YMMV / Skagboys

• Moral Event Horizon: Simon's seduction of a neighbor's teenage daughter, Maria. Once he realizes he wasn't the first guy she slept with, he quickly introduces her to drugs and prostitution.
  • He starts by ingratiating himself with her elderly alcoholic father Coke. He shoots up on heroin in a pub when he could have stood by Coke against an ex-cop barman, who beat him to death. Coke's wife Janey is encouraged by Sick Boy to continue claiming benefits even after his passing, helped in part by her being seduced by the young snake. He then proceeds to grass her up and remove her from the picture, after which Maria is easy prey for him. He tries to fool both himself and Maria that he's in love with her as a means of justifying his trivial guilt.
  • Furthermore when he allows Maria to be raped by her father's killer.
• Wheelchair Woobie: Wee Davie has chronic cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and extreme autism. The odds of all of these occurring in one person are approximately four billion to one.
• The Woobie: Several.
  • Alison, who loses her mother to breast cancer, slits her wrists and succumbs herself to heroin addiction along with Lesley. She does gradually heal herself over the course of the next two books, though.
  • Maria as the first sexual victim of Sick Boy's wicked ways.
  • Carmelita, the Spanish housemaid of the lawyer. Her mother is also ill, her boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident, and Donaldson's family are bad employers... it's all too much for her. She perceives the Skagboys as sent by God to save her instead of the lucky accident that it was during a house burglary meant to fuel their drug and drink habits.