Continued Yapping About Resurrection (because I Said So):

Continued yapping about Resurrection (because I said so):

The mutual issue that Skulduggery and Valkyrie have in book 10 is that they both place the other on a pedestal of perfection while simultaneously degrading themselves.

For example, Skulduggery views Valkyrie as someone who is fundamentally good but sometimes screws up and himself as someone who is fundamentally evil and tries to be good but fails whenever Valkyrie isn’t around to remind him what good is, hence the past six years where he’s been helping build a goddamn dictatorship. He also killed a guy who was investigating said dictatorship. Not to mention how he acted when Valkyrie turned into Darquesse in LSoDM, meaning that he has a lot of reasons for why he thinks that way about himself.

Meanwhile, he’s known Valkyrie for literally twelve years at that point, and she has always tried to be a good person and help as many people as possible (and for the most part, she has succeeded). And since Skulduggery tries his best to be good, Valkyrie is a person he can actually look up to and depend on, and he puts so much emphasis on that in Resurrection, to the point where it actually starts to drive her back.

And the REASON it drives her back is because she puts him on a pedestal too. To her, he’s an incredibly powerful sorcerer who’s capable of doing what needs to get done and keeping on going, no matter what. This is in opposition to how she sees herself, where she has weird powers she doesn’t know how to use, she’s too scared and traumatized to keep pushing forward, and most of all, she’s semi-responsible for the deaths of over a thousand people and that fact crushes her. It’s what makes her feel like she deserves to die, that she deserves the glares she gets whenever she goes outside and the beatings that people give her in random alleyways.

And seeing Skulduggery put so much trust and faith in her even when she views herself as worthless is scary because she feels that she’ll mess everything up when he’s fully capable of fixing the problem all by himself. And so when a problem arises that makes him disappear and forces Valkyrie to take charge of the situation, she spends a significant amount of time telling herself that everything is fine and that Skulduggery doesn’t need her.

The problem is that both of them view the other as something close to perfect, or as close to perfect as a person can be. And that causes a lot of miscommunication between them because they refuse to sit down and actually talk about their problems with each other. It takes fucking Russian roulette for these two to look each other in the eye and even admit that there is a problem.

Another issue with Skulduggery that I think manifests a bit in book 10 is that to admit that Valkyrie has raging fucking depression and actually needs help, he also needs to properly come to terms with the fact that the way he treated her as a teenager was awful. I could go on for hours about literally how bad he was for her, but it can really be summarized as using her as a child soldier. And to come to terms with that, he also has to then reflect on the issues with their relationship and to fix them, if they even can be fixed.

And the idea that your entire relationship with a loved one is built on abuse is a really scary one, and I think he wanted to skirt around it as best he could. But it’s kind of Valkyrie’s main problem, and he does eventually realize that, even if the two of them still refuse to go to goddamn therapy (hence his conversation with Omen in Bedlam. Absolute wild thing to talk about with a fifteen-year-old).

HEY FELLAS I DIDN’T INTEND FOR THIS TO BE SO LONG AGAIN

Why would you do this to me

I have the curse of knowing exactly what type of fashion I wanna wear but also knowing that I need top surgery before I’d ever willingly wear it

Sebastian Tao saying that he would have picked a fight with Skulduggery over child-soldier Valkyrie if he had been there was very sweet, but I think he was severely misunderstanding how different the Skulduggery he knew was from book 1 Skulduggery.

Because wow, all his years with Valkyrie had really mellowed out Skulduggery by the time Omen even met him.

Like, book 1 Skulduggery was an absolute mess. He’d pick fights in back alleys and then drag Ghastly into it, he had it out for Serpine and was constantly looking for something he could use to get him in trouble, he was mean and would physically assault nearly anyone who pissed him off, and he was, you know…willing to take a child soldier, which is something that phase 2 Skulduggery would probably have avoided. All this while the Council of Elders didn’t want to deal with him, and so he was allowed to roam nearly unchecked.

Ghastly and China, who knew him best at that point, thought of him as a restless troublemaker who should be avoided. The other Dead Men were actually relieved when he started hanging out with Valkyrie, because it meant that there was finally somebody to keep him in check, even if that somebody was a teenage girl.

This was the same Skulduggery who had many people chew him out over Valkyrie and really didn’t care, which is definitely something Sebastian also didn’t know about.

Meanwhile, the Skulduggery that Sebastian/Omen knew had many of these features, but greatly toned down. He mostly avoids picking violent fights with random people, regrets what he did to Valkyrie, so on and so forth. They really are different people and phase 2 Skulduggery would prooobably punch book 1 Skulduggery if he ever met him.

It means literally nothing, but it was an interesting comment from Sebastian that got me thinking about it and now I’ve written this whole wall of text.

Been thinking about this a while so as the Shattering Spirits are being rolled back soon here are my thoughts on the Sky Economy. a VERY long post.

Event Spacing (1)

I joined right after Season of Prophecy ended, Season of Dreams was to start in about 3~ weeks? not sure since it was a long while ago.

Later seasons I notice rather than getting up to a month of season downtime, we now get as little as less than a week to break between seasons. Season gaps became slim. Hardly time for off season daily candle quests that make racking up normal candles easier.

On top of this, “Days Of —“ Events became more and more prominent, being mashed on top of Travelling spirits and new off season cosmetics that cost white candles. There’s no room to breathe, its almost a punishment to players who’ve taken breaks from the game after burning out from having to candle run consistently just for new items. Cosmetics that they miss out on get price hikes from their original value in reruns with the new ticket system. It’s a cycle of fomo and it’s what’s killing the playerbase in the first place.

The lack of spacing seems pretentious in a way, since nearly with every update, a new game breaking bug is rolled out, makes it feel ironic since season down gaps have been cut for seemingly no reason.

Ticketing (2)

A while ago TGC added the ticket system denoting inflation in the sky economy, it was made to remedy the fact people can’t keep affording everything with candles.

Yes it did help somewhat, as the tickets are very easy to collect, but with 3 new ftp cosmetics that are bought with these tickets and some things costing up to a weeks worth of tickets it’s easy to have to skip these items because some people just don’t want to do more daily searching on top of the already daily quests from the questgiver.

Returning items not only are insanely expensive but additionally do not equate the energy spent grinding in their original release (The Days of Sunlight towels from last year have no right being that expensive whatsoever.)

Candles (3)

Early 2021, around March the Daily Light “Chevron” was rolled out as a way to farm light without feeling the pressure to grind insanely hard daily (since very many people were asking for a way to get candles more leisurely, since candle running was very time consuming)

It became redundant as the prices for candle items was driven up very far. Not to be so “back in my day” but genuinely the need to candle run extensively in the way we do now wasn’t as big as it is now.

This is funny. Because now I see people asking for the same thing. A faster, less grindy way to candle run.

the first in game event I participated in was the first Days of Bloom, the cherry blossom cape was 70 candles (which to me was VERY expensive at the time). The following year’s wisteria cape cost 105, then the next tulip cape cost 110. The first price driveup was already kind of nuts to me (is the cape really worth a 35 candle mark up to the first one?) It’s hard to even prepare with the aforementioned small event gaps, it’s punishing to newer players and players who’ve skipped events out of burnout without any time to prepare for candles unless you pay real money to get candles quickly.

Assuming an average person clears their chevrons daily (15-17 candles) and heart trades with their friends (-3 for every person traded with) it’s hard to afford everything that comes your way. Travelling spirit prices are near doubling what they used to, items now costing over 100 candles with the inclusion of the batshit expensive nesting shop it really burns people out knowing you can’t afford everything you want in a game you already grind daily in. It’s demanding.

IAP items (4)

Do I even have to talk about this. The Sunlight Chunky sandals cost more than you can buy actual sandals. Why are in game cosmetics costing up to $25 USD. Huh. I could buy a whole meal for that.

Cute little items cost only a dollar before but now they’re like $3 and its kind of bonkers to me. I have to pay $3 whole dollars for a tiny jellyfish on my shoulder. is this not crazy. im not crazy right? dont wanna get deep into this but jesus my wallet

So why do I care so much? (5)

Sky is a game I hold near and dear to my heart. But I notice people including myself have stopped playing for the same, very painful reason. The fact that Sky is very buggy with little to no compensation to players as well as the Economy being so. So very bad. as well as the shithole that was shattering (the hype for that season was so crazy because yay lore!!! no actually Fuck you crab stunlock 100000)

I know people will be “Well you don’t HAVE to buy — item”, but the game’s userbase is driven completely on grinding for new cosmetics. The active playerbase is driven on just candlerunning. The lore is interesting but there’s hardly anything in game to go off of, there’s little to no curiosity for what the game is and it’s story because it gets more and more arbitrary as TGC refuses to talk about it in game. (Jenova Chen saying that games are not an effective storytelling format really pisses me off sorry)

The cycle of fomo that is essentially required to keep the playerbase going just makes me feel like this game is made on popsicle sticks and prayers (thanks aspen for this line). I can’t find myself to love sky in the same way I used to as a moth.

anyways this is really messy. Sorry. but like damn this is kind of a sad thing to me. made this post because a rant on yt got misogynistic in the middle out of nowhere so i wanted to give my own take minus the misogyny

minecraft steve is the most whitewashed character on the planet and no one talks about it