I really wonder if China’s power works on homosexual men. Do they also fall in love with her? Or do they just think she’s really pretty but she’s not my type? Or do they want to be friends with her?
Honestly I think about that a lot.
in my interpretation, china is jusy very very desirable in general. it doesn’t have to be “i’m sexually/romantically attracted to her” (while sometimes and a lot of times it is) it can just be “oh my god she’s beautiful i want to give her Things”
So, I just want to put this out there, but have we considered the fact that the rules might be different for ‘permanently’ bonded remnants? (i’m assuming that derek will ‘cure’ tanith because it seems like too good an opportunity to miss to tear our hearts out further) but what If when Tanith is remnant free, the fact that she was bonded would mean she would remember everything. she would remember killing all those people. she would remember Sanguine. and she would remember learning that Ghastly was dead. and she would remember not caring. and that’s what I think will really hurt her.
based on this post, I was thinking about the title ‘the dying of the light’ again. so Valkyrie was the light in Skulduggery’s life. it made him a better person. so if she dies, maybe he’ll become lord vile and everything will go boom boom pow
So I don’t know if anyone’s thought of this yet, but is it possible that China Sorrows and Gordon Edgley are Valkyrie’s real parents?
Just a thought I had based on a few things:
- Valkyrie looks a lot like China.
- Her personality is a lot like Gordon’s, and they seem very close for uncle and niece.
- When China meets the Echo Stone Gordon, he is one of the few people she is genuinely warm and nice towards. (Valkyrie being one of the others)
- At Valkyrie’s 18th birthday toast, Desmond Edgley mentions that he didn’t first see her until she was two days old, which seems a bit unusual since fathers are supposed to be there for the birth.
- If China had a child, that child would be in a lot of danger and would be a target for people wanting revenge on China (Eliza Scorn, Skulduggery Pleasant, etc.) so giving baby Valkyrie to Desmond and Melissa for safekeeping would make a lot of sense.
- People seem to fall in love with Valkyrie at first sight a lot (just like they fall in love with China a lot). For example, Fletcher, Caelan, Aaron Boyle, Owen from the club Val and Fletch went to, Alan from the coffee shop, etc.
- In Last Stand of Dead Men, Dusk promises Valkyrie that one day he’ll tell her a secret about herself that even she doesn’t know. Since Dusk’s tasted Valkyrie’s blood, it’s possible he could tell she was related to China from that.
sp tag the concept i am here to pitch to you tonight is: what if the section of val’s brain/personality/consciousness/whatever that is devoted to being darquesse 24/7 also encompasses the part of her that still secretly appreciates late-nineties-to-mid-2000s pop-punk music as much as she did at age 12. what if darquesse destroys buildings while mouthing the lyrics to green day’s 1997 single “hitchin’ a ride,” is what i’m asking here
‘It will tear your soul in two’ is possibly the scariest thing that I took from that video, I mean who’s soul? We’ve already tried to split Val/Darquese but it could refer to trying again? Skulduggery splitting with Lord Vile? What about everyone splitting from their magical side? What about Tanith and the Remnant? Then obviously he’s also referring to the entire SP fandom too
Cry with me siblings
so some very quick basic analysis after looking the poem over some more (any bolding is added by me):
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.‘Do not go gentle—’ the whole idea of this poem is that you should rebel against death and inevitability. Valkyrie has been treating Darquesse’s takeover as an inevitability, even though Skulduggery attempted to convince her otherwise.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.This makes me very suspicious—consider Tanith, with her unwavering devotion to Darquesse, and a potential bad ending where Darquesse wins.Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.This one can refer to Saracen and Dexter. The only two remaining ‘good’ characters in the series apart from the Edgely clan, however they are more active characters. In spite of their active status, though, Dex and Saracen have impacted the overall story very little—they couldn’t prevent the deaths of any of their friends, couldn’t see Erskine’s betrayal, and cannot stop Skulduggery’s self-destructive behavior.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.This verse I basically attribute to Darquesse, with little to no contest.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.This one I attribute to Skulduggery. First of all, ‘grave men near death’—it’s a pretty simple leap to connect that to Skul.However the other line I’m considering is ‘blind eyes that blaze like meteors.’ This sounds really similar to some descriptions of Skulduggery we’ve seen in the books. Okay, he doesn’t have eyes, but the ‘blazing eyes’ imagery invokes someone very angry and intense.And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.This last line is Dylan Thomas referring specifically to his own father in the original text—however when you put it in the context of the SP series it makes me worry considerably for Desmond and by extension the Edgely clan.I’ve already written about how the Edgely clan has suffered multiple casualties to to the magical world. However, also consider that Desmond is a direct descendant of the Ancients, and it’s that bloodline that gave Val such unusual magical strength. Desmond also has a tendency to turn into a papa wolf when his family is threatened.The combo of those two attributes couple with the end verse makes me think that perhaps Desmond will have a much larger role in tDotL than he did in previous books.Please feel free to contest or differentiate from my interpretations! I think this poem is super important in the context of the book and I really would love to see what other people think.
Deacon Maybury changes peoples personalities and makes them forget about magic right
what if it’s the only way to stop Darquesse
Bury both her and Valkyrie under layers of magic until she’s not even Stephanie anymore. She’s just some really buff beautiful girl who loves fighting and feels like she’s missing something important
and even though there’s this weird guy in a nice car who seems to just come and watch her every so often she always feels safe.
And every year, on her birthday, even when she’s 130 and the oldest person in the world she gets a stick in the post.
so you know the theory about saracen having x-ray vision, right? (if not, it’s toward the bottom of the page)
i’ve sort of quietly accepted this as canon for a few months
but i just suddenly realized
if that’s true, he knows who Vile is.
oh christ i just had an awful thought while writing those analytical posts
what if the whole sp series is just darquesse’s supervillain backstory
i don’t think this is the case but what if sp is a prequel series to a future series about a mage kid who has to save the world from the likes of darquesse???