#rubyposts

Because it doesn’t matter.

Simon doesn’t feel like he was revealed to be gay as a way to expose “hidden depth,” which is why this move often feels cheap to me. It’s not used to justify his actions, and he is not excused for them. The narrative makes no apologies for his behavior. He murdered Edwin and the narrative underscores that

They both take the detective work very seriously.  Edwin comes off, generally, as more serious than Charles about it, with his little asides about being a “proper” detective and the methodical ways he likes to do things, but Charles is clearly into it, too.  And sometimes it feels so clearly like they’re playing at the idea of being detectives that it’s almost like a game or a roleplay for them.  They want to be (and are) detectives, but they are two teenage boys who have styled themselves after the idea of being detectives.  Then there are moments where this “performance” of detective work begins to break down.

For Edwin, this happens earlier in the season.  In the first episode, he admits that the detective work matters because he needs it, emotionally, to matter.  His and Charles’s cases didn’t get solved, no one cared.  He needs someone to care.  That’s his investment in being a detective; its more than just a game for him.  When the Cat King casts his truth spell, this is only built upon.  He says he does the detective work, too, because he wants to stay out of hell.  For a while, though, I was trying to find Charles’s investment.  Yeah, his case was also written off when he died, but didn’t seem as upset about that as Edwin.  On the first watchthrough, I wondered if Charles’s investment in the detective work was simply because Edwin was invested.

Then there’s episode 4, when Charles beats the Night Nurse, and part of the speech he yells at her is about being a detective.  I think that’s when it started to click for me that there was something deeper going on with him, too, about the detective work specifically.  Charles is upset he died, he never came to terms with it.  I wonder if part of the reason he’s so invested in being a detective is because it gives him a sense of purpose and impact that he misses from being alive.  He could never stop the things he wanted to stop, never protect the people he wanted to protect, but at least he has this, with Edwin.  At least they are detectives, and Charles can feel needed, feel like his life didn’t end so early for no reason at all.