#was sitting in my drafts for a while

[quinn-pop]

ripple and magolor

"you don't have to perform around me" sweetheart i have to perform in front of myself

[peanuttoffee]

[obii-wan]

JOSEPH QUINN as EDDIE MUNSON in STRANGER THINGS Season Four Chapter One: "The Hellfire Club"

[hummise]

whoops forgot about this

[nuclearanomaly]

Spite Loves...

[anyataylorjoys]

SWEETPEA・Episode 1 "Sorry For Your Loss"

[ricky-mortis]

They're the best of each other!

[blorbosinmyheadcentral]

You have my whole (digital) heart

[radarchives]

mc releasing their inner alpha

[necroticboop]

GARGOYLES : ↳ Types of Soulmates

[myuuchii]

adventure time's your huntlow

[coldranger]

Den and her new friend deserve a nap after dealing with that tunnel man

[caemidraws]

---

[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.

[hummise]

are we still doing bill cipher angst ?

[thevoidstaredback]

Danny grew up (kinda) with Bruce Wayne. Like, they're friends, but neither know either is/was a vigilante until B calls Danny up to visit Gotham.

Danny can pass as Bruce as long as people don't look too hard. With Batman needed in space, Nightwing needed in Bludhaven, and Brucie Wayne needed in Gotham, Bruce pulls in a favor from a man the kids have only ever heard their father mention once.

Bruce has a type: Smaller than him, but could absolutely kick his ass. Danny fits that