dead-zra

HAPPY 'EXACTLY ONE YEAR UNTIL PEOPLE STOP AGING, DYING, AND BEING BORN' TO THOSE WHO CELEBRATE

Added today new Jayvik fics to my Notion list!

1. After (H)ours (Modern Setting, Divorced Jayvik, Getting Back Together, Smut, Trans Viktor, Top Jayce/Bottom Viktor)

2. This Life (Modern Setting, Smut, Switching, Trans Viktor and Trans Jayce)

3. I do not have wings, love, i never will (Canon Divergence, Time Travel, 1S Viktor + 2S Jayce, Smut, Getting Together, Top Viktor/Bottom Jayce)

added the most important tags because I remember that not all can like trans viktor or switching dynamic between jayvik of course!

oh boy what a great day to love all arcane characters and acknowledge that they’re morally gray! oh boy what a great day to love vi and jinx and cait and jayce and viktor and mel and ekko and sevika and vander and silco and

About four fifths of the books in the Dead Boy Detectives’ collection are reference books - magic tomes, bestiaries, mystimedical volumes. Nearly all of the remaining fifth are detective stories - the biggies, of course (including three shelves of Agatha Christie - their favorites are the Tommy and Tuppence ones) but also plenty of more obscure novels.

Tucked away in a corner where they will be safe and not seen by clients are six children’s picture books.

They discovered the series quite soon after they met, and hunted through bookshops to collect the set. They had an entire party for themselves, by a pond in a park, when the last two were published posthumously in 2009.

Normally Edwin is the only one who reads to Charles, not the other way around, but these books are the exception. Whenever one of them is very sick, or very injured, curled up on the small sofa, they’ll look up at the other, and the one standing will smile and reach for the hidden corner of the shelf without being asked, and then settle down to read.

“One day in summer, Frog was not feeling well. Toad said, ‘Frog, you are looking quite green.’ ‘But I always look green,’ said Frog. ‘I am a frog.’ ‘Today you look very green even for a frog,’ said Toad. ‘Get into my bed and rest…’”

no but jayvik is so fucking funny to me like

one of them is from the Evil City and he does drugs one time and almost dies. he’s got severe cheekbones and a slavic accent but he’s one of the most soft spoken characters in the whole show. he died three times and tried to kill himself once. his best friend wants to live inside his skin in a totally normal and platonic way. he became jesus because a rocket from the Evil City blew him up and then the power of homosexual love saved his eternal soul.

the other is a Hot Man™ who pulls the sexiest woman ever animated by being naive and intelligent. he is still a crippling bisexual. he tried to kill himself but he got negged and became Less Depressed instantly. when he remembers his best friends face, he specifically remembers the burning gold of his eyes. despite being the stereotypical depiction of the “ideal man” he is certifiably possessive, obsessive, selfish, and insane. this only makes him more attractive somehow. he performed necromancy with world-altering technology and then got broken up with. he fell down a ravine and became the Sexiest Man I Have Ever Seen™. he saved his best friend from becoming a genocidal eldritch being with the power of gay love.

Fresh furniture abuse committed at Planet Comic Con Kansas City 2025

Charles rattles the door of Hilarion’s basement level, then kicks it. Locked. Typical. “Wilson? You gonna let me out, mate?”

There’s a strange sound behind him, almost like giggling. Great. Derek must’ve stayed in here to laugh at him. Not a well thought-through prank, really. He turns around. Might as well play stupid. “Is that someone mucking about? Who is it?”

No response.

There’s a lot of tumped-over boxes of old dolls down here, for some reason, kinda creepy, really, he’d noticed them earlier. He starts back down the other way, towards where Derek was giggling. One of the doll’s heads rolls out into the middle of the hall. Must’ve fallen off the stack. He reaches down to pick it up, and it rolls away from his hand behind a box. He blinks after it for a second, then shrugs. So long as it’s out of the path and nobody’s tripping on it.

He gets to an intersection. There’s more giggling, from the left, in a direction where the light’s kinda green - maybe it’s an Exit sign? He starts to head that way when there’s a weird sound from behind him, and he turns around, and there’s a doll, standing a few feet away, half its face broken out.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you got me. Very funny.”

More doll heads roll around the corner, towards the standing doll, and he’s not quite sure how his mates are pulling this off. “Right, I’ve got the joke. Whose idea was this? Is it Derek’s? Is it? Derek, is this you?”

More and more doll parts are rolling towards each other, and they’re starting to form a sort of mass, and the giggling’s getting very loud, and a kind of broken-porcelain tentacle reaches out towards him, and something grabs his hand -

“RUN!”

Charles is yanked off his feet and running down the hallway, something with a lot of porcelain legs chasing after him, and he’s being dragged by the hand, a boy’s running next to him and they’re holding hands and something in Charles settles into place even as the giggling gets deafening and the clatter of broken porcelain gets closer.

The boy pulls him into an elevator and a sort of porcelain pincer tries to follow them in and the boy pushes it back, and Charles’s brain finally kicks in enough for him to help shove it out the door, which struggles closed and sends them up. Some porcelain falls to the floor, and he picks it up. It looks pretty ordinary. Old ugly paint, probably full of lead, but shouldn’t be dangerous otherwise, definitely shouldn’t be trying to pincer him to death.

The boy does something to the elevator and it jolts to a stop.

As the doors open, Charles pulls himself together enough to talk - “Who are you, then? What was that thing down there? Some kind of demon?”

The boy gives him a rather haughty look as they speedwalk through the halls. “That was something rather worse than a demon. It is only able to remain on this plane thanks to a tethering rune-circle in the attic, so I am going to go up there and destroy the circle, and I might well be discorporated in the process, but don’t worry about me. No, you go back to the dorms. Go on. Go play cricket or banter with your mates. And don’t tell anyone about this, because if you do, you’ll get them killed.”

The boy steps through a door and slams it behind him, and Charles stands staring at it, deeply confused and with the strangest feeling that if he never sees this boy again something will go deeply wrong with the universe.

The door swings back open and the boy’s head pops back through. “I’m Edwin, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Charles.”

“Nice to meet you, Charles. Run for your life!”

Sometimes, early on, when feeling his age, Edwin referred to Charles as “dear boy”, or “my boy”, and on one memorable (to Charles) occasion “my dear boy”. Edwin eventually noticed that saying this seemed to cause Charles to short-circuit, concluded that it must be because Charles found it condescending/was uncomfortable with the reminder of how much older Edwin is, and did not say it again.

The sorcerer finishes yelling his line at them, whatever it is; Edwin hasn’t been listening particularly, not since Charles went down. (Charles is fine now. Edwin turned his back on the sorcerer, and took several hexes to it, in the process of ensuring that fine-ness, which had distressed both Charles and the sorcerer.)

Edwin hums in response to the sorcerer’s unheard insult and settles what Charles has dug out of the bag for him in his hands. He looks back up at the man, who seems quite petulant. “I have not yet had occasion to use a modern firearm,” Edwin says, “but I was a decent shot with a .275 Rigby bolt action, at one time. The rounds in these handguns have been enchanted to be magically armor-piercing, as it were; they should bypass your various wards and amulets. I had not intended to use them, but you harmed my partner, and I find myself quite…” he pauses. “Put out.”

The streetlights around them flicker slightly. Edwin ignores them, and also ignores the sorcerer beginning to say something. “As I said, I have little experience with handguns, or modern firearms in general, but from what I have gathered from Charles, for maximum effectiveness one has merely to wield one in each hand and then turn them sideways, like so.” He raises both hands and tilts them accordingly, then looks down at Charles, who is gazing up at him with a look that can only be described as adoration and glee.

Edwin looks back at the sorcerer and tilts his head to the side. “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”

Charles: You have to learn to love yourself.

Edwin: don't you hate yourself?

Charles: yes but this is about you. Stay focused.

Not enough attention given, I feel, to the fact that Edwin is Charles’s psychopomp. The boys spend decades running from Death, but Edwin’s first act out of Hell is to do Death’s job.

And this is clearly an intentional theme, given that at the end of the season the Night Nurse and the Principal fold them into the afterlife’s bureaucracy, with the Dead Boy Detectives acting as a sort of specialized offbeat psychopomp team.

But with Charles it wasn’t even specialized or offbeat. Edwin was just literally acting as a classic psychopomp. He guided Charles’s soul into the afterlife. Even the lantern is quintessential psychopomp imagery.

(Which makes Charles’s actions just so utterly fascinating, from a mythical standpoint. It’s like if Charon was taking you over the Styx and when you were nearly across you suddenly said “actually, I think I’d like to become your apprentice boatman, instead,” and Charon said “that’s not how this works, you can’t escape your final destination by appealing to me” and you said “nah, this has nothing to do with the Asphodel Meadows, I just really like you and boating looks fun but kinda lonely, so I thought you might want company,” and then Charon stared at you like you were a crazy person for a second (which you clearly in fact are) but then shrugged and said “sure, but we’ll have hide from Hades for the rest of time”. This is not normal behavior, Charles - or Edwin, for that matter)

Dead boys in their comic clothes!