Pale 1.4
This review was fast lane comissioned by Aris Katsaris.
I'm going to be covering one more chapter of Pale, as well as a collection of supplemental texts from throughout the first arc. I'm not sure why these specific parts were chosen, but Aris implied that they're mostly worldbuilding stuff. Since the worldbuilding was (by far) the thing I liked best about what I've seen so far of "Pale," that would make sense.
The one mainline chapter I'll be starting with follows directly where I left off last time, and is once again from Avery's POV. Consecutive chapters from a single POV are a rarity in this serial, but maybe this will be Avery's big chance to have a personality. Let's see.
So, basically two full days for this trip. I hope they did a little more investigating than what was shown in the last chapter, because pretty much everything we saw them learning in it was stuff they could have just as easily been told in town.
Avery thinks that the other two are "so good at their own things." I'm really curious about what she thinks Lucy's thing is.
Dang, she's that sheltered? I remember she was homeschooled for a long time, but how long, exactly?
I suspected earlier that she might have some kind of mental health issues, and that suspicion is getting stronger. She's not just shy, this is some kind of anxiety disorder.
I wonder what faeries are, exactly, within PactPale's metaphysical framework.
They're associated with the seasons, and also with deception and illusions. The concept of change, maybe? Chaos, uncertainty, transition? That doesn't feel exactly right, but it doesn't feel exactly wrong either.
The story is really working hard to convince me that Lucy is a good investigator. I wish it had instead spent that effort on actually making Lucy a good investigator.
On the other hand, Verona is the one who figured out the hat trick before, and who expresses the most curiosity and enthusiasm about magic and how to use it in general. It is odd that she had more trouble getting her aura perception working than the others in 1.1, though. Maybe she's exceptionally good at active magic, but bad at passive magic? Something tied to her stubbornness; very self-reliant, but also very attached to her current view on things? That feels right for this kind of magic system. And like the kind of trade-off that Wildbow characters often have in their power sets.
Anyway, "play defence." What does Avery mean by that?
Wow, she's REALLY socially inept if this is the kind of thing that takes her by surprise.
Also, a reminder that much of Avery's limited social experience revolved around hockey. Between that and the deer costume, I'm starting to thing that part of Avery's shtick might be "Maximum Canada."
Have they met any individual entities who are nearly that old? "Since before man wore shoes." Granted, even just having any sort of continuity of tradition that go back that far would be incredibly formidable, of course.
Goddamnit.
See, this? THIS is the kind of moment that should be Lucy's time to shine, if she's meant to actually be a good detective. This is the kind of raw deductive reasoning and analysis of (potentially criminal) tactics that doesn't come down to having an affinity for magic specifically.
But instead, we have Verona doing the tactical thinking and deductive reasoning. For some reason.
Verona is both the most competent, and also the most convincingly written, dumbass edgy teenager of the three. I feel like most novice wizards who aren't from practitioner families are probably people like her. And that few of them survive for very long.
Lucy is finally showing at least a little bit of the cunning and scepticism that we've been repeatedly told she possesses. And also putting her assertiveness to work for the team, rather than against it. This is good. We need more of this.
And hey, Avery has a personality now! Probably the most clearly defined of the three, honestly. It's just hard to characterize someone who has shyness as a major trait until you get into their own POV (which the previous chapter really should have done more, but better late than never).
How is being around that going to make you a worse person, though?
She had a nice moment there, but Lucy is back to just saying dumb shit in confrontational ways now.
Matthew himself warned them about that, but it's the kind of thing that should bear repeating, so good on Charles for doing so.
Others have something that can make them "revert to instinct." Granted, so do humans, but those circumstances are exceptional enough that you wouldn't normally think to warn someone about them. I guess they only have humanlike "personalities" due to exposure, and those aren't indelible.
Most of what Charles is saying after that bit doesn't require any xenopsychological speculations, though. These things are true of most humans as well.
I actually forgot Matthew was in the car with them. Especially with how Charles talked about him earlier, as if he wasn't there (and Matthew himself didn't interject, either to protest or to concur, when it seems like he probably should have).
Huh?
Are Verona and Avery both autistic?
Or is Avery wondering how sarcasm interacts with the "only speak truth" law?
It's written very confusingly.
Bloody handprints all over. People with blood on their hands had a role in building these things, or at least have touched them a lot since then? People with guilty consciousnesses? People who Avery would think should have guilty consciousnesses if she knew what they'd done?
Or is it specifically the entity who killed the Carmine Beast running around groping everything?
Lol.
If I'm remembering correctly, John was described as a "dog of war," and is one of the ones who didn't say anything at the ceremony.
Interesting! This is a folkloric archetype that turns up in quite a few ghost stories, but that fantasy bestiaries rarely think to include. The ghost soldiers, the haunted battlefields, with spectres that don't *quite* actually correspond to any particular dead people.
I'm not sure how one of these spirits would manage to pry itself away from its spooky bone-strewn plain and settle down in Nowheresville, Canada. Maybe he was here before the town itself got built? Or was created from some First Nations butchery that coincided with its creation? Or maybe dogs of war can evolve beyond just violence-wraiths and become more like people, given time and experience. We've seen evidence that goblins and compound spirits can, so the same principle should apply.
About the warnings though...hmm. Dogs of war sound very direct in how they would harm a person. How would he be able to get around his oath not to hurt them, if he got set off? Maybe enough violent stimulation would just cause him to become a sufficiently different entity that he stops being the one who made the pact? That makes pacts in general seem kinda pointlessly weak though, since death of personality is such a ridiculously fuzzy concept without clear boundaries.
Also...this exposition is even clunkier than usual. And I'm noticing that when Wildbow has the characters go into exposition mode, their voices become identical. Charles explaining about certain types of Other is indistinguishable from Matthew explaining about certain types of Other. And...do we even know what a revenant is, yet? Do the girls know? Do we know if the girls know?
I don't think "lynching" is the right word here, since that (at least usually) refers to the vigilante killing of certain specific individuals. With how dogs of war are said to work, I think the type of event being described here is a pogrom.
Then again, with how dogs of war are said to work, I don't understand how the "dog meat" species can exist at all. Serial killers target people one at a time, generally at pretty staggered rates. They don't create the chaotic "we don't know who's still alive" situations that the dogs supposedly spawn from. To be fair, I don't know if this contradiction is on the author, or just on the character. Charles might be mixing something up, or pretending to understand more about the dogs than he actually does.
Interesting that the unnamed sick dog he ended up putting down was an "it" while John is a "he."
Anyway, it sounds like John and the other dog were not actually created here at Kennet. They came from somewhere else. What motives do a dog of war have to move somewhere quiet and live a peaceful life (the regrettably necessary partner-murder aside), I wonder?
So, the circle cuts off the "power lines" connected the dog to the past or present disaster that created it, and while they're cut off they're mortal. Fairly simple process for a fairly simply entity. It's just that you'd need to be a level 20 archmage to draw John's circle while the Iraq War is still ongoing.
Canada no longer participating in that war is a pertinent enough detail for Charles to mention. I wonder if that's why John (and his late companion?) came to Kennet? There happened to be a bunch of Canadian soldiers whose deaths (or whose killings? it could work either way, or even both ways) went into John's genesis, and some inherited memories guided him to their homeland? That could make sense.
Lmao Lucy. Insightful as always.
Are we not going to learn what the Hungry Choir is this chapter after all?
You what mate?
Either Verona is overstating things for dramatic effect, or her home life is significantly worse than the first chapter suggested.
You and me both, Avery.
I don't think I understood five consecutive words of this.
The kids in the Hungry Choir are people who got sucked into an internet urban legend ritual thing? I think? Maybe?
Yeah, I still don't understand what the Hungry Choir is.
Lucy is just such a winner. I guess that one good moment earlier in the chapter needs to be paid for with interest.
What did that "don't hurt us" pact actually do, seriously?
He's reading a real lot into that one statement of hers.
I still feel like Wildbow is making too much of a "thing" over Avery's sexuality. I can't remember him ever randomly having Taylor's face ground into Brian's crotch back in Worm. Avery has a much more complete personality now, thanks to this chapter, so this doesn't bother me as much as it would have in the preceding chapters when "gay" was one of her only defining traits, but it still feels weird.
Hehe, the flurry of names and obstructive activities is pretty effective at communicating what a circus Avery's household is. Were these kids ALL homeschooled? That seems infeasible. Wonder what the circumstances with Avery in particular were?
The lack of physical descriptions of where most of these people are in relation to each other does add to the chaotic aspect, but it also sort of...almost cleans it up, I want to say? Like they're all just shouting at each other in a floating white void, aside from the last half-paragraph there.
It's like my family when I was a kid, only moreso.
Hah!
It's a hell of a lot more comfortable and emotionally healthy than Verona's relationship with her parents. Presumably an intentional juxtaposition, by the author.
Wonder what Lucy's home life is like? Now that Avery has abruptly become the most complete and well-characterized individual among the three, Lucy is the weakest link. She's definitely fixable though, so this chapter is making me hopeful for how all three of them will eventually be written once Wildbow gets the hang of them.
Is Sheridan fat, or just her butt? I ask because aside from her age and hair color this is the only bit of description for her lol.
Avery might not be a goalie, but Kerry is training to be one.~
Ah, that's Grumble. I was starting to really wonder.
I'm guessing it started as a childhood nickname for "Grandpa." It's a little unfortunate now, since the stroke has given him an actual grumbling sound to his voice, but it would probably be weirder and more obtrusive for her to stop calling him that because of this than the alternative.
Now, how tropey does Wildbow feel like being with this character? If the answer is "very," Grumble is going to know something about magic. I doubt we're going that route, but you never know; sometimes the only way to be unpredictable is to do the predictable thing that everyone is expecting you to not do lol.
Is she banking on her mom not caring enough to ask what a boomerang hat is, or does she already have a lie all cooked up and ready to serve?
Alternatively, she might be planning to tell the truth and let her mom just snort and change the subject. That's a genre classic.
She's not used to this, in that case?
Ah. I see. More of a recent pattern of behavior in that case, yes.
On one hand, this is bringing Avery's sexuality to the forefront in a way that the hetero characters' aren't yet again. On the other hand, in this case it's other characters' reactions to Avery's sexuality pushing themselves in front of the camera rather than just Avery's resting state of being gay doing it. Given that this is a (probably pretty conservative) small rural town, this is probably just realistic.
If my daughter suddenly developed an interest in camping that she'd never had before, and she started going on these trips with her female friends specifically shortly after coming out, I wouldn't be too worried about how accepting those friends were being. Frankly, I'd just be relieved I didn't have to worry her getting teen pregnant.
Huh. So it was just her, then. Wonder what the issue was? She seems to do fine in her hockey thing, so I don't think it's just a matter of social problems. Then again, maybe the hockey thing is more recent, only since she became well-adjusted enough to start attending school.
Oh fuck.
OH FUCK.
Hopefully it's just a lie, and doesn't force itself to become truth now.
Well, the spirits aren't confused enough at her for trying to convince them that her little brother is an undersized male sex organ when he clearly isn't to stop following instructions. That's good, though there might still be consequences of some kind.
Ah. You can say something that isn't technically true as long as you make it clear that you're using an intentional metaphor for something that is true. Got it.
I'm now imagining PactPale wizards having silly rap battles where the lyrics are all them breaking down and justifying the insults as they hurl them at one another. This is probably a whole genre of YouTube videos in the setting; the wizards don't need to let their audiences know *why* their diss-matches are restricted to this format, so there's no risk of masquerade breaking.
Hopefully this doesn't increase the chances of her actually turning him into a penis, though.
Ah. She's just hoping that that's how it works.
I hope so too. Somewhat for Avery's sake, but mostly for the YouTube rap battles.
I'm trying to remember if they cast anything on that chocolate bar. Even if they didn't, I guess she just might not have known what it was he took until she fished it out, so she had to make sure.
Also, its HER FUCKING CHOCOLATE BAR, of course.
It seems like not forcing Avery to watch with everyone else would cause less resentment than this.
Or just like. Let Avery be doing something else on her phone, so she's in the same room with the others and thus at least marginally participating in family time.
Avery's parents are morons.
Loving, well-intentioned morons, but still. Morons.
Oh my god Sheridan is such a cunt.
Or...wait...is she out to her parents, but not to the rest of her family? That seems unlikely, given the family dynamics and general lack of secrecy or privacy, but that's kind of what the phrasing her is suggesting.
It does make Sheridan's comment massively less cunty, though, so that's nice.
"Oh, just making a philosophers' stone. Mind moving just a few inches to the right?"
Family soul absorption successful.
Seems like Charles or Matthew would be the bests to ask, no? Matthew is probably also the easiest to reach on short notice, I would think.
Also, oh my god Lucy shut up.
OH FUCK YEAH NOW THIS CHAPTER IS PICKING UP +10 GIGACHAD BONUS ALL UP IN THIS BITCH
Hah, well, if profanity magic really is a thing, then goblins would obviously know the most about it. Granted, they're more likely to teach Avery how to actually turn someone into a disembodied cock than they are to teach her how to just call someone one without karmic consequences, but still. Either of those abilities could be useful in the right situation, so it's a win either way.
The goblins are friends with the dog of war. Hmm. Matthew and/or Charles mentioned something about how particularly violent goblins tend to generate dogs of war a lot. The Kennet gobbos are pretty chill by goblin standards, but there might still be a general affinity between these two "species" of Other even when they're not actively bolstering one another. They do share a common thread in the human experience of unpleasantness and chaos, after all.
Anyway, that's the chapter. Still have some supplemental materials to cover in the next ten days as part of this month's fastlane order, but that was the bigger chunk of it.
It's definitely the strongest chapter of Pale so far. Still suffers from the same issues, but not as badly.
Something I'm starting to notice as a strength of Wildbow's is that he's good at writing family interactions. Pretty diverse family interactions, too. Comparing my memories of Taylor's strained-but-loving relationship with her widower father in Worm, to the cold antagonism of Verona's home life, to the busy den environment of Avery's, they're all written very naturally and convincingly despite not having much in common.
Not much else to say about the chapter in isolation. It's better written than the ones before it, and it's cool that Avery went from most boring to most interesting trio member, but nothing novel or game changing.