YMMV / Skulduggery Pleasant

From both series:

• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • Carol had grown up enough to realize how unpleasant she had been. She had awful self esteem issues... enough to warrant Jerkass Woobie status. And then, just when she's starting to learn magic and get a little more development, she's stabbed by Valkyrie's reflection.
  • Stephanie Edgley, the former reflection, is brutally beaten and strangled to death by Darquesse only a few metres away from help. The sheer despair felt by her as she narrates her death finally pushes her over the line into sympathetic territory.
  • There's an in-universe example towards the end of Death Bringer. Valkyrie finds herself feeling sorry for Scapegrace when she thinks he's been killed. Until he wakes up and starts annoying her again.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • If Valkyrie didn't ask Caelan to drink her blood, he may have never gotten that obsessive.
    • Definitely defied, as it's mentioned by Dusk and another vampire that Valkyrie was not the first girl that Caelan obsessed over. She was just the first one that he failed to kill.
    • Perhaps double defied, as we see that Caelan is extremely reluctant to drink Valkyrie's blood, refusing multiple times, waxing lyrical about how bad an idea it was and warning her repeatedly that it would end in disaster. At the very least, it seems as if he knew exactly what would happen and tried to prevent it.
  • Valkyrie has become this in later books. Is she simply a brave, innocent and genuinely good-natured Woobie who wants to save everyone she cares about from her Superpowered Evil Side (and ask for nothing in return) and thus jokes around or snarks to distract herself, or an overconfident reckless spoiled little brat who believes in solving her problems by punching them and wants everything and sacrifice nothing, like wanting adventure and excitement with no concern for the danger she's putting herself and others in? Following her Character Development, her own opinion is closer to the latter and she's riddled with both guilt and PTSD.
  • Melancholia. Was she driven crazy by Craven or was she always a homicidal maniac? Or did she just go Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!? The implication is the latter, since she's significantly saner when her power levels dip, but as the likes of Vile and Darquesse demonstrate, that kind of darkness doesn't come out of nowhere, leaving it open to question.
  • Did Argeddion really think the people he murdered didn't "count", or was he just trying to delude himself into believing he could still be an Actual Pacifist because the alternative was too horrible for him? Was him killing Walden D'Essai an accident or did his repressed anger, grief and guilt finally boil over after his alternate counterpart revealed the truth of his plan? Was Argeddion oblivious to the consequences of allowing evil mortals to use magic or was he simply in denial until Walden refused to cooperate?
  • Is the reflection just a mindless psychopath who killed Carol to gain power, or is she a pragmatic (she is Valkyrie's reflection, after all) human being who only wants the Sceptre to protect her family and her place in it? Or is she both?
  • Was Crepuscular Vies's reason for leaving Skulduggery Pleasant justified or was it a case of him being oversensitive and willing to betray others for his own personal gain? He sides with Martin Flanery yet chooses to mess with his head, and eventually abandons him in favour of trying to make Omen into his apprentice, with the ulterior motive of wanting to get back as his former mentor Skulduggery for leaving him to die.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The Unnamed/King of the Darklands. Though his abrupt and indignant defeat is clearly intentional, his arrival at the very last minute of the book after taking no part in the story at all borders on an Ass Pull.
  • Valkyrie's trainer and ex Coda Quell is unceremoniously killed at the end of "Dead or Alive" by an empowered Militsa, due to him having the misfortune of his murder attempt being on Féile na Draíochtha. He winds up falling into the death field set up earlier, killing him instantly.
  • The Faceless Ones themselves, despite having been built up as the biggest threat of the entire series ever since the first book end up easily defeated and scared into abandoning their plans by Obsidian in ''Until The End.
• Awesome Ego: Skulduggery.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Last Stand of Dead Men has a scene where the gang infiltrate Roarhaven and find Scapegrace, Thrasher and Mr Ping underground. All three of them are silently dancing. It's neither foreshadowed nor ever mentioned again.
• Broken Base:
  • Opinion is strongly divided on The Last Stand Of Dead Men; some reckon it is the best installment yet, while others are writing death threats to the author. (He expected it.) Those who like it point out to the strong world-building, the realistic depictions of politics and war, the plot twists, and for having, refreshingly, an Antichrist trope played completely straight for once. It's disliked for its lack of focus on Skulduggery and Valkyrie, the deaths of several popular characters, the reflection's role as new protagonist/hero, particularly as she's not well liked and her behavior in the book just seems so out of character and the ultimatum given at the ending. Oh, and no Lord Vile.
  • And that was nothing compared to The Dying of the Light- it's either a perfect conclusion to the series, an alright book in the series that isn't as good in comparison to the other trilogy closers (Faceless Ones and Death Bringer) or a piece of tripe because Landy wrote himself into a corner concerning how to kill Darquesse and copped out. And then there's the arguments about things in the book itself...
  • Phase 2 in general is pretty polarising:
    • Never, the genderfluid teleporter: she’s either a hilariously sarcastic and a justifiably confident foil to Omen, or a hypocritical asshole guilty of the exact same arrogance he decries in Valkyrie. Which side of the spectrum he falls depends on the reader.
    • Whether or not Valkyrie and Militsa is a good pairing. Some like Militsa and the fact that she makes Valkyrie happy. Some think the relationship came out of nowhere and don't particularly like Militsa due to the fact that she doesn't really contribute to the plot or undergo character development. A few don't mind the actual ship, but think it is underdeveloped and could have been handled better.
    • Bringing back Darquesse. Some feel it was needed and well deserved after the unsatisfying conclusion to her story in Phase One, while others feel she's played her part and outstayed her welcome, or that having something so powerful hanging in the background makes any active threats feel potentially pointless.
    • The whole existence of Phase 2 could be considered this, as whilst many fans enjoy the new books, just as many feel that the series should have ended after The Dying of the Light.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Crazy Is Cool: Skulduggery refuses to give an answer on whether or not he is insane. Making that decision, he says, is the job of a psychiatrist. He is not a psychiatrist; he just punches people.
• Creepy Awesome: Skulduggery. He is a skeleton, after all.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Valkyrie having her limbs seared off by the Brides of Blood Tears and finally giving over complete control to Darquesse? Graphic and disturbing. The whole chapter being communicated entirely by Darquesse's snarky inner commentary? The darkest sort of humour.
• Die for Our Ship: Fletcher is considered by some Valduggery shippers to be either a complete moron or evil incarnate. Caelan on the other hand, is mercilessly mocked by just about everyone. Including the author.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Almost every single non-main character counts, although Ghastly and Sanguine seem to be the most popular.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The series' main YouTube reviewer, Capricioushelen likes to think of the Phase Two books as being set in an Alternate Continuity. Some fans are inclined to agree, feeling that Phase 2 tends to suffer from cases of plotlines being introduced and being discarded between books, several cases of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character and introducing many new characters, some of whom barely do anything, the rather dystopian overtones regarding the Irish Sanctuary ^note Such as police brutality, China's position as Supreme High Mage effectively making her a dictator, Skulduggery and Valkyrie's position as Arbitors making them above the law. and pacing issues that make things seem cramped and chaotic.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Phase 2 was supposed to be 9 books but got cut down to 6, which does explain the pacing issues where it feels like it takes a while to get to the main plot while also trying to cram in a lot of ideas, and as a result ends up in a story that feels like it's trying to do too much. This problem already existed in Kingdom of the Wicked which takes a few chapters to get Valkyrie to the Leibniz dimension and then the story is about both a Bad Future where Mevolent won the war while also dealing with Argeddion's plan to introduce magic to the entire world while dealing with the 3 superpowered teenagers he chose to showcase his plan.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Anything and everything about Erskine Ravel after Last Stand of Dead Men. If you reread the scene in which Ravel hits on Tanith in front of Ghastly in Mortal Coil and listen closely, you can hear the sound of shippers sharpening their pitchforks.
  • The part where Ghastly and Ravel try to convince Skulduggery to reclaim his crest is particularly depressing because Ravel and because the reason Skulduggery gave up his crest in the first place was that he's Lord Vile.
  • Kingdom of the Wicked's main conflict is about how Argeddion's plan to introduce magic to mortals is horribly misguided and naive, with Skulduggery believing that it will end in total catastrophe. Several books later, Until the End has the Faceless Ones bring the Shalgoth to rampage across the world, ensuring that mortals learn about magic users and their unique struggles in the worst way possible.
• Ho Yay:
  • Scrapegrace and Thrasher.
    • Taken up to eleven in Last Stand of Dead Men, depending on whether or not Scapegrace is still considered a man.
  • The Monster Hunters basically have a "who would you do?" discussion about the Dead Men and Frightening Jones (without realizing that they're being overheard) in "The Maleficent Seven". Frightening Jones is described as "gentle" and Vex's abs are admired.
  • The author has stated on his Twitter that virtually all his characters have at least some homosexual tendencies.
  Pfft. There IS no straight when you're 400 years old!
• Magnificent Bastard: Now with its own page.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The Reflection murdering Carol before creating a reflection of Carol to take her place to use the Scepter of the Ancients for herself. Before, she deserved sympathy, afterwards just revulsion.
    • Last Stand of Dead Men seems determined to drag her back over this line, giving her a Sympathetic P.O.V. and the excuse that she didn't really have emotions or a conscience at the time. Dying of the Light even has Darquesse kill her and use her corpse as a vessel for her powerful soul.
  • Skulduggery's transformation into Lord Vile during the war, he threw in his lot with Mevolent and murdered countless people, including Ghastly's mother. During his relationship with Abyssinia, he even betrayed her so he could prolong the war and murder more people. It's only after abandoning the persona and returning to his true self that Skulduggery tries to atone.
  Skulduggery: Such redemption is well beyond me at this stage. But I try.
  • Ravel murdering Anton and Ghastly. Everyone except Billy Ray Sanguine is disgusted with this display of treachery and cowardice, with even Ravel being disgusted with his own actions. Not that it stops Skulduggery from wanting to kill him. It says a lot that nobody feels bad for him when Darquesse curses him to feel intense pain for 23 hours a day.
• Narm Charm:
  • A chunk of the series has some of this starting out due to choice of names, though justified because everyone chooses their own name. The names "Valkyrie Cain" and "China Sorrows" sound more like Dick Tracy characters, but they make it badass. And the name Lord Vile sounds really Narm-y... Then you get to the end of Mortal Coil and you see Skulduggery break down at the sight of him, and yes, all of a sudden the name seems very appropriate.
  • Myra calling Fletcher a "flamin' drongo" was this for Australian readers.
  • "Armageddon Outta Here?" Really, Landy?
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • This series is advertised for children 9 and up. This would utterly shock the people who have read the series without knowing this. Particularly in later books, given the amount of harm Darquesse recovers from, including beheading.

From Phase 1

• Paranoia Fuel: The Reflection. Looks exactly like the original, talks exactly like them, acts exactly like them, has all their memories, but it's not them, and the real person is out doing God-knows-what. It'd never fool a magic-user, but for someone like you...
• The Scrappy:
  • The Reflection/Stephanie. Obviously it would always be difficult to design a likable Replacement Goldfish who's an exact clone of Valkyrie but her martyred, holier-than-Valkyrie attitude (despite murdering an innocent girl) and her place as new protagonist in Last Stand of Dead Men, despite the fact that she has precious little impact on the plot, has led her to become rather unpopular. The fact that she completely escapes punishment aside from being murdered by Darquesse for murdering Carol and replacing her with a Reflection doesn't help matters.
    • She also shares the memories of her torture with Valkyrie. Just to prove a point. That torture wasn't even Valkyrie's fault, and Valkyrie actually saved her from it.
    • It appears that Skulduggery agrees- the opening chapters of The Dying of the Light has him cold and untrusting to her. Her status as a Replacement Scrappy is lampshaded by China.
  China: I dare say that this one is even ore sarcastic than the original. She lacks a certain warmth, though, a quality that made Valkyrie so endearing.
  Stephanie: I'm not here to be warm or to be liked. I'm here to stop Darquesse and go home.
  • Mr Ping doubles as an Ethnic Scrappy and just plain unfortunate. Mainly for sexually harassing Scapegrace. He disappeared after Last Stand of Dead Men and was never mentioned again - except in the Grimoire, where a side notation mentions that he was actually born and raised in Bristol, England, and catered to clients looking for the 'authentic' experience. In other words, Scapegrace, with typical bad luck and lack of brain, picked a sleazy conman for a teacher.
• Shocking Moments: Kingdom of the Wicked. Just when you think they cannot possibly top the Argeddion vs Kitanna's gang vs Lord Vile vs Darquesse vs Alternate Mevolent fight sequence at the climax, Landy drops a sequel hook in which the reflection commits murder.
• Squick:
  • It's a piece of Hollow Man skin - in your hair.
  • Remnant Tanith and Billy-Ray Sanguine kissing. Valkyrie certainly seems to think so.
    • Even more so when you think about it. Sanguine had a very creepy thing for Tanith for a while. Now, he's got an evil, possessed, fully consenting Tanith. God help the poor thing if/when she comes out of this stupor. Mercifully, she doesn't remember any of it when she comes out of it, and Sanguine is sad yet accepting.
  • On a somewhat more light hearted note, Valkyrie flirts with a guy at the Requiem Ball. What she doesn't realize is that she has his drunk father's vomit in her hair.
  • Lord Vile sticking his thumb in Darquesse's eye.
  • The end of Death Bringer has Valkyrie biting that... thing to get it off her while they try to get away from Lord Vile. Even Melancholia stops being mean to her for a moment.
  • Darquesse gets her jaw burned off in Kingdom of the Wicked.
  • Have you ever read a detailed description of a human magically healing from decapitation? Do you want to?
  • Last Stand of Dead Men almost gives us a death by spiders scene. Which then turns into a graphic death by burning alive scene. But that was okay because the readers had already seen numerous people almost burned to death at the point and were over it. See What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?
• The Un-Twist: With the amount of focus and hints dropped towards the subject, it was utterly inevitable even in the early books that Valkyrie's reflection would develop sentience, as well as turn out to be a budding psychopath.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Man With The Golden Eyes. After multiple books of build up, he is shown to be genuinely regretful but unrelenting in his actions, putting him in an interesting situation with the heroes. Once his identity is revealed, however, he comes off as far less cunning going forward, and ultimately proves to be a spineless coward who abandons all redeeming qualities when things stop going his way. Of course, this does make a certain degree of sense, as like Batu before him, his threat lies in his secrecy and his being unsuspected. Once his identity is revealed, he completely folds and he ends up in trouble.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • There's a great deal of wasted potential with regards to the reflection; all of the possible conflicts involving Fletcher, Valkyrie's parents, and life in general are more or less swept under the rug right before she dies. It seems like the author originally had plans for her to have a larger role, but aborted it upon realizing how unpopular she was.
  • The ending of Death Bringer heavily implies we will soon have the magical world revealed to the mortals. However, all of Kenny's work is destroyed by Kenny himself, except for a video which gets shown to Valkyrie's parents.
  • Skulduggery getting trapped in the Faceless One's dimension between books 3 and 4. Although it does affect his behaviour, once Valkyrie gets him back, things return to normal a little too quickly, as if Landy just wanted to get on with the Revenger's Club plot but had to follow up on the cliffhanger. That being said, it does have a longer term impact - for starters, since he's part of Skulduggery's subconscious, it sets in motion the return of Lord Vile.
  • Speaking of the Revenger's Club, the group itself is quite underused. They initially tease the ideas of former henchmen and bit players becoming a serious threat, but the group is more or less just a Quirky Mini Boss Squad for Scarab and Billy-Ray. Crux is killed off before making any contribution to the team at all.
• The Woobie:
  • Fletcher in Death Bringer, when he finds out that Valkyrie cheated on him. In Last Stand of Dead Men, his new girlfriend turns out to be a hitman, Valkyrie goes full Darquesse, his Australian friends die, Ghastly dies and, after making out with her, he finds out that Stephanie murdered Carol. And finally in The Dying of the Light, he's just getting over what Stephanie did and is thinking of starting a relationship with her, and then she's murdered by Darquesse. Dude really cannot catch a break.
  • Ryan from End of the World. Imagine finding out you're just a personality created by a criminal and that you're about to die.
  • Carol. Her sister has an eating disorder, she has horrible self esteem and just when she begins to find herself, she gets murdered by Stephanie.
    • Said sister, Crystal, who never finds out that her sister had been murdered and replaced, but becomes convinced regardless that the new "Carol" is an impostor. Nobody believes her, and she eventually suffers a mental breakdown from the strain.
  • Ghastly. He's born with a cursed face, his mother is murdered by Lord Vile who is really his best friend, the woman he loves is permanently possessed by a demon and about to marry Sanguine and his friend murders him.
  • Scapegrace. At first all the stuff that happened to him was hilarious, because he was such a pathetic character. Now that he's genuinely trying to become a good person (and succeeding—kind of), the things that he has to now deal with on a daily basis (a sex change, gender dysphoria, sexual harassment) stop being funny.
  • Skulduggery himself. Since the end of the war against Mevolent, he's been trying his best both to make up for his crimes during the war and to get over the deaths of his family. He's not doing to well on either count, but he keeps trying anyway. Meanwhile, he also has to deal with his Side Kick being The Antichrist, his oldest friend being murdered by one of their mutual other friends, his Band of Brothers being reduced to a mere two non-evil, non-dead members plus himself and eventually his own being stuck in the middle of a vendetta between Darquesse and Stephanie, both of whom are sorta-kinda his Sidekick.
  • Tanith in Dying of the Light.

From Phase 2

• Genius Bonus: In Greek mythology, Lethe is both a spirit and a river famed for causing forgetfulness. It's an early hint that Lethe is a false identity, created after Savant had his memory wiped.
• I Knew It!: The fact that Saracen Rue's discipline was X-ray vision was guessed at on our WMG page years before the Seasons Of War confirmed it.
• Narm:
  • The spectacularly awkward and on the nose way Temper's skin color is established when he's introduced in Resurrection.
  Temper: Well, I've always had trouble hating people because they're different than me. It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand. Or maybe you would. Could there be a brother hiding beneath that freaky mask of yours?
  • Valkyrie's first meeting with her future self in Dead or Alive, wherein they fly in and violently murder the person she was talking to hardly a few minutes after she arrives in the future. Much later this is explained by some kind of psychic connection drawing them together, but in the moment their arrival is so sudden and brutal that you may just have to laugh.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The King of the Darklands, otherwise known as The Unnamed. Only briefly and vaguely alluded to in Phase One of the series as an ultimate evil, and Mevolent's former master, the King of the Darklands arises Phase Two after it's revealed that the new Big Bad on the scene, Abyssinia, is both his daughter and the vessel for his power. At the end of Bedlam, the Unnamed is resurrected in the body of his grandson, Caisson, and it was assumed that he would then become the Big Bad of the remainder of Phase Two, being the central figure of the Darkly Prophecy that overshadowed the lives of Omen and Auger Darkly. Not so, as he vanishes after his resurrection only to reappear a full book later at the climax of Seasons of War, where he proves to be little more than a sideshow to the return of Mevolent and his forces, and is killed off very abruptly after being ganged up on by a crowd of schoolchildren.
• The Woobie:
  • Omen Darkly has it bad during Phase 2. Suffering from neglect due to his parents caring more about his brother fulfilling the Darkley Prophecy, he often spends his time suffering from low self esteem and often goes unnoticed. Throughout the series, he's constantly trying to prove to himself and others that he's as every bit as capable as his brother in terms of heroism, often having to face enemies far stronger than him in situations that a boy his age shouldn't be exposed to.

From Phase 3

---