digits of pie he knows, the fibonacci numerical sequence, make him count down from one thousand by eight, it will eventually calm him down. if you ever comfort him from a nightmare by holding him to your chest, he’s probably counting your heartbeat.

tl;dr: ren is a math nerd.