Oh No I Noticed A Parallel

Oh no I noticed a parallel

Crystal offered to sacrifice herself for Niko. Niko ended up sacrificing herself for Crystal.

Inspired by this post by @purgatory606 because after seeing that, I wanted to talk about DBDA weapons/fighting styles of characters. Well Charles and partially Edwin here, I might also analyze Crystal and Esther in another post.

I'd like to start from the scene from the first episode where Charles is trying to teach Edwin self defense and he chooses boxing. Which is quite interesting, if a bit odd choice.

He gives Edwin boxing gloves, and then required him to his his palms, albeit protected, but still. Such an odd choice? Without anger or adrenaline from the fight, most people find it quite difficult to hit something-or someone particularly hard. Doubly so when a person holding a target you should be hitting is someone you care for. It's difficult to override your naturally instinct to pull your punch back, which is what I think happens to Edwin. Especially because he generally isn't someone who leans into violence, even in situations where it would be warranted.

I think we can presume Charles was either teaching Edwin how to fight in case he finds himself weaponless, given he doesn't have an infinite backpack, or he was judging by his own instict, not seeing how Edwin wouldn't want to use brutal force. If anything, Edwin would likely do better with a more precise, long range weapon. Like a sword, or a bow.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's look at Charles' weapons of choice and how he utilizes them. Throughout the s1, we see him use a cricket bat, a music box(?), a molotov cocktail and a sword.

Cricket bat is his preferred weapon of choice and as the og post said, bats are for pure, raw pain. Traditionally there is not much elegance or finesse with it. You use a bat when you want to inflict the most amount of hurt in the shortest and most brutal way possible. What I find interesting is the way Charles wields it, which he does in a way that is almost elegant.

We see him twirl it on several ocassions and while he does hold it in a way that one would expect would inflict most damage, I am not sure we ever see him use it that way? Esther knocks him down with her cane before he can, he doesn't actually get to use in on the Cat King, he beats up the Night Nurse with a music box, not his bat, he breaks David's mirrors in a way that he actually sends the bat flying, not actively smashing mirrors with brute force like one would expect. And when he faces Esther's snake, his bat breaks.

What does that tell us about Charles? I think his bat actually reflects him quite a bit. Both how he sees himself, and how people who don'tknow him well do. So many people make a mistake of writing his off as just the brawn, of someone only there to deliver lethal sort of damage. Even Charles himself seems to sometimes think of himself that way. Of someone capable of great violence. Because he thinks that's simoly what he is. A bat cannot be used for anything else but direct damage.

Except....Charles finds a way. His attacks may be brutal, but they are very precise as we saw in David scene. And even when we consider other insance when he used different weapons, thr only time his blow didn't land as expected was against Esther in episode one.

The attack against the Night Nurse was brutal amd seemingly uncontrolled, but he got the job done precisely the way he intended? He didn't kick her around mindlessly, he kicked her off the cliff to get rid of her and the sea monster they were trying to lull to sleep. It was violent yes, but he was still very aware of what he was doing.

Throwing the molotov cocktail at the Dollheaded Spider? Also very calculated to allow him and Edwin time to run. Hiss fight against the snake? Once he concluded brutal force of his bat wasn't working, he choose a very precise and deadly weapon instead. And used it perfectly, in quite an elegant move, too!

In conclusion, I think Charles' weapon of choice has more to do with his perception of self rather than his actual realities or abilities. Which I think is why we get a scene of the bat breaking in the last episode and have it replaced with a sword! His perception of self changed from a weapon more used for it's brutal force to a weapon more commonly associated with knights and heroes. I'd be very curious to see if the bat returns to s2 and how it'll be utilized

I've seen a question going around about when exactly the boys decided to start the agency/what caused them to do it on the first place.

We know it was somewhere in 1990, so it's safe to assume just a few months after Charles' death.

During that time, they found out what happened to Edwin's case, which definitely took a lot of research. And they saw the non-investigation about Charles in real time, which probably meant following people around and checking records.

Not only the injustice about their deaths is what prompted them to help others, the way they went about it showed that they could, in fact, be detectives. They were good at it.

If we consider that, we already know the first two cases they worked on - the Case of Edwin Payne and the Case of Charles Rowland.

you can SEE him pull himself back into his smiley facade after a genuine snap slipping through.

the moment of realisation that he snapped then into the quick smile and eyebrows to recoup his lightheartedness then trying to convince crystal to back off, it's such a good second of just solid acting

(also the eye roll up felt very Edwin-esque sass)

Um, so, here's a snippet of my ongoing fic (this bit is already posted):

Going in for the slowburn-feelings realization-accidental flirting with this one 🙂‍↕️ it's been really fun to add these little scenes and thoughts amidst the case (in which they're figuring out a lot of stuff about Niko)

For anyone interested, it's we're growing up and we're finding home on AO3!

Charles realizing he's in love with Edwin after all, my beloved