#cassdug

can you please draw cassandra and skug pleasepleaseplease?

God he is the fucking worst patient. Any therapist would hate him.

The problem with Skug is that he's not just one type of Problem Patient. He's:

A standard-issue armed forces macho man, which tends to mean he'll be stubborn as a mule, very much under the influence of the toxic masculinity culture you get in the army, and would rather pull out his own teeth than admit to having a weakness.

Special forces! Which is a special brand of pain in the ass because it lets him deflect with responses like I'm not at liberty to discuss that and that information is classified.

Active-duty law enforcement! That doesn't necessarily make him a difficult patient, but it does mean that as his therapist you know at all times that this mess is out there on the streets somewhere and he's legally allowed to carry a gun.

Born and raised in a time long before mental health conditions were understood or cared for, so in combination with the "macho soldier" thing, he's more likely to be dismissive of or combative towards new ideas and diagnoses. He's spent multiple lifetimes white-knuckling his way through his PTSD on stubbornness and spite alone, so he absolutely does not want some pencil pusher telling him that he should try meditation.

An incredibly charismatic, highly intelligent, witty conversationalist, which, in someone who wants to be in therapy, is a wonderful thing. But in someone like Skug, it means he's great at deflecting questions, diverting the conversation, and generally avoiding doing any actual therapy in his sessions.

Very slow to trust, and lowkey neurotic about his privacy - there's a huge amount of stuff that he even keeps from Val until he's forced to reveal it, and she's his favourite person in the world. When he shuts down about something, he shuts down hard, and there's no getting past his emotional armour until he wants to take it off.

Honestly I think the only way Skug would actually get anything out of therapy is if it was competitive - if there was someone else involved that he could be better than.

Was in need of some good vibes so I present

Them

AJDJAJDJAJDJAJDA THANK YOU IM GLAD

SUFFER WITH ME

OKAY SO

here's the rundown

DEAD MEN

ghasdug: they don't really use pet names. ghastly sometimes calls skug skul, which skug hates, but he gets away with it by dint of having done it since they were teens. they get together at 16 and for most of their relationship skug doesn't use affectionate nicknames or pet names for anyone. He does sometimes fondly call ghastly bespoke, though.

sexter: dexter is just dex, mostly - not just with saracen, but with all his lovers. saracen is like 5'9 to dexter's 6ft, so dexter fondly refers to him as big guy.

shudderkin: shudder isn't a pet name person, but he is pretty much the only person who regularly calls larrikin by his first name, rover. on the flipside, larrikin will answer to pretty much anything, and shudder promptly gets nicknamed altar boy, in honour of all that religious guilt he carries around.

other: ghastly was a sergeant major during the war. everyone who doesn't outrank him still occasionally whines "but sarge," if he's telling them off for something.

BAD BOY BRIGADE

violent: their relationship is a closely guarded secret for a long time, so in public they're professional: vile calls mevolent your grace, and mevolent calls vile general. in private, over the years, mevolent will sometimes fondly refer to vile as rouquin ("little redhead" or "little ginger" in Middle French). vile doesn't use pet names at all, but he does call mev mevolent, rather than an honorific title, which isn't something many people get to do

nefmev: they don't do pet names, especially not from nef. he's pretty smitten with mevolent, but mev sees him as a convenient casual hookup whenever he wants one, so he won't get away with over-familiarity in the same way vile could if he was the pet name type. he's one of mevolent's closest advisors, and in the war room, to a certain degree he gets to talk to mev like an equal and argue with him, but that doesn't really carry over to the bedroom. nef is used to messed up power dynamics, so this never really strikes him as odd.

sorrowscorn: they're both rather fond of darling

baronscorn: they have their own little awkward thing where she calls him husband and he calls her wife. the rest of the court are not entirely sure whether these are affectionate pet names or whether they are just strange ultra-repressed oddballs who think that's how normal people speak. vile and mevolent have a running bet.

GOOD GUYS (MISC)

cassdug: she's not flowery at all about her pet names - he's usually either love or lovey, depending on her mood. he doesn't really go in for them with her, but he does call her cassie in private, which is. very unusual for him, seeing as he pretty much never shortens names.

skulpine: skug calls nef nefarian. this is significant to nef because he isn't on first-name terms with leibniz!skug, and he gets visibly annoyed when og!skug keeps calling him nefarian in lsodm/tdotl. as his obsession shifts from skug-as-enemy to skug-as-ally, he starts to like the informality, because it makes him feel like skug likes him, and at a certain point he starts reciprocating by going from "the skeleton" or "detective pleasant" to skulduggery. these aren't actually pet names for skug though - he and og!serpine are on first name terms the whole way through book one, so this is normal to him.

valdug: pet names are pretty rare from him, and non-existent from her, but he does call her dear every now and then. neither of them are really the type that show affection like this.

skugwife: easily the most petnamey couple here - he's my darling and she's dearest. when they're courting and writing to each other, him at the front and her back in dublin, his letters begin with "dearest clary" and hers always end with "be safe, my darling". they keep this sappy shit up until she's killed, and even after - he vaguely remembers hallucinating her comforting him and telling him to come with me, my darling when he was being slowly tortured to death in serpine's dungeon, and that's the incident her ghost tells him about in tdotl - "we watched you suffer, we tried to get you to come with us".

vilekyrie: not so much a pet name, but i've always had a headcanon that when vile has nonverbal periods, he communicates with little shadow emojis like the sandman in rise of the guardians. he has one for her, like (🙎🏻), and mostly uses it to show he's worried about her if she's upset (🙎🏻❓) or that he's happy to see her/wants to show her something (🙎🏻❗) or say "I love you" (🙎🏻❤). sometimes his shadows will make the little signs in his sleep, and she can tell he's talking to her in his dreams. she sees it as almost a pet name. when he's talking though, they don't really have any.

(@bubblemoon66 do they have pet names in the spy!au? now im curious)

soldug: they mostly call each other by their surnames (pleasant/wreath) or by titles (detective/cleric), so their version of pet names is just...informality. if they use skulduggery or solomon, it's usually affectionate or concerned.

skug's siblings: after skug's mother is killed, he gets custody of the five youngest siblings. respair, the youngest, is only like four, and still has a little-kid lisp, and can't actually say 'skulduggery'. So skug gets to spend several unfortunate years as...well...skug thkug. respair grows out of it - eventually. raising kids is a thankless, embarrassing job.

BAD GUYS (MISC)

vilequesse: she frequently refers to him as my little toy or my pet. he doesn't really have one for her (but vilekyrie!au vile does have a sign for darquesse, and it's different to his one for val, which is. a relief for her tbh because for a while she's not actually sure whether he knows there's a difference)

So we meet her, and already it's established that they have some kind of a past. She's warm and friendly to him, and apparently well aware he's a shameless charmer. It's also implied she's aged considerably since she saw him last. We see him in Flirt Mode in the halloween ball story, so Flirty Skug is not out of character for him.

He's familiar enough with her process that he doesn't need to be told what to do. He knows what her steam room is, how it works, and what she wants from him. They've clearly done this together before.

Now, Skug is incredibly touch-averse. It takes him years to start hugging Val when she's upset and needs comforting, and a few more to start tolerating hugging for the sake of hugging. As late as LSODM, he's awkwardly trying to redirect her away from wanting a celebratory with, "I prefer the old tradition."

He has no problem telling someone to take their hands off him when he's not comfortable being touched - we see this with Abyssinia ("Hands. Off. The suit.") - but when Val starts crossing his prickly no-touch barrier to hug him, he grouses but doesn't really resist it. He could, but he doesn't, because he loves her to pieces.

Cassie is the only other person in the series who gets to hug him with minimal fuss. In fact, she's the third of only three people who get to be physically affectionate with Skulduggery in the whole series. He hugs Ghastly once, when he returns from being a statue, but Ghastly lets him initiate it. Cassie, like Val, knows the complaining is mostly for show and that she can hug him anyway.

He? Hates it when someone disparages her. This response to China is pretty savage, especially considering he has a tendency to let her little comments go unchallenged. It also bothers him when he thinks Val doesn't like her, because Val's opinion matters to him, and he wants her to like Cassie.

It's worth noting that Skug doesn't go to bat for hardly anyone like this. Even with Val, nine times out of ten he lets her fight her own battles when someone insults her, and only really intercedes if she's hurt or too fragile to take it on the chin. He gets defensive every time someone insults Cassie.

He fuckin?? Talks to her at night while Val is sleeping?? And more importantly, the conversations they usually have are apparently private enough that a) she answers the phone to him with a flirty comment and b) he feels the need to immediately blurt that she's on speaker? Val is an adult here. What the hell does Cassie talk to you about that's inappropriate for Val to hear, Skug? Huh?

Also? She makes the noise like he just killed her buzz? Cassie is the reason Skug knows what phone sex is, is what I'm getting at.

He. He knows where the spare key to her house is??? And none of her possessions have been sold or packed away despite her not having been there for two years? Did she just fuckin...leave everything to him and he hasn't been ready to touch any of it?

SHE TAUGHT HIM TO PLAY GUITAR AND HE STILL MISSES HER DEEPLY AND HASNT REALLY ACCEPTED THE LOSS

Anyway i refuse to accept her offscreen death & from now on, she was supposed to be targeted for the Night Of Knives but the assassin was unaware that since Val left, Skug's house had become painfully quiet and empty and he hardly spent any time there anymore bc he has an open invitation to Cassie's hippie hobbit hole. When the assassin arrived to kill her, she wasn't alone and Skug put the fear of god into him and saw him off with his tail between his legs thanks for coming to my ted talk