#zero says thingz

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Payneland week has been too busy for me to do anything but it's been so incredible seeing all the works and pieces that people have posted with love for a show that ended over 2 years ago ♥️

Here is my offering

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it fucking gets me sometimes that edwin struggled for so much of his living life and then hell.. but when we are first introduced to him we're shown a teenager mucking around at his job with his best friend

like in life we see he's so so lonely and rejected by everyone.. the only person that approaches him later kills him out of spite and jealousy and self-hatred..

then he's in hell and it's runningrunningrunning dying over and over just pain and broken bones and absolutely nothing akin to friendship or companionship it's just inconceivable agony for seventy-three fucking years

but then!! we see him first introduced as a dead boy detective- he runs a detectives agency now - a thing he obviously was interested in, he reads comics about them not just for himself but to a dying boy. he wants to find a way to comfort someone struggling and he shares this thing close to him even after having to rediscover people after so long

and now he runs a detective agency with that dying boy and it's his best friend in the whole wide world who loves him more than anyone ever has at any point in his existence and he's so so happy

the scene when charles is trying to teach edwin how to fight he's being jostled and teased and egged on but he's so so fond.. he's so happy in that scene cause that's his best friend they're in their home taking a break from the job they made together and love.. he has everything he could want and he's had it for 34 years and he deserves to have it for so so many more

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my headcanon I believe in so hard I forget it's not canon is that Charles didn't actually look like how his memories show he did when he died

what the Night Nurse is seeing and subsequently what the audience is seeing when she looks into Charles' memories is how Charles viewed that night. it's his memories, and memories are biased

when we see the memories in the attic, even when Charles is curled up under a blanket literally about to die, he just looks gaunt, tired, and a little woozy (btw this is NOT an attack on makeup artists what they do is amazing and I'm just building on that)

but we are told over and over that he died of hypothermia and internal bleeding. and I doubt that the rocks that were thrown at him did all that much damage- have you ever thrown something into water? it sinks slowly as soon as it hits the surface. those rocks weren't doing any damage to Charles anywhere that was under the water. so yeah, his 'friends' probably beat the shit out of him first and that's what caused the internal bleeding

but internal bleeding is typically from organs or brain damage and is often visible as mass, dark bruising. but you're telling me Charles had no bruising on him whatsoever?? he was bleeding internally enough that it's listed as his cause of death - not just a side note - it's part of the reason that he died. but no bruises on the face, none on the arms, no bleeding from the head or anything (we don't see his torso until after he dies so I have nothing about that)

Charles definitely felt fucking freezing so of course that's shown in his memories, of course he's gaunt and tired and cold - but the pain can just be passed off as the cold and he had something much more interesting to pay attention to: Edwin

I fully believe that we see those memories with Charles looking the way he does because his focus on that night looking back on it isn't that he was slowly bleeding and freezing to death; but that it was the first time he met his best friend, (and why would he want to remember all the gory details) and that's why he looks the way he does in his memories

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Dead Boy Detectives came out 2 years (!!!) ago today This show means so much to me, and a big part of the story is to be brave. So I am going to be brave and post some of my dbda artwork over those 2 years that I like.

Happy Anniversary!

(click on them if you want to see them in better detail)

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it occurred to me today that the show presents us with how edwin and charles balance each other out in the agency in literally the first episode

while edwin is at the desk skimming through a giant tome, charles is playing around with a ball

when charles is painting the demon sigil on the sheet, edwin is reading on the couch

they're always in the same room, not always doing the same thing, and letting the other focus on what they're good at (brain and brawn dynamic again). and it shows that even though they aren't doing the same things, they're both pulling their weight in the agency at what they know they can do and getting it done together

and that's how they've run a business together for over 30 years. it's literally parallel play

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I fear that all I add to fandom discussion is colour analysis but I am going to do it AGAIN because the choice of having Sherlock and James being both complementary and opposing colours is incredible

Sherlock is always dressed in blues or dark clothing: providing him the disposition of cooler, 'smarter' colours. His outfits also tend to lack pattern to them.

James is instead dressed in warmer oranges and browns, with a lot of plaid and decorative textures. And he - despite his 'evil ways', does have a warmer demeanour and a better social ability.

And orange and blue are the opposite colours on the colour wheel!! They are opposing each other, but also used to complement, and that is exactly what Holmes and Moriarty do. They are narrative foils to each other. They are the only ones at the equal level of one another (complementary), yet are also eventually at conflicting morals with each other (opposing).

It is also of note that when James sneaks himself and Sherlock into the party in episode 1, he is wearing a dark blue coat over a brown patterned blazer. The same with the dark graduate gowns (?) of the university. In order to fit in, James has to cover himself and his dispositions in the more 'acceptable' cooler colours: In which another thing can be said for his stated inability to "fit in", and how that connects to his place in England as an Irish man after the Great Famine.

((and then of course after leaving Oxford and amongst the Holmes', he is wearing his orange and brown suits freely)

(there is then additional analysis with the bts of season 2 showing James dressed in greens. His personality is changing and his disposition is cooling, and he is getting less aligned with Sherlock and his endeavours.))

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I think in the next iteration of charles' shirt turning from red -> burgundy -> black, in a hypothetical situation in which he's feeling even worse than we see in s1, when he's just hitting rock bottom after rock bottom; his harrington jacket turns a darker shade, eventually fading to black too

and then when he's really really not doing well, his smiley-face pin disappears from his coat

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i have an unfortunate hatred for Guy Ritchie media, but i have to acknowledge that if you give the guy a sherlock holmes adaptation he absolutely nails it every time