"Magic," she says

mostly skulduggery pleasant nonsense, come scream at me about skeleton detectives. spoilers are tagged. icon art belongs to https://alizalayne.tumblr.com/

[morwenna-crows]

Notes from a translation of the books, into Irish.

[jenniferstolzer]

[nicstylus]

isnt he adorable

[valkyrieposting]

Looking for a subject to test my new water-resistant fineliner against and the obvious option presented itself

[lonepower]

me realizing half an hour later that skulduggery is. 200 years older than his taken name.

so like.

did he overhear it for the first time in the 19th century and just go 👁️👄👁️ and immediately change it, or

[morwenna-crows]

This gets brought up quite often in the tag, but. The idea that Skulduggery’s name originated hundreds of years after he was born isn’t completely accurate, historically?

You’re right that skulduggery first appears in the 1800s, but the 19th century OED definition is specific to American English, to that particular spelling, and to that exact definition. The word itself is older, and it’s not English - so it doesn’t appear in any English dictionaries.

It’s Scots, like you noted, and it first appears in written form in the 1600s. The Dictionary of Older Scots Language - https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/sculdudry - has sculdudry, meaning trickery or deceit, in correspondence c. 1663; other sources have variant spellings of the same word as far back as 1630.

(You’ve also got etymologists and linguistic historians arguing that although the origins of the word are unknown, sculduggery is potentially a late medieval English or Scottish corruption of a relic verb from 14th century French, making it even older again. It’s actually a really interesting linguistic question? Nobody knows for certain where this word comes from.)

Scots is primarily a vernacular language, with relatively few early written sources, so? It’s totally plausible that since the word appears in writing by the mid-1600s, it was in spoken usage by the 1590s, when Skuduggery was a teenager taking a name. (There’s usually at least a few decades between late medieval words entering the common tongue, and those same words first being written down - especially when they’re considered obscene, which sculdudry was.)

Skulduggery is born c. 1580, meaning he grows up during the Tudor conquest of Ireland, a period with a huge migration of Scots-speaking populations into the country; mercenaries and soldiers, political administrators, colonists and planters. Him hearing the word spoken aloud, by someone else, allows any spelling weirdness to be handwaved.

So. His name can be explained in a way that makes sense? The word itself existed. But also like. Landy definitely didn’t think about it for more than five seconds.

[morwenna-crows]

The original etymology of skulduggery into Scots isn't really known; there was some speculation that it derived from French, as above, but this feels tenuous, and a bit convoluted - like trying to make awkward pieces fit.

I think it seems quite plausible, as an alternative, that the term comes from Gaelic; scaíl in Middle Irish is lax, loose or immoral behaviour, a dishevelled appearance, promiscuity - so roughly the same as the earliest Scots definition for skulduggery, which meant "obscenity, fornication."

In that case, the initial skuldu formation could have been scaíl do - maybe from scaíldogaire, loose and promiscuous, loud, and badly-behaved.

https://dil.ie/36260 - Scaíl; loose, lax, uninhibited.

https://dil.ie/36270 - Scaíltech; dissolute in a moral sense, hedonistic.

https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/promiscuous - Scaoilte; promiscuous.

https://dil.ie/17728 - Dogair[m]; a bad reputation, someone of ill-repute.

[morwenna-crows]

@lassieposting

[kiltamestari]

And THIS this is now my greatest creation yet, may I present: Melancholia st Clair

[morwenna-crows]

I've been reading back over an unfinished post I wrote forever ago, about Ravel, the various iterations of the Roarhaven plot, and why it ultimately failed.

But I couldn't reconcile or explain his killing of Corrival Deuce. The rest of what he does makes sense - at least in the context of his deeply insane plan - but murdering Corrival is inexplicable.

We know Erskine killed Corrival; he taunts Skulduggery with it. We know it was in the aftermath of the remnant attack, but he wasn't possessed; he remembers what he did, in enough detail to mockingly reminisce.

We don't know why he did it, though.

The entire Roarhaven Plot quite literally depends on successfully electing Corrival as Grand Mage, with Ravel and Mist as his Elders. They'll work to undermine him at every turn, push to start a war, assassinate Strom the English Grand Mage, make Corrival the scapegoat for the unrest, and then betray him and claim they want peace. Corrival has difficult opinions, he has enemies. He's a divisive political figure, in his own words, and a former military leader who could easily be accused of warmongering.

Their plan would've worked, probably.

Erskine has literally spent the past century making a list of people who hate Corrival. Murdering him is throwing away a century of groundwork, and removing the person he intends to blame for the war he's about to start.

(And Ghastly is like, the worst possible replacement scapegoat. Ghastly has no interest in politics, is a beloved war hero, only takes the job because nobody else wants it, and spends all his free time worrying about Tanith. Knifing him in the back turns everyone against Ravel immediately - the Roarhaven sorcerers refuse to defend the city, if Ghastly's murderer is giving the order.)

Even the speech he gives, about Ghastly "conspiring" against him, sounds ridiculous and implausible - Ghastly, who has all the subtlety of a brick to the face, and has never kept a secret in his life.

(A speech making the same accusation against Corrival - that he always thought he knew best, for everyone - might have sounded more believable.)

The Roarhaven Plot simply doesn't work, with Ghastly as an Elder.It also doesn't work with Erskine as Grand Mage. He's now personally responsible for every questionable decision, and bears all the blame for starting a war. It's fairly apparent that whatever he intended, it wasn't this.

But I was reading back over the election chapter in Mortal Coil, and I'm like… convinced Corrival knows something is amiss - maybe not the exact details, but something. You don't survive centuries of war against Mevolent without knowing when you're walking into a trap.

First, he hits Erskine with this. Yes, he noticed just how badly you wanted him to attend this meeting, and he clocked it.

He casually counts his would-be allies, in the room - people he knows he can trust. A plan is already forming, here.

He then wrongfoots the Spiderfolk completely - this is clearly scripted, from the back and forth between Erskine and the Torment but they're not expecting him to agree without a fight.

(If I had to guess, I'd imagine this staged disagreement ended with the Torment suggesting that if Erskine was so worried about a coup being staged in Roarhaven, he was welcome to take an Elder role and keep them in check, himself - with Mist as the other Elder.)

By giving in to the initial demand so easily, Corrival cuts off this next request - Mist as an Elder - and immediately proposes his own alternate candidates, before the Torment even has a chance to speak.

I could never figure out why he nominated Skulduggery - who walks into the room and says "I don't like these people, I might start shooting."

It's such a random, chaotic thing to do - nobody reasonable or sane thinks Skulduggery would make a good Elder - and from a military general, someone who doesn't seem impulsive or irrational, otherwise.

But by nominating Skulduggery - someone he trusts unequivocally, and he stresses that several times, how much he trusts him - he seeks out an ally, creates an uproar, and buys himself time, the equivalent of throwing a bomb and then running for cover.

(In this context, reminding Skulduggery that he knows he'll make the right decisions in difficult moments, should it ever be needed, is extremely interesting.)

If the other Dead Men had been there, he might have chosen Shudder or Ghastly, instead - he pointedly asks after both of them - but they aren't there, so he works with what he has. He drags Erskine along as the second Elder, too, because he's not getting out of whatever is happening here that easily.

Then he leaves, before anyone can argue.

This might be the only time Ravel is honest, in the entire book - he definitely wasn't expecting that.

It's so interesting to watch Ravel quietly enter damage control mode, at this point. He's badly shaken enough that he literally follows Skulduggery back to Ghastly's shop, and then laughs it off with a made-up excuse - note the sarcasm; Skulduggery is surprised, and vaguely irritated by his unexpected visit - this is obviously not a regular occurrence.

He tries to convince Skulduggery not to take the job - which makes sense, given that Skulduggery got Ireland's last Grand Mage thrown in magic supermax for corruption like, a month ago. He is the last person on earth you'd want as your co-elder when staging a coup.

He then insists that no, Corrival has to be Grand Mage, because at this point, the whole Roarhaven plan still hinges on Corrival as Grand Mage and scapegoat.

He's so worried and off-balance that he literally walks into the path of Tesseract, the assassin he hired like two hours ago, and almost gets himself killed. Tesseract does not remember that Ravel hired him, and is trying to murder him for real. Getting assassinated by his own assassin was clearly not part of the grand plan.

And look at how both Ravel and Skulduggery react, when Corrival shows up unannounced at the shop, later.

They don't greet him normally at all - the only person having a halfway normal reaction is Ghastly, who has no clue what's going on.

Ravel is immediately on edge, and then wary - "So... there's nothing wrong?" because by now he absolutely believes Corrival has come over suddenly, in the middle of the night, to warn Ghastly and Skulduggery about him.

Skulduggery is equally unsettled - "what's wrong?" - so clearly he picked up on something unspoken, too, during their earlier conversation, to the point that I wonder if they have a version of "the sparrow flies south for the winter" to quietly warn for danger.

I think it's debatable, how much Corrival actually did know - I don't think he was aware of the full extent of Erskine's involvement or the scope of the plan, because if he were, I feel he would've told Skulduggery sooner - but it makes sense that he'd want to confirm his suspicions before accusing Ravel.

Whatever he had intended to do, it was interrupted by the Remnant Crisis.

But Erskine is deeply, violently paranoid - with good reason - and I think his behaviour implies that he believes Corrival at least suspects him - which means the plan to make him Grand Mage is now nonviable, and so his hand is forced. He takes advantage of the remnant chaos to murder him, before he can warn anyone else.

But in doing so, he wrecks his own plan, and he must have known the risk - so Corrival figuring out what was happening and forcing his hand is the only plausible reason for this murder. Nothing less serious than that makes sense, as a motive.

[tinted-mint]

My headcanon for China Sorrows :^]

While reading, I imagined a poised, graceful character with a Mona Lisa smile and dark hair.

[candycanepencils-deactivated202]

who up thinking about skulduggery&ghastly and valkyrie&fletcher parallels .

[morwenna-crows]

@lassieposting

[morwenna-crows]

[morwenna-crows]

Some of the names in the series - especially early villain names, like Vengeous and Serpine and Mevolent - aren't really words, but sound like existing words, and evoke the same meaning.

This works fine, in canon - Vengeous is obviously supposed to be vengeance, etc. - but it gets a little more difficult, when you're creating backstory.

The worldbuilding has characters choose their own names, as children, often inspired by something they heard or read - but it's less simple to explain why someone would choose a name that isn't like… a real word, or where they'd even first hear it.

For Mevolent, I invented a backward etymology from an alternate spelling of mauvoillant - variants include mauvoilant, mauvuilant, and mauvuillant - all of which are roughly pronounced as ‘mevolent' - from Middle French, dating back as early as the 12th century.

(I think that tracks with canon heavily ~implying Mevolent himself isn't Irish - he invades Ireland from abroad, China flees his castle and "returns to Ireland," Valkyrie notices that he speaks with a strange, flat accent, and he uses a translator, when speaking to the Irish Sanctuary in the 1700s.)

Mauvoillant has the same root and definition as the English malevolent - wicked, evil, accursed.

It has a second meaning, though - it's used in Christian texts as a cipher for the name of the devil, literally "the evil one."

Which is really fun, as characterisation for a religious fanatic, and creates a nice parallel with Serpine - whose name also plays on the allegory of a biblical serpent.

[declan-isms]

those golden eyes

(aka ravel in the art donaldson puppy dog eyes pose)

[morwenna-crows]

[morwenna-crows]

@venividivictorious

[morwenna-crows]

[dykemcqueen]

she...

[morwenna-crows]

Hey, I just really have to ask if you’re Irish, I literally found your account like twenty minutes ago when I saw your Irish translations and nearly started screaming with joy, there is not enough love for Skulduggery Pleasant in Ireland or by Irish people in my opinion and like even if you’re not Irish the fact that you’re literally translating the series into Irish is enough for me to lose my mind and love you forever, please please please post more translations I actually love it so much and I’m so sorry that this has turned into rambling I’m just so excited

I'm Irish, yeah! I grew up in north Dublin, around twenty minutes from the real-life town that Haggard is based on; my favourite thing about Val Cain was always that she sounded like me and my friends, when she spoke.

The translation of the first few books was a personal project, and even if I do finish, I'm not sure I'll be able to share them - not because I don't want to, but because Landy is highly defensive of his copyright and has shut down fanmade merch before, forget an entire unofficial bootleg translation of the books, and it would be like… really obvious it was me, found at the scene of the crime.

But I will definitely post more translations here as I write them! My hope is to create - and share - a full Irish language glossary (or maybe like, an in-universe dictionary of magical terms?) that can be referenced as a fandom resource for writing fic and worldbuilding.

(I have a few other niche Irish-centric projects I want to finish, too - I have a rough outline for a sigil language based on Classical Ogham, a lore post on Gaelic Irish sorcerer names and how they differ from the English system of family crests that Skulduggery describes, a city map of Mevolent's Dublin-within-the-Wall diverging from real maps of 18th century Dublin, etc.)

[morwenna-crows]

[wobblycompetencies]

I just finished the last Skulduggery Pleasant book on the beach in Cuba over Christmas and am still in a very skeleton-y mood, so have some Tanith Low! I liked her, she’s my kind of bad-ass, and I was both surprised and relieved at her treatment in the final book.