History Literature / Skagboys

* HollywoodDateless: Really Mark? Shags with eighteen different girls and counting at the age of 22? Even if some were rubbish, that's still more than the average reader can hope to achieve in their lifetime. Its only by frequency comparison that he can be said to be going through a dry spell relative to Sick Boy.
** Averted by Spud, who has only had three encounters by this point.

%%* CrapSackWorld

%%* {{Deuteragonist}}: Sick Boy.
* DinnerAndAShow: When Alexander brings Alison to visit his family at a barbecue shortly after she starts working for him, his sister and mother confront him over his separation from his wife and children.

%%* DrugsAreBad
%%* EruditeStoner

%%* FromBadToWorse
%%* FunetikAksent

%%* RingRingCrunch: The first sentence of the "Dirty Dicks" chapter

%%* StartOfDarkness: For Renton and especially Sick Boy.

* BreakTheCutie: Depending on how much you like their characters, arguably Renton, Spud, Keezbo, Second Prize, Alison, Leslie and Sick Boy (though this was [[Literature/{{Trainspotting}} before]] his DespairEventHorizon...) among others. Its not entirely clear if Matty was ever what you might call a cutie, and even if he was, he seems to have broken long before even this prequel.

%%* ADateWithRosiePalms

** A less fatal example for Second Prize. While his alcoholism is quite dysfunctional in this novel, he eventually gets to the point where he can kick the habit, train for another shot at professional football and sip an orange juice. But ''Trainspotting'' shows that the sobriety didn't last. It took much longer until the time of ''{{Porno}}'' before it stuck.

[[quoteright:265:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/skagboys_2_6336.jpg]]

* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents

* BiggusDickus: Wee Davie, apparently
* BlackComedy

** Lesley: Whom appears in Trainspotting and is mentioned in ''Porno''.

* CountryMatters: Par for the course in a Welsh novel. However, Matty's use stands out. Much more often than not, he simply refers to everyone else as "Cunt". Its no exaggeration to say this helps to make him one of the least sympathetic of the protagonists, and that really does say something when [[CountryMatters country matters]] is tossed around as freely as it is by almost every other main (and peripheral) character.

* CrapSackWorld
* ADateWithRosiePalms

* {{Deuteragonist}}: Sick Boy.
* [[ScaryTeeth Disgusting Teeth]]: We hear about the decline of Renton's teeth from white to yellow and Matty's from yellow to brownish. Toothpaste isn't as valuable as heroin to these lads.
** The White Swan's teeth, meanwhile, are [[SarcasmMode lovingly described]] as having a green and brown tinge, like [[Music/SexPistols Johnny Rotten's]].

* DrugsAreBad
* EruditeStoner

* FromBadToWorse
* FunetikAksent

* [[IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming Idiosyncratic Chapter Naming]]: The gang's more disturbing struggles with heroin really kick off in Junk Dilemmas No. 1-4, with trademark italics. This is an important CallForward to ''Literature/{{Trainspotting}}''. And then you have The Rehab Diaries, intermittently charting 45 days of Renton's cold turkey at St. Monan's. Also, there's Notes On An Epidemic 1-7, explaining the myriad events leading to the skag addiction cum HIV infestation Edinburgh played host to in the eighties.

* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope
* NobodyPoops: Averted. Did you expect anything else?

* RingRingCrunch: The first sentence of the "Dirty Dicks" chapter
* StartOfDarkness: For Renton and especially Sick Boy.

* WretchedHive: Leith, where most of the economy was built around the "now practically defunct" port of Edinburgh. If it weren't part of the city it would clearly be a DyingTown.

-->'''Renton''': But what did ye say tae get him tae come back inside?\\

->'''''Renton''': But what did ye say tae get him tae come back inside?\\

'''Cop''': Does it fuck; it gets bleedin worse...''

* CountryMatters: [[CaptainObvious Par for the course in a Welsh novel.]] However, Matty's use stands out. Much more often than not, he simply refers to everyone else as "Cunt". Its no exaggeration to say this helps to make him one of the least sympathetic of the protagonists, and that really does say something when [[CountryMatters country matters]] is tossed around as freely as it is by almost every other main (and peripheral) character.

* BreakTheCutie: Depending on how much you like their characters, arguably Renton, Spud, Keezbo, Second Prize, Alison, Leslie and Sick Boy (though this was [[{{Trainspotting}} before]] his DespairEventHorizon...) among others. Its not entirely clear if Matty was ever what you might call a cutie, and even if he was, he seems to have broken long before even this prequel.

* DoomedByCanon: Anybody who's already read ''{{Trainspotting}}'' will already know that [[spoiler: Matty and Tommy will die of AIDS. By the end of ''Skagboys'', the final "Notes On An Epidemic" chapter lists a number of HIV positive patients, one of whom is Matty.]]

* VitriolicBestBuds: Before Renton and Sick Boy started to [[{{Trainspotting}} actively resent each other]] and eventually [[Literature/{{Porno}} turn mutually treacherous]], they just [[CallForward pantomimed insulting each other]] for their own amusement and that of others.

** The White Swan's teeth, meanwhile, are [[SarcasmMode lovingly described]] as having a green and brown tinge, like [[TheSexPistols Johnny Rotten's]].

* PlaceWorseTHanDeath: Wester Hailes has this reputation for Leithers, perhaps more so here than in any other Welsh novel.