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We have a winner! The cats may have dominated the tournament over on twitter, but here it was Angie who won the day in the end! And what a gorgeous shot our winning gif is 🥰 Thank you to everyone who voted & shared this around, as always ✨

1st Place: Angie

2nd Place: The Cats

3rd Place: Monty

Endnote: I was very surprised that the sprites didn't make it into the top four in either tournament, so I might have to make a mini sprites-only tournament at some point, because "these small gods require constant gifs sacrifices" ✨

The tournament was very different over on twitter, it was really fun to see, so I'm also giving you the three winning gifs for their tournament & the full grid :)

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Who owns Dead Boy Detectives

For those of you who didn't watch the Dead Boy Detectives tv show bc they didn't wanted to support Neil Gaiman, please read these:

The og twitter thread: https://x.com/CadwaladerMr/status/1834023939502129480

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One last time we are choosing between the supernatural creatures of dbda to determine the winner of the creatures gif tournament! I love that our two finalists were also part of the cinematography tournament - two creature gifs that are stunning to look at! As always, you have 24 hours, and please like & share for a bigger sample size!

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The moment she became my favourite

Dead Boy Detectives Character Appreciation Week Day 4: Niko Sasaki

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Just thinking of Edwin putting, "You, Charles Rowland, are the best person I know," into his wedding vows 🥹

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Some thoughts on Edwin tonight:

I’ve talked about how I think Edwin is so interesting because he goes against the grain of the very reserved and stiff Edwardian archetype, but something else I find interesting about him is he lets people know exactly where they stand with him. Here are some examples:

Niko:

This one is highly quoted. Admittedly, Edwin does not say this right to Niko because Niko could not see him at this point. To Edwin's knowledge she was not going to be able to see him. She is alive, and perhaps he did not anticipate the sprites a near death experience. All that being said, this was as close as he could get to expressing fondness to her at the moment.

Charles:

Edwin actually does a great job making sure Charles knows when he is doing well on cases, like when he praises Charles' quick thinking with the sprite jar. Even when Charles isn't present, Edwin identifies them as "best friends, if you must know". But of course, Charles is rattled after the Dead Dragon case for a lot of reasons. So Edwin reassures him that he is, in fact, the best person he knows (even after he has met many new faces).

Crystal:

Although they got off to a rocky start, Edwin lets Crystal know (tentatively perhaps, but earnestly still) that he does value having her around. He pushes back against the assertion that he did not want her on the case to find Monty's friend "Gladys" because he did- and he ultimately believes in Crystal and has built a relationship with her.

Monty:

This scene is really interesting to me because we tend to think of Charles as someone who fawns more out of these two (and Charles does-he'll be the first to put his feelings aside to try and smooth the group dynamic time and time again). But here we see that Edwin also has some capacity to fawn, especially with people he considers friends. He continues to try and smooth things over with Monty well into the evening.

Until Monty was revealed to be a crow, Edwin was still working on smoothing things over. Edwin tried to reassure him they were friends, even if his feelings were for Charles. He did seem a bit (or a lot) disappointed by being misled about the whole witch-familiar thing.

The Cat King:

I don’t think we talk nearly enough about this moment :

Their bond is a bracelet. Ultimately, Edwin probably would have left TCK behind in the cannery if not for the caging spell. Some often forget Edwin would not have entertained all of the harassment, taunting, and interruptions to his casework if he hadn’t been trapped in a caging spell- a spell which trapped him in Port Townsend, allowed him to be located by The Lost and Found Department, and ultimately led to him being sent back to Hell. As an aside, that trip back to Hell was the only reason the bracelet fell off- it was never removed intentionally. The Cat King even had his own final cat count wrong- whether by accident or on purpose is debatable (however, TCK did threaten to “stop playing nice” in this forest scene, so it is debatable if he ever would have given Edwin a clear answer).

Charles (again):

When Edwin realizes his feelings for Charles, he attempts a confession before he is sent to Hell- but is sadly interrupted by the giant spider made of babydoll heads. His second attempt on the stairway is much clearer.

Edwin makes it abundantly clear that his feelings for Charles are romantic- and he needs him to know, for better or worse. It's brave to lay a heart bare like that (and admittedly, Charles does his best to meet him where he can, while they are being chased by an eldritch horror).

In short, Edwin is someone who actually knows how he feels about the people in his life and articulates that more clearly than many give him credit for.

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This thought has been stuck in my head for some time and I need to pass it along the line.

So, in the mushroom episode, in the forest, Charles says that he always looks up the anachronistic words Edwin calls him, and I was thinking — what Edwin called him? It was implied that they were insults, but what if not only insults, but also endearment here and there? Had Edwin even wanted Charles to understand the words? And in case of insults — did he really mean all these words? Or maybe some of them were like a knee-jerk reaction from his upbringing? So many questions.

And now — imagine Edwin trying to remember what he called Charles throughout their years together and having feelings about that.

Also the thing about calling someone words — you do it in the heat of the moment, and at that moment you have an emotional context. And the person you call words has it as well, AKA knows that you are irritated, angry, scared — or happy, relieved, delighted etc. But looking the terms up is the activity that’s performed outside that emotional context. The person gets the meaning of the words you called them later, not in the throws of emotions.

And it shouldn’t change the meaning of the words, but it kinda does?

So Edwin doesn’t know which words Charles parsed correctly, and which he took to heart (or discarded) mistakenly.

Yeah, I'm thinking about that one again.

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Charles: Sorry I told you about my trauma, do you still think I'm hot?

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I've convinced three people now to watch Dead Boy Detectives and every single one of them has texted me after the first episode like "It's sweet how Charles is clearly so in love with Edwin!"

The only person who has not clocked this boy's obvious bisexual crush remains Charles Rowland himself.

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Love love love characters that present themselves as emotionally open social butterflies but the more you see of them the more obvious it is that they’re the most closed off fuckers in the story. Sure, they want to help you with your personal problems and messy emotions, but if you turn that shit back on them, they’ll shut down or deflect every time. Why are you sticking your nose in their business anyway? It’s not like it matters. They’re not a person, they’re just a role being played. They’re the guy who fixes things and saves people. Please ignore the man behind the mask, he’s fine. Everything’s fine.

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One of my favourite photos from last year. Had so much fun with @das-diddy-stalking as my amazing Charles!

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Behind the Scenes Motion Tests by Jeff Han and animated by Lee Buckley for The Dead Boy Detectives Theme 🔍💀

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Would it be insane for me to say that to me, the red & blue starfish are the most ironclad evidence we have that the show intended to make payneland canon eventually? Red & blue coded characters… “They’re in love.” Ik we’ve talked about the starfish plenty but it’s literally such an obvious and unsubtle bit of signaling it kind of makes me crazy. For all that there may be ambiguity and room for interpretation re: their relationship elsewhere, the starfish moment is so unambiguous imo. Every time I see it I’m like “how did I ever question the intent here”

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am i crazy, or does charles look incredibly flirty in this shot?

like boy control yourself and that tongue lmfao

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Edwin was a character who really grew on me over my first watch of the series, and especially over the first episode. Initially he comes across as aloof and distant with everyone but Charles - his cool demeanour with the WWI nurse and "playing hardball" with Emma, his obvious resentment of Crystal's intrusion into his space and his irritation with Charles for inviting her without asking him.

One of my favourite little character-revealing exchanges in the first episode is Edwin and Charles' argument in the games cupboard about whether to take the Becky Aspen case - specifically, the way that after Charles lays out all his arguments about taking a break from the office to avoid getting caught by death, he smiles, relaxed and confident, and pulls out what is obviously his trump card:

"You really gonna let a little American girl die?"

And Edwin gives him a longsuffering look, and Charles grins like a madman, and in the next shot they're in Port Townsend. Because no, Edwin was never going to do that, and they both knew it.

We see more of why he's like that over the rest of the episode, the flashback to his own murder, and then finally in his argument with Crystal, where that composed facade cracks and we see the thing that drives him, the reason why he's spent the last 34 years risking getting caught and sent back to hell, the motivation that normally hides behind the sterile excuse that a good detective does what he must to close the case.

Edwin wants justice. For himself, for Charles, for Becky Aspen, and yes, for Crystal too. He wants every death to count, every hurt to matter, every wrong to be righted - or at least acknowledged and given the weight it deserves. He was murdered at sixteen in a hate crime, was sent to hell on a technicality, and dragged himself out to discover that his death had been smoothed over and forgotten. And he's spent the last 34 years doing everything he can, even at the risk of being sent back, to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen to anyone else.

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Canon Queer of the Day:

Edwin Payne

Edwin Payne is a protagonist from Dead Boy Detectives! He is canonically gay and has feelings for his best friend, Charles Rowland.

Submitted by Anonymous