#dead girl detectives au

[duchess-doodles]

Dead Girl Detectives AU because it just works so well!!!

(In case it wasn't obvious: Olivia as Crystal, Chris as Niko, Ivy as Edwin and Laura as Charles. Also not pictured but Rowan as Jenny)

Some more thoughts + closeups under the cut

Ok so. Some loose thoughts on the au

Most of the plot moves the same as the show. Ivy died in 1916, Laura died in 1989. (I might make some tweaks to how they died later, but for now its basically the same) They meet Olivia, who's psychic, go to Port Townsend, piss off a witch, get trapped by the Cat King, hijinks ensue

Most of the Port Townsend denizens are the same, like Tragic Mic and Esther. The Cat King and Monty are basically the same just genderbent so they can be Ivy's lesbian suitors or whatever

Rowan is Jenny, obviously. The only real difference is he's an emo butcher, not goth. I will draw him eventually

Olivia is still psychic, but she doesn't do the whole summon greater power from her ancestors thing. That's a black girl power and it feels weird to give it to Liv. Also I'm a big fan of Liv "what, like its hard?"ing her way through learning to use her foible, so I think the same applies here with her psychic powers. She's just a prodigy

Ivy isn't immortal anymore (obviously, she's dead) but I think the immortality translates into the whole edwin being more durable than other ghosts thing. Maybe her time in hell also gave her *ahem* west virginia-esc qualities, if you catch my drift

Chris eventually gets powers as well, though how those powers work and what they might be will depend a little on what they do with Niko in season 2. But he will get something

There's no romance between Laura and Olivia like there is with Crystal and Charles. Laura just found an annoying amnesiac and said "can we keep her 🥺" and got a new bestie out of it

I honestly can't see Laura being as in the dark about her feelings as Charles is, so I think maybe on the steps of hell when Ivy says I love you maybe they kiss. Or at least Laura reciprocates. Or is going to before the fucking spider shows up

I adore the dynamic this au poses of Ivy and Chris as besties. I feel they would be very comfortable around each other, but they don't actually interact one on one in canon a lot (unless??) so who knows

That's all I got for now, but I don't think I'm done thinking about this au so expect more later!

[madmaxified]

letting myself cook and sharing my dead boy detectives swap au on here ‼️

( also i wanna note that if an adult and teen swap so do their ages, so some characters are aged down and some are aged up )

the night nurse ( or charlie as i have graciously renamed her in reference to what charles said in the finale ) takes edwin's place, still dies in the 1920’s but however, instead of dying at the boarding school, she dies in a ‘I hate women look i have a spell book boom demonic sacrifice’ style hate crime and that’s how she ends up in hell ( it’s giving rosalie from twilight’s death ) she’s still a bookish, nerdy little shut in, but there’s less of edwin’s sass and more of her being so blunt and straight to the point that she often comes off as quite rude

jenny takes charles’s place, she dies in the late 1980’s early 1990’s but instead of getting attacked by classmates her abusive, alcoholic father almost beats her to death and then she wanders out into the night in the middle of winter and dies of extreme hypothermia. she’s a lot more upbeat and outgoing than canon jenny is but is still giving jade west vibes. when it comes to her trauma and how she died, she’s alot more cagey about it and gets angry and just flat out mean any time someone brings it up so charlie always avoided talking about it. she’s a gay little fella and is one hundred percent fully aware of and comfortable with that fact.

charlie is still absolutely and one hundred percent in love with jenny but has a really hard time understanding feelings and so she’s not really sure what she feels most of time. jenny is utterly devoted to and in love with charlie but never knows when to tell her

esther is swapped with crystal comes from a long line of witches and has inherited those magical abilities and ability to see everything supernatural, but she’s lost her memories due to a sketchy deal with a demon she made in order to get out of some ‘trouble’ ( she killed her cheating boyfriend and his lover and wanted it covered up ) her and jenny make out a lot and it’s very messy and filled with way too many feelings and they’re not super good for eachother and it only makes charlie hate esther more. she’s a lot most mischievous than crystal is and legitimately believes lying, scheming and violence is the solution to every problem the agency encounters, she eventually leans tho because character development!

monty is swapped with niko and is the scooby doo obsessed nerd that lives across the hall from esther. he’s just as sweet as he is in canon and is the girl’s emotional support, grounded in reality member who’s job is essentially to make sure nobodies emotions get so incredibly out of whack no one can do their job

crystal and niko are a witch / physic medium and her cat familiar who was once a human girl. niko’s relationship with charlie is not romantic at all and instead niko and crystal have an insane toxic yuri arc going on. once they were both human and in love and happy but after lillith granted crystal eternal life niko realized she needed a way to be with her forever. crystal promised they could be together if niko let her ‘change’ her and then she made her gf into an immortal cat who she kinda emotionally manipulates ( toxic yuri save me save me toxic yuri )

edwin is esther and monty’s landlord, instead of running a butcher shop he runs a small independent bookstore and is still struggling to figure himself out. he’s less mean than jenny is initially, except to crystal he’s very mean to her, but is still very overprotective of his tenants

charles is the night nurse, overworked, underpaid and stuck in a job he doesn’t want, he’s just working towards retirement, and if he can catch those slippery dead girl detectives that might just been the case that fills out his retirement requirements. he’s just as fed up, if not more, than the night nurse is in canon

maxine is the cat queen, and on top of flirting with charlie and giving the poor girl a horrible sexuality crisis, she’s also flirting and teasing jenny every time the two get close, something jenny does not appreciate at all. her connection to crystal is through niko because since she’s a cat most of the time she’s technically one of maxine’s subjects so she’s always looking out for her

thomas ( the cat king ) is the pet shop manager with big heart eyes for edwin, who after being set up on a date with edwin by monty, reveals that he’s actually a creepy weirdo and then he dies ( everyone cheered )

bonus : when charlie confesses to jenny on the stairway to hell jenny confesses back and they share a kiss before escaping hell forever

( bonus two : this is only one of two swap aus I have for this show mwa ha ha )

[verianal]

Uhm waiter theres a payneland in my yuri... 😬

[gardenveela]

dead girl detectives 🔍

dbd and it’s the same but everyone is gender swaped so it’s not

[ro-doodles]

Did someone ask for a role swap AU?

No? Well, take one anyway.

In this AU the agency would be based in the US, maybe New York or Boston, since Crystal and Niko are both from or live in America in the show. Then instead of Port Townsend they would go to a small sea side town in England. Like I mentioned in the Charles blurb, I’m swapping Jenny and the Night Nurse for this au, but I’m not sure what to do with the rest of the characters, so I’m open to suggestions.

More of this au:

Jenny and the Night Nurse

The Cat King and Esther (+ Monty)

Miscellaneous Doodles

[stark-lord]

Side A

[tma-thoughts]

Sketches of the girls + incoming milf and dilf

[thepearlyalbatross]

have some sketches of Swap! Palasaki and Payneland

[hannaloony]

ohhhh i absolutely love your comic <3333

Hi! Thank you so much 💖💖 I DO appreciate your kindness and interest in these little stories 💖 I hope you have a nice day!!

also taking this opportunity

As you maybe know, I'm currently working on several comics and AUs that are in progress and you can see them on my blog and I thought you might have some questions?

If so, I would be happy to answer with pleasure (if of course I have these answers 😂😂)

So feel free to ask them here, guys 💖

[novacomics]

palasaki week day 2: dead girl detectives

honestly this was the day I was the most excited for 😸😸 @palasakiweek

[foultreenightmare]

If dead boy detectives continued, Edwin would have had more exes/love interests that could battle Romona Flowers.

Speaking of which a Scott Pilgrim au of Edwin as Romona and Charles as Scott but like less creepy Scott and idk maybe whoever knives is is just a really close friend of Charles. I just found the little au cute and because Edwin would have a whole BOOK of people that he either dated or had a crush on him

[alltimefail]

Don't get me wrong I've been loving all the Alive AUs for the boys set in the Edwardian era and in modern day with the girls...

but I would REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE it if someone would write an Alive AU set in Charles' time (1989). Please!!! I promise there is soooo much to explore there!

[acediscowlng]

okay but does anyone know what manga is actually on niko's shelf???? are they even real titles??? my friend and i have been looking and nothing???

[zinnie-zoloft]

I absolutely love the dead girl detectives role swap AU because it’s such a great way to analyse the parallels between the main characters

There’s the parallels in their circumstances, Niko and Edwin both having distant relationships with their families and being sent away to boarding school, Charles and Crystal being involved with bad crowds and people they thought they could trust that eventually turned on them

There’s also the parallels in their character, Crystal and Edwin both having an incredibly strong sense of justice and drive to help people despite their selfish tendencies, Niko and Charles both feeling pressured to appear happy by the people they love and putting others safety and happiness above their own to their own detriment

I’m not usually a fic writer but this show has such a hold on me I had to come up with this concept

[ro-doodles]

Swap au doodles

I’m working on the next character set, but I’m a little more busy with school rn and I’m struggling a bit design wise, so for now have so au doodles.

We have 1/2) alive boys first meeting (+ some sprite effects), 3) Charles annoying Charlotte, 4) Crystal in hell, 5) dead girls first meeting

Main au post here, cat king and Esther coming soon.

[read-write-thrive]

part 1 (both girls in their full outfits) ; part 2 (Edwina in several other outfits/sketches) ; part 3 (the companion to this piece aka Edwina getting ready :)

part 4 of my fem!payneland fanart series!!!! as I talked about with the poll, I have quite a few variations of this piece as I couldn’t make up my mind on a few of the elements, but I listened to your feedback and have included them all here !! the winner of the poll is above the cut with the rest of the variations below to hopefully make this not take up too much of your dash lol

lmk what you think - especially people who voted on the poll!! I’ve also included my thought process below the cut since I know y’all are interested :)

- first and foremost: I have absolutely no idea what order someone would get ready in with all these outfit components, so if you’re sitting here like “why is her makeup done when she has to pull a shirt over her head?” or something like that: you’re probably correct but my getting ready process is always chaos and there aren’t exactly articles on this sort of thing

- along with that: her straightening her hair is probably not accurate to how hair works but again I’ve got v little experience to pull from and trying to find a proper reference was a pain in the ass

yes her bra is fully rendered and then got covered up by her arm. I'm still mad that I did that to myself but I like the pose too much to change it so oh well

- (onto actual historical stuff!!)

- her hair is being straightened here despite straight not being in style during this era for several reasons:

1. I based her hair (and a lot of her style, as per part 1) on Rhoda Dakar of the band The Bodysnatchers, which was an all-female band that was part of the ska revival in the late 70s/early 80s. Rhoda Dakar in particular is a British artist (who’s still making music!) with an English mother and Jamaican father—so not only was she one of the only women of color I could find as part of this subgenre/in ths era/with plenty of photo references, but considering Jayden Revri is Jamaican and English (alongside Indian) himself I thought it was fitting! Her Bodysnatchers look is also much more femme leaning than the rest of the band, as well as her hair styled in a way that suggests straightening, so I carried that over to Charlotte here as well.

2. On a related note, there is a clear historical and modern difference in hairstyles worn/made popular/deemed fashionable by non-white versus white individuals and I thought it only appropriate to acknowledge that in my design of her. I even went so far as to research how her mom’s hair may have been styled since I assume that’s who would’ve been teaching her how to care for her hair in the first place. With that, I looked at popular Indian hair trends from the 60s (figuring that’s when Charlotte’s mom could’ve still been in India and following those trends) which also involved a preference for straight/wavy hair, with soft fringe made popular by Sadhana and the styles ranging from long and luscious to styled up into a very 60s beehive. Charlotte could easily also rock a beehive, especially since the 60s revival was a part of the ska revival movement and Dakar herself styled her hair as such, but I figured Charlotte is a little too much of a rebellious teenager to go for a look she’s seen her mom wear!

- her makeup is based off of the different members of The Bodysnatchers as well as other punk/ska fans at the time. The look usually required more blush that what I gave her here, but I wanted to make sure the eyes were the feature (since Charles wears eyeliner himself) and then the lips being any less just looked weird to me. Also, Dakar doesn't seem to wear the same heavy blush that the other members do, which could be a stylistic choice but could also be the potential lack of blush shades that would work well on her skin tone, so I went that route for Charlotte here

- her underwear is all based off of meticulous searching of historical advertisements, though I will admit the sources are (presumably) American since I couldn't find British equivalents (I'm hoping the styles were similar enough...) in particular:

1. Her bra is based off of: Playtex’s New Made for Me, Playtex’s Right For Me, and Playtex’s Thank Goodness It Fits (which are seriously the names of these as per the ads—how creative /s)

2. Her panties (or pants or underwear or whatever term you want to use) are based off of: Sears Best’s Nylon tricot panties, Sears Very Impressive Panties Nylon panties, and JCPenny’s eiderlon fashion panties

3. (In the below variations) Her pantyhose are theoretically based on L’eggs and Spirit by Stevens’s Slim & Slender pantyhose. But, honestly, they’re mostly based on my own experience wearing hose bc almost none of the ads showed how the gusset of the pantyhose actually looked so I needed to fill in the gaps (one of the many reasons I’m still unhappy with them—plus the wrinkles would not look right no matter what I did !!)

4. Her socks are called slouch socks! I don’t have a specific brand for them but the style was all the rage in the 80s-90s (and I want to own some so bad ngl)

- the hair straightener is just a blob based on the reference photo since trying to research historical hair tools was beyond me at the time apparently, but the style of outlet/plug is accurate to Britain in 1989 so there’s that at least (I have no idea why my brain works like this)

- since I talked about it in the poll I feel like I should address it here: technically having a bush was well out of fashion by 1989 due to the grooming boom and new types of hair removal popular throughout the 80s and 90s. However, she’s wearing multiple layers over it and is technically a teenager (in an abusive household and a catholic all-girls school, at that) so I kept going back and forth on it. It won the poll so it’s in the main post, but you’ll see in the below variations that I really went back and forth on it. that being said I do think it’s interesting given her nylon pants being semi-sheer besides at the gusset, so I’m not mad at it. plus I figured she was definitely shaving her legs/underarms, so maybe that balances it out ?

and finally here’s the other seven variations of this piece :) lmk what you think!!