The Art Of Starting Over - Prologue: Before

Playing with Fire cover comparisons

Annnnd we’re back! This time with PWF, which in my opinion is rather underrated? Definitely not the best book in the series, but I like it better than the other middle books. YEAH, GET READY FOR UNPOPULAR OPINIONS. Also, apparently almost every country universally decided the main character gets to appear, so this time there’s lot of Val! Yay!

Anyway, this list has some weird mixups. Let’s go.

1.

Indonesian Cover

In my opinion? The best Skulduggery Pleasant cover, ever. It’s beautifully drawn, the compositions great, the PERSONALITY!! the font is not the greatest (that blue is… out of nowhere) but good god I will forgive for that BEAUTIFUL val. this is the only official art i’ve ever seen that actually looks like a pretty teenage girl, so, props. I also love the hand tucked into her jacket. “yeah, im shooting fire, but it’s not a big deal.”

also, indonesian artist learned to draw skeletons!! it is kinda weird to see him standing far back not doing anything, but it works better here than other places…

2.

UK Hardcover

This and #3 are really close, but this is probably one of my favorites of the original hardcovers. I like the lemon/lime color scheme, and the composition is great - maybe the best of all of them. The hands popping up out of the frame really work, and the splatter effects actually look good here! Yay! I … kinda suspect someone else did the composition here, lol. Not sure how I feel about the bats, but. Eh. 

3.

Thai Cover

im sorry about the sticker/website, this is the biggest I could find :,(

ANYWAY! DAMN! Once again, love the framing, and especially love the hand creeping out! The chains are great, the fiery background is great … also the grotesquery is creepy as fuck, much scary then any of the art Percival’s done of it. thoo…. why put the villain on the front cover, is my question? 

4. 

UK paperback.

It’s okay. Playing wirth fire, so… Skulduggery plays with fire. Composition is good, colors are good. Not much to say.

5.

Bulgarian Cover

Yay, Val!! And Skul lurking protectively in the background. This one mostly comes down to me not liking the art style much. Also val’s weird very ooc (and age inappropriate??) top. Aight.

6.

US Ebook

You know how I said the Indonesian/Bulgarian covers with Skul standing back worked? Yeah, this is an example of one that.. doesn’t. Seriously, there are vampires coming at them and Skulduggery is … actually, I’m not sure what Skulduggery is doing. What is he looking at? … SKULDUGGERY, SHE’S 13.

Speaking of that background, it’s awful. I can’t believe we’re only about halfway down the list and it’s already this dismal. Oy vey.

This is a cute Val, though. Yay. Why does Val never age in Percival’s covers? Questions, questions.

7.

US Hardcover

this is hilariously awful to me in the way the czech cover of book 1 is. it’s just so HIDEOUS, I LOVE IT. i bought a copy of this in powell’s and it’s my ugly baby

people do not run like this. I mean, for one, they do not hover off the ground like this, but the arms should be opposite the legs (so right leg forward, right arm back). Both of them are wearing brown, for some reason? Val’s coat is super short? i don’t know, man. I don’t know. 

8.

Serbian Cover

It’s a massive improvement over the last cover, though it’s still a mess. Their photoshopping is a bit more coherent, at least. Look at val’s emo bangs. And I’m sure she’s very proud to be 2 inches taller than Skulduggery.

Also, the bats return. Were there bats in this book??

9. 

Czech Cover

Well.

I’m impressed that they did worse.

it’s like Skulduggery cosplaying billy-ray sanguine, I don’t even KNOW. 

10.

American Paperback

Exec #1: “well, the skeleton cover really didn’t work here… We think it might have been too scary. What should we do for this reboot?”

Exec #2: “what’s the title?”

exec #1: “Playing with Fire.”

Exec #2: “Hand. Fire. DONE, BOOM”

at least they TRIED with the first one by making a scepter. ths is just… utter laziness. 

“Vampires are just part of the problem!” what was wrong with don’t try this at home?? IT MAKES EVEN MORE SENSE HERE. it’s the only one of these covers with a tagline, too. lord. 

This is amazing!! Thank you :) I really love the idea of Leia realizing she misses Han pestering her and then interrupting his work for a change

Since you asked for a number that might or might not be for a fic prompt: How about 7?

Ah, the last of the ficlets! I'm sorry for taking so long on this (and...honestly, I'm unsure of the quality here, but...you know, these are mainly exercises, so).

Number 7 on this list was "visiting them at their place of work", so here you are!

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

She didn’t want to invite trouble merely by acknowledging it, but the Command Center had been painfully quiet for her entire shift, and Leia needed something to happen. Not a disaster, mind; they already experienced those on a regular enough basis, and it wasn’t like she was looking for an adrenaline rush. No, she just hadn’t seen anyone except the staff on duty, which was…strange.

Strange? It’s strange that the only people I’ve seen today are the ones I’m sharing a shift with?

It was, though. Her day was usually interrupted by a number of beings, from a single smuggler to an entire squadron of pilots, all of whom thought their own concerns more important than anything she could possibly be busy with. The complete lack of contact from any of them was unnerving.

Well, the Rogues were out on a mission, so the lack of contact from them was to be expected. Han and Chewie weren’t, though. They weren’t due to leave for another run for several days, and Leia was certain she had heard loud cursing in Basic, Corellian, and Shyriiwook emanate from a nearby hangar when she had grabbed lunch from the mess.

The fact that she had even had to get lunch herself was strange. It shouldn’t have been — it shouldn’t have been — but the number of times she missed the lunch window only to have Han or Chewie or Luke show up with her midday meal probably outnumbered the times she had sat down and had a proper lunch without interruption.

Leia’s shift had ended a solid half hour ago, but she found herself waiting in the Command Center for…something. Someone? She rarely had so much time to devote to thoughts of her own movements and often relied on outside indications that she should be somewhere: an alarm, a meeting alert, someone stopping by on their way to dinner…

Someone.

Right. Han almost always annoyed her until she gave in and ate dinner in the mess when he was planetside. When he wasn’t…well, she was usually too busy to notice until her stomach growled, at which point she ate a ration bar or two.

I wonder where he is. It was a silly thought; they had no agreement, no contract demanding that he irritate her into eating away from her desk, but she had apparently started relying on that outside cue more than any other.

Leia walked to the mess. She heard loud banging, followed by Han shouting to Chewie as she passed the hangar where the Falcon was housed. What is wrong with that disaster of a ship now? she wondered.

As she entered the dinner line, a thought occurred to her: Han hadn’t bothered her about dinner. He might have gone with just Chewie — it was possible they were in a hurry and couldn’t bother with going to get her — but she wanted to be sure. Leia caught the attention of the ensign spooning a brilliant orange mystery grain into containers. “Have Captain Solo or Chewbacca come through yet?”

The ensign shook his head. “No, ma’am. Haven’t seen ‘em.”

Leia checked her chrono. The dinner line was minutes away from closing, and Han and Chewie had certainly sounded preoccupied. She asked the ensign for three meals and carried the stack out of the mess hall toward the hangar.

The area surrounding the Falcon looked as if the ship had been sick. Parts — old, new, refurbished, destroyed — were strewn everywhere, and Leia couldn’t discern any meaningful order just by looking at them.

Han hung upside down from the belly of the ship, his legs completely consumed by the Falcon’s hull, while Chewie handed him a tool of some kind. Before the smuggler disappeared entirely into the ship, he caught sight of Leia and scowled.

“No time for whatever you’ve got for us, Worship. We’re workin’ on a deadline and we’ve gotta—”

“Dinner?” she interrupted, lifting the boxed meals emphatically. “One of the guys on dinner duty mentioned you two hadn’t been through yet, and you’ve seemed busy all day, so I thought…” She shrugged.

Han blinked, checked his chrono, and shook his head once. “Didn’t realize it was so late.”

Leia nodded. “I figured as much.” She set the boxes on the lid of a nearby crate. “I’ll leave these here. You may want to get to them pretty quick; whatever grain they served looked half-congealed by the time I went through the line.”

[Thank you, Princess,] Chewie said.

Leia nodded. “You’re welcome.” She turned and took a step away from the Falcon, intending to eat…she wasn’t sure. Maybe her quarters, or back at her desk just so she wouldn’t be completely alone.

“Hey, Leia?” Han called. She turned to look in his direction right as he freed himself from the guts of the ship and twisted just enough to land on his feet. He took a few steps toward her. “You wanna eat here with us?”

Leia nodded and walked back toward Han and Chewie. “Yes,” she said with a smile. “That’d be nice.”

Time for random Dexter headcanons:

- He totally uses his magic instead of a microwave whenever he wants to warm up something. It´s way faster and so much cooler.

- He doesn´t like to stay in one place for too long but if he has to, then he´d always chose his apartment in Dublin. It´s home. Whenever he goes there, he leaves lots of trinkets he found during his travels. By now the apartment looks like a tourist shop. The other dead men call him a clutterer but Val thinks it´s wicked. 

- There´s a framed picture of all the Dead Men together on his nightstand but whenever the others come over, he hides it because he knows that Saracen and Erskine would make fun of him.

- He's an overthinker. Sometimes everything gets just too much and it´s just too much pain. In those moments he really needs a drink - or rather one too many. 

- While Saracen is the womanizer, Dexter is known to seek comfort in someone else´s bed when he´s drunk. 

- All the overthinking causes insomnia. When things are really bad and he lays awake the whole night, he´ll watch documentaries on YouTube. That´s why he´s an expert on the most random and most useless subjects.

- Cats just love him. Even the really grumpy ones. He´s like a magnet for them.

- He heard about what went down between Ghastly and Tanith from Erskine but didn´t realize how much it hurt Ghastly until he talked to him at the Requiem Ball. He never forgave himself for not checking up on his friend sooner. 

- Out of all the dead men he was closest to Saracen but Erskine was a close second. That´s why his betrayal hit him especially hard. 

- Most of the time he prefers to listen and doesn´t talk too much unless he has to say something important. That´s why he´s the go-to person for the other dead men if they need to talk about something. 

There are so many people in this fandom who just hate Valkyrie or think she´s annoying, but honestly I love her character. 

She´s so incredibly flawed. She´s arrogant and rude. She often doesn´t think about collateral damage and thinks the end justifies the means, because that´s what she learned from Skulduggery. All those things make her a round and more dimensional character. I don´t wanna read about someone perfect. perfect is boring. I wanna read about someone who fucks up, someone who has bad character traits. Valkyrie does. She fucks up, she sometimes is a shitty person, but she always gets up again and tries her best.

In spite of her many flaws, she doesn´t stop trying to be a better person. Unlike Skulduggery she is able to get over herself and to admit that her (past) behavior is often questionable. Even though fate dealt her a shitty hand with the whole being Darquesse thing, she still tries her best. Obviously, she didn´t handle the situation very well back in phase 1, but she still basically was a kid back then. A very frightened kid who was told by Skulduggery again and again not to tell anyone else because they would find a solution... 

So yeah, Skulduggery and everything in phase 1 fucked Valkyrie up, but at the end of the day she at least tries to be a good person and i respect her for that. Also, can we all just take a moment to appreciate how fucking much she loves her family and Xena?

Serpine wore these glasses all through seasons of war just to remind people whose side he’s really on

Irish Sanctuary : Don't worry, we've sent out our finest team to find Nefarian Serpine.

The Dead Men :

They’re back!!

Also can’t y’all just imagine Dexter’s face when Valkyrie said “I’m with Luke on this one. They sound the same to me.” 

Okay, but can we all just appreciate how fluffy and soft Sanguine looks even though he´s drawn in red and black only? 

I doodled Billy-Ray and Dusk on my to do board