Oh I'm speechless now.

Holding hands to keep you close

This adorable comic was a commission for @creamsoda1998! As all of her ideas, it's just the cutest thing.

And she also wanted a summer illustration!

Holding hands to keep you close

This adorable comic was a commission for @creamsoda1998! As all of her ideas, it's just the cutest thing.

And she also wanted a summer illustration!

Like… bravery, at least as Charles does it, I think, is willingness to go into a scary/painful/dangerous situation when you don’t actually have to. You could choose to turn around and go the other way, and instead you go into the scariness.

Endurance, on the other hand, is ability to cope with and function through scary/painful things you have no choice about. You’re already in the situation, and instead of breaking, you keep going; keep thinking or fighting or simply surviving.

Charles has a lot of bravery - he loooves charging into situations where he could’ve just stayed out of it - but not nearly as much endurance as Edwin. Things like a massively lower pain tolerance, obviously (eg not being able to work through the pain of iron like Edwin can) but also just, like… he’s in general more likely to snap under pressure.

On the other hand, Edwin has literally inhuman levels of endurance, not only physically but, more impressively, psychologically. He was being continuously horrifically tortured for more than 70 years and instead of breaking and becoming a gibbering whimpering mess he was able to keep strategizing and working and fighting and escape, and then even be mostly sane afterwards. It’s canonically his primary superpower! He endures things no other ghost can.

But he’s a lot less brave than Charles is. His base responses are flight and freeze, and he’ll do them pre-emptively. He has to have a damn good reason to actively go into a scary situation, and he’ll look visibly terrified while doing it.

You see an interesting comparison of the two in the Devlin House. Charles sees something horrific against his will and is very visibly horrified. His trauma gets triggered, and he snaps - he can’t endure it. But he then acts brave - goes to attack the scary person when he could’ve just, y’know, not, could’ve stayed safe with Crystal and Edwin. But then he can’t endure the consequences - he’s so upset he gets stuck in the loop.

On the other hand, Edwin sees the same horrific thing and is like. Ew, that’s messy. His trauma is triggered (by the Misery Wraith) and instead of snapping he manages Crystal in order to try to keep them both safe and simultaneously save Charles. He is in acute danger of losing the one thing that matters most to him in all of existence but he stays functional.

But by golly he’s gonna run and hide from that Wraith the second he can; he comes up with no plans that involve going towards Mr. Devlin. He doesn’t go into the tape room knowing there’s something scary in there; he just is able to keep doing what he has to do once something scary happens against his will.

Very different types of strength - both powerful and valuable but they are both weak where the other is strong and that’s kinda fascinating to me.

Lol, thank you for thinking I am cool by any metric. I’m touched .

Charles is certainly my favorite to write, so I will deliver my least popular opinion about him: I think Charles is kind of a rich poser in the ska scene.

I DO NOT MEAN that he isn’t actually cool, or that he doesn’t belong there, but let’s be serious. The most salient fact we know about Charles Rowland’s life is that he went to a historic boy’s boarding school in the late 1980s. That is rich kid shit. They don’t do sport scholarships at places like that. (This is also why I write his dad as a doctor—to ground the family in a class status that would be notably out of place among Rich rich kids with old money, but still be able to afford St. Hil’s.)

Charles is an upper-middle-class teenager who goes to a posh boarding school. The third wave ska scene in the UK was a subculture with very working class roots. I am a million percent sure that Charles meandered his way in as a clueless kid one day and immediately made it his whole identity with no deeper understanding, as clueless kids are wont to do.

Firstly, then schools like that do offer scholarships. Which I know because my husband was the recipient of a scholarship at a school like that. (We're both Gen-X, just a few years younger than Charles.)

However I still think that Charles is middle class. His accent is not posh, so I would place him within a family that has worked its way up. I reckon his (paternal) grandparents were working class, and his father has worked/studied his way into a good profession and a much higher financial status. Charles probably went to the local school when he was in primary, but then his father decided that a posh school would be the thing to set up him for life: it would give Charles the kind of connections that comes from that environment, the kind that his father never had.

I think we can see the working class roots partly in his father's (very rough) abuse, and partly in the reasons for it? Because if his life's project is clawing his way out of his unfortunate background and up the class system, and his son (whose school fees - even with a scholarship, if he had one - are probably a huge drain) is seemingly squandering all that and instead drawn to working class subculture and music... that would undermine everything he is.

Re. the school experience itself, then - speaking for my husband - he absolutely hated it. And I can see Charles very much coming to that understanding (the rich do not care and take everything for granted) yet be unable to articulate that to his parents and finding refuge elsewhere...

Boba tea milk!

Dead Boy Detectives: A Cluedo-Inspired Board Game

Over the past month or so, I’ve been working on illustrating and designing a Dead Boy Detectives Cluedo-Inspired game fully from scratch! I was going to wait till everything was finished to share, but I’m impatient😂

Here’s a sneak preview at some of the cards👀It’s definitely been a commitment and will be a big project, but I am so looking forward to sharing the full thing hopefully in the next couple months!

Only a few more illustrations to go, then I need to work on the instructions manual and box design.

My goal is to actually physically create this, not sure if it’s something I’d try to sell—for many reasons, one being copyright, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there😂

Words cannot express how excited we are to finally bring you, The Case of What Came After: A DBDA Zine!

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your continued support and encouragement. We hope that you love this project just as much as we loved making it!

Here's our zine! Enjoy!🔍💖

Here's what we made, with love:

Check out all the frames closely: https://sites.google.com/view/the-best-frames-we-know/home?authuser=1

To see the slowed version:

by speechlessG

Niko 幫 Edwin 大改造，Charles 面臨性向危機（大概吧）

Words: 8056, Chapters: 1/1, Language: 中文-普通话 國語

Fandoms: Dead Boy Detectives (TV)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Charles Rowland (DCU), Edwin Paine | Edwin Payne, Niko Sasaki, Crystal Palace (DCU)

Here's is some thoughts for Charles’ death and his chance of survival in 1980s.

TW: Detailed discussion of major injury The information below is intended to be roughly medically accurate, but I’m not a trauma surgery specialist, so please feel free to share corrections!