FacelessXChurch

Personal 'Skulduggery Pleasant' sideblog. Here I reblog SP stuff I like and post doodles that didn't make it on my main artblog. Mainblog: UmbralJxrk   The original nasty bois blog! Banner drawn by Lyadrielle. PSA: I'm 100% fine with people using my SP character/object designs + using my SP art for icons, edits, RP blogs, ect. However, don't repost it and claim it as your own.

[facelessxchurch]

[source]

This is the only part of the news I find to be enticing tbh.

Of course I'm hoping that since the first book is Serpine's book, he will be on the cover, but I'm not holding my breath. As for the 'exclusive bonus content', I'm hoping it will be more excerpts from the first draft because I would honestly kill to read it in full. I'm kind of tempted into wanting to buy it, which is a first since HBL, and we all know what a disappointment that turned out to be. At the same time I really don't want to buy it because I know the 'fixes' he did for the Matt Taylor cover editions made both the books and Serpine as a character worse. Apparently the most egregious thing he did was change the scene where Serpine offered Bliss wine into him offering him elephant-shit coffee along with an autism rant about it. Landy really is giving his best to ruin Nef because he just has to ruin it every time he has a good thing going because we can't have nice things. And I don't want to reward him for his BS by giving him money :/

When I heard 'special edition', my first thought was the battle card edition of the first book I successfully managed to hunt down. If the new special edition includes a special merch item like that again, I might buy it for that alone because we sure as hell are not getting any good merch from the actual merch store 💀

I hope he'll post more info on the special anniversary edition in the coming days so I can make up my mind if I want to buy it or if I will ignore it completely because rn I just don't know enough about it to make up my mind yet.

[facelessxchurch]

Btw of course I'm not going to read a new series by Landy. His writing in phases 2 and 3 sucked ass. And Demon Road rightfully flopped so hard he had to crawl back to SP, I don't know why they are pushing it with a cover rerelease. I didn't make it past the first book, and I hated every second of it. I was dating an American chick at the time and was liveblogging to her, and for someone that loves the US that much, he sure as hell gets nothing right about it according to her, which I had already been suspecting tbh. The books were even more weirdly sexual than SP and you'd think HarperCollins might wanna stay away from that with the Epst**n stuff still being on everyone's mind. DR even had a Nef stand-in, Dacre Shanks, which somehow got done even dirtier than Nef. I am 100% convinced Nef/Dacre are based on someone Landy hates, so it must really gall him that even only me and maybe 3 other people prefer Nef over his self-insert characters despite Val and Skul still getting the vast majority of fan attention, that petty little b---

[facelessxchurch]

[source]

This is the only part of the news I find to be enticing tbh.

Of course I'm hoping that since the first book is Serpine's book, he will be on the cover, but I'm not holding my breath. As for the 'exclusive bonus content', I'm hoping it will be more excerpts from the first draft because I would honestly kill to read it in full. I'm kind of tempted into wanting to buy it, which is a first since HBL, and we all know what a disappointment that turned out to be. At the same time I really don't want to buy it because I know the 'fixes' he did for the Matt Taylor cover editions made both the books and Serpine as a character worse. Apparently the most egregious thing he did was change the scene where Serpine offered Bliss wine into him offering him elephant-shit coffee along with an autism rant about it. Landy really is giving his best to ruin Nef because he just has to ruin it every time he has a good thing going because we can't have nice things. And I don't want to reward him for his BS by giving him money :/

When I heard 'special edition', my first thought was the battle card edition of the first book I successfully managed to hunt down. If the new special edition includes a special merch item like that again, I might buy it for that alone because we sure as hell are not getting any good merch from the actual merch store 💀

I hope he'll post more info on the special anniversary edition in the coming days so I can make up my mind if I want to buy it or if I will ignore it completely because rn I just don't know enough about it to make up my mind yet.

[insert-edgelord-title-here]

Eliza + an alternative version of her shirt design.

Which design do you guys like better?

[kingsdodecahedron]

wow

[facelessxchurch]

.....

This random dark knight from the music I like to have on in the background is giving me massive Mevolent vibes. Specifically from the Matt Taylor SoW cover.

Source: "Black Flame - Epic Dark Choir Music - Dark Ambient Music"

thought I'd share for the other Mev simps

[nevermindigotthis]

On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man in a dusty black coat with a red right hand…

Nefarian Serpine everyone! I think of him whenever I hear that song.

[nevermindigotthis]

Mevolent came through the narrow door behind the throne, barefoot, wearing a simple robe and some kind of veil over his head that hid his eyes.

[facelessxchurch]

I'm pretty sure Meg Foster was the inspiration for China's eyes because look at this. I've never seen eyes like this IRL 😳

[facelessxchurch]

Hello! If you don't mind me asking since you are probably very busy...

Do you have any head canons on Skulduggerys wife and what their relationship would've been like?

I have a hot take.

You know how a bunch of people headcanon that Skul took Valkyrie as his partner because she reminded him of his daughter? (The child's gender is also part of their headcanon; it's still unrevealed at the point of writing this.)

And how Landy denies that and says Skul "was just looking for a friend". [Link]

I think Skul's dead wife is a lot like Valkyrie. We know Skul likes women that are badass and kick ass, given his previous canon love interests are China and Abyssinia. What they lack, at least at the time of dating him, is a good heart. Phase 1 Valkyrie was a flawed character, but she was good at heart. She makes him want to be a better person, and I think Skul's late wife shared that quality with Valkyrie.

In book 1 Val is described by Gordon and Skul as "Strong-willed, intelligent, sharp-tongued, doesn't suffer fools gladly[...]" and that would probably describe Skul's late wife well also.

Is this headcanon very Valduggery coded? Yes. Do I ship it? I see it in the way I see Ganith; it's not a ship I find appealing, but I'm not surprised it's canon/if it turned out to be canon. Because I know Landy ships it, and if you disagree, you are in denial.

On A Side Note: I think we might finally get more info about the wife and child in phase 4 because Landy is desperate to maintain readers. In phase 2 he was using Saracen discipline as bait; for phase 3 he used Ghastly being back and Ganith being a thing as bait, and I think Skul's wife and kid might be the bait for phase 4. Because in the recent poll on his Instagram, when he was asking about which topic to cover for the Magical Minute, I suspect it was a cover for him to probe people what they wanna see the most, and Skul's family won by a large margin, with most people in the comments asking about his wife and child.

[sir-kiss-my-axe]

“Hi…..how y’all doing?”

How I imagine Serpine casually dressed doing his girly things like strutting around his castle and torturing people.

[sir-kiss-my-axe]

China spending countless long nights with no sleep just carving sigils into her apartment. Queen.

[cryptidmoe]

Is there no one left to mourn you? Do you think he mourns you? Or are you just someone else to abandon him?

close up of the straight razor under the cut

[facelessxchurch]

I found a size reference generator for couples. It's in Japanese, though, so you'll need to have Google translate the site.

Also, friendly reminder that Nef is canonically as tall as Mr Bliss; he's an evil, tall weed man~

Nefarian Serpine: 6.4 ft (195 cm) Mevolent: 8 ft (244 cm)

[cryptidmoe]

Was your honour and your pride all worth it? Was it worth his life?

[facelessxchurch]

Since I’ve already gathered a bunch of reference images for my skinless hand key-charms, here is a masterpost of most references I used in case someone wants to draw Nef with a more realistic looking skinless Red Right Hand.

Source Muscles:

SciencePhotoLibrary: “Hand muscle anatomy, 1831 artwork”

ASSH “Muscles”

Medicalart.Johnshopkins.edu:“Muscles and Tendons in the Hand”

TeachMeAnatomy:  “Muscles of the Hand” (Gore Warning, if you scroll down too far there are prosection images)

BreakingMuscle:  “ More Insight Into Developing Grip Strength: Your Hand Digits”

AnatomyOnTheGo: “The Hand Muscles: Episode 24″

GettyImages: “Back Of The Right Hand”

Cover Art for the new french edition of the first book by Regis Torres

Source Venous System and Arteries:

SciencePhotoLibrary: Venous system of the hand

SciencePhotoLibrary: Dorsum of the Hand and Fingers

Anatomy.Lexmedicus: Wrist Hand Anatomy

Earthslab: Dorsal Venous Arch (Hand & Foot)

Pintrest: Arm Veins For Venipuncture

Hand/Tendon Art Tip by Arthur Gimaldinov

Resources:

3D Model of the Muscles of the Human Body, Interactive with Layers

Seam Webster: “Hand & wrist bones & muscles of the hand”

Armando Hasudungan: “Clinical Anatomy - Hand, Wrist (palmar aspect/flexors)”

[facelessxchurch]

In regards to a simplified version of a skinless red hand (bc drawing it in full detail is a time-consuming hassle), Joshua Donato from “Allies” by Bubble Comics is a pretty good reference I think.

EDIT: Gore warning under the cut for a RL skinned hand. The pic shows the  extensors REALLY well.

Keep reading

[facelessxchurch]

Found another great reference for Nef's red hand, this time less skinned and more corrupted.

[source]

Either version (skinned or corrupted) would work, I think, depending on what you are going for. The realistic drawings fit the descriptions of the book more with it being literally skinless and the necromancer technique involving skinning his own hand which explains why not many people learn it. Landy likes to play the pseudo-intellectual with magic in phase 1/book 1 being tied to physics and science in general, so a logic-based magic system. While the design I just added would be better for an emotions-based magic system and have the hand be messed up like that as symbolism for corruption/inner rot. Both work; it's just different flavours of the same thing, I feel.

[facelessxchurch]

A Concept: Nefarian having always been a little jealous of Mev.

Mevolent had always been the golden child, chosen to be the Unnamed's student, and then had been credited for his death. The Unnamed had been right to dislike Nefarian, as he had been instrumental in influencing Mevolent and gathering intel on all of the Unnamed's allies and weak points so they couldn't regroup and strike back after the Unnamed's death. Afterwards, when Mevolent had been growing his following, he had always been the shining messiah figure while Nefarian stood in his shadow, regarded as a devil for committing the atrocities Mevolent himself had sanctioned. Nefarian had his own acolytes, but they valued him for his strength and cunning; they didn't worship him as their saviour like Mevolent was worshipped by most of the church.

And then, years later after the war during the truce when Mevolent is long dead, Nefarian STILL doesn't manage to step out of his shadow, as he is still being introduced as Mevolent's general/lieutenant, and the whole of book 1 is just Nefarian trying to outshine Mevolent by succeeding where he failed.

[cryptidmoe]

working on a new rendering style, watcha think??