#Ren: I'm a professional minecrafter -- and also dog nose

[silverskye13]

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omg i love your ren comic so much!!! /pos

do you think you could explain/expand on the lore behind ren being a werewolf? like did he keep it a secret? or was it just already known by the last life servermates? and what exactly can he do and not do as a werewolf? theres so many possibilities!!!

Hey I'm glad you liked the comic! To say I had a ton of fun making it would be an understatement. I adore werewolf/shapeshifty characters and there needs to be more of them in fiction.

Renwolfy headcanons! Below the cut I guess! It's a long ramble.

I think everyone who followed him into Last Life from Hermitcraft know already that he's a werewolf, but everyone from off the server don't, which is why he pounced on Scott in the comic instead of Cleo. I feel like Cleo knows to stay wary when Ren's getting violent, self defense or otherwise - and also probably wouldn't be afraid of fighting back to keep him from getting his teeth on her. Monster/monster solidarity, you don't allow for there to be any of those "I'm a monster who hurts my own friends!!" moments. Her and Ren have probably bonded over being monsters with monster problems over the years [being that both werewolves and zombies tend to have a violent streak and a craving for human flesh at times].

That being said, I don't think he goes out of his way to keep his werewolf-y-ness a secret, but he also doesn't bring it up in conversation - he feels awkward about it in a "we all have our own problems, no use dumping my weirdness on someone else" sort of way. And a lot of the Hermits, who are used to his random shifting by now, all forget how weird it is for newcomers when the harmless dude with a flair for dramatics randomly turns into an 8ft tall wolf man. Lizzie definitely knows he's a werewolf, and his werewolf-ness would have been really evident when he was the boogeyman [the scene where Lizzie says she doesn't believe him when he says he's not the boogeyman gets so much funnier if you imagine her being busy when he walked up. And she's like looking through a chest going, "So how about you? Are you the boogeyman?" and he says nervously, "What? No, definitely not." and she turns around to see he's a giant wolf man, and without missing a beat she deadpans, "I don't believe a word you just said to me." "I'm such a bad liar," Yes Ren, yes you are. You turn into a dog when you're scared my dude.]

Something that comes with the territory of being a werewolf for a long time and being relatively in control of all your faculties is he controls when he shifts somewhat. There are still some pitfalls he falls into [if he's really freaked out and the fight half of fight/flight is kicking in, he'll shift, and of course during the full moon he has no control over that and stays shifted for the full 24 hours] but for the most part he picks and chooses when he can change. If people need help carrying heavy loads around the server he'll frequently Wolf Up to twice his normal size and throw heavy deepslate tiles around like they're made of sawdust. I feel like when Lizzie first called him over as muscle for the enchanting table, he probably stepped up with all his tall fuzzy glory, axe in hand, ready to intimidate people just by standing nearby.

I'm a bit generic when it comes to what I think he can do as a werewolf! He gets a lot tankier for one thing - he's thick furred and thicker skinned, and all the weapons made for cutting down regular people sized enemies tend to harm him less. That being said, any wound he takes as a werewolf transfers to his regular human self when he shifts back, and there's been many times where he's underestimated just how hurt he was and collapsed the minute he turned back into his more human form [which probably happened immediately after the comic ended, poor dude]. Ren himself has stated he's not a fighter, and he isn't very good at it, and I think that mostly comes from the weirdness of swapping his body around every time a fight happens. He might feel reasonably proficient with a bow and arrow as a human, only to be really clumsy with it as soon as he has big wolf paws. And biting people to do damage is fine when the wolf brain has the reigns, but gets considerably more gross when he has to clean himself up after as a human.

Since Minecraft doesn't have things like Silver or Wolfsbane, those are kind of counted out as Werewolf Ren Weaknesses (tm), but I do feel like copper stings him when he has to handle it too long, and he tends to stay away from flower biomes because all the overpowering smells overwhelm and confuse him at times. He also has a hard time finding people on the LL server because it's so small, and people are constantly running from place to place, he has a hard time picking out what smells are new and who has been through recently. On cold nights at the Fairy Fort he definitely shapeshifts into a massive doggo to keep everyone warm, and when Lizzie wasn't paying attention he would romp with Dragon, Ogre and Taxes. He has a hard time telling when Joel is around because he smells so much like Lizzie that he gets them mixed up, so Joel sneaks past him easier than most of the other folks on the server [which is how he was able to do things like trap Lizzie's houses multiple times]. He had a lot of respect for BigB's "Terry" disguise because he sympathizes with someone feeling so bad about their actions as a monster that they felt the need to take on a whole new identity. Ren feels like he himself is a lot angrier and more violent in his wolf form, and while he's never attacked anyone just out of annoyance, he has snarled and barked and generally scared/intimidated people before, which he feels a lot of shame for later when he's back to human again.

Also I feel like the reason he says things like, "Well if you want to go we can go, I'm ready to do this thing," whenever he gets threatened [cough -- Etho pretending to be the boogeyman -- cough] it's because he's trying to scare people out of picking a fight with him. You want a fight? Okay I will wolf it up and we can fight and you'll lose! Because I'll be a scary wolf! I'm ready! I'm turning into a wolf now! You better back off or I'm going to do the wolf thing! Please!!

He doesn't follow through with it most of the time, but when he does people recognize he's getting serious and tend to backpedal pretty fiercely.