Too busy to properly analyze it right now but I think there’s something to be said about Charles’s bravery versus Edwin’s endurance
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.
(Of course, them being them, they probably both think that only what the other one does actually counts as strength, and what they’re themselves less good at makes them weak/cowardly, but… that’s another post.)
Hello. I'm going around and asking the cool kids the following. 1) Who is your favourite DBDA character? 2) What is your most insane headcanon about them?
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.
And that’s beautiful! I love that for him. Teenagers deserve spaces where they can safely grow and experiment with their identities away from their family. I just feel like some people in the fandom give him waaaaay too much street cred 😅
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.)
Find out more about the Stonyhurst Scholarship programme - the highest awards offered, available at different entry points for sport, drama,
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...
Sidebar: I love your 'verse and am eagerly awaiting whatever installment comes next. And I appreciate what you have done with Charles' background, it feels a lot more aligned with my own headcanon (see rambling above) than many other fics. <3
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😂
Feel free to reblog, but please do not share on any other platform, thank you!
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!🔍💖
(You can find the link to download in our bio as well!)
Night Nurse mentioned that Charles' cause of death was hypothermia and internal bleeding, and I'd like to dive deeper into the discussion about internal bleeding.
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!
Although the Night Nurse only mentioned internal bleeding, the term generally refers to bleeding within the abdominal cavity, particularly from organs like the spleen or liver, which are highly vascular and prone to damage from trauma.
However, based on anatomical positioning, these organs are protected by the rib cage. Considering the size of the rock, the angle of the throw, and the cushioning effect of the lake water, it seems unlikely that the impact directly caused organ damage.
A more plausible explanation would be that Charles sustained his injuries from being hit or kicked by his so-called "friends." This theory also aligns with his rigid stance in the lake, he likely didn’t dare to run or fight back because stepping out of the water might have led to another beating.
Blunt abdominal trauma caused by physical violence can lead to internal bleeding, most commonly from ruptured spleens and livers. Other potential injuries include damage to the intestines and pancreas.
The spleen and liver are particularly prone to bleeding, with the severity depending on the amount of blood loss and the extent of tissue laceration. These injuries can worsen over time.
Liver lacerations might be managed with embolization (though this technique wasn’t as advanced in the 1980s) or surgery, while splenic injuries generally require surgical intervention.
Given the likely mechanism of Charles’s injuries, multiple organ damage is plausible, and such cases almost always necessitate surgery.
Patients with less severe organ damage might survive under conservative observation, but Charles only survived a few hours (while also likely dealing with hypothermia). This suggests that his organ damage was significant, potentially with severe bleeding (as the body can sometimes lose a staggering amount of blood before losing consciousness), or his condition deteriorated rapidly.
Even if he had been transported to a hospital from school, the chances of saving him would have been slim.
Additionally, even if Charles had survived surgery, being immersed in lake water would have significantly increased his risk of developing aspiration pneumonia and wound infections, alongside other possible complications from abdominal surgery.
All things considered, the internal bleeding caused by blunt force trauma might not be visually obvious on screen, but it would have made Charles experience more pain and gradually grow weaker, which absolutely breaks my heart.
Moreover, it reveals that what seemed like a sloppy "teach you a lesson" act was, in reality, no different from murder. I really, really hope Edwin does something to those bastards.
Hypothermia and internal bleeding are also a particularly vicious combination because the proteins that induce blood clotting are very temperature-dependent and don't work as well at temperatures much below 37C. So you can get this dangerous feedback loop where hypothermia makes a person bleed out faster, while blood loss makes it harder and harder to regulate their temperature.
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