#but mostly raven

[inverted-typo]

I have no excuse I just saw this and was like—welp time to put Raven in it

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 3: Octaven, Tattoo

AU-August Day 3, Tattoo

~900 words

Raven/Octavia, modern AU

What business I had writing this at this hour, idk. I took this long nap after work and had very intense dreams and it was super discombobulating...anyway. I know nothing about... anything in here so shhhh you don't see any inaccuracies.

*

Raven has never been in the tattoo parlor after dark. All of the lights, beneath their wide metallic brims, are off now, except for one. It leaves an unfocused triangular sheen, soft-yellow and slick, against the deep red of the walls. The sleek leather chairs and tables hunch as deep shadows, the lines of artwork on the display wall now all frame, dulled gray rectangles and squares. The lava lamp on the corner table still glows, hypnotic red jelly shapes floating, luminous.

Plaintive guitar is playing over an unseen speaker.

The shop's closed up, the neon OPEN sign no longer crackling red in the window, but the door's still unlocked. Raven closes it softly behind her, listens to the jarring shiver of the glass and rustle of the closed Venetian blinds as it shoves back into place. Her shoes squeak on the clean black-and-white tiled floor.

For a while, she stands in the middle of the room, past the front desk, staring at the sharp, bent angles of the metal stool left sitting by one of the chairs, and the high reach of the bright lamp next to it, now just a gray circle set into a gray frame, and at the lava lamp again, and thinking.

The first time she came to the shop, she stared at that lamp a long time, letting it hypnotize her. Letting herself dissociate from her own body, and it wasn't about the pain, but about the aura of the place and its intimacy, and about something of the enormity of the moment, too. She'd decided to get a tattoo that intersected with her scar. Something to really mark it, to own it—this ugly raised line of bleached scar tissue on her leg, this way she is marred now and always will be. Because it was fine for Finn to tell her that's not how it is. It wasn't his leg and it wasn't his skin. And it was fine to tell herself that at least she was walking again, with the brace. And it was fine, it was fine, it was fine, except for the weighty feeling of powerlessness she carried around with her all the time, the vertiginous loss of control that—and no one ever warned her it would be this way—was not just the short flashing moments of the accident, but uncountable random and terrifying moments ever since.

So she told herself she'd own it and she'd get the tattoo. A pattern of stars, not over the scar but around it, integrated with it: she's still as vast as the universe, still a part of the heavens.

The scar stretches up high along her leg. The process of sitting for the tattoo, then, of twisting just so, the long expanse of her leg and thigh exposed, was so much more intimate than she'd expected. The walls of the long, low rectangular room were so exquisitely red. The ceiling fans, between the lights, bumped to the rhythm of their own breeze, and there was music that day too, but quieter and tinny. Sometimes barely audible beneath the whir of the machine.

The occasional, clinical touch of gloved hands against her bare skin.

Like therapists, Raven thought, perhaps tattoo artists must deal with transference: how she put all her anxieties and hopes into that touch, and into the steady way Octavia Blake watched her as she sketched out her vision of the constellations, and into the sweeping promise of her own tattoos, slashed black lines along her arm that read like anger painstakingly controlled.

Octavia is in the backroom now, fiddling with the papers on her disorganized desk. Raven can hear the sounds beneath the sweeping, melancholy guitar slide, can picture her back there in the cramped and the dark, looking for her keys.

When the door opens, she's holding them tight in her fist, pushing her hair out of her face with her free hand. She catches sight of Raven, stops for a moment, mid-gesture, and narrows her eyes. "We're closed," she says. But she doesn't keep walking.

"I wanted to talk."

Octavia doesn't answer and she still doesn't move. All the way at the front of the shop, a single car passes by on the lonely night-street, bleeding headlight glow through the blinds.

"To apologize."

Octavia sticks her keys into the pocket of her jeans and crosses her arms. Raven saw a picture of her once at fifteen, a petulant teenager with a cut above her eye and a bruise on her arm, and she sees in the grown woman in front of her now something of the ghost of that girl.

"I'm closing up," she says finally, grudgingly. Because of course she doesn't want to have this conversation in the shadowy shop, burned out neon and leather and silver and ink, and mournful blues notes on the sound system she still hasn't shut off. Raven doesn't want to have it here, either. She's standing just at the edge of the still-lit lamp, there at the outer rim of a spotlight. And she's thinking about Octavia's hands on her, the way she slings her arm around Raven's waist and the way she kisses, like burning, and the way she asked, unaccountably, for permission to touch her own work and the clean, pale ridge of scar beneath. And about how Raven herself is so fucking good at pushing people away. Dissociating away from vulnerability and need.

"Please," Raven says and it's ragged. It's ripped from her.

Octavia takes a deep breath, lets it out, and concedes: "Okay." Then she turns off the last of the lights and the music, so only the deepest lines of shadow are still left, and ushers Raven out the door first.

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[baldnt]

holy hell i found him y’all. he is indeed in rural Virginia.

[jaradraws]

zac oyama you've done it again (making a character that's irresistible to me)

[write-the-room]

ik this is prob obvious but I'm putting it out there anyway bc I randomly got reminded of it

INDEPENDENCE & SELF SUFFICIENCY

Andrew spent all the money from Tilda's death on that car BECAUSE he didn't need the car - he wasn't gonna go pay college fees or groceries or whatever bc he didn't need Tilda to survive - he didn't need her while she was alive and he didn't need her now, he could support himself. So of course he wasn't going to use the money from her to buy essential things - he bought that ridiculously expensive car solely because he did not need it and he wanted the money gone.

Nicky jokingly mentions that the car is the reason they're poor, but Andrew wouldn't want Tilda to be the reason they're stable - they can take care of themselves. That money was never going to be used for things they needed, so he blew it on the car

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

okay okay okay

<_<

>_>

With the book 7 Savanaclaw update coming out late November…

IS IT LEOVER FOR ME OTL

THIS MONTH'S BEEN NOTHING BUT PURE TORTURE 😭 tELL ME WHY EVEROYN'E SBEEN ON MY ASS ABOUT HE WHO sHALL NOT BE NAEMD EVER SINCE THE START oF OCTBER????? IT'S BEEN RELTENTLESS, I'M LIVING' OUT HERE I N tHE TRENCHES TELL ME WBHHYYYYYYY YY Y Y Y YyYY Y Y Y YYyYyVYVVYV y????? ???? ??? ?? ? WGHAT HAV E IT ODN ETO DESERVE THIS... . . . ....... .. .. . .... . . ... .

OTHER IMAGES THAT HAVE AGED POORLY IN HINDsiGHt… DON'T ASK WHY I HAVE THESE ON HAND

COLLAPSES ONTO MY HANDS AND KNEES IN SLOW MO

GUYS, BE HONEST WITH ME… AM I COOKED???? ??????? ???? ??? ?? ? ?????????? ???

[magniloquent-raven]

Harringrove AU

Steve and Nancy got married right out of high school, because Steve was madly in love and it was the thing to do, and Nancy always liked him, she really did, and she thought. Y'know. He's a good guy. He's a catch, everyone says so.

They stay married for years, and they grow apart. And they argue. They get mean. It wasn't malicious at first, but the longer it goes on the more they resent each other.

Meanwhile Billy got his shit together enough to put himself through university. Get a degree. Get a cushy job helping rich people avoid messy divorce. It wasn't his first choice of career paths, it just sort of. Happened. Partly to spite his father, like a lot of the big choices he makes in life. Neil was always very down on the concept of therapy. When Billy was a child teachers would occasionally tell Neil he should think about getting Billy professional help. Which Billy was always punished for when they got home.

So maybe he wanted to see what all the fuss was about with this therapy stuff. Psychology turned out to be interesting. He ended up being good at it.

Until he isn't. When Steve Harrington walks into his office and fucks everything up by being everything Billy wants in a man and married to a woman who does not appreciate him. And Billy gets incredibly unprofessional.

Also I think it would be super funny if Jonathan was Billy's secretary, so Steve and Nancy are both like, yes, totally, I want to go to this couples counselling session for our relationship, not because I want to fuck the person trying to help us.

The mess. The chaos. Imagine it.

[cabesswtaer]

aaron that entire bonus chapter:

[pixiishi]

always best in threes 💫

ID in ALT text

[sentientsky]

Aeschylus, The Oresteia

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.

[littleoddwriter]

Trapped | Cooper Abbott x GenderNeutral!Reader | Dark Fic

Hi there! I'm incredibly down bad for him, to nobody's surprise, so here's the first fic I wrote for him. More to come! This fic isn't exactly romantic or even really sexual, albeit with some hints to it; but I used it to get a feel for writing him, first and foremost. And also because I saw somebody wanting a fic where Reader is in Lady Raven's position at the end of the movie, and I wanted that as well, so, here. It's not exactly what was imagined when demanding that, I know, but it's something! (also, excuse the uninspired title, please, it's very tongue-in-cheek, I know, dshjkfgsdkjs) summary; You're captured by the Butcher as his last chance of entertainment - and revenge - before his inevitable arrest or death. There, you learn a lot about him, and also yourself. notes/warnings; GenderNeutral!Reader; Reader is in Lady Raven's position (Reader is a pop star, etc.); slight spoilers for the movie (but I expect you to have seen that if you're reading this anyway); Character Study; Implied/Referenced (Attempted) Murders; Kidnapping; Angst; Implied/Referenced Sexual Attraction; Implied/Referenced Past Child Abuse; Mostly Open End; Dark Fic. (once again, this is not a full on romantic or sexual fic about Cooper and Reader, but more of an exploration of the character, his dynamic with Reader, and Reader's own conflicting thoughts and feelings about the situation and Cooper. there are hints of romance and sexual attraction, though. this is a dark fic and it has a mostly open ending; but it does imply a bad ending if we're realistic. if you're like me, you could also find a way to imagine a better ending to it. that's why I left it somewhat ambiguous.)

The car’s passenger door was slammed shut on you, making you jump with the force behind it. A shaky breath left your trembling lips as you waited for Cooper to settle in the driver’s seat of his wife’s car. Soon to be ex-wife, you figured. If not a widow. 

Your mind was still reeling with the night’s events. One moment, you’d been giving your best for the concert, like you always did, and the next moment, you were stuck with a wanted serial killer because you decided to play hero. Desperately, you hoped it would all be worth it, in the end. Or else this might have been the stupidest decision you’ve ever made. You should have just alerted the FBI when you got the hunch that something was up with the man, you berated yourself internally. 

“Put these around your wrists,” the Butcher told you gruffly, holding up a pair of zip ties to you. 

Stunned, you just looked at him for a long moment, your mind trying to catch up with what he was asking of you. Everything has been happening too fast. Too much, all at once. And worst of all, you were terrified. Yet at the same time, you felt for him. He was a desperate man. Trapped. Cornered. In a way, you were his last resort now. How ironic.

Cooper gave you a stern look, his dishevelled hair covering parts of the upper half of his face, but the fierce glint of desperation and murder in his eyes shone through the brunette strands. 

“Put. These. Around. Your. Wrists,” he commanded again through clenched teeth, shoving the zip ties into your chest, as your hands automatically flew up to catch them.

Shakily, you nodded and put your hands through the loop. Once the zip ties were around your wrists, the Butcher pulled them tight, the thin hard plastic cutting into your skin, rubbing it raw with every small movement. 

As soon as he was certain that your hands were tied, Cooper started the car’s engine and quickly exited the garage and driveway. In the distance, you could hear police sirens on their way to the house you had just left behind. Too late. 

“If only you hadn’t decided to play hero,” Cooper mused with a strained, almost manic, smile on his lips, “None of this had to have happened, you know? I would have let you go.”

“And let you kill more innocent people? I couldn’t bear the guilt, knowing I could have prevented it,” you responded quietly.

“As if you actually care about random people’s lives more than your own. You’re just as fake as they all are. Pretending that you’ve got it all figured out, that you’re fulfilled.” He sounded bitter, angry, spitting those last words in your direction, like your existence has personally offended him. His grip around the steering wheel tightened, turning his knuckles white. 

Not wanting to anger him any further, you decided to stay quiet; even though you had a million things on your mind that you would have liked to retort. 

The FBI had briefed you on what kind of man they figured him to be. A psychological profile, they called it. You had heard about those on TV before, but it always seemed silly to you. How could they possibly know what was going on inside a person’s mind without having ever met them before? With all conclusions based on evidence from crime scenes instead? It didn’t make sense to you.

Until now, that was. Cooper seemed like the exact man the FBI had described to you. Perfect on the outside, an overachieving family man, unassuming, kind, always happy and ready to lend a hand. And beneath all of that, on the inside, there was a hurt child, craving their parents’ love and approval, but never getting it. Now, he let that anger that had manifested out on people he deemed to have had it all, to have what he was missing all his life. 

Deep down, you felt bad for him. If his parents had been different, perhaps there would be one less killer on the loose. Or perhaps, he would have ended up this way, no matter the circumstances of his upbringing. Who was to say that killers like him were only a product of abuse? 

After what felt like an eternity, he pulled into another driveway, getting out of the car. His footsteps were quick and heavy, and your heart was sinking in response to those sounds. 

Ripping the passenger door open, he leaned down to look at you, grabbed your bound wrists and jerked your body in his direction, forcing you out of your seat. Stumbling out of the car, you almost bumped into him, your head barely reaching his shoulder. He really was massive. You stood no chance against him, you thought, feeling defeated. This was it, then. 

Cooper bent over and quickly picked up the bag he had taken with him from the garage, before slamming the door shut once more. And just like he had done before, the Butcher put his fingers on your shoulder, verbally giving you directions for where he wanted you to go, while keeping a dominating presence behind you, not allowing you a real chance to escape.

Eventually, you found yourself in a basement, not unlike the one Spencer, who was hopefully safe now, had been stuck in before. 

The Butcher pushed you down to sit on the cold hard chair in the middle of the room, a support beam right behind it. He made quick work of putting the ice-cold steel chains and cuffs around your wrists and ankles, snapping off the zip ties at last. 

Looking up at him from where you were seated, the sinking feeling of hopelessness creeped in. There was no way you were getting out of this alive. 

Cooper retrieved a cleaver from his bag and pulled out another chair, placing it across from you and sitting down on it, playing with the knife in his hands. He looked at you for a long moment, not saying anything, just breathing calmly, idly stroking the knife’s handle with his thumb of the hand that was holding it. With his other hand, he brushed the loose strands of hair away from his face.

Once again, he was smiling at you. A smile that never reached his eyes, which glinted with murderous intent and something else that you couldn’t quite place. His smile was too big, too sharp, to be genuine. It seemed manic and desperate. Strained. And at the same time, he looked to be in complete control over the situation. 

Cooper Abbott was a man of many facades, you came to realise. 

“I was gonna stop, you know?” he finally spoke up, the tense silence broken by his voice that was laced with too many emotions at once, giving away that he didn’t feel as in control as he seemed to be. 

You waited for him to continue, not daring to ask questions.

“It’s been a while since I last felt the urge. Until you, tonight. I don’t know if it was because of everything that happened, or because I could see right through you… but it was an almost pleasant surprise to feel the urge again.

“Spencer was gonna be my last. That was the plan. Go to the concert with Riley, kill Spencer from the comfort of my home, sneak out hours later, making up some kind of lie of having to work an extra shift because of an emergency, chop him up, dispose of his body and any evidence, return home, and pretend like nothing had happened,” Cooper explained his initial plan for tonight like he was talking about something completely normal, like a family vacation he was planning instead. It was eerie, but somewhat intriguing to you. 

“And then, with time, I would have cleaned out all the houses I had bought to keep my two lives safely apart. I could have been a regular husband, father, and firefighter in just a couple of weeks, maybe months. And no one would have been any wiser on what I had done for all those years that the Butcher was active. It was the perfect plan,” he finished with a frustrated sigh, brushing his hair away from his face again with more force than was necessary. You could hear the steady, but sharp, tapping of his fingers against the cleaver’s wooden handle.

There was a long, tense moment of silence.

You almost felt the urge to apologise for ruining his plans.

“Why did you decide to stop?” you asked, unable to contain your genuine curiosity any longer.

Strangely enough, Cooper’s smile softened, his face relaxed and his eyes lost some of the fierceness in them. “Because I thought that I had finally done enough. The urge had lessened over the years, like I said, I didn’t feel it for a while until tonight. I was just doing it out of routine at this point, I think. Believe it or not, it was fun. And I wasn’t ready to give that up for a while.”

“What changed?” 

“I did… My children changed me. Riley and Logan are everything to me. And I was trying my hardest to be the dad they deserved to have. The one that they needed. A loving, fun, and especially involved, dad. I didn’t want them to feel like I did growing up,” Cooper explained in a wistful tone, “It all started out as just another way to keep suspicions away from me. Starting a family with Rachel seemed like the perfect cover. Nobody would ever suspect that a true family man could be a messed up serial killer, right?”

Despite your current situation, you felt your heart flutter. You understood where he was coming from, and you wished things had gone differently for him. But most of all, you wished that he wasn’t what he was.

“I didn’t expect to actually enjoy fatherhood, or to love my kids the way I do,” he continued after a short pause, still in that oddly wistful tone, a harsh contrast to the entire situation and his true being, “It’s so strange… With everything that happened tonight, I’m just enraged. But I’m less angry about having been found out at all. I’m mostly angry because I’m never going to see my children again.”

This time, you couldn’t resist the urge, and so you whispered, “I’m sorry,” like it was somehow your fault, when in reality, it was his decision to murder people in the first place.

Letting out a long sigh that ended in a small, insincere chuckle, Cooper got up from his chair, meat cleaver in his hand, towering over you like this inescapable force that he was to you. 

With practised ease, he took his shirt off and threw it over the chair behind himself. You had no idea why he would do that. Easier clean-up, maybe? With regret, you realised that you didn’t hate the sight. He was an attractive man, there was no question about that. But to feel such attraction, despite your current predicament, was nothing short of confusing and embarrassing to you. 

“You don’t have to do this, Cooper,” you whispered, looking up at him with pleading eyes.

“I wish that was true, but… there’s no escape. Not anymore. I might as well have fun one last time,” he told you quietly with that eerie smile that did nothing to hide his intentions. It only emphasised them now. 

Feeling your heart rate accelerate, your stomach sank with the realisation that this would be it for you. 

It only took two steps for him to stand right in front of and above your seated, captured, cowering form. Before you could utter another plea, Cooper’s free hand wrapped around your throat, almost covering the entire thing with his large palm as his fingers gripped onto your jaw, moving your head further back as he bent down, leaning into you.

A small noise escaped your throat, sounding both distressed and almost aroused. You had no control over that, and it felt utterly humiliating to have made such a sound in response to his actions. 

The Butcher chuckled darkly, a sharp smile playing on his lips, and a glint of intrigue in his eyes. 

“I think I’m gonna enjoy this a lot more than expected…” he whispered into your ear, his hot breath tickling your sensitive skin. 

“Please don’t…” you tried again, weakly, your voice strained from the weight of his hand against your windpipe. 

As you struggled to breathe, and his hand only tightened around your neck, your vision started to blur both due to panic and the lack of oxygen. Darkly, in the back of your fuzzy mind, you thought that at least you’d go out with a handsome face as the last thing you'd see. 

Faintly, in the far distance, you heard police sirens. Or maybe your mind was playing tricks on you.

“If only you had saved yourself…” the Butcher whispered to you before he quickly, and with impressive force, snapped your head back against the support beam behind you, and your world went dark.

[excelsiant]

The worst thing that could happen is that they stop being friends.

Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch and Richard Gansey III in THE RAVEN CYCLE (2024)

Part 1 | 2

[shorthaltsjester]

very happy with the vax situation because it is a ‘reward’ that doesn’t undo (in fact it reinforces) the tragedy and is clear evidence of the very real care that the matron holds for vax and the mortal man he was that was desperate to save his sister and found purpose in the consequence. but what i really can’t stop thinking about is the fact that when the vision of the matron stood over vox machina in 1x115 and beckoned vax to her side, scanlan’s reaction was “now? we don’t even get a night together or anything?” and now 30 years later the matron tells vax “the night is yours.”

[feelingthedisaster]

anyone's got aftg fic recs?

brainrot is hitting hard. i reread too many times already and im desesperate for content. if i can, without smut or not smut centric would be awesome, here are some of my own recs as i know im not the only one in this situation (a lot of relationships, both rom and gen, different lenghts and completation status, we dont discriminate here, tho you can see my obvius preference for some characters)

odd eye

a reddit love story

hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing

Oh love, I'm sorry if I smothered you

where the wind can exist

Kevin & Wymack's Ultimate Road Trip Playlist

part time soulmate, full time problem (rooftop gays)

the struggles

staring at the sun

proof or survival

hoax

queerplatonic kandreil

despite everything im still human

a lot's gonna change

dead of the night

[somnimagus]

did some vesperia chibis, i always forget how happy i get drawing these guys. i love them dearly

[id in alt text]