#trauma detectives

[zarainink]

Dept. Q

Dept. Q, the new Netflix crime series that crawled into my basement office, knocked over my trauma binder, and whispered,

“he’s not healing, he’s compartmentalizing.”

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So picture this: Matthew Goode, a man of mystery and cheekbones honed like a Doric column, stars as DCI Carl Mørck, an emotionally repressed detective exiled to a damp Edinburgh storage closet for having the audacity to feel guilt. He’s been shot, his partner’s paralyzed, and he’s one passive-aggressive eye twitch away from exploding into a cloud of sarcasm and unresolved grief. In short: my favorite genre of man.

He gets dumped into Department Q, aka “cold case hell,” aka the bureaucratic oubliette where dreams go to die. Enter:

🌀 Akram Salim, the Syrian ex-cop with the quiet competence of a haunted falcon

🌀 Rose, a Gen-Z goth admin who’s either 10 seconds from quitting or founding a cult

🌀 Rachel, his therapist, who is VERY tired of his deflection tactics

🌀 Jamie Sives in a wheelchair giving the performance of a lifetime from a living room

AND THE VIBE???

It’s bleak. It’s beautiful. It’s marinated in saltwater trauma and the distant cry of seagulls judging your life choices. Edinburgh doesn’t just rain, it broods. Every alley looks like a Victorian ghost crime happened there. The show is soaked in political rot, vanished women, metaphor-heavy grief, and enough emotional repression to power the National Grid. The lighting? Bisexual. The mood? Scandinavian noir but dragged through Scottish Calvinism and left to simmer in a Tupperware of guilt.

The writing? Sharp enough to leave a scar.

The pacing? Deliciously slow and unsettling like it’s daring you to pay attention.

The cases? Grim as hell and coiled like barbed wire. The dialogue? Absolutely feral, half cryptic muttering, half emotional shrapnel. And the acting?? So devastatingly precise I had to keep pausing just to *recover* from a single eyebrow twitch or a haunted inhale.

And Matthew Goode?? I did not expect this man to hit me with “dismantled ex-detective who keeps a metaphorical graveyard in his chest cavity” energy but HERE WE ARE. He’s not just sad. He’s SAD in a way that screams “I don’t deserve closure.” And the show lets him sit in it.

Akram, meanwhile, is the only adult in the room and barely holding it together. Their partnership? Full of tension and cautious loyalty and so many unspoken feelings that I’m going to need the two of them to go out for emotionally repressed pints and maybe a rooftop shouting match.

Some critics are like “Hmm the pacing is slow” and I’m like GOOD. LET ME MARINATE IN THIS MAN’S BURNING GUILT. I want my mysteries with trauma and unresolved father issues. I want “redemption is a myth and closure is earned.” I want the visual metaphor of a man dragging boxes of dead girls up the stairs.

💀 Verdict: 9/10 emotionally stunted detectives in a trench coat.

🖤 Watch it if: you like Broadchurch, Mindhunter, Dark Academia detective edition, or yelling “OH YOU POOR THING” at your screen.

🚬 Watch it if: you believe in the healing power of trauma bonding, old case files, and emotional repression.

GO WATCH IT. Just don’t expect to come out emotionally unscathed. fuel my coffee addiction here : https://ko-fi.com/zarainink

[batcavescolony]

My favorite thing to add to my text post is Dick remembering everything that's retconned. So

Jason: sometimes I wish Bruce never adopted me

Dick: I almost adopted you

Jason:... What?

Dick: back when you were a blonde acrobat, you had the same trauma as me, I wanted to adopt you.

Jason: when I was WHAT?

Dick: yeah, you were menace back then too-

Jason: BRUCE DICK IS ACTING WEIRD! HE'S SAYING I USED TO BE BLONDE AND AN ACROBAT!

Bruce: he does that sometimes

Dick: Bruce remember when Alfred didn't exist yet and it was just you and me?

Bruce: sure chum *pats head*

Dick: what is Julie doing now?

Bruce: *whispering above Dicks head* I have no idea who that is.

Bruce: No idea why don't you go look her up?

Dick: ok *leaves*

Jason: what the hell?

[glindauplland]

DEAD BOY DETECTIVES | THE CASE OF THE VERY LONG STAIRWAY

Sorry. No version of this where I didn't come get you, is there?

[potato-lord-but-not]

c’mon baby, cry

[celendiar]

highkey in love with the idea that when it comes to their relationship, charles and edwin are the complete opposites of their usual behaviour.

charles, normally with zero impulse control or patience, is so so so careful and attentive with edwin, concerned about doing it all just right, spending hours planning their dates and content to take it all slow

meanwhile edwin, normally prim and proper and patient and self-disciplined, has repressed his wants and needs and feelings for 100+ years and now that he no longer has to?? he has no fucks left to give and will kiss charles senseless whenever he damn well wants to

[downbaddetective]

I kinda love that, in general, as a fandom, we collectively don't know what to do with Kashi. Like, we looked at him, said, "I love him," and then just sort of moved on. We don't know what to do with the well-adjusted man in the fish, he has no trauma. We can't work under these conditions!?

[tragedy-machine]

Be like Charles Rowland, romanticize the little things

Like your death

[technically-human]

Misunderstandings part 3/3

Talking about it! Kind of.

@i-am-as-normal-as-you-are thank you again for this commission, I knew these two were not talking properly about Hell, but I never considered all the implications. Silly boys.

[chaoticke-rambles]

I’m interested in how both Charles and Edwin treat the whole idea of being “detectives.”  Obviously, they are detectives.  They have formed a detective agency, they run cases, it’s their whole thing; it’s how they spend their afterlives.  But it’s more than just 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.  

I think a lot about the concept of ghosts having unfinished business and how that might apply to both Charles and Edwin, and I think that the detective agency, despite how it sometimes comes off as playacting, is deeply tied to both of their psyches.  Edwin needs the detective agency to feel like there was a point to everything that happened to him.  That maybe no one cared he disappeared, and maybe he ended up in hell, but it wasn’t for nothing.  They can try to keep it from happening to anyone again.  And Charles?  Well, he needs the detective agency because there was no point to what happened to him.  He shouldn’t have died, and he’s not ready to move on to an afterlife.  He needs to feel like he’s needed, like there’s something he can do.  If it hadn’t been a detective agency these two formed, it would have been something else because they had too many deep-rooted issues that have been sublimated into the agency itself.

[mirellapryce]

I haven't wrapped my head around the full thought yet, but what if Edwin DOES have memory issues from his trauma? One could argue that he can't possibly memorise all his spells, but he specifically asks Charles for his book in ep one rather than using a different spell he already knows. Then in Lighthouse Leapers he commends Charles on his memory of a previous case. I'm just saying, trauma fucks with your memory, and 70 years in hell probably did a number on the poor boy more than we saw.

[aceinspacesstuff]

Does Charles miss his life, or just life? Does he really hate being dead, or does he hate how he died?

I've seen some artists interpret the light house crash out scene as Charles missing his old life and probably struggles more with being dead than Edwin. While that is a good interpretation, I don't think Charles's feelings about life and death are that simple.

I think Charles hates how he died and wishes he and Edwin could experience living together.

Because, objectively, dying at 16 from hypothermia and internal bleeding because your racist friends beat you and drove you to a frozen lake is a terrible way to go. No amount of good in Charles after life will change that, so it makes sense he would regret that no matter what.

He grew up in an abusive household and went to school with a bunch of posh rich kids, so he probably wouldn't miss his life, just what life could've been. If he got to be old enough to move out and live on his own terms, old enough to leave his shitty house and shitty school.

Now he's made a good after life with Edwin. He co-founded a successful detective agency, he has a best friend who loves him unconditionally, and he goes on adventures every day. I have no doubt he loves his afterlife with Edwin and wouldn't change that for anything, but you can still love the outcome and hate how it happened.

Obviously, Charles couldn't say all of that because he was reeling from having his worst memories thrown in his face and his friends being scared of him. He makes up for this when he tells Edwin,'I wouldn't want to be dead with anyone else'.

Charles would want to be dead with anyone but Edwin, and he wouldn't want to be alive with anyone but Edwin. He would want to experience growing up and old with Edwin.

[alltimefail]

As someone who lived in a home where it was not safe to be queer but their first love was their same-sex best friend, I really cannot emphasize the importance of characters like Charles Rowland enough. As someone who deals with shame from years of self-hate, repression, happy-masking, and being called a "Token ally" by even my queer friends while feeling wrong wrong wrong about it, and being the kind of person who just didn't "Look queer enough" or whatever the fuck arbitrary, exclusionist rhetoric people would casually hurl about, I just really can't believe we have a character like him.

He's complex and deeply scarred and I've never cared about a character like this before. I've never felt so "Seen." I can't wait to save this show because seeing him heal will be like a balm on my heart. His character arc is completely unique and handled with such care that it brings tears to my eyes.

That's all. I am just so deeply thankful for & emotional about Charles Rowland tonight.

[infinite-beginnings]

The line when Charles said, "Edwin's told me loads of stories about Hell," and him seeming to know he'd find a map in Edwin's book always hits me hard.

Now I acknowledge Charles might’ve been posturing to reassure the Night Nurse he could navigate Hell, but let's assume this fact was real.

Because that means that Edwin felt comfortable enough to talk about all of his trauma to Charles. He mentions Hell a lot in passing in front of the girls, but he never goes into specifics. However, it seems as if he actively told Charles quite a few details about Hell. I also noticed that Charles is very calm when he's going to find Edwin. Yes, he's studying the book a lot, but he is also navigating the space with a certain amount of confidence. I'm sure it's partially due to Charles' tendency to do things without thinking and project confidence. But also, it seems as if he might have at least a very basic level of knowledge or familiarity with the levels of Hell based on the stories Edwin told.

I think this is probably another reason why Edwin struggled to believe the fact that Charles had faced abuse in his past and never shared it with Edwin. Because Edwin was always up front and honest with Charles. He told him the very first time they'd met that he had just escaped Hell. I'm sure Edwin did not want to relive his memories of Hell, and maybe it took him decades to feel like he could share. But I bet when he started talking about it with Charles, he felt relief. Because sharing your trauma with someone who accepts you and loves you no matter what is always a relief after holding it in and pushing it down.

So I just imagine Edwin feeling that relief after sharing his stories from Hell and feeling closer and more bonded with Charles because of it...and then he finds out that Charles has this huge amount of trauma from his past that he has been keeping inside. It probably breaks Edwin's heart that he hadn't been able to offer Charles the same relief he'd felt.

And yes, Crystal mentioned that Charles was probably denying the trauma even to himself. We all know that Edwin knew something was off with Charles and that he was probably frustrated in himself because he hadn't been able to figure it out, but Crystal apparently had.

But I also think there might be another level to it. The boys have been solving cases for 30 years. I find it hard to believe that they never had another case involving abuse or at least someone with a controlling personality that would've reminded Charles of his father. Maybe Edwin thinks back to a couple of those cases and how Charles was acting strange and withdrawn during them and realized he'd missed a huge clue about how his friend was feeling.

All those years of sharing his stories from Hell and being comforted by Charles and Edwin hadn't been able to do the same. Edwin is definitely hurt that Charles didn't feel like he could confide in him and heartbroken to think about how much pain his friend was going through alone.

[potato-lord-but-not]

FAROEVERSE DOODLES I can only think about her for 5 minutes at a time before I become unwell and need to lie down

(also in this au Arthur dies during the book incident instead of Parker (who probably wasn’t present), she’d been going thru his office trying to find a way to be helpful bc her father never tells her things and keeps his job from her and she found some things she probably shouldn’t have, Arthur caught her a bit too late)

((AND Jane is literally the exact same as John except her gender got transed in the opposite direction))

[moresandmanstuff]

Charles Rowland

Edwin Payne

[packleaderbriggan]

Edwin Payne Really Fucking Cares: A Short Essay

Was re-watching ep 1 and something stood out to me like never before:

Edwin Payne cares. Like, he cares *so deeply*. He tries his very best to remain calm, cold, and collected, but there are moments where truly visceral emotions slip through the cracks in his facade.

(Please excuse the obvious, distracting play button in the middle of the pics; there's only so much I can do with my pirating app 😂)

But this- this is just as he catches his first glimpse of Becky Aspen, under the piles of discarded clothes and bones. You can see the way his heart drops, how affected he is at the prospect of finding this little girl's corpse.

This is as he starts trying to unbury her. He is so viscerally distraught- just LOOK at that face. He is terrified that they were too late to save her. Terrified that he didn't do enough. Terrified that he has failed to save an innocent life.

While he's listening for her heartbeat, you can just see how desperately he is begging for her to still be alive. Look at him!! That is a boy that is fucking *scared*. He is so worried about Becky, and he doesn't even know her! All he knows is that she is innocent, and all he can do is pray that he is not the reason she is dead.

And this? This is when he's screaming at Charles, telling him that Becky is here, that she is alive, that they were not too late. Look at his eyes. Look at his brows. That is the face of someone who is desperate - to save her, to keep her safe, to get her away from the imminent threat of Esther Finch.

As if that wasn't enough to think about, there's a little voice in my head that is telling me something else: while he's down in that snake pit, Edwin is not truly seeing Becky Aspen as just another case. He's seeing himself.

Think about it. He's surrounded by heaps and heaps of bones, torn clothing, the memories of lives so cruelly and unfairly snuffed out.

He looks at her, covered in the disjointed remnants of death, and he sees himself back in the dollhouse. He sees himself being torn apart by the spider demon, covered in his own blood and guts, the terrible reminders of the inevitability of his pain.

It is in these brief moments where his facade falls that we can see Edwin's actual motivation: he is looking at Becky, but he can only see himself. Edwin Payne is a good person, but I don't think he was thinking rationally right here. He was thinking through the lens of his own trauma.

He wants to save Becky, not out of a conscious desire to do good, but a base, instinctual need to protect her in the same way he never was. He is doing this for her because no one ever did it for him.

After Charles pulls him out of the void, we can see that Edwin is well and truly shaken. It even takes him a good minute (and Charles' help) to get back on his feet! He blames it on the snake, but I wonder how much of that was to save face and keep Charles from asking questions.

Edwin doesn't like to talk about Hell, and for good reason, but he cannot hide the fact that he was rattled by what he saw down there. He knows that Charles knows him well enough to clock that immediately, so he brushes it off with the reference to " ... a very large snake."

Idk I'm just rambling at this point. But there's something so incredibly *real* in his expressions during this scene. For a few brief moments, we see him display emotions that very painfully parallel ep 7, where we once again see him acting through the lense of deeply ingrained trauma.

Just. Mhhhh 🤌 Chef's kiss, and hats off to George for playing such a real character 👏