#but i had a whole bit about raven and his “mom” that was so heartwrenching

[angeart]

Well now I just wanna know even more about your ocs and their story! xD Even before all the spooky stuff, Raven being placed in the middle of someone else's life and there's pressure to remember people and things he doesn't... And the watch, is that significant, what happens if Raven makes it to new years (hopefully with his sanity intact)? And what is up with this universe's Raven that just 'ah the amnesia hit him again' ?

And what did Rei do to get people that pissed at him? And but is he still trying to look out for Raven even if he acts like he's not?

-🎀

ribbon anon, you have no idea how happy these questions make me.

there's not a lot of pressure on raven to remember things he doesn't, because everyone around knows he gets these amnesia spells. it's still tough on him because he has to navigate this world anyway, and it lets people be dismissive of him. because—there's no reason to make friends with someone who's bound to forget you in a couple of weeks or months anyway, right? (it also gives a green card to be a shit. he won't remember!) (fun morality dilemmas right there.)

he's entirely lost, made to "play family" with people he doesn't know, live in an appartment that's wholly unfamiliar to him yet he's meant to call it his home, and whenever he steps outside, he has to deal with all these strangers looking at him knowingly while they don't know anything about him, actually. and on top of that there's the voices and shadows and mirror reflections...

add in him being worried about evia as she gets close to rei, because he isn't yet sure what kind of person rei is. and then later on kye telling him he needs to stay away from rei. (that they both do; him and evia. especially evia.) that raven should help them bring rei down—

except. kye's words come at a time when raven's already experienced the cracks in rei's masks. they come at a time when raven's beginning to be acutely aware that rei cares and he's hurting.

and now raven has to decide who to trust and side with, caught in the middle of it all.

... so let's talk about rei.

rei is meant to be a troublemaker, this uncaring character who only cares only about himself... and yet this caregiver role is thrust upon him, where he has to also (begrudgingly) make sure raven's okay whenever he forgets things, right? he's tired of this cycle. tired of doing the same things over and over pointlessly.

i had lots of notes on their childhood and young rei leading to how rei got to be like this, and why. but if you want to know about The Incident that so fiercely set nick against rei... well.

rei used to have a girlfriend. and they were young and stupid, and it was a little bit toxic.

ok, very toxic.

see, rei often felt like he's not paid a lot of attention, and he isn't as loved as raven is. that he has to actively take, whereas it always felt to him like raven is just given things. like he always had something to compete and fight for.

and so when he got into this relationship, he really just dug his nails into the idea that he's now wanted and needed. that this was his.

it was possessive, and controlling, and bad.

it ended on a cliffside in a tragic accident.

rei was trying to prove something. like an idiot that he was. she was trying to leave, and he was trying to insist she needed him, cornering her near the edge as they fought.

he tried to grab her, but she fell anyway.

kye and nick were witnesses, and from far away, it looked like rei pushed her.

from kye's recounting of events, it isn't clear if she survived or not. what is searing, though, is the idea that rei never got any kind of backlash from it. he never got punished. he never stopped treating people like shit, making him a ticking time bomb until it happens again. because he hasn't learned his lesson.

nick wants to teach him that lesson, by any means necessary. even if those means are equally as bad as what he thinks rei did. (to be fair, nick is also a little psycho who enjoys people's suffering and power, soo—) (it's kye who's going into this thinking they can do it right.) (it's kye who's begging raven to help them. to go against rei. to let rei feel some consequences; to teach him that people aren't toys or possessions.)

(rei knows these things.)

here's a fun little note i have on rei:

Rei’s choice to be a troublemaker (to fight, physically, with the world around him) was his way of dealing with the things inside of him. But he never wanted that little sphere of destruction to reach anyone else. He never imagined it would ever affect anyone but himself.

[princess-faelivrin]

It’s a very abridged list of characters, BUT I wanted to make a post about my interpretations of some of the CoH characters despite the fact that Nobody Asked. Apologies in advance for 100000 blocks of text and yelling. 

TÚRIN

Call it projecting, ‘cause I guess it is, but Túrin has always been half-Asian in my head, in terms of appearance. I don’t know if I do a good enough job of showing it in my art, but Morwen reminds me of my Taiwanese mom and Húrin of my white-passing dad, so my Túrin takes after his mom. He’s stated to have grey eyes, so grey eyes he will have, but I tend to draw them dark enough that they almost look black. Aside from that, he’s tallish with unruly also-almost-black hair and a tendency to wear dark colors, which... might also be projection except for the tall part. It is what it is. 

Anyway, personality-wise... I mean this with all the love in my heart, but Túrin’s a dumb emo. Actually I partially take that back-- he’s a smart emo, smart and charismatic enough to be a natural leader with a good head for battle, but a ridiculous emo nonetheless. 

As stated in the Childhood of Túrin, he was kind of a weird kid, too old for his age and slightly unsettling, with a quick temper and an ability to hold grudges, but he cared deeply for the feelings of those around him and had a strong protective instinct for his little sis Lalaith. He’s also shown to have a leaning towards pity throughout his life, for anyone hurt or sad or at a disadvantage, which is really sweet and kinda makes me want to cry. 

Later on, Túrin is clearly pretty impulsive and can be ruled by anger, like when he smacked Saeros in the nose with a cup (which is valid) and lashed out at Beleg when he tried to give him bread. He felt bad about that second one pretty quickly, but I think it’s mentioned a couple times throughout CoH that people are scared of Túrin because of how quickly his mood can go south. 

On the other hand, despite the fact that he keeps directly and indirectly killing them, Túrin actually does really love his friends. Obvs he loves Beleg, and he loved Sador and probably Nellas too, and during the Nargothrond chapter he tries his best to look after Gwindor and Finduilas and try to figure out what’s making both of them so damned sad all the time. He fails, of course, because he’s too oblivious to notice the romantic tension so thick you’d have to use Gurthang to cut it, but he tries and that’s what counts. 

BELEG

I think it might just be because of fanart, but Beleg as I see him has silver hair. Between Beleg and Mablung, the consensus seems to be that one of them has dark hair and the other silver, so my Beleg is the silver one. I have actually no idea what color his eyes are, though. Hazel? Who knows. He’s taller than Túrin, that’s for sure, with long legs and broad shoulders. I like drawing him with a little white flower pin on his clothes. 

He seems to be a pretty cheerful dude, probably the most cheerful in all of CoH, which is good for him, I guess. He laughs when the outlaws see him and go “oh shit, who is that?” and lets them be in suspense for a second or two before going “haha, sike, it’s me! Beleg! I have food for y’all starving dudes.” Thus, he’s a good foil/companion to Túrin’s depressing nature and his death removes a lot of the scant happiness in Túrin’s life. 

Something I love about Beleg is that he’s very forgiving and just like... a ridiculously nice person for the situation. Beleg doesn’t hold anything against Túrin, doesn’t hold anything against Andróg either (which is pretty impressive,) and immediately decides to give Gwindor lembas and take him along for the ride after finding him under a tree in the forest. 

The big important thing to Beleg’s personality, imo, is that he’s very loyal (to Túrin specifically.) Despite being told it’s a dangerous idea, he goes and looks for Túrin in the wilderness, and even Thingol is well aware he won’t be stopped. It also outright says that where Túrin is concerned, Beleg “yield[s] to his love against his wisdom” to be with him. He’s straight up referred to as the most steadfast of friends, which is really sad because it’s like a sentence after he dies, but there it is-- Beleg is a good friend and a loyal one. 

TÚRIN’S FAMILY

I already mentioned the fact that Túrin’s family reminds me a lot of mine, which definitely influences my perception of them, but anyway: 

Morwen is a fairly angular lady, who has dark dark hair pulled into a chopstick bun behind her head and a pair of raven-feather earrings that gleam in low light. She’s the parent that Túrin got his unsettling edgy aura from, and her Displeased Face is enough to scare any intruder out of her house. She loves her kids and her husband, but she’s stern so sometimes it’s hard to tell. 

Húrin is the neighborhood guy who knows everyone and who everyone knows in return. He’s kind of a square-looking blond guy, like Van Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist except happier and more of a jock. He apparently can play the harp, which is cool, and he probably has lots of stories from being out and about with the elf-host. He loves his kids and his wife and likes to joke around sometimes with Túrin because he’s so straightforward and less inclined to humor. 

Niënor outstripped her parents and her brother in height, and ended up the tallest of the family. She has her dad’s blonde hair, and is slightly more square shaped than her mom or her brother. She’s also half-Asian, but you have to squint. She doesn’t fight like her brother, and is acutely aware of the Túrin-shaped hole in her mother’s life and heart and the matching shadow cast over her own life. However unlike Túrin she is in some ways, she has the same occasional fiery stubbornness and penchant for anguished theatrics, albeit on a smaller scale. 

Lalaith... poor kid. She was charming and cute but didn’t last long. 

MABLUNG

My Mablung has wavy-ish dark hair in a similar style to Beleg’s, and has a slightly less willowy build, for lack of a better way to compare them. He’s got dark eyebrows to better express how utterly unimpressed he is with whatever dumb shit is going down in Doriath, and probably a few not-too-flashy piercings. He’s very dignified in posture and appearance, but not like... pretentious, because he fights people in the woods on a regular basis. 

Out of Túrin’s friends, Mablung is probably the most akin to the Responsible One, with Gwindor at a close second. He’s less willing than Beleg to drop everything for a friend, and requires more evidence to support it, but he’ll still do it after thinking it over and will probably beat himself up about not having gone for it sooner. 

On that point, poor guy takes too much onto his own shoulders and ends up feeling shitty and miserable when he fails at something that he could not have possibly succeeded at. This is demonstrated in terrible, heartwrenching fashion throughout the story, when Mablung asks Thingol to fire him because he lost Morwen and Niënor, to which Thingol says “what no, you’re too good, we need you” and Melian says “don’t feel too bad about it, ok?” (he ignores the last part and continues to feel bad enough about it that he looks for Niënor for Literal Years.) Also on that topic is the scene in which Mablung sees Túrin dead and stands there like some sort of Beleriand Benvolio, realizing that all his friends are dead and that “thus with words have I slain one that I loved.” 

NELLAS

I almost forgot her, can you imagine? You probably can, because she’s a minor character who disappeared like a third of the way through the story, but let’s not talk about that. She’s a forest girl, so I imagine she likes to wear a lot of nice leaves on her head, and/or make a bunch of flower crowns and then drop them in fright if anyone happens to find her in the process. She has dark brown hair and big, curious eyes, and is short and slight even by human standards. 

Nellas has... hardcore dirt lesbian energy. It’s implied that she had a crush on Túrin, but honestly, I doubt that very much. In my head, she and Túrin were just really close pals, and she taught him about how to live in the woods and how to rescue worms from the rain. Her moment of glory, basically, is going into the city once and immediately proceeding to freeze up from anxiety in front of the king. Is that a mood? Yeah and I love her. I hope she’s okay.  

ANDRÓG

I realize he’s another minor character, but he is a very compelling one to me specifically, so. As I imagine him, he’s a fairly lean young dude with a hungry-wolf look about him, which is sort of a mixture of desperation, suspicion, and plain snappishness. He has dark eyes and hair a little darker than what could be called ‘mousy brown,’ tied back in a short ponytail. He also has a frequent scowl and generally is a little bit scary, although he isn’t exactly physically imposing in the ‘tall and buff’ sense. 

There really is no other way to describe Andróg’s personality than ‘he’s a particularly mean tsundere.’ He’s just... full of rage and repressed Feelings for Túrin and possibly also Beleg. Unfortunately, these feelings manifest in Being A Bitch And Generally Not Nice. It takes him so long to admit he can’t actually hate Beleg that he literally just up and dies after doing one (1) nice thing. Why do I like him? It’s anyone’s guess tbh. 

GWINDOR

Ah... yes...... the character who nobody talks about but who I love with my whole heart and soul. To start off with appearance, the only canon things about what he looks like is that he has dark hair and looks older than he would otherwise because torture. Immediately post-imprisonment and during it, I imagine his hair is short, but beforehand and a while after, it gets back to being long. He has a bunch of scars from all that too, and generally has the bearing and amount of grey hairs as a substitute teacher who nobody listens to. I draw him with grey eyes usually, but saw @bisexualturin‘s hc of him having had violet eyes before and I’m kinda in love thanks. 

In terms of who he is as a person, we don’t know much of what he was like before the Nirnaeth, but as I see him, he’s always had a fiery streak and a slightly acerbic sense of humor. Being tormented for 14 years forced him to mellow out some, by which I mean a) how the hell are you supposed to keep your sense of humor after that and b) as shown in his arguments with Túrin over tactics, he’s now extremely wary of head-on battle. 

He’s fundamentally someone who wants the best for the people around him, and who loves both Finduilas and Túrin very much despite feeling hurt and miserable over the fact that his opinion is now worth nothing to those in charge and the sense that he’s not good enough for anyone (much less his two best friends) in his current state. Overall, his dying speech is emblematic of the very Oof Ouch and Complicated feelings he ended up having toward Túrin, namely “you’re a dumbass and probably should have listened to me, but I love you and I am going to try my damndest to give both you and Finduilas as much of a chance at life as I can, even here as I bleed out in your arms.” 

Which brings us to... 

FINDUILAS

Finduilas is sweet like honey chamomile tea and her whole being radiates soft sunlight. In my mind, she’s somewhat round-faced, with really fluffy golden hair, sparkly freckles on tan skin, and a liking for wearing light blue clothes that match her eyes. She smiles a lot and possibly gives off actual light??? Also my heart is full of affection for chubby Finduilas. General consensus is Soft. 

Canon-wise, whether she’s more introverted or extroverted is kind of up to interpretation, as all we’re really given is that she worries about Túrin when he’s out fighting and “wishe[s] not to add one tear to [Gwindor’s] suffering.” I tend to think of her as sunny and gregarious, with way more game than her dad, and with endless reserves of empathy, sympathy, and compassion for the people she loves. 

As a Finwean princess, she absolutely has the capacity for badassery, which makes me very into the idea of Túrin rescuing her post-Nargothrond as per Gwindor’s request and the two of them going on a road trip of doom. But unfortunately, we don’t get to see another side of her in the book. 

I usually just put the book down and cry after the sack of Nargothrond, so I’ll just do one more character: 

ORODRETH

Ok, so Finduilas has to have gotten her Vanyarin hair from her dad, clearly. But since Elves can probably change their appearances based on willpower to some degree, Orodreth’s hair is nowhere near as fluffy, and is a darker honey-blonde than Finduilas’ gold. He’s one of the plainest-looking Finweans by virtue of the fact that he perpetually has this look on his face that makes him seem like he wants to melt into the floor and go back to Aman. Which he kinda does. 

Unfortunately, Orodreth didn’t do much in the story except be a doormat to like five different people and then die, but I still like him for whatever reason. Way early on, before Húrin or his kids were a thing, Orodreth was still himself, aka someone who asked nicely for people to not make bad decisions, and predictably didn’t get listened to. Sure, some of Fëanor’s terrible boys took over his hidden elf city, but what was he going to do? Fight them? No. He’d rather just Not. 

...I feel bad for him. He literally did not ask for Any Of That. 

that’s all y’all, I am so sorry for making you read the entirety of the inside of my head as it has been for the past four months