Pale (“notes on others” and “lost for words 1.3”)
Finishing up this order of Pale's introductory chapters now. "Lost for Words" is pretty long for a Wildbow intro arc, being eight chapters long plus extras and interludes, and as I've learned the chapters are individually fairly meaty. So, this isn't even fully half of the first arc. Not the complete introduction. But, well, the introduction being this long isn't really something either I or @Katsuragi can help.
Before starting chapter 1.3 though, there was some bonus interquel content. An epistolary thing titled "Notes on Others."
"Notes On Others"
These are the notes Lucy took at the forest meeting, about individual suspects (prematurely, in my opinion) and hopefully about general Other knowledge as well. Let's see what she's got.
Charles Abrams
Type: Ex-practitioner, forsworn
Appearance: Sketchy looking dude. Kind of guy who grows his hair long to make up for what he's losing on top. Greasy. Dirty. Skinny. Brown/Gray hair & scraggy beard.
Appearance with Sight: Same?
Awakening: Didn't participate.
Can lie.
Seems pissed off at the world.
Broke an oath, lost ability to practice. Now he's vulnerable.
Owes the Kennet others a lot? Maybe?
Avery: Her #1 vote for most scary. No observations.
Notes: Priority to interview. Need to work out questions to ask. Means motive opportunity? Alibi? Verona wants to know why/how he got forsworn.
Is "Avery" and her hierarchy of scariness just a category of bullet point? I hope so lol. Anyway, the human is the scariest, even moreso than Miss apparently. To be fair to Avery, Charles was described as basically the archetypal image of the backwoods horror movie slasher, so yeah.
Charles is definitely bitter. Whether or not he's bitter about the thing that led to him breaking his oath, or if he broke his oath as a result of the bitterness, it's too early to tell. With how active the local Others seem to be in maintaining their relationship with the local humans via practitioners, I can only assume that he lost his powers either very shortly before or very shortly after the fall of the Carmine Beast. There's definitely a connection there, but the causal relationship could go either way (or, alternatively, the same bad actor that murdered Big Doggo could have also baited or tricked Charles into breaking his oath).
Anyway, getting all the details about Charles' fall from grace are definitely a high priority for the investigation. To the point where I'm surprised Miss didn't just twist Charles' arm into telling them at the meeting.
Matthew Moss
Type according to Matthew: Host
Appearance: Human I guess? Brown hair + beard. 20-35?
Appearance with Sight: His eyes are in shadow.
Awakening: Hourglass → Gave holly, took wine → skull
Knows about magic circles and stuff.
Married to Edith James.
People can see him. He works in town (sales).
Was awakened a long while ago.
Actively encouraged us to investigate but not to feel pressured to solve. Why?
Verona: reminds me of when I'd meet a friend or coworker of my dad and think they seemed suprisingly nice. Then they'd say something that made me dislike them.Avery: During the ritual when I was saying personal stuff, I looked around for a friendly face and looked to him. He looked more serious than caring? Suprised me.
Notes: Interview Later – Verona wants to wait until he's taught us before we spook him any. More chance of catching him in lies?
"Host," huh? As in, human body being puppeted by an Other? Or a human with a symbiotic Other (wanted or otherwise) sharing the body? The latter would explain the surprising shifts in his behaviour from friendly to cold that the girls all commented on; there are at least two of "him."
Edith James / Girl by Candlelight
Type according to Matthew: Complex Spirit
Appearance: Human? Bleached blond hair.
Appearance with Sight: Eyes glow like fire
Awakening: Skull → Gave red gem, took ash → coin
Quiet so far
Married to Matthew (didn't take his name?)
Knows fundamentals. Sorta human?
Verona: No idea what to say. Name's cool. Wait until we hear more about spirits?
Avery: Makes me nervous when a woman's this quiet with her husband around. It reminds me of distant family.
Notes: Have to interview around the time we interview Matthew. Couples talk.
No idea what she is either. As stumped as the girl squad.
"Complex spirit" makes me think she might be another case of multiple entities fused together, in which case her "marriage" with Matthew might be a matter of some of her sharing his body sometimes. Maybe.
Alpeana
Type according to Matthew: Mare
Appearance: Filthy hair, totally black eyes, ragged clothes.
Appearance with Sight: Same?
Awakening: Thread → Gave oil, took molasses → Thread
Friends with Faerie Girl
Climbs a lot. Sticks to shadows
Shy?
Avery: gets the feeling 'Alpy' might not give up much information because she seems secretive.
Verona: Says Alpeana smiled at her & Avery after the molasses. (relevance?)
"Mare," huh? As in, "nightmare?" Nightmare myths are related to nighthags, succubi, etc, so a "mare" who looks like a scary Ringu woman could make sense if that's what the name refers to.
Maricica
Type according to Matthew: Faerie, Dark Autumn
Appearance: Pretty. Smiles a lot. Long brown hair.
Avery thinks she has moth wings. Verona thinks she has bat wings.
With Sight: Nothing after (she left too soon) but Verona says she saw something scary out of the corner of her eye mid-ritual.
Awakening: Thread → Gave crystal, took honey → Coin
She didn't say/do much prior to the ritual. Suspicious? If I was guilty I'd want to keep quiet.
I am glad I wrote things down because I'm noticing a lot of the mysterious others started out from the thread.
Seems young?
Giant guy was paying close attention to her
Avery: Seems nice?
Verona: Nobody smiles that much without something messed up going on there. (Said bit in 'With Sight' above, added: I was glad I wasn't feeding her).
"Dark autumn" fairy. Well, going by Celtic mythology fairies are heavily associated with the seasons, so there might be "light" and "dark" subspecies for each season or something to that effect. She seems to have an extra layer of glamour that fools aura-vision, with her true form being less attractive to human sensibilities, which is also true to at least some of the source myths.
On that topic, I wonder if the excessive smiling is some sort of glamour glitch. Making her illusory appearance smile even when she isn't actually smiling and isn't trying to make people think that she is.
Big guy has a crush, or a suspicion, or else just thinks fairies taste good.
Guilherme
Type according to Matthew: Faerie, Summer Above
Appearance: Handsome. Long, pale hair, tan skin. Chiseled good looks. Muscles. I've seen people as tall as him and people as muscular as him but never both together like that.
With Sight: Left too soon after the ritual. Nothing special during.
Awakening: Timepiece → Gave myrrh (according to Avery), took honey → Thread
Fussy eater.
Again, not a lot of info. He was quiet (suspiciously quiet!)
Avery: Friends with John? They were hanging
Verona: Not my vibe at allll. Can't say why for sure. He hasn't said or done anything and he feels like the kind of person I'd like least.
Not much to say about this guy. Don't think he said a single word in the chapter, either.
John Stiles
Type According to Matthew: Dog of War
Appearance: Blond buzz cut. Scary look in eyes. Deep lines in face. Age indeterminate.
With Sight: Same?
Awakening: Blade → Gave oil, took bread → blade
My (Lucy's) vote for least favorite Other by gut feeling
Friends with goblins/manages goblins?
Strong?
Verona: Does he turn into a dog? Should I not have picked a cat mask?
Verona when asked to give more serious input: I feel like I've seen him at the edges of crowds or when things have been busy, but not the same way I've seen Matthew or Edith. What does a dog of war do all day?
Avery: He didn't really catch my eye, but if I'm cribbing from Verona… does Kennet even have any war?
Surprised they're being so silly and snarky about all this so quickly. Not sure if this feels like realistic human coping behavior or not. That's probably what it's intended to be, either way.
Whatever a "dog of war" is, they're apparently visible to normal humans, and may be somewhat integrated into human society.
Toadswallow, Cherrypop, Bluntmunch, Gashwad
Type According to Matthew: Goblin
Appearance: Toadswallow is fat, bellybutton-high, monocle, spiky belly, dresses nice.
Cherrypop is red, ugly, big nose, squinty, messy hair. Rat-sized
Bluntmunch is human sized but slouches, muscular. Underbite, warty like a toad
Gashwad has a huge nose, glaring, beady little eyes, yellow-brown skin instead of pink like others
With Sight: No change?
Awakening: Blade → Gave spices (?), took meat → Skull for all except Toadswallow, who used hourglass.
Distillations of filth and nastiness? Vulgar words?
Most don't seem that bright. If one had any part in this, seems like it would be Toadswallow. He is training two others to work with kids? How would that tie in?
Feels like they wouldn't be very good at lying. Lots of infighting, they don't seem to think much before saying stuff. Might be useful?
Verona: They smell. If we're writing up questions for the witness, we can ask if the crime scene stinks? Stunk?
Avery: My grandfather once told me if someone's easily angered, you can use that against them. Maybe if we have to we can do something like that with them.
I think they might be making a very bad mistake by writing up the goblins as a single entity instead of giving each individual their full attention in turn. Likewise, assuming that Cherrypop, Bluntmunch, and Gashwad are actually as stupid and impetuous as they presented themselves could be dangerous.
Hell, Toadswallow might not actually be the smartest and most chill of the four. He might just be the only one who doesn't pretend to be stupid and impulsive. After all, as the best character, he knows he has no need to hide anything of himself.
The Hungry Choir
Type According to Matthew: Ritual Incarnate
Appearance: 50+ people, mostly young, varying clothes, varying appearance. Some have bloody mouths or broken/missing teeth. Lots of singing when they're around.
With Sight: No change? During awakening ritual, they were silent.
Awakening: Skull → Gave ? / Took Meat → Coin
Can't remember what they brought. There were so many it was hard to see & ritual was over soon after. Makes me suspicious.
Avery: Is it possible one did it? Do we have to interview them separately?
(Discussion followed this. Won't/can't summarize. By end we agreed they're probably considered one thing)Verona: I haven't heard them say one word. How do we interview them if they don't speak?
Note: Interview soon, once we figure out how. They might have shortchanged us in the ritual, taking but not giving.
"Ritual Incarnate." I think they need to ask the more talkative Others about what some of these terms even mean, because that name makes it sound like the Hungy Chorus might not even be sentient.
Miss
Type According to Matthew: Unknown
Appearance: Woman, age indeterminate, face and hands always hidden
With Sight: Same?
Awakening: Thread → Gave Myrrh, took ash → thread
Only thing more suspicious than someone trying to stay quiet and out of the way is someone trying to control the investigation and she's controlling a lot.
Friend of Matthew and Edith? Who are also acting suspicious?
Smart?
The ones who missed or might have messed with the awakening ritual make me most suspicious right off the bat. She pretends to want to set everything up, but how do we know if the woman with the hidden face ate anything? What if she threw away our offering? Is that like not signing a contract? Top 3 suspect for me.
(Avery) …
(Verona) …
Note: We may have to be careful with this one. Too smart. Too connected. I can probably think of 2 things that are alarming or suspicious for every thing that's legit.
All the things that Lucy finds "suspicious" about Miss are traits that any community leader would possess, with the exception of the "can't see her face" thing (which I don't think Miss can help).
Also, like. Miss is the one who recruited them, right? I guess it's too late to turn down the job now, since they'd be oathbreakers with all the associated consequences, but if Lucy thought Miss was so suspicious she should have backed out before the pact ritual. It's not like Miss wasn't displaying all of those allegedly suspicious traits before that point.
Lucy is not smart, but I've already made my opinions on this subject repeatedly clear.
So, those are the notes. Aside from giving the names and species of some of the randos who didn't speak last chapter, and providing some silly flavor in the girls' opinions, I don't think this really added much to the story. Now the chapter following it.
Lost for Words 1.3
This one is from Avery's perspective, and its background art has the opacity to match.
The glowing tree ribbons have a shinto vibe to them. The fact that they're glowing like that suggests that they're only visible via auravision. Avery has nice hair, the shade wasn't as clear when she was transparent but that's a really vibrant shade of blond, good for her. Chapter start!
Was going to say that this reminds me of my own high school years, hanging out in the back of a pickup with friends and watching the stars, but then I remembered that the girls are in middle school. So, it's someone else's pickup. I'm guessing Matthew and Edith's, since they probably wouldn't trust Charles to give them a ride even in the unlikely event that he offered them one.
Yeah, things might have gotten a little better, but ultimately they're still in Canada.
I like the detail that Avery and Verona won't even hold the flashlight for her anymore, forcing her to put it in her mouth.
I wonder. If Verona had actually slipped up and said "I WILL hear you in my dreams," would that have caused her to suffer a karma backlash if she didn't dream that, or would it have worked a spell that causes her to dream that?
Anyway, Lucy is...I don't even know what her deal is. It's not just a matter of her not being nearly as good at this as she thinks she is. It's also the singleminded focus she has on this, despite everything else she should be reacting to more strongly. It's got to be a coping mechanism, shutting out all the weird stuff and focusing on the "let's solve the murder mystery" detail since that's easier to wrap her mind around (or so she thinks).
Lucy is really doing everything possible to make me like her, isn't she?
And yeah, Matthew's truck. I figured.
Yeah, well, you just used a minor oath to place negative moral weight on Verona using minor oaths for chocolate bars, Lucy. God even knows what the karmic cascade effects of this might be. :p
Well, now she HAS to realize it, unless she wants Verona to get in a lot of trouble.
That feels like a non sequitur. Her only telling Avery after the fact that she picked her first doesn't suggest "holding things up her sleeve," neccessarily. It just...might not have been important? She might not have seen the relevance until it came up in conversation?
I'm starting to wonder if this is Lucy spreading her weird mistrust of Miss to the others, or if the author is hamfistedly trying to make the reader mistrust Miss by making the protagonists all do this. I want to say it's the former, but. Hmm.
Damn, didn't realize they'd been driving nearly that long. Wonder where Matt and Edith are taking them? The old forest lair of the Carmine Beast, perhaps? I'd be surprised if there were any roads close to that, so probably not. Some other entity they need to talk to who lives a few hours away?
Sympathetic geometry magic. Interesting, and also logical. I dig.
Dang, I was hoping they were going to levitate the truck. Oh well.
Still, cool magic trick. I'm fully expecting them to use this wind-stopping spell to defeat a scary monster in a surprise callback three arcs from now. This feels like a Chekhov's Gun (in the more recent sense of the term, rather than the original conservation of detail way) setup.
Based and Speedwagonpilled. I knew Verona was the best girl squad member.
Seriously, Verona, you need to stick some blades to the brim of that thing.
Hmm. I wonder how much the loss of the hat would have reduced the power of Verona's garb, and of the other two's in turn?
Maybe wearing costumes with lots of separate little pieces like masks, hats, etc that can easily get lost was a bad idea. If they could have made outfits just as powerful that were just one-piece bodysuits or something, that might have been safer. But then we really would just be doing superheroes again, wouldn't we?
Charles is along for the ride, even if he's not the owner or the driver. Maybe they're going to wherever he lives? He seems like a "shack in the middle of the woods hours away from anywhere" type.
Are these "spirits" the same thing as the Others? I'm starting to think that these are two totally different classes of being. Spirits are more like...sentient vibes. Not physical. Not personal.
Okay, where the hell are they going?
...that is such a weird, bland way of describing the forest. And also a weird place in the story to put the description.
If you already know what Canadian forests look like, then it's superfluous. If you don't already know what Canadian forests look like, then it's insufficient. And...why, after multiple chapters set in the forest, are we only now getting this detail about the trees?
One of the most WTF little bits of prose in the story so far, in context.
They've been riding in the back of the truck all day? Damn. Even if its late winter and not quite freezing out, that's got to take a toll.
Campground, huh. Wonder what this is all about now.
Nightvision says something about Verona's personality or worldview that the other girls don't share. Not sure what that might be, yet. "Always trying to look on the bright side," maybe? She is good at making the best of bad situations, for the most part.
The weaving bands going through the trees...hmm. Is that what the banner art for this chapter is supposed to be depicting? The text doesn't match the image very well, so I'd think not.
Ah, so they're just taking a rest stop at this campsite, it doesn't have any particular significance to the mission. And it looks like my first guess was right; they're heading to the Carmine Beast's former lair. It's either closer to the roads than I thought, or they're going to have to get out and walk a few hours at the end of the trip.
Oh. I see.
...the gods make you waste a lot of gas lol.
Only the lost and desperate are *likely* to follow. So they don't actually have to make themselves lost and desperate to find it, just think like a lost, desperate person.
Carmine Beast was a she, then. Could have sworn they used male pronouns for her before, but I might have mixed it up with them talking about a different character.
Also...how "local" was the Carmine Beast, really, if its lair's location is that fluid? Is it only a day's travel from Kennet, specifically, or is it also a day's travel from some other towns around the region? If the latter, how big is that region?
If the Beast was latched onto one particular town, then that makes me wonder how old she was. She was described in terms that made her sound like an ancient creature, but if her existence hinged on a certain degree of distance/proximity with one or more human communities then she might be much younger. I guess it's possible she just made a smooth transition from First Nations villages to Canadian ones in the region over the course of the 16-20th centuries. Or I guess she might have only moved into the area within the last couple hundred years and locked her lair into a new "place" using whatever towns were there.
The lengths to which this world take the "as below, so above" principle are kind of mindwarping. I like it.
I wonder who does the witch-hunting. Maybe other magicians who have been tasked with hunting down troublemakers. Maybe some random murderhobo Hunter: the Vigil types. More information needed.
It occurs to me that it might be really, really easy to cast the wrong spell by mistake. Or even multiple wrong spells by mistake. Potentially at the same time as successfully casting the one that you wanted.
That's probably why the girls were told to practice with the very, very basic things, doing the same tricks over and over again, to establish the symbolism that they intend with specific ritual actions and totems. And also why they need to keep the spirits happy with them, so that they're more inclined to interpret the spell actions the way they meant them to be interpreted.
Actually, "happy with them" might just be anthropomorphising the spirits. The whole taboo against lying could be like...a way of "syncing" yourself with the spirit world. If you misrepresent yourself or say things you don't mean all the time, maybe that makes the spirits get confused when you try to do a spell. If what you say isn't always what you mean, then they just have to give it their best guess when you ask them for something, and they're often wrong. This could be in addition to the karma system that was mentioned before, or this could be the phenomenon that causes what some interpret as "karma" in the first place.
This, in turn, leads me to two other thoughts.
First; spirits and Others definitely seem to be two different things now (or else Others are a very specific category of spirits with an unusually high degree of sentience and independent action). The fact that wizards suffer consequences for lying, whereas (with a few exceptions) Others can't lie at all makes me wonder if the Others' entire existence is basically an ongoing spellcasting process. If they botch the spell that is themselves by confusing the spirits, they die. That would make sense. It's not the only possibility (I'm still not clear on whether or not they count as "spirits" themselves, in which case it might be more axiomatic than even that), but it would make sense.
Second; I know that in Worm (and also later on in his other works, from what I've been told), the author showed a fondness for "powers that manipulate other people's powers." In the framework that Pact/Paleverse magic seems to work on, I wonder if that might turn up here as a "death of the author" school of magic. A practice that lets you reinterpret other people's ritual actions convincingly enough that the spirits believe your version of what is being asked for instead of theirs. That could be really interesting.
Huuuh. So at least ONE type of Other is a spirit-composite, then. In Edith's case, a bunch of bits and pieces that had the common elements "fire" and "child" were freed up in a series of destructive incidents, and ended up binding together into her like an animistic version of a chemical reaction.
Which makes it odd that she looks and acts like a human adult, minus the flaming eyes. Wonder what happened there?
The name "Edith James" also raises questions. Maybe Matthew named her that, or she chose that name, after he helped her pull her shit together? Or maybe that was the name of one of the dead kids? Perhaps a combination of several of their names?
Her relationship with Matthew seems a little skeevy now, in any case.
Oh.
Well, that is a thing.
When Matthew said that he was a "Host" I figured that his backstory would be the one to fall along those lines. But no, Host means something else here. And the body of Edith James is the host for the fire-ghost that Matthew helped stabilize.
That said, how many girls are supposed to have died in this one small town in a short span of time in unrelated incidents? Hmm. I guess it might not have been such a short span of time; I assume that spirits eventually go *somewhere* when things are destroyed, but maybe in certain conditions they can keep floating around an area and mixing with other freed spirits for a much longer time. Also, they might have gone to a hospital somewhere much further away to steal that body.
This doesn't make Matthew look particularly less skeevy, in any case. Even if we're generously assuming that there really was nothing left of the real Edith and that there was no way she could come back; she couldn't be lying about this, due to Others not being capable of uttering lies, but she could be doing some self-deception or wilfull ignorance.
So that's what he's the Host of. He switched to a different character class after helping put Edith together, in order to complete the process of putting Edith together. And the thing he took into himself was the...suicidality spirits that were still haunting the original Edith's body? Maybe along with some other destructive elements from the Candlelight Girl's original composition, like the pain and grief of the traffic and fire victims' deaths and funerals?
And yeah, they're kind of sharing a collective of spirits. Only, the part of the collective that's imprisoned and being harnessed inside Matthew wants to destroy the rest of Edith as well as/instead of rejoining her.
The exposition is awkward, but the concept interesting.
Yeaaah...the ethics of this whole thing continue to not be very ethical, unless they're both being much more honest than I suspect.
Him doing the talking "for" her might be at least in part because of them being - to some degree - part of the same compound entity. Maybe. That's a charitable reading.
Ehhh...you clearly haven't met the gym bros that I've met, Avery.
Hahahaha Verona is the fucking best.
Lucy is so stupid oh my god. What makes her assume that that ISN'T relevant to what happened between them?
Also, the sketchy practitioner friend he had over was Matthew, and Edith was the creation. I'll be surprised if that isn't where this is going. Matthew may have gotten less sketchy since then, or he may just have gotten better at hiding it.
Okay, not Matthew then. Charles was the one who wanted to make an Other, and it seems to have been more like engineering a purpose-built spy drone than trying to refine a wild monster into something sane and friendly like with Edith.
And it sounds like this other wizard was deliberately trying to sabotage him, maybe from the beginning of the visit. Honestly, unless Charles is lying about this whole thing (which I think he can do now that he isn't a wizard anymore), this other character he's talking about seems highly suspicious. Purposefully de-powering the resident shaman right before the Carmine Beast incident definitely seems like the work of a systematic assailant.
That said...just starting to raise his glass to throw it is all that it took? That seems really weird to me. If he'd actually thrown it then sure, that would feel like a proper fairy tale taboo breakage, but merely threatening to...yeah, this feels kinda forced.
Then again, Charles was drunk at the time, and is probably very ashamed of the whole thing, and he probably can lie at this point. So, he might have changed the details just a little.
Oh. I see. That makes much more sense, then. Lucky break for the asshole, that he happened to step on the glass and hurt himself. If he'd done it on purpose then I doubt it would have counted.
Oh, I thought this was much more recent. I guess the local Others decided that they could get by without a shaman after all for those ten years, until the murder of the Carmine Beast proved otherwise.
That makes the actions of that other wizard less suspicious in terms of connection to the case, then. While he was trying to de-power Charles, a nefarious act done for presumably even more nefarious reasons, it likely didn't have anything to do with what eventually happened to Dogezilla. Could have just been some petty personal grudge for all we know. Or an incredibly destructive method of stealing one of the things that he stole without having to fear magical retaliation from Charles.
I wonder. When someone calls you on oathbreaking, and you have a moment to defend yourself, who is the actual judge? Do the spirits have the power to rule in favor of one or the other, or is it down to which of the two genuinely believes their case to be stronger? In this case, Charles knew that he couldn't make an honest case for how he hadn't broken his promise, so anything he said to the contrary would just make things even worse by adding additional lies? If two wizards came into conflict over an alleged breach of contract, and they both were truly convinced that they were in the right, would they stalemate or would the spirits weigh in using their own biases?
Also, in those cases when there's no one there to call you on your transgression, does the environment prompt you to pass judgement on yourself? The question of spirit sentience and agency remains an intriguing one.
...I'd say that's still pretty goddamned important, even if not for Charles' life personally. I'd definitely at least consider terminating a friendship over that.
Wonder if Charles was bitter and misanthropic in this way before his fall? While I'm sure he became much worse over the decade since then, this sort of fundamentally pessimistic worldview could have predated it.
Anyway, he might have had motive to want the Beast to suffer, but probably not method. If he had the resources to go after a supernatural entity in his current state with any level of effectiveness, you'd think he'd be getting revenge on that other wizard, not on the Carmine Beast.
Seems legit. His account of the goblins' actions is consistent with what Louise saw in the prologue, with them sort of scrabbling around near the gas station at the edge of town.
Lucy at least has a backbone, if not a brain. That's some kind of central nervous system, at least!
I'm going to assume that everyone has already asked everyone else if they killed the Carmine Beast, so the ones who are not capable of lying are already known to not be directly responsible.
I wonder if this was a contributing factor to the girls all having initial negative impressions of him, on top of him actually looking like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre cast member. Now that the three of them are practitioners, karma is acting on them more strongly than it does on muggles, so whatever karmic bias mundane people would have against Chales is likely amplified in their own judgements.
Wildbow does know how to do unreliable narrators, I'll always credit him that.
They notably didn't suffocate when they put up the wind-shield earlier. At the time, I assumed it was because they were still allowing air to pass vertically, thus blocking the winds but enabling oxygen to circulate. The heat conversation makes me wonder if there was something else going on there, though, since leaving the "ceiling" open would also do a pretty good job enabling evaporative cooling as long as it's not too much heat all at once.
Maybe that's what Edith meant when she said it would depend on how strong the heat source was.
This is every new DnD group figuring out the long rest shifts lol.
Yeah, at this point it really does seem like the author thinks Lucy is a good investigator. Oh well.
Avery raises a good point in those last two sentences, unfortunately. I'm most of the way through her POV chapter now, and I'm still not sure that I could describe Avery's personality to you. Quiet and observant, I guess? Maybe?
Maybe that's not the best expression to casually drop into a story where literal zombies are a distinct possibility.
Huhhhh. Maybe this is to facilitate the process of making themselves "lost" and thus able to find the Carmine Beast's den?
Oh that is fucking creepy. Just by wearing that hat, she makes her own family temporarily forget about her.
There was at least one character in Worm who had a power like that, but I find it a lot scarier of a concept here. Any wizard could potentially draw that on any object and give it to any person.
Oh, your family and friends get a saving throw against it apparently. Enough mental resistance eventually wears down the spell, and in turn causes the circle to physically fade from the object.
That does make the existence of this spell a little bit less terrifying.
Avery seems to have the best home life. Then again, we haven't heard that much about Lucy's yet, and Verona, well, not that high of a bar.
Still wish I could say more about who Avery herself is, though.
Growing up in Nowhere, Canada, and you've never been...I find this hard to believe.
Well, not DIRECTLY related to that. Her appreciation for people who can enjoy camping might actually have very much to do with that fiery, foresty nature of hers.
How would connection-blocking keep the police off of them? The police don't need a personal connection to you to stop you. Maybe this "connection" thing runs deeper and covers more conceptual ground than the previous explanation made it sound.
Oh shit, what if you forget to be more careful to not make stupid oaths like that again?!
A wounded coyote is something only a lost or desperate person would follow?
Eh?
I guess if you were really desperate you might want to eat it, but it certainly wouldn't be my first read of what such a sighting "means" to the human mind in general.
So, the lost, the desperate, and...people who are looking for it. That seems a little cheap, after the buildup that the rest of the chapter has done until now, not gonna lie.
Anyway, the implication that the Carmine Beast wanted to be found by the lost and desperate in addition to purposeful wizard visitors could paint a picture of a very benevolent entity, or a very predatory one. What did she used to do to lost, desperate nonwizards when they came to her door?
Hunters and the hunted. Can take the shape of various different animals. Was once a run-of-the-mill spirit like all the others that inhabit everything, but somehow grew to fill some archetypal niche and become a minor god.
Hmm. Let's see where this is going.
So red the leaves looked white? Is that a thing? Maybe that's a thing. Maybe it means that everything in the area just moves toward red in its color, and with green and red being opposite on the color wheel that means white? I don't feel like looking up the science right now, so I'll just assume that the author knew what he was doing here and accept it.
Oof. Wildbow. Wildbow, I know you can do better than this.
"There were animals here, all carnivores?" Really? That's all the attention that Avery is giving them? Just walked into a clearing full of wolves and bears (I think? Maybe? For all I know these carnivores are just spiders and yellow jacket wasps, plus the occasional ferret :/ ) and not having any sort of fear or surprise or wonder reaction at all?
No exclamation from Verona, who's never even been camping before and thus probably isn't used to this much wildlife?
I get that the sadness aura hanging over this place due to the Beast's death might be changing the way they react to things and where they put their focus, but still. "Walking into a clearing full of bears." That's going to elicit SOMETHING from the girls.
Unless the carnivores really are all just small birds and insects. I can't tell.
The lack of description and reactions to these things are starting to actually make me resent the text.
It doesn't help that Avery is also the protagonist with the least defined personality so far. Letting us hear her thoughts about these things, the memories they might evoke, the feelings they inspire, could be a great opportunity to actually develop her a little. The lack of ANYTHING, of any interest or fear or curiosity being devoted to the animals or the new Others showing up while we're supposedly in her head, is making me wonder more and more if Avery is a robot or something.
A few of them get described in the following passage, but only after they've exchanged a few lines of dialogue with Charles. And only a handful of them.
So, that explains why she had an affinity for hunters and the hunted. Whether she actually did any killing herself or just encouraged it to happen in her domain if it was to happen at all, she definitely sounds like a hard goddess to get along with at least for most.
The existence of this local pantheon of demigods does call the need for a human shaman to look after the spirit world into question. At most, you'd think the role of the shaman would just to be an ambassador to these guys, rather than actually having any kind of leadership role. I guess there must be more to this, in terms of what the demigods can and can't do on their own.
I wonder how large an area each of these mini-pantheons administers? Matthew mentioned three different ones holding sway in different parts of east Asia, but east Asia is really effing big, so there could be any number of others in there as well. How many other of these pantheons are there in eastern Canada? In North America?
Anyway, all these interesting musings aside, unfortunately...this prose is just bad. Wall of exposition. Minimal description. This entity rides in on the head of a giant fucking centipede and Avery doesn't even fixate on how big it is or whether it's looking at them hungrily. The exposition almost feels like something from a BioWare game, where there are just NPC's standing around waiting to be interrogated at length so they can provide these long immersion-breaking infodumps. The characters are having a face-to-face meeting with a family of GODS, and the reader isn't being made to feel anything about this at all.
HOW DO YOU MAKE A SCENE LIKE THIS SO BORING AND BLAND? HOW???
Oh...so it's not necessarily a "spirit" that grows to fill that niche, then. Any sort of entity that can do magic would be able to become the new murdergod, potentially.
The definition of "spirit" in this framework continues to elude me.
What...but...no! That's how CASES get brought before the supreme court, not how they pick fucking Justices! We were talking about how the seat gets filled, not what its occupant is given jurisdiction over! What even is this fucking conversation and how many times did the author fall asleep in the middle of writing it?
What? She's just going straight to asking about the candidates, instead of asking what the hell "make them vulnerable" means in this context?
John Stiles is the "dog of war" from the meeting who I don't think said anything. The Hungry Court are...I guess sentient after all, then, probably? The fact that the unnamed goddess lady refers to them as "your" hungry choir suggests that they are closer to humanity than most Others.
I really don't get why someone hasn't already asked John or the mutilated ghost kids "hey, did you kill the Carmine Beast?" Others can't lie, so I feel like they'd have to have scratched these two obvious suspects off the list pretty much immediately, right? Maybe the Hungry Court can't talk, or have convinced everyone they can't talk. That might give them a way around this, potentially.
Anyway, that's the chapter, and the commission. I still can't describe Avery's personality.
I want to like this. I love the ideas and concepts on display here, in this latest chapter especially. It's just so badly written. I know I've been through this repeatedly already, but I just can't understand how the author's prose could have gotten *worse* after a decade of near-constant practice.
Like, here. Take any given passage from what I've read of Pale, and compare it to the opening paragraphs of Worm written in 2011:
The first person narration makes things a little more intimate just by default, sure, but the differences are much bigger than that alone can account for. Is the prose still pretty scant when it comes to direct sensory engagement? Yes. We don't know what Mr. Gladly or Madison Clements look like, or where in the room the protagonist is sitting, or what the classroom has pinned up on its walls. And sure, I think it would be better if it did engage the mind's eye with details like those.
But the personality! The atmosphere! The emotions! The anxiety and depression hit you in the very first sentence. The feeling of entrapment that defines Worm for pretty much the entirety of its length comes in strong and hot right from the start. The protagonist gives us her assessment of Mr. Gladly, and then we're shown his behavior right afterward and given a chance to judge how accurate her assessment is. We know who Mr. Gladly is and how he acts less than a page into the story, and at least to a large extent we know who protagonist Taylor Hebert is and how she acts just from how she describes the scene and her place within it. We know Madison Clement is a mean bitch who's plotting something, and any reader who ever experienced bullying in school immediately shares Taylor's trepidation about what might be coming. Which in turn transforms the repeated mention of the minutes creeping by on the clock into a gauge of the building dread.
Pale's word choice and grammar might be better. It might have more attentive editing. But I could never, ever bring myself to say that it's written better than this.
It's a shame, because in theory I find Pale's setting and speculative concepts much more interesting than Worm's. But frankly, I feel like I've shown more curiosity and enthusiasm for Pale's world in these three chapters than the fucking protagonists have, and it's really, really hard for me to keep it up in those conditions. Starting the story earlier, with the girls first being contacted by Miss and made aware of the supernatural's existence, would have definitely made it easier to give Pale an engrossing introduction. But even that better introduction point would have suffered badly if it was delivered in this sluggish, grey, sterile writing style. It's really too bad.