I Am Once Again Skulduggeryposting - Tumblr Posts

My brain is fucking overanalyzing a two-page phone call scene in Resurrection so now I’m just gonna spill my thoughts, probably pretty skin-deep analysis but I’m doing it anyway

Needless to say, spoilers ahead

This entire scene does a really good job highlighting how unbelievably not normal Skulduggery and Valkyrie are about each other, even after five years apart.

First off, the book never actually says who started the phone call, and the dialogue is vague enough that you can’t really guess. I actually really agree with this choice, because making it clear which person called the other could have made the weird dynamic going on in this book seem much more one-sided, as opposed to the mutual obsessiveness shown in this scene. The chapter shows nothing of the beforehand of the call (how Valkyrie got to the hospital, etc) and shows nothing of it afterwards, ending the chapter when the conversation seems to reach its natural conclusion and Valkyrie hangs up.

There’s also barely any description of the setting that Valkyrie is in. Valkyrie basically spends one or two sentences describing the clinic and stating that she’s in an empty room, and then that’s it. It doesn’t go into any sort of detail into where in the clinic she is or why she’s there, so the viewers have to guess. The scene also barely shows Valkyrie’s inner thoughts, so the scene is mostly just the dialogue between the two characters, which adds a feeling of objectivity and also makes the scene feel more closed-in, which is probably a good representation of what Valkyrie was feeling at the moment (due to the shock factor of abruptly losing someone and then talking to weird version of them a few hours later).

In fact, Valkyrie’s inner dialogue is mostly just used at the very start, where she mentally notes his voice. This on top of only starting off using pronouns instead of their names shows a repeated familiarity between the characters that immediately tells us who’s perspective we’re looking at, no names necessary. Showcasing the familiarity between the characters is also important to do here because they’ve recently been apart for five years and it’s reassuring to the audience to know that they’re still freakishly close.

Also, Valkyrie being so desperate to hear Skulduggery talk that she’s willing to sit there and listen to him talk about how he’s going to literally murder her. There is so much going on there, from Valkyrie’s current shitty mental state (it’s already shown in the book that she puts up with a lot of bullshit, this just adds to it) to her borderline denial that anything is wrong with her partner (like how in the next chapter she just repeats to herself that Skulduggery is fine and everything will be alright).

Skulduggery, of course, is calling her out by claiming that some part of her does understand the direness of the situation at hand, even if she doesn’t want to. He also does it in an almost taunting “there is nothing wrong with me, I’m not trying to fight this corruption at all way”, which MIGHT be true at that moment, or might be a bare-faced lie that he’s trying to make Valkyrie convinced of in order to also convince himself. After all, he does later manage to fight off Smoke’s corruption TWICE, and you cannot convince me that some part of him wasn’t trying to beforehand.

Adding to my previous point about the familiarity between the characters, Skulduggery is quite willingly (and gleefully) open to Valkyrie about his emotional state, how he’s coming to his current moral conclusions, how it feels from his perspective, and so on. While he’s definitely more generally emotionally open when he’s corrupted, he never quite goes into the same detail about it with other people as he happily gives to Valkyrie, which is a trend across the books (and again, reinforces to the audience that these two are still close).

He also acts incredibly exhilarated at Valkyrie’s knowledge of how his mind and motives work (as shown by “do you think I’m gonna kill your family”), since it shows him (as well as the audience) that Valkyrie still knows him really, really, well. It also adds a sort of serial killer vibe to the dynamic that makes it more interesting to consume for the readers.

And not really related to the scene, but the transitions between chapters in this book (including this particular chapter) are really smooth and make for some very funny moments, such as subtly calling the in-series stand-in for Trump an idiot, or talking about “the most beautiful woman in the world” only for the next chapter to immediately cut to talking about China. Also, the repeated chapter transitions between Sebastian and Omen were REALLY subtle foreshadowing for the twist in Until the End, which really shows how much Landry planned out phase 2 before writing it.

There are more words in here than there are in the actual chapter.

Discussing Valduggery and how it reflects disagreements in generalized fandom shipping ethics (I wrote this on a dare, thanks @vividvermilion)

Gonna preface this by saying that I do not ship Valduggery, nor do I necessarily approve of other people shipping it. I think that there’s some legitimately fascinating discussions that could be had surrounding it though, but any sort of nuance usually gets flattened and it’s pretty disappointing. So this essay is gonna sound a lot like me defending the ship, I’m not, but I was thinking about it.

Like I said earlier, nuance often gets cut out of the conversation, likely due to a variety of factors. One would be a knee-jerk disgust towards it (which I’m not saying is inherently bad) and another is probably that people really, really do not want their fandom to be known as the one that defends a borderline pedophilic ship (I say borderline because I’ve only ever seen Valdug stuff set when Valkyrie is an adult, but I’m also only on Tumblr and have no idea what’s going on in other forums). Again, not a bad thing to want, but outside social pressure is how a lot general fandom policing takes hold, which then makes the fandom more of a toxic space.

Now, this fandom in particular is pretty relaxed and I appreciate that, but getting into fights, bullying others over their ships, and just generally spreading vitriol against your fellow media enjoyers is never ok and it makes the fandom spaces so much less enjoyable for everybody. And since so many people on social media feel the need to insert themselves into everything regardless of whether or not they enjoy it, it’s always a good reminder that if you dislike or disapprove of something, keep your mouth shut and block it (I know this is a pretty general thing taught on Tumblr, but I’m still going to reinforce it here). This also means that experiencing some form of shaming from someone outside the fandom is very much within possibility, but the people who do that are stupid and you should internalize the idea that you shouldn’t take that seriously.

I’m also gonna point out, no matter how already-talked-about this point is, that none of these people are real people, or even based on real people. These guys are about as fictional as you are ever going to get. It’s a fair thing to point out that allowing yourself to become accustomed to this particular flavour of fictional abuse can allow you to become more accepting of it in real life, and that might be vaguely correct (don’t quote me on this, I’m not a psychologist), but the thing is is that if that were true, than that standard would have to be enforced on all types of fictional abuse.

And here is where I discuss the big double standard of abuse in fandom spaces. I’m gonna have to use some other fandoms as a reference for this, and I’m dead certain that everyone reading this can come up with a few of their own as well. Abuse is depicted in media pretty often, which means that the people who consume it are then desensitized to it (to a degree). But since some flavours of abuse are shown, discussed, and joked about more often, this leads to a sort of fandom dichotomy between “acceptable abuse”, which is abuse that is allowed to be drawn, enjoyed, and romanticized, as opposed to “bad” abuse, which will get you demonized for enjoying and sometimes even depicting. If any of you have seen Gravity Falls trending recently, Billford (the reason it’s trending) is an abusive ship, but it’s considered “acceptable” abuse. Bad abuse usually involves sexual assualt or pedophilia (and often other topics as well). It’s all abuse, but the fact that some forms of abuse will get you harassed and threatened while other forms are extremely popular signals to me that some amount of discussion regarding double-standards and basic self-control should probably be had in general fandom spaces.

Because if we were to enforce the idea that all types of abuse (romantic or otherwise) are Very Bad™️ and need to be demonized, none of us are actually allowed to enjoy Skulduggery Pleasant because it’s a series about a child soldier and the four-hundred-year-old guy she has a toxic codependency with. Again, I do not ship them romantically at all, but I really do enjoy thinking about and analyzing fucked up dynamics, so I’d much prefer to be able to enjoy this series without being shamed for it (and wish to extend that courtesy to others because if there’s anything I hate, it’s being a hypocrite).

But going back to shipping, shipping something abusive or generally fucked up (such as Valduggery) is not the same as endorsing it, even if the person does enjoy it. Enjoying/appreciating is not endorsing either. In fact, writing or depicting something that’s already messed up in the canon can be a creative way to analyze and then extend that abuse, which gives fans more food for thought and gives writers and artists good practice thinking about social implications.

For example, there’s probably an unholy number of variations of Valduggery ships (I’ve seen two here on Tumblr but I’d be shocked if there’s not more) due to there being so many variations of both Skulduggery and Valkyrie (four each, I believe). Each of these pairings have a slightly different dynamic and writing about those different dynamics is interesting! I have fun thinking about the different possible dynamics between the duos (hello, every SP au I have ever made) and doing that same analyzing but in a romantic sense isn’t inherently evil (sometimes it’s really funny). Fandoms are supposed to be places for creative self-expression, and policing what people are allowed to do with themselves (while also enforcing a double standard) isn’t good.

On a more general note and not necessarily tying into the SP fandom, sometimes people write or draw toxic ships (or other things that aren’t necessarily ships) as a way to work through and express trauma or other negative emotions. And these people don’t deserve to be harassed for doing that (again, self-expression). They also don’t have to defend themselves to you or specifically state that they’re doing what they’re doing to help themselves handle trauma, because that’s on par with asking for the medical history of a trans or disabled person and is a fucked up thing to do. Not that I’m blaming this fandom in particular for doing that, you guys are great. This is just my general ranting about fandom spaces with my limited experience handling fandom (especially toxic fandom).

Now, as I said earlier, I actually don’t interact with the SP fandom outside of Tumblr, so I could be wildly mischaracterizing Valduggery shippers in other spaces at the moment (I’ve heard horror stories about AO3 but I’m not on there so I have no opinions of my own). Intentionally making light of abuse is always bad, but again, please do not harass your fellow fans.

This was a REALLY long post and I’m sorry for bringing up something that I know is a bit of a touchy subject for this fandom. This idea started out as a lot more specifically about Valduggery but then I decided that so much I wanted to talk about regarding the ship is a trend reflected across nearly all fandoms, so I ended up talking in much more general terms.

If anyone has literally any thoughts please share them, because I’m slightly in disbelief that I actually wrote this out about this subject. I also want to know if I missed any important factors while writing this because I hate doing that. Thank you all for reading my soapbox rant.

Hmmm I’m thinking about Resurrection again

I’m thinking about how both Skulduggery and Valkyrie spend the book denying that there’s anything wrong with the other

Skulduggery insists that Valkyrie is fine and that she just needs to get back into her rhythm, which leads to him dismissing her emotions even though she has raging depression from the literal years of trauma he put her through

And Valkyrie insists that Skulduggery will find a way to fight off the corruption on his own, because he’s smart and strong and she doesn’t deserve to be here and couldn’t ever possibly save him, even while he repeatedly tells her that the corruption isn’t just something he can shrug off

I’m having THOUGHTS about them

ARGHH

Sebastian Tao saying that he would have picked a fight with Skulduggery over child-soldier Valkyrie if he had been there was very sweet, but I think he was severely misunderstanding how different the Skulduggery he knew was from book 1 Skulduggery.

Because wow, all his years with Valkyrie had really mellowed out Skulduggery by the time Omen even met him.

Like, book 1 Skulduggery was an absolute mess. He’d pick fights in back alleys and then drag Ghastly into it, he had it out for Serpine and was constantly looking for something he could use to get him in trouble, he was mean and would physically assault nearly anyone who pissed him off, and he was, you know…willing to take a child soldier, which is something that phase 2 Skulduggery would probably have avoided. All this while the Council of Elders didn’t want to deal with him, and so he was allowed to roam nearly unchecked.

Ghastly and China, who knew him best at that point, thought of him as a restless troublemaker who should be avoided. The other Dead Men were actually relieved when he started hanging out with Valkyrie, because it meant that there was finally somebody to keep him in check, even if that somebody was a teenage girl.

This was the same Skulduggery who had many people chew him out over Valkyrie and really didn’t care, which is definitely something Sebastian also didn’t know about.

Meanwhile, the Skulduggery that Sebastian/Omen knew had many of these features, but greatly toned down. He mostly avoids picking violent fights with random people, regrets what he did to Valkyrie, so on and so forth. They really are different people and phase 2 Skulduggery would prooobably punch book 1 Skulduggery if he ever met him.

It means literally nothing, but it was an interesting comment from Sebastian that got me thinking about it and now I’ve written this whole wall of text.

Continued yapping about Resurrection (because I said so):

The mutual issue that Skulduggery and Valkyrie have in book 10 is that they both place the other on a pedestal of perfection while simultaneously degrading themselves.

For example, Skulduggery views Valkyrie as someone who is fundamentally good but sometimes screws up and himself as someone who is fundamentally evil and tries to be good but fails whenever Valkyrie isn’t around to remind him what good is, hence the past six years where he’s been helping build a goddamn dictatorship. He also killed a guy who was investigating said dictatorship. Not to mention how he acted when Valkyrie turned into Darquesse in LSoDM, meaning that he has a lot of reasons for why he thinks that way about himself.

Meanwhile, he’s known Valkyrie for literally twelve years at that point, and she has always tried to be a good person and help as many people as possible (and for the most part, she has succeeded). And since Skulduggery tries his best to be good, Valkyrie is a person he can actually look up to and depend on, and he puts so much emphasis on that in Resurrection, to the point where it actually starts to drive her back.

And the REASON it drives her back is because she puts him on a pedestal too. To her, he’s an incredibly powerful sorcerer who’s capable of doing what needs to get done and keeping on going, no matter what. This is in opposition to how she sees herself, where she has weird powers she doesn’t know how to use, she’s too scared and traumatized to keep pushing forward, and most of all, she’s semi-responsible for the deaths of over a thousand people and that fact crushes her. It’s what makes her feel like she deserves to die, that she deserves the glares she gets whenever she goes outside and the beatings that people give her in random alleyways.

And seeing Skulduggery put so much trust and faith in her even when she views herself as worthless is scary because she feels that she’ll mess everything up when he’s fully capable of fixing the problem all by himself. And so when a problem arises that makes him disappear and forces Valkyrie to take charge of the situation, she spends a significant amount of time telling herself that everything is fine and that Skulduggery doesn’t need her.

The problem is that both of them view the other as something close to perfect, or as close to perfect as a person can be. And that causes a lot of miscommunication between them because they refuse to sit down and actually talk about their problems with each other. It takes fucking Russian roulette for these two to look each other in the eye and even admit that there is a problem.

Another issue with Skulduggery that I think manifests a bit in book 10 is that to admit that Valkyrie has raging fucking depression and actually needs help, he also needs to properly come to terms with the fact that the way he treated her as a teenager was awful. I could go on for hours about literally how bad he was for her, but it can really be summarized as using her as a child soldier. And to come to terms with that, he also has to then reflect on the issues with their relationship and to fix them, if they even can be fixed.

And the idea that your entire relationship with a loved one is built on abuse is a really scary one, and I think he wanted to skirt around it as best he could. But it’s kind of Valkyrie’s main problem, and he does eventually realize that, even if the two of them still refuse to go to goddamn therapy (hence his conversation with Omen in Bedlam. Absolute wild thing to talk about with a fifteen-year-old).

HEY FELLAS I DIDN’T INTEND FOR THIS TO BE SO LONG AGAIN

Random thought I had about Dead or Alive/Until the End. Spoilers below cut.

In both Cadaver’s timeline and the main timeline, Valkyrie is transformed into something, correct? In Cadaver’s timeline, she becomes a harpy, and she becomes an evil semi-possessed god in the canon timeline.

In both timelines, Valkyrie’s friends and family do everything in their power to fix her.

And in Cadaver’s timeline, they fail. China bears scars on her face from Valkyrie escaping after she tried to save her, Cadaver describes how Valkyrie tried to attack him whenever he got near her, and so on.

But in the canon timeline? They actually succeed in capturing her, and China’s sigils actually manage to undo the Faceless One’s effect on Valkyrie. Even if it wasn’t his primary intention for travelling back to the past, Cadaver actually managed to save Valkyrie.

This post is going nowhere, I just thought it was an interesting contrast between the two timelines. Especially with China.

I would adore a post about how Skulduggery treated Valkyrie in phase 1, your stuff is so fun to read

HEHEHEHEH IVE BEEN ENABLED

There is so much stuff to unpack in phase 1 it’s kind of ridiculous, but I’m going to talk about literally whatever comes to mind because this would be SO fun to talk about.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of their super early dynamic is that Skulduggery really neglects Valkyrie’s physical needs as a living human. In book 2, Valkyrie mentions how she hardly ever gets the opportunity to eat or sleep because she spends so much time doing things, but brushes it off as just another sacrifice it takes to be with him. This was one of the first things I noticed while also reading this book. Skulduggery doesn’t need to eat or sleep, and Valkyrie doesn’t want him to leave her behind and so just…doesn’t tell him that she actually needs something, and he’s too caught up doing his own thing and viewing her as a fully responsible adult to note that she’s not getting the basic necessities for a teenager. He does eventually get better in this way of course, doing things like adjusting parts of his house so Valkyrie can eat and sleep without the back and forth of going home.

There is also, of course, the repeated endangerment. Phase 1 Valkyrie never holds it against him of course (even phase 2 Val barely mentions it), but he definitely has no problem bringing her into situations where she’s likely to be killed, including situations that are kind of unnecessary (like him telling her to drive a truck when she’s thirteen on account of the fact that it would be funny). I think a big moment of reflection for him was in The Faceless Ones where Valkyrie’s tooth gets broken and it’s a really traumatic experience for her, but she holds a brave face for Skulduggery and only breaks down crying when Kenspeckle expresses worry over her. The book kind of brushed over his reaction to it, but I really think he realized in that moment that he was actually hurting Valkyrie with the standards he was enforcing on her. This point is honestly pretty straightforward, but it’s also pretty relevant to their phase 1 dynamic and so I wanted to mention it. Pretty much all the trauma Valkyrie has can be arguably traced back to Skulduggery.

Because while Skulduggery definitely loves her and has his protective moments over her, he really does have an insistence on treating her as an adult, even at the points when she was barely a teenager. It gives Valkyrie a life where she has no safety bars on anything she does and is free to make her own mistakes and possibly get herself killed. And while he is willing to step in and help if she requests it, Valkyrie is also ridiculously independent (a trait that Skulduggery also encouraged) and clearly tried to avoid going to him with personal problems as best she could. While there are definitely issues to this approach to raising Valkyrie, I think Skulduggery was hoping to avoid becoming overly controlling of her and instead overcompensated by giving her full control of her own life, for better or for worse. Alternatively, it could be that Valkyrie’s extended freedom originally came from a branch of Skulduggery’s neglect of her, and later on in phase 1 just became a thing of habit.

Now, Valkyrie is a pretty independent person in phase 1. BUT. Since she has so much control over her own life, she refuses to socialize with other kids her age, which does lead to an emotional dependency on Skulduggery that is really apparent in the earlier half of phase 1. He’s effectively the god of her world, and even if she isn’t forced to do what he wants, she will do it with no hesitation or regard for her own well-being. Even when she’s an older teenager (16-18 range), it’s still pretty apparent that Skulduggery and whatever he wants or says is the first priority in her life, with everything else coming second. I also think this is a big reason as to why she dated Fletcher for a bit, because he was literally the only person she was hanging out with at the time who wasn’t literally hundred of years older than her.

Another thing I wanna point out that I always found really amusing is how physically comfortable they are with each other. Like, they’re detective partners who get into fights together, of course they’re gonna be pretty comfortable with each other, but it’s just so fucking funny. There is an entire scene in Death Bringer where Valkyrie is going about her morning routine (taking a shower, getting dressed, etc) and the whole time Skulduggery is following her around and chatting with her, and neither of them are weird about it or mention it at all. This is literally just normal for them (and also they’re conversation is kind of unhinged, I need to reread DB because there was SO much weird stuff in there). Valkyrie literally sleeps at his house on the regular, sometimes even more so than her own house. When Valkyrie finds out that the man is casually standing in her backyard, her reaction is to let him into her room through the window, which is so weird that even SOLOMON FUCKING WREATH commented on it. And while I do love having characters not being weird about other characters having bodies, having that dynamic between a teenager and an adult that her parents don’t know she hangs out with is absolutely wild.

And speaking of absolutely wild, having a “I’d fight loyally by your side until the end” scene with a fifteen-year-old is crazy, but so in-character for this series. I’m not complaining about it though, because the continual use of that phrase throughout this series sucker-punched my emotions every time and that’s exactly what I’m going for.

Something I also really liked throughout the series is them learning to place more trust in each other. In book 2, Valkyrie actually has a moment where she’s worried he’s going to kill her. In book 4, she’s worried his emotional breakdown will push him to physically harm her. In the first part of book 5, she’s subconsciously worried that he’ll kill her for being Darquesse. In the last part of book 5, she puts up no resistance and instead lies in his arms when he puts a gun to her head and threatens to shoot her. In book six, Skulduggery is brave enough to actually have a discussion with her about being Lord Vile. There are so many more examples of this, but I really adored their slowly growing relationship and how it was depicted throughout phase 1.

Don’t get me wrong though, the whole fiasco with Lord Vile in Death Bringer was really toxic. Specifically the fact that Skulduggery sort of emotionally blackmailed Valkyrie into forgiving him for being Lord Vile? I know that he didn’t mean for her to find out, but taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable teenager who’s going through an especially rough part of her life right now is not a great thing to do.

I do understand why he did it though, because Skulduggery is really not normal whenever Valkyrie leaves, and he might have gone through another bout of mental instability if she actually left him because of Lord Vile. I think this part of him is best seen in the second half of LSoDM and the first half of DotL. He’s angry, lashes out, emotionally cold, and he threatens tries to shoot an eighteen-year-old for the crime of being Valkyrie’s reflection. He’s also so aggressive when they have to revive Valkyrie with the Sunstone, because he’s scared that he messed up and that he’s now going to lose her forever, which causes him to act really scary towards everyone around him. It’s definitely not a side of him that he likes and that’s why he’s so determined to stay with Valkyrie no matter what. Not phase 1 related, but I will always find Skulduggery’s explanation for what he was doing while Valkyrie was in Colorado hilarious because what do you mean you decided that a lapse in morals would be fine until Valkyrie gets back.

Skulduggery also seems to have a really hard time admitting with words that he loves someone (and given his history, I really do not blame him) but Valkyrie casually saying that she loves him in KotW and teasing him about it while Skulduggery will express that he loves her in literally any way other than actually saying the goddamn words (it takes him seven fucking years to actually say “I love you” yahoo) and it made for some really sweet but also heart-wrenching moments in the last three books of phase 1. Because Valkyrie doesn’t really need him to say that he loves her, because she knows it already. But still having him refuse to say it does kind of sting, and it’s fun to watch the two of them dance around their emotions like funny little acrobats.

What makes Skulduggery and Valkyrie’s dynamic in phase 1 so wild to me is the way that it kind of casually glazes over the raging abuse going on, but I actually really like that because it highlights just how much this series is written from Valkyrie’s perspective. She loves him so damn much, and you really can’t blame her for it. He gave her a life where she could express herself and do what she wanted and be with people that made her happy instead of being stuck in a school she hated, with people she hated, in a life she hated. She was traumatized and scarred by him but he gave her the opportunity to actually live, and no way in hell was she ever going to risk giving that life up and going to back to what she had before. Toxic as their phase 1 relationship was, he represented her freedom and autonomy and Valkyrie viewed any hardships she went through as a simple sacrifice necessary to keep what she had. It’s not healthy, but you kind of get it.

I love their phase 1 relationship so much, but there is so much to unpack between them and I definitely missed a lot, so everyone else feel free to add on your rambling.

I've been meaning to ask this, idk who else to talk about it with lol

What do you think of Valkyrie and the Corrival Kids in phase 2? I liked them when they were around (Omen and Val mostly because they're funny to me) but I know a lot of people didn't like them.

I enjoyed Valkyrie’s arc in phase 2, and while I understand that some people didn’t like it because she seemed different, I honestly just think that’s because she got some more maturity as an adult? Like, she had the time to reflect on her years with Skulduggery while she was in Colorado and she also got older, so of course she’s going to be kind of different from when she was a teenager.

Side note, when I was reading book 2 of this series I was thinking to myself “oh, this girl is gonna get a drug addiction on her twenties” and guess what happened

For the Corrival kids, I also liked them. I do wish that some of them had gotten more of a character arc but for a bunch of side characters, I did enjoy when they were around, especially when they were working as a team. Jenan really struck me as a depiction of a kid who was groomed, traumatized, and is now trying to figure out what to do with himself. I also think that Never was a good depiction of a fab queer (as opposed to a queer that tries to blend in). I didn’t really find them super funny though, but I honestly really liked Crepuscular and Omen’s dynamic. I should think more about Crepuscular and Omen because I reckon there’s a lot to unpack with them.

Overall, I liked it, I’m not a phase 2 hater. I really hope Omen comes back to do something in phase 3.

I know that some people don’t like phase 2, but there is SO MUCH I could ramble about in there, and maybe I will in the future.

I could talk about Jenan and the effects of grooming and toxic masculinity

I could talk about Crepuscular and Omen’s relationship

I could talk about Abyssinia and Crepuscular and the generational trauma that’s so prominent in phase 2

Or China’s entire character arc

Or how Auger and Omen switched social roles and the possible psychology behind it

Or how fast the opinions of the general people can change drastically

Or how the series blends real-life politics and issues with the fictional sorcerer ones, and how it creates a really interesting culture in Roarhaven (I wanna talk about culture in Roarhaven so badly oh my god)

I could talk about Temper and how he sacrificed everything for his friends (and how his religious trauma affected him right up till the end)

I could talk about the absolute tragic tomfoolery that is Dexter’s life (someone needs to draw him in the Bi, High, And Ready To Die t-shirt i swear)

I could do some analysis on Valkyrie and Mevolent’s dynamic

I could yap to the void about how I liked the really slow and sometimes boring pacing of Seasons of War

Or maybe I could talk about something related to the Leibniz mortals that I think would make a really cool cultural addition to Roarhaven

Or what about Valkyrie and Nefarian’s friendship? I can think of stuff to talk about there

Me? Normal about this series? Never in a million years

Idk if you've spoken about it before, but what is Mevolent and Valkyrie's relationship in your SoW au like?

Nobody has ever sent asks about my SoW au before so that’s completely uncharted territory for you to explore

After Valkyrie is captured and is spending her days hanging around in the castle, she and Mevolent act a lot like friends (bickering, sharing ideas, chatting, etc), with Mevolent occasionally giving her assignments. Mev also often teases her about her wanting to leave (I imagine he vaguely objectifies all three of his generals, so that’s more of a him thing) and will, in the same cheery voice, threaten to send her to the dungeon again if she’s misbehaving.

Valkyrie definitely doesn’t like Mevolent but she has literally no choice but to interact with him and choosing to interact with him in a way that simulates a normal friendship for her is a way that she copes with her situation (I imagine she does something similar with Vengeous as well).

Mevolent doesn’t necessarily care for Valkyrie, but he does like her because she’s smart, witty, and very expressive. Vile hates talking and is kind of an edgelord and Vengeous is ultra-serious round the clock, but Valkyrie makes for an actually interesting conversation and he finds her attempts to escape him amusing.

When she does misbehave in a way that will get her punished, Mevolent usually acts a lot scarier for a moment before ordering that she be taken to the dungeons. The two of them also never mention the torturing, ever. Vile definitely has a preference for Valkyrie but he refuses to help her when this happens, so Valkyrie becomes pretty well-behaved pretty quickly because she doesn’t want her support network taken away from her.

I could do some analysis on Valkyrie and Mevolent’s dynamic Or what about Valkyrie and Nefarian’s friendship? I can think of stuff to talk about there

I would laugh manically about either of these things. Your SP posting is amazing, I really enjoy it even as a casual reader of the series!

Valkyrie’s dynamics with random people who’ve tried to kill her are all absolutely gold lmao

Starting out with Valkyrie and Nefarian, their friendship is the most unlikely thing ever. They met when Val was seventeen, didn’t see each other again until Val was twenty-five, and then had to spend a number of months on a team together. And during that time, they came to a sort of understanding of each other through Nefarian trying to piss her off in the most platonically flirtatious way possible and Valkyrie not taking ANY of his bullshit.

And then when Valkyrie goes missing, Skulduggery becomes a lot more unhinged and ends up cutting up Nef’s hand. And when Valkyrie makes it back, she manages to not only kill Lord Vile but also successfully regenerate Nefarian’s hand, which pulls him closer to her since she’s capable of shielding him from people like Skulduggery. And her surprising amount of patience for him that she shows in SoW and UtE probably doesn’t help either.

I really want his arc to be learning to care about other people/learning to be a semi-functional human being, because I think it would be sweet to watch. I also think Landy should give him a boyfriend for the funnies, because he already hates the idea of caring about people in a platonic sense so much that him realizing “oh shit I like this person romantically” he’d break down then and there. Also you cannot convince me that Valkyrie wouldn’t offer to wingman him.

As for Mevolent and Valkyrie, their dynamic is a bit odd but it’s so interesting to see them together. Mevolent is a weirdly polite, eight-feet-tall fascist while Valkyrie is a much more emotionally straightforward freedom fighter. But there’s a constant sense in SoW that they hate each other, yes, but also have a profound respect for each other that makes their interactions so fun. They aren’t degrading each other, they’re kind of just…talking. While trying to kill each other.

And Mevolent actually trying to comfort Valkyrie right before he was going to kill her was honestly great?? That whole interaction was gold from start to finish, but “it’s ok to lose” was such a fascinating line, especially coming from an older sorcerer who managed to conquer the world to a younger sorcerer who earned his respect and who has the potential to one day be as great as him. And Valkyrie’s “I think we could have been friends in another life” seemed actually legitimate. Yes, she was trying to stab him with a god-killer, but there still is a general vibe that she meant it, and that Mevolent actually agrees with her. And then he helps her get to her feet to he can kill her with dignity, and she just accepts her fate without showing any real resentment towards him.

I am FULLY convinced that Mevolent sees a younger version of himself in a lot, because I honestly don’t think he was always evil. I think that came around simply as a result of him living so long and being so successful, especially in defeating The Unnamed. And Valkyrie is really similar to that, and I think that’s a big part of why he respects her so much (and why he registers her as such a threat). I REALLY hope that Mevolent and Valkyrie get to have an actual conversation in phase 3, because Landy has the opportunity to pull some emotional gut-punchers with them, and also we don’t get to see them interact a lot and that is a travesty.

Something I notice in Skulduggery Pleasant that I think reflects a lot of Europe (from my limited experience, feel free to correct me) is that Canada is pretty much nonexistent. America gets lots of attention, both in the series and in real life, whereas Canada is pretty much never mentioned because it’s “basically just America” and therefore lumped in.

Not necessarily a critique, just something I notice a lot. I actually have to do a double-take when Canada is mentioned in any fictional text and I live here.

Kinda chewing on Omen and Crepuscular’s relationship right now…man they’re complicated and I wanna talk about them 😭

Even independent from Crepuscular, Omen is a pretty fascinating character to me. At first I didn’t like him because he felt like a bad stereotype, but character development saved him for me so much. He’s a really good representation of positive masculinity, even while he’s doing things that many of the more violent or problematically masculine characters do. He manages to do these things without having to be toxically masculine about any of it, and I’m proud of him for that. And a lot of his ability to do that came from Crepuscular.

Because while I definitely think that their relationship is toxic, Crepuscular was still hugely important for Omen being able to develop his own opinions and do what he wanted instead of being a shy kid who trips over his own two feet. Being with Valkyrie and Skulduggery and helping in their missions definitely started him out by giving him a taste of what the adventuring was like, but every single time he sort of…went back to his normal, boring life afterwards. He always felt like Skulduggery and Valkyrie needed to call on him before he could do anything useful.

Enter Crepuscular, who has so many emotional issues that he successfully manages to hide from Omen by actually being interested in what Omen has to say and encouraging him to do more risky and adventurous things. By this point, Omen has spent his entire life being an idiot who nobody takes seriously and who’s inferior to his brother, so he eats up what Crepuscular is feeding him and starts doing little rulebreaking things, like helping his brother get a knife he needs to kill the King of the Darklands. Small things, and stuff that Omen doesn’t have to get too involved in to help.

And then his brother kills the King of the Darklands a year early, freaks out about it, and suddenly stops helping out people around the school, even when that’s been what people depended on him for for years. There’s suddenly nobody to do it. There’s an empty niche in the school’s metaphorical ecosystem that Auger used to dominate but is now too traumatized to.

And then Omen is there with Crepuscular encouraging him and helping him grow and be more adventurous and be more independent. Since Omen understands what his brother must be going through right now and also understands that the people around them need help, he takes it upon himself to help them (while also pretending that it’s Auger who’s doing it). And Omen circa Resurrection would never have been brave or strong enough to do that, but by this point he’s been following around Crepuscular long enough that he’s actually brave enough and organized enough to figure out what needs to get done, sneak out and talk to Crepuscular, and then actually get up and do it.

And then Damocles Creed becomes Supreme Mage and suddenly they’re living in an incredibly fascist and restrictive state. Does this stop Omen? Hell no. The boy becomes a little punk who investigates suspicious activity around the school and talks to his friends (and sometimes other students) about how they’ll escape this situation.

And then he picks a fight with Valkyrie, who’s an evil god at this point, and tells both her and Skulduggery that they’re awful people (and rightly so). Again, Resurrection Omen would have passed out at the idea of disrespecting these two in their normal forms, but two years later he’s perfectly willing to yell at a god with a streak of breaking people’s wrists.

Crepuscular was a bad person who was produced by circumstances so bad even he knew they were fucked up and he was helping Omen for his own emotional gain, but that doesn’t prevent the fact that he gave Omen the same thing that Skulduggery gave Valkyrie all those years ago: a safe space to test himself out and spread his wings in a way that felt comfortable. And even if Crepuscular was simply doing it to compare himself to Skulduggery, it legitimately helped Omen so much and allowed him to become a more emotionally put-together person than Auger, who had always been considered the better one.

And even after Omen decides to break off his friendship with Crepuscular, that bravery still lingers. He leads a goddamn rebellion in his school and the other kids accept him as their leader and begin taking orders from him.

And after it’s all over? Omen decides to go to art school with a girl he met while on a mission with Crepuscular. Crepuscular was such a bad person but he helped Omen so much and I honestly wouldn’t change much about how their relationship went.

And I honestly think that Crepuscular didn’t hate him either. Aside from Omen giving him what he wanted, Crepuscular chose to go back and ask for Omen’s forgiveness even after he claims to have proved himself better than Skulduggery, and Omen chose to go on one last mission with him because Omen is a sweet person who is easily peer pressured and Crepuscular knew that.

In short, their relationship is toxic but developmentally important for Omen and this post mostly turned into me ranting about Omen’s character development, which I’m not mad about.

Considering actually writing about the battlescape of the gods (?) au because wow I need to practice writing when a lot of stuff is going on

Anyways so sorry if you see me aimlessly rambling about that 🫠

Fun worldbuilding idea for Roarhaven, specifically the Leibniz mortals.

It’s been stated in-series that the mortals there are developing their own culture and such since they’re no longer being systematically oppressed by Mevolent, correct?

But these are just the mortals who actually grew up and spent their entire lives under Mevolent just learning to be happier now. Mortals live much shorter lives than sorcerers, and probably a bunch of the Humdrums mortals will start trying to catch up and better live alongside their fellow sorcerers (I know some of them might also leave to go live with other mortals, but I reckon most will want to stay around the place they grew up, especially when things tend to be fancier than mortal stuff).

So I have a suggestion. AMFoM used the term “technomage” to refer to a sorcerer who relies on magic items. WHAT IF that term were then commandeered for mortals who rely on magic items to keep up alongside their sorcerer peers? They’d suddenly live and work together so much better with the other sorcerers and they could be integrated into official sorcerer areas like the Sanctuary and they could perform certain tasks and do so much more, while also having to live under the reality that they age much faster than sorcerers, therefore causing them to work harder or live more chaotic lives?

I think it would be super fun to see how the mortals work to become equal to the sorcerers, especially if some of them try to stealth as sorcerers. Plus there’s also how sorcerers would react to having mortals who’re suddenly on the same level as them and doing the same jobs as them and not being so inferior anymore. It’d be such a fun topic to write about and worldbuild.

More thoughts about Valkyrie and Nefarian, specifically related to SoW.

By the time book 13 rolls around, Nefarian has never actually cared about anyone (by his own admission). He doesn’t love anyone, he’s selfish, and he likes to press people’s buttons, that’s the persona he plays. But Valkyrie does not take his bullshit and handles him in such a way that it becomes a fun back-and-forth for them.

And so the idiot gets emotionally adopted by her and now they’re friends, and Nefarian has to deal with actually learning to care about someone and how to handle those emotions for the first time in his life.

And now getting to the point of this post, the book doesn’t really discuss how Nefarian handles this, so I’m going to talk about it (and probably state the really obvious in the process). Nefarian becomes really, really hungry for attention from Valkyrie, even more so than his general “I’ll be a bitch so people focus on me”. Like, when they’re standing at the wall, he’s literally going “Valkyrie Valkyrie Valkyrie are you paying attention to me” while Valkyrie has to tell him that she can hear everything he’s saying, she’s just ignoring him. He also tries to divert her attention and/or affection away from her friends (most notably Skulduggery) and towards him. Does this work at all? Hell no, and she tells him that. But it’s really interesting to watch him actually fight for the attention of a singular person.

And thinking about why he learns to care about her is really fun to think about as well. Because a lot of their interactions in the beforehand part of SoW was Valkyrie disrespecting him and projecting how much she hates herself and views herself as evil onto objective reality. And Nefarian can see this woman perfectly fine; he knows damn well she’s not evil. But for whatever reason he sees her being all “I’m an evil person and all those war crimes are my fault, I’m a worse person than Skulduggery” and immediately goes to “hm. friend material”. This has…so much potential for backstory stuff, as well as being really funny to watch.

And watching Valkyrie go from “hey am I allowed to murder this guy” to “guys stop bullying him” was hilarious. I really hope we see more of them in phase 3 because they are such a funny duo and I like turning them around in my head.

Trying to write about Skulduggery and Valkyrie in an AU. It is turning out very long, so in the meantime I’m gonna talk about what the Sanctuary is up to.

This au pulls the very stereotypical “most of civilization has collapsed”, so Roarhaven is incredibly crowded full of people mortal and sorcerer alike, and the city is shielded at certain times of the day to protect from threats (most notably Mevolent/Serafina or the Faceless Ones).

Like, when I say packed, I mean packed. Pretty much the whole city is stacked on top of each other and some people are seeing if they can connect the buildings together to form one massive structure, and even that isn’t enough to hold all the people now penned up in this city. Splashes of magic are becoming even more widespread, especially among mortals, to the point that some of the police have started to crack down on it. There are also people who can’t afford places to stay who all sleep together under one big tarp to conserve body heat, it is a mess.

China got aged down to about her forties in this au because of the magic blast, which really led to her being annoyed that magical explosions kept tampering with her age. She’s no longer the principal of Corrival and now she lives on the edge of town running a business as a Signum Linguist (since Signum Linguists are in very high demand in Roarhaven). She doesn’t create Splashes, but she does make weapons and/or enhancements for soldiers, particularly mortal ones (which I will get into later).

Corrival Academy is technically no longer functional but many of the teachers do still teach, and they find places and times to do it so that students can show up in groups and learn. Teachers like Fletcher and Militsa are partially helping the Sanctuary keep organized and on-task and partially trying to organize and actual school for kids since the last one fell apart. Also Militsa broke up with Valkyrie again on account of Val being an evil god (AGAIN), and now she and Fletcher are disaster besties who’re trying to keep it together. The two of them somehow managed to keep Xena alive until her death at an old doggy age.

Ghastly is still running things over at the Sanctuary, and he is having a VERY rough go of it. On top of mortals finding out about magic and chaos ensuing, he also has to deal with the fact that he now knows that Skulduggery is Lord Vile (because of what Cadaver told him) and that Valkyrie defended him for years (and has now turned into a slightly deranged god). He, Tanith, and Temper have been working together to create different military units with different purposes now that they have more demographics of people to keep track of, protect, and make use of. In short, Ghastly is even more burnt out than he was before the apocalypse.

The mortals have also been making themselves useful, usually working as soldiers for the Sanctuary. I talked about technomages a bit earlier, and I am talking about them now. Lots of the mortals now living in Roarhaven have been going out of their way to equip magical tools (usually weapons) to help them keep up with the sorcerers. This has led to them basically forming into military units working for the Sanctuary and has greatly increased their firepower, making them slightly less appealing to attack.

On top of Temper, Tanith, and Ghastly at the top of the Sanctuary, Dexter Vex also has a little group of his own who technically don’t work for the Sanctuary, but stay in Roarhaven and are more than willing to do tasks alongside them. Aside from Dexter, this team consists of Saracen (who was revived in the same way as Anton), Kierre, Aurora, Frightening, Donegan, and Gracious. Kierre showed back up when the Sanctuary (aided by China’s sigils) figured out a way to fix her boyfriend, and Aurora and Frightening found each other in America shortly after the general apocalypse (North America did not take it well) and then hopped over to Ireland to find Dexter. The Monsters Hunters did something similar to this except that they were in England at the time, and Saracen basically respawned in Ireland.

One of the people who is not present at the Sanctuary (or in Roarhaven at all) is Anton Shudder. He’s off working for Valkyrie for reasons that I plan on explaining in a later post, but he (and Valkyrie) are missed dearly by their friends.

Unlike most of the other groups in this au, Roarhaven isn’t actually aggressive and doesn’t go out of their way to pick fights with other gangs, instead working to act as a safe space for refugees from the war. They’re also completely stationary, which is why they have the part-time shield to protect them from attacks. Valkyrie is willing to spend resources to protect them, but they don’t entirely trust her and so she tends to give them space. They do get visits from her occasionally though, and she’s described as feeling like a harbinger of doom.

Much words, sorry to spam you all with au stuff

I’d have to have literally zero other creative projects going on if I were to write this AU as an actual piece of fanfiction, because my overanalyzing dumbass would give every single character an arc and this AU is basically “how many characters can I have running around at once” 💀

Ok. So. I was initially going to make this in one post, but then I realized it was going to be too long and so have split it into two parts. This is gonna be me rambling about an AU. This is part one and is going to be about Skulduggery, Valkyrie, and how they’re doing in the war. This is still probably gonna be a long post that makes exactly zero sense, so buckle up.

Firstly, I’m gonna talk about what the two of them turned into after the big magic explosion.

At first Valkyrie seems relatively normal, albeit a bit injured. It takes a few days for her to realize that anything changed, similarly to what happened at the end of DoA. But she eventually begins to suspect that something is off about her and after a week or two manages to trigger a transformation that gives her several sets of wings and a set of retractable tentacles with which she is able to absorb other people’s souls and move power from person to person.

Shortly after this, she also starts acting a lot weirder. Similarly to Darquesse and her obsession with magic energy, actually, except that Valkyrie gains an obsession with absorbing everyone she cares about so that she cannot ever lose them. Luckily for everyone else, she’s only willing to do this if they’re close to death (at least in her current state). But basically, she starts talking a lot more like a god would, which is weirdly, vaguely, and objectifying of everyone around them. Skulduggery and Anton are both in something similar to isolation with her at some point, and so they are the first two to notice. Anton is vaguely creeped out but trusts Valkyrie in spite of it, even if he does continue to be slightly morally off-put by some of her decisions. Skulduggery doesn’t really mind it, and even welcomes the additional power since he’s now having to try and stay normal and not turn back into Lord Vile. In the years since she and Skulduggery split off from the main group, her form with wings has also grown in size, although she’s still normal on the rare occasions she decides to look normal.

Now, Skulduggery didn’t really have any big magic transformation. However, bad circumstances and peer pressure basically forced him to put large chunks of the armour back on so he could fight, and he ended up never really taking them off out of paranoia that he was about to be jumped by Sanctuary officers, even when he was at Valkyrie’s house. So it wasn’t the magic that eventually made him go insane, it was the magic armour, the violent tendencies that come with it, and his best friend randomly turning into a god.

While they’re technically classified as leading different groups, they work together constantly and are still pretty much inseparable. The two groups have also decided to just…merge together. It’s famously codependent duo that’s leading them, they might as well become besties at this point.

Another thing about how they work is that their dynamic drifts around a bit, but through areas that are pretty predictable. The two of them both sort of have the average SP god’s appreciation of life, that being “it’s all irrelevant in the face of the universe”, and as a result they don’t really think about the potential consequences of their violent actions. When they’re like this, they both tend to talk in such a way too (as stated earlier). However, they’ll also default to bantering as normal sometimes. But more importantly, the two of them (although most prominently Valkyrie) sort of…float in and out of lucidity.

To explain, they’re both insane and their brains work like gods, they don’t really think about the consequences of their actions. However, there are times when things such as their humanity, old morality and general personalities float back to them that sometimes cause them to have small breakdowns (although again, this tends to happen more with Valkyrie). And those usually last for a few days, and then their brains begin to slide more back towards the cold inhumanity of godhood. So their followers really just have to wake up and figure out how their bosses are doing mentally on that particular day.

That’s all I can think of for them right now tbh, but maybe I’ll add more in the future. Next post is gonna take a lot more organizing than this one.

One thing I wanna do for the AU is write out in extremely specific detail what happens in the timeline of phase 3 after AMFoM so I can see how close to canon it is when the actual books come out