Every year Derek Landy releases the 756th Skulduggery Pleasant book and every year I go, wracked with embarrassment, to the children's section of my local bookstore to buy it and it's usually terrible and great all at the same time and I think about these characters for about a month and then I forget they exist again. Anyway, here's the OG 5, all still kicking butt despite the odds. See you next year ig
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Skulduggery Pleasant/Nefarian Serpine (implied)
Characters: Skulduggery Pleasant, Tanith Low, Saracen Rue, Dexter Vex, Nefarian Serpine
Additional Tags: Implied Sexual Content
Summary:
During the three week walk towards Tahil na Kurge, Skulduggery pulls Serpine to the side for a "private talk". Tanith and the others are left behind to wonder at the implications.
"Sharon and my kid are at her cult meeting, so I'm not doing anything for the next few hours."
"Sharon's in a cult?"
"Yeah, it's one of those funny ones that try to get the women members to sacrifice their husbands at every full moon or something. I don't know if that's an appropriate atmosphere to bring a kid into, but everyone needs a hobby, am I right?"
Derek Landy, Dark Days (Chapter 18)
Finbar Wrong heard "God forbid women do anything" once and decided he would be the polar opposite of that, and good for him honestly
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Nefarian as a character was a really interesting look at Skulduggery and Valkyrie's relationship, hear me out on this.
He first shows up when Val is seventeen, which also happens to be the first time he gets a glimpse of their dynamic. From his perspective, they probably seem weird as hell, but that could easily be chalked up to them being from another dimension. The vibes are off but it's probably fine. Something to note though, Nef asks Skulduggery if he still has any intention of hurting him, and Skulduggery tells him that no, he doesn't care anymore.
He shows up again when Valkyrie is eighteen, and she takes the opportunity to truly demonstrate her commitment to Skulduggery by walking into a very deadly scenario with Mevolent with absolutely no magic to protect her. Again, probably weird as hell to Nefarian, who has never really had a friend. Why is this teenager and this grown ass man so dedicated to sticking with each other? Who even knows, but it's not like he cares.
Seasons of War is really where it all comes together. Stuck on a trip together for seven whole months, of course Nefarian is going to get a much clearer look at what is going on than ever before. And at first, the vibes are probably even more bizarre than previously, since Val and Skug have since separated before coming back to each other and Valkyrie is struggling with a drug addiction. But it's fine, right? Just get this mission done and everyone can go home. It's only when Valkyrie goes missing that he really realizes the extent of what is going on.
That extent, of course, is the sheer fucking obsession that Skulduggery has about Valkyrie. His blind, unfaltering commitment to her. Far more insane than she ever acted about him, even. While Valkyrie was willing to act self-deprecating in order to save him, he is willing to sell the souls and lives of all his other teammates if he thinks that it will get him back to her. And it's insane just how fast he devolves back into that state, it's a level of cruelty that Nefarian hasn't seen in him since before he became Vile. While KotW Skulduggery wishes no harm upon Nefarian, SoW Skug will gladly strip him of his ability to move and hold him down so the necromancers can cut off his dominant hand.
The whole party feels the impact, and really they all know what it is. But Dexter and Tanith and Saracen have become almost used to this dynamic; they've become too comfortable with Skulduggery to really criticize who he is or what he's doing. What he's becoming. They're all too scared to face it. They're all too scared to even really admit it to themselves because who are they if not a team?
And so Nefarian actually saying the words they're all thinking, Nefarian being able to criticize Skulduggery for the absolute monster he is when Valkyrie isn't there, is a good thing. It's a great thing. A fresh pair of eyes, a perspective that hasn't been adjusted to see this as fine or normal. We've heard about it when characters talk about who Skulduggery became after Valkyrie left, we see hints of it in DotL and LSoDM, but this is really the first time that we get to see how emotionally dependent Skulduggery is on Valkyrie in all it's ugly colours.
And just...it's interesting. The difference in how Skulduggery and Valkyrie handled the separation has always been interesting to me.
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