#(looks at hmtb scar. haha. me and that tag huh?)

[angeart]

... I would like to know about your OCs... pretty please?

-🎀

ribbon anon my dearest!! you wanna hear about them? 🥺🥰

the drawn characters are rei hayden and raven hayden, and they're meant to be twins. "meant to be" because... well, let's backtrack a little.

the story on raven's side starts on one fated new years eve. he's spending it alone, unhappy, contemplating his life. he makes an unwise and impulsive wish, yearning for something different.

this wish yoinks him and transports him to a very scary place <3 but dw! there's a guide person! and he recognises raven (which is odd :3c) and keeps saying this is a place for lost souls.

but he also says raven isn't lost.

the place kind of turns into a nightmare, the world shifting and reshaping around raven, and– there's a maze, and rising water, and lots of mirrors, except every single of his reflections looks different and acts on their own. (and not in a good way. they look kind of desperate.)

i'm trying to be concise here, so let me just say he gets out of this mid-world (by drowning while staring at one of his reflections that looks so so sad <3) and wakes up... in a bed. in an unfamiliar apartment. with a person with his face telling him to hurry up and get ready for school.

so! huh. that's weird.

raven's never had a brother, least of all a twin, but here rei is, flesh and blood, looking at raven in a way only an annoyed family member can.

here's some fun bits about the story:

raven is considered to have an irregular amnesia where he occasionally forgets everything about his life. this alludes to this not being the first time something odd has happened to some raven in this world. it's also not medically accurate, because, spoiler alert, it's not amnesia. and our raven remembers his life, and this wasn't it, thank you very much.

rei is the irresponsible brother. the troublemaker. the lone wolf. he also gets into fights and has enemies. he tries to reaaaally sell that he doesn't care.

raven kind of sees through that lie, gradually at first, then more steeply.

raven has a digital watch that stopped working the moment he was spirited away. which is 8 seconds before midnight on new years eve. it's his only possession that's carried over.

the new years eve hasn't happened here yet. it's before christmas.

you'd think this world is Nice and Safe and Normal, besides all that, but wrong! raven still sometimes catches his mirror reflection moving of its own accord, and he hears voices behind his back, and feels phantom touches that sometimes feel a bit too real. let's not forget about the nightmares.

he's exhausted and confused and scared and it's getting worse.

basically, he doesn't belong in this reality. these are the ways in which this reality is rejecting him, absolutely messing with his perception <3

there's a lot more going on here, about why he's here, and what happened before, and what the voices are actually telling him, etc.

there are other characters too! (but i tend to draw mostly just raven kjxbnk) the other characters include:

evia, a bullied girl with a horrible home life who just wants to escape it all, and gets tangled in with rei thinking he might be her ticket out (seeking out protection, even for the price of being used)

nick, a gang leader who doesn't shy away from violence, thinking rei needs to pay for some things he did in the past and learn his lesson (his methods are questionable; he's ready to hurt and destroy anything in rei's vicinity to prove his point and bring rei down to his knees)

and kye, nick's friend, who's genuinely only trying to do a good thing, but agrees with nick that rei needs to be stopped. he tries to take people away from rei safely, in order to protect them from the blast zone of this mess, convinced rei doesn't really care about them anyway.

here's a 2022 art of raven as a bonus <3