Pale (More Extra Materials)

This final supplemental bit is from after chapter 5.2, much later in the serial. Pretty much anything could have happened between the chapters I read and this, so these notes could be about literally anything. I can only assume that Aris Katsaris picked this one for a reason, though, and that it should be at least mostly understandable even without context.

The title of this one is "Faerie Courts & Goblins," which does suggest raw exposition. So yeah, should be accessible enough. Let's learn about PactPale's fair and ugly folk.

A. Kelly and S. Drop. So, Avery is writing a field guide along with...someone? I don't think Lucy or Verona go by their middle names or anything, and the surname "Drop" also doesn't ring a bell, so probably a new character.

Starting off by framing their question as "which fairy tales fit each court" is an odd choice. Do all types of fairies necessarily embody something as coherent and detailed as entire stories, let alone stories that we in modern times would classify as a type of "fairy tale?" It's possible, but it seems incongruous with how magic in this setting generally works. What are fairies, exactly?

Anyway! The seasonal courts seem to have a hierarchy between themselves, with Bright Spring sitting at the top. The wording isn't entirely clear, but I think what's being said is that while not every Bright Spring fairy is above every single non-Bright Spring fey, most of the Bright Springers are above most others. Only the cream of the crop from other courts are allowed membership, should they seek to switch factions, but not all of them seek to do so.

Bright Spring seems to be all about the appearance of perfection, which is not the same thing as actual perfection. This makes them very deceptive, jealous, and almost demiurgic in how they need to constantly work to keep the wool over everyone else's eyes.

Oh man, here comes the best character with the best rules of engagement for dealing with these pricks!

So, don't be impressed, and you'll minimize their power over you. Be crass in your contempt for them and their works. This might not be the only way of contending with Bright Spring, or even neccessarily the easiest way, but its the goblin way and it works well enough. Honestly, the goblins as a whole seem like they're basically the rock to Bright Spring's scissors. They're made of all the stuff that the Bright Spring fairies define themselves by the absence of.

The mention of the fairies having *turned themselves into* what they currently are also seems very different from most Others. Wonder what the story actually is?

Anyway, Bright Summer is the next court on the list. The drama lamas. If Bright Spring is the appearance of perfection, then Bright Summer is...excitement? Bloodlust? Something like that. Or...hmm. Keeping on a more consistent theme with Bright Spring, maybe they're something like...what's the word, not valor, not gallantry...I'm having trouble putting my finger on it. The kind of romantic aesthetic that (fictionalized) warfare holds. Where it's all about excitement and drama and satisfying character arcs, and the anguish and horror are either made explicitly the province of the bad guys or are watered down and sprinkled just enough throughout the story to make it feel "gritty." Like most of the stuff I review, read, and write, lol.

Yeah, I think that's closer to what Bright Summer is about. It feels right, both for the mythical concept of fairies in general and in relation to Bright Spring.

I can't remember if Guilherme is someone we've met before or not; there were a couple of fairies at the initiation, but I don't think either of them spoke much if at all. Well, whenever this character was introduced, there's apparently a Bright Summer fairy that the girls have met, and they're named Guilherme.

I love Verona's doodles of the Others they interviewed. Her depiction of Guilherme is just straight up Middle School Araki.

Anyway, fairyland actually engages in warfare with other realms, and these wars don't seem to be catalysed by human meddling at least from how it's described. The fact that they're said to fight against the Abyss specifically - the forces of actual, physical non-metaphorical entropy - might mean that fairies actually play an important role in maintaining the (nonhuman!) universe. What ARE fairies, seriously? They really aren't much like other types of Other at all.

Maricica, she was the winged fairy in the initiation, with the glitched glamor-smile. Looking back at the "notes on others" extra, she's a Dark Autumn fairy. She has some strong opinions about Bright Summer. Her criticisms make sense, and seem pretty much inevitable in light of what Bright Summer embodies. The mystique of war is bound up very heavily in myopia, and lasts only as long as you confine your attention to the protagonists. So, basically the Summer Court is an army made of incarnate main character syndrome. A small party of Bright Summers can be devastatingly powerful, but get too many of them together and they fall apart in a mess of competing spotlights and the narratives that empower them as individuals trip over each other.

So, in practice, the "Bright Summer" army is usually just a handful of actual Bright Summer fairies and legions of allies, mercenaries, and battle thralls. They're aware of their own weakness, and probably aren't happy about having that awareness, but they have enough self preservation instinct to bite the bullet at least most of the time.

I wonder where the centaurs and minotaurs and so forth come from?

Much as it pains me to disagree with Toadswallow, I think his biases might be blinding him a little here. It's notable that, unlike his description of the Bright Spring, he's not giving any specific points of advice on how to fight these guys. Fighting dirty doesn't even necessarily work against them; if you'll notice, all he *actually* says is that it makes them mad, not that they lose to it. It seems like stepping on creatures like goblins would honestly just play into the Bright Summer's concept and make them even stronger. His only *actionable* piece of tactical advice is about preparing for the battle by scrambling around hoping to find evidence that tarnishes their legend.

I think I might have fairies figured out now, though. Maybe. They could, collectively, embody the concept of "beauty." Which makes their antagonism with goblins obvious, because goblins are - at least approximately - ugliness. That also plays well with how they each can be potentially dangerous for humans. Beauty can hide something's true, sinister nature. If a fairy has ill intentions, you won't see it coming. If a goblin has ill intentions, you will absolutely see it coming. Which of the two are more likely to actually want to hurt you in the first place, of course, I couldn't say.

There are some holes in the "fairies = beauty" interpretation, though. Why would the concept of beauty be so heavily linked with the seasons, or the day and night cycle? Why does beauty, moreso than other abstract concepts, fight the forces of the Abyss? Those questions need answers before I can put any real confidence in my theory.

Bright Autumn now. It continues on the next couple of pages; lots of info about these guys.

All about buying, selling, and getting ahead. Humble beginnings and big aspirations. I guess they're...hope? Optimism for the future? If so, it's channelled specifically through the lens of the "rags to riches" narrative. Maybe that hyperfocus on a specific type of "better future" is capitalism's influence on the fairy part of the noosphere? That would fit, since Guilherme pointed out that Bright Autumn in particular has been changed a lot by human paradigm shifts in the last few centuries. Then again, there seems to be a word missing in that explanation of his, and it could be causing me to misinterpret everything ("fairies have ??? in the wake of...").

The double-edged nature of "rags to riches" naturally makes Bright Autumn less offensive to goblin sensibilities than the previous two. You need to be in rags to start out with, after all, and goblins are all about rags. The kind of underhanded, dishonorable conduct favored by rags-to-riches protagonists also play more into goblin themes than spring/summer court themes. Hence, Toadswallow is warning the reader about the Bright Autumn fairies, but he's not really presenting it as a condemnation of them. I expect he'd give similar-ish warnings with a similar-ish tone when telling a human about his own kind.

This is all a bit further from "beauty" as a concept, so my theory is looking weaker. What is the fairies' actual thing, then? I'd say narratives, but then that would exclude Bright Spring since there's no story arc for "looking perfect." So yeah, I really don't know.

Speaking of static, the Winter Court (no bright/dark distinctions here, there's just the one winter faction apparently) seems to be sort of the other side of Bright Spring's coin. An image of completion. In Winter's case it seems to be more genuine, but also less happy. It's not "happily ever after" so much as "okay I'm done." That's just going off of these first couple paragraphs, though. There's more to read about them.

I see now why winter doesn't have a bright/dark distinction. It's because the winter "court" isn't really an organization at all. It's fairies who have been damaged in a way that turns them into a different, much less proactive, type of Other. And the fear of contagion associated here...I think the closest human analogy might actually be a leper colony.

Toadswallow's last comment kind of surprised me. With what goblins are supposed to embody, I wouldn't expect such a persistent focus on violence and fighting in particular. That would be part of their bailiwick, sure, but only a small part. I guess it's possible that they asked Toadswallow for tactical advice specifically. Or that the general antipathy goblins have for fairies means that goblins know more about how to fight them than anything else about them, and Toadswallow is just sharing what he's got.

Or...hmm. I wonder. Violence has become further removed from what most people consider "proper society" over the course of the last century or so. Maybe that's caused goblins to become more warlike? If fighting becomes more taboo, then it would make sense for goblins to become fightier. It's a possibility, at least.

Hmm. Yeah, I don't know what to really say about this. It's definitely a major archetype for fairies (at least in modern takes on them), but in terms of what it means about human culture or aesthetics or narratives or whatever...yeah, kinda lost.

I'm also baffled by the Bright Spring apparently being centuries behind the times on things like race and gender. Shouldn't they be shaped by the perspectives of nonwhites and nonheteros just as much as the hegemonic group's? Does political power in the material world necessarily give white cishets more influence over the spirit world too?

Hmm. Maybe that's a local thing that varies by country/region. The Bright Spring fairies that you meet *in Canada* represent the aging white settler colonialist image of traditional perfection. In a country that wasn't colonized, or in one where the natives weren't reduced to a small percentage of the population, things might be different.

Even in that framework though, I don't know what to make of the Dark Spring court.

Maybe the Spring Courts are always specifically influenced by an idealized view of the social elites? So, Bright Spring is an increasingly rose-tinted mental image people have of old-timey aristocracy, whereas Dark Spring is the much less rose-tinted mental image people have of entertainment moguls and techbros? Maybe? The "even more fragile than Bright Spring" bit definitely makes me think of information age era elite insecurity.

Still. Much less sure about anything with these guys.

So, "glamour" is a thing that doesn't just refer to illusions or enchantments that fairies can cast on people. It's also a resource that they consume, apparently. That's probably the key to understanding what fairies actually are and what makes them a unified type of Other instead of multiple unrelated types that just happen to kinda-sorta cohabitate.

Anyway, Unseelie Summer seems to be where the ogres and minotaurs and suchlike that their Bright counterparts use as canon fodder come from. They're able to be more direct than most fairies, but still have to do some ritual stuff as part of their warmaking, or else bite the bullet and become actually biological creatures that need physical nourishment (which might also mean you can hurt them with mundane guns and stuff, though the text doesn't say that outright so I wouldn't assume it until confirmed).

Okay. So, the fairies are "stories" in general, then? I don't know. Bright Spring doesn't feel like it fits that theme. Dark Spring maaaaybe does, but it's still a difficult fit.

I feel like the author may have wanted fairies to embody a certain concept as part of the setting's metaphysics, but also wanted to include some folkloric fairy stuff that was hard to reconcile with that. Maybe I'm not giving him enough credit, but that's what it feels like right now.

Anyway, Dark Summer are monsters. Don't do the things that people who get eaten in monster stories do, and you're less likely to get eaten. Don't do the things that *any* character in a monster story would do, and you can hit the fairy in a way that actually hurts it. Aside from whatever other weaknesses this particular Dark Summer creature might have acquired by compromising its fairy-ness with physicality.

So, uncertainty. The furthest peaks and valleys of hope and fear, all in close proximity. Lots of fairy tale witch stuff, with the emphasis on child abuse.

Hmm. What percentage of missing children in the world of PactPale are down to the depredations of entities like these? Or is there something that protects most kids from them unless a wizard does some bullshit to make them vulnerable?

Anyway, they're also merchants like their Bright counterparts. That seems to be the pattern with the Seelie/Unseelie mirrors in general. The Bright courts are the codified, civilized version of a concept, and the Dark courts are inchoate, abstract, unrestrained versions of that same concept. Bright Spring is traditional power and authority, Dark Spring is wtf random arbitrary power and authority. Bright Summer is a romantic depiction of warfare, Dark Summer is "Ugh angry! Ugh smash with club!" Bright Autumn is a free market where you can go from rags to riches or riches to rags, Dark Autumn is utter chaos full of nonsensical schemes where anything can happen to anyone at any time.

And then Winter is just the old and broken (but still very powerful in at least some cases) from any of the above sort of dumped off together.

Aside from Winter, I don't quite see how they match their seasonal motifs though. And if the conceptual niche of fairies is "narratives incarnate," then it seems like there are a lot of things missing from their lineup.

Anyway this next bit answers some of my questions on what Dark Autumn can or can't do to humanity in general.

Those last two paragraphs seem mistyped. "But if this happens, chances are good that you're as good as in their grasp?" The hell does that mean? "You'll know to stay clear because the trap is too well wrought for you to ever notice?" Isn't that a contradiction? Does the Dark Autumn court have some protective spell on it that fucks up the speaking ability of anyone who tries to share information about it?

The preceding bit, at least, is much more coherent. Basically, "remember that scene from Labyrinth" and "remember that scene from the Blair Witch Project." That explains some of Dark Autumn's restrictions. They've got the usual "cannot enter a home uninvited" restriction, but applied more broadly in ways that both help and hurt them.

They're only covering goblins along with fairies because they happen to have some goblins to talk to while doing the fairy research? That...hmm. Looking at the range of concepts that the fairy courts cover, it's kind of hard for me to believe that the goblins aren't related to them at least distantly. The difference between a fightier-than-average goblin and an uglier-than-average Dark Summer fairy is...I don't know, you tell me. What is the difference between those two?

Anyway, we have a guy here whose whole job is teaching human children about goblins, so he should have plenty to tell us. So.

Size correlates to power and importance, though that's more of a tendency than an absolute rule. Notably, though he usually does the talking, and sort of *presents* himself as being the leader of the group, Toadswallow is considerably smaller than Bluntmunch. I mused earlier on that Toadswallow, for all his overpowering gigachad grandeur, might just be the face rather than the brain of the Kennet goblins. Size = importance is a tendency rather than a rule, sure, so he COULD actually be in charge, but more than before I suspect that he might just be Bluntmunch's diplomat.

Dust bunnies, hmm. Are dustbunnies actually the lowest form of goblin? Like, goblins spawn from bits of soggy dirt and hair that get left in uncleaned corners when they absorb enough "disgust energy" or something? It seems plausible. Then again, Cherrypop could also be fucking with them. Or just be so stupid that she actually mistook the dustbunnies for other goblins when they aren't.

Toadswallow isn't clarifying this stuff for them? Surprising.

Heh.

Gremlins seem against-theme for goblins. Disgust, taboo, and...technology? I'm not seeing it.

I wonder if Toadswallow let them fumble around trying to ask his companions about their names and titles deliberately, as part of a lesson? Letting his human students make mistakes and learn from them in a controlled-ish, safe-ish environment definitely seems like it could be a goblin teaching method. Anyway, their names and titles are just made up and don't necessarily mean anything.

So, that's that. Mixed bag, but overall this monthly order has left me with a more positive impression of Pale than I had before.

I especially like the effort put into making the glyphs work like an actual programming language. "Computer magic" is basically a fantasy genre unto itself at this point, but it's usually much lazier in execution.

Still not sure if I'd bother reading more of Pale on my own, but definitely an improvement over the first couple chapters.