Pale (“lost for words 1.2”)
Time for 1.2 now. The banner art has a different one of the girls be the non-transparent one, which I'm guessing signals a POV shift. Looks like the trio will be taking turns in the protagonist chair.
Wonder if we'll ever get back to Louise from the prologue? I can't say I particularly want that, since she didn't exactly enchant me, but I'm a bit curious about it.
Anyway, this chapter is a bit shorter, which hopefully means better pacing.
Lost for Words 1.2
Salty pepperoni? Lucy, you didn't eat your buffet table contribution, did you? I don't think the spirits would appreciate that.
Also, dress for the weather dumbass.
She packed extra clothes aside from the cloaks, but she didn't put them on? Even when she spent all that time standing around waiting for Avery? Lucy, you kinda made your own bed here.
Hmm. I'm torn on this.
On one hand, this sort of circular causality that changes who you are and what you do as a result of your (and other people's) magical activities is very prominent in occultism. It's true to inspiration, and opens the door to some really far-out speculative writing that you wouldn't be able to do in any other genre.
On the other hand, it also runs the risk of depriving the characters of agency, and...let's just say that Wildbow has a less than pristine record when it comes to this. Think "spent multiple years clarifying every other character's idiosyncratic traits and mysterious motivations with, literally, aliens made them do it" less than pristine.
Hence, I'm wary about this. Moreso than I would be by default if this were by an author I didn't know. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Agricultural term for human waste when used as crop fertilizer.
Hah. Did he actually think she didn't know, or was he just taking the opportunity to mess with them?
That means that goblins, at least, aren't independent entities. They only exist as a reflection of a certain aspect of humanity. If the other spirits are also like that, then it would make sense for them to call themselves "others" and define themselves in relation to humans.
This would also explain why they're so weirdly deferential to humans, in some ways, even though they won't admit it in as many words. Feeling like they need a human to manage their shit for them, when it seems like they should be more comfortable avenging the godwolf on their own. They recognize that humans are the subject and they are merely the verb, dependent on human action for their own existence.
I don't think that could be true for ALL others, though. The Carmine Beast seems pretty beyond human concerns. Maybe spirits like it are derived from all sentient life, human and otherwise. Or maybe some others really are independent, naturalistic entities.
Anyway, goblins seem to embody...disgust? contempt? taboo? Something along those lines.
Hahaha fuck yeah what a bamf.
Lucy, Lucy, two things here.
For one, you and your fourteen year old classmates aren't about to have kids. He's not on the clock, or even really networking, right now. Let him blow off some goddamned steam.
For another, you're a late gen-z early gen-alpha kid, Lucy. Referring to children as "crotch-fruit" or "crotch-goblins" or the like is something your favorite mildly edgy YouTuber does every other day. Not just that degree of crassness in general, I mean something close to that specific turn of phrase. This reads like Lucy is the old out-of-touch one, and Sir Toadswallow is the internet-savvy teenager. Which is funny, but also kind of baffling.
Four goblins, a pillarman, a harpy, and a guy with a weird haircut. The full set of classic supernatural beings.~
I don't think this is the time and place to expect people to incriminate themselves, Lucy. You need to get to know them first and get a sense for what is and isn't normal for them. Treat this like a meet and greet.
John is some kind of servitor of Matthew's, it seems like. Hmm. Are there are going to be a Mark and a Luke?
Anyway, I don't think Toadswallow needs to be banished. Seems like he was behaving himself, to the extent that a goblin is capable of doing that. I guess he probably would want to stay with the other goblins anyway, given that they're tight-knit enough to casually form a goblin pyramid as part of their idle animation.
John is either a victim of longtime abuse, or he's some kind of trauma-elemental and is just like this by default.
The latter would fit in pretty well alongside the goblins and other beings like them. The former would imply some very unpleasant things about Matt, unless John was a rescue or something.
Lucy describing Verona as "scruffy" is surprising, given how much of her own POV chapter was spent detailing her fastidiousness.
Verona using her brain and approaching this problem in a logical, methodical manner, while also taking into account the fact that they're going to be expected to keep working with this community after they resolve the Carmine Beast fiasco. She's definitely the smart one, between the three. Lucy...so far, she kind of seems like the dumb one.
Again, very human-dependent. The rituals that *actually do bind* the others vary by human culture, and the materials used have different effects due to the connotations they're given by (very temporal) human attitudes. Wood being "old" and metal "new" is a paradigm that's only existed since the industrial revolution, after all.
Well, sort of. Trees being associated with tradition and the past on account of the roots Miss mentioned goes back considerably further. The oppositional symbolism of metal, though, is pretty modern.
Miss said that Holly would be appreciated better by this more conservative population of others, so no reason to rock the boat. Holly is the better choice for sure.
Now, why holly instead of other wood...hmm. It's had protective ritual uses in much of western Europe for quite a long time, and looking it up now it also apparently has some circle-of-life symbolism associated with it in India.
I'm curious if holly trees had any particular significance to the First Nations of the Ontario region, because I figure those people would have left the strongest mark on the region. Or maybe Anglo-Canadians have been the supermajority in the area for long enough at this point that the European traditions matter more to the local spirits now.
Pillars of human experience, let's see. Time is obvious, and probably has a ritual connotation as well (rituals happen to mark certain times and events, after all). Thread...either protection from the environment a la clothing, or more metaphorically representing social and cultural connections. Coin, wealth, desire, aspiration, also reciprocity in the form of trade and commerce. Knife is the ability to act upon the environment, the ur-tool that you need first in order to make virtually all other tools. Skull...don't know. Mortality, even though that overlaps with the clock? Violence? Ancestral ties? Something to do with the brain, representing intellect? Could be a lot of things.
Verona is a skull person? I'm a little surprised at that. Not very surprised, but a little bit.
Thread is interhuman connections then, yeah.
Knife twice for Lucy? Wonder what other part she's substituting it with? Maybe the thread, if her knife was a gift from a close friend or family member?
I wonder if this relatively short list of entities is made up of like, elected representatives? As in, the goblins, fairies, etc each appointed an emissary or three to send for this ritual? Or is this actually the entire community right here, or at least the entire part of the community that cares to participate?
Also, if the others are at least largely human-derived, do their population densities correlate to human ones? It would make sense for them too, but then this town of five thousand people in the middle of nowhere shouldn't have anything like the supernatural scene that it does.
...well. Unless EVERY town of 5k actually is like this, and big cities are much moreso. That would actually be really cool.
I guess it could also relate to human perceptions of "otherness" as such. When there's lots of wilderness nearby, people see a lot of untamed, unknowable stuff for them to project their own weird biases onto and thus unwittingly create others, whereas people in developed areas don't have enough mystery in front of them to start doing this. Maybe that's how it works?
Both interesting possibilities for sure.
The stories that concern that guy's interactions with spirits are, um, not exactly heartwarming examples of interspecies cooperation. Maybe the version that got written down makes Solomon look much worse than he actually was, in terms of how he treated Others and how they reacted to his actions.
Well, Lucy at least has the best memory, if not the best reasoning ability. Making sure the terms of the pact are spoken during the ritual itself, not just advertised ahead of time.
Only a 51% majority needed to empower the local wizard(s) for a specific goal. Presumably including a purge of the other 49%, if it comes down to it.
Not what I'd call a safe parliamentary system, but hey, if that's how the others want things to work I wouldn't expect a trio of middle schoolers to have either the guts or the critical thinking skills to second guess them.
The wording sounds less like "disempower the guilty spirit" and more like "empower the girl squad to go beat up the guilty spirit."
Maybe Verona rehearsed, even if no one else did?
Lol at Lucy being impressed by words like "unjust."
Okay, I guess being a wizard just comes with a built-in vocabulary bonus. This may only be when they're doing actual rituals, though. We'll have to wait and see if they start doing better in English class before concluding that it's always active.
Lucy sees herself as being smart and cunning, huh? Well, maybe this is aspirational rather than reflective. I'm sure you'll get there someday, Lucy.
Seems like I was right about the knife doubling as a thread, and for the reasons I surmised.
Hmm, she may have accidentally told something on herself there. Cats - black ones in particular - also have connotations of cowardice and hiding. She's refusing to engage with her past, trying to deny it...escaping from it? The ritual might be making the girls better able and more willing to express themselves, but it might not be teasing out all the murkier underlying motives. They're telling what they think is the truth.
Anyway, Verona seems to have a more accurate sense of who she is and what she's good at as her current self than Lucy does, at least.
Hmm. Deer have the same cowardly symbolism that cats do, but they also have quite a bit of other things associated with them. "Silent and timid" is one of them. I'm still not quite seeing it, though. From Avery's account, it sounds like she may have had undiagnosed mental health issues, on top of general teenaged alienation, social isolation, and losing the best friend she's implied to have had an unrequited crush on. Her experience reminds me a lot of my pre-medication college years, IE the part of my life that Serial Experiments Lain reminded me of. The teacher who saved her may or may not be the same one who that crush got transferred onto and remains subject to it.
Verona left her position to hug her? Hope that doesn't ruin the spell or anything.
Definitely aspirational, rather than diagnostic, then. The deer is what she wants to be.
Very strange choice of animals for the symbolism she wants, though. Deer can fight if you back them into a corner, sure, but they're not exactly known for it. Maybe she had a harrowing personal experience with a deer at some point in her life? I can't imagine why else her mind would go there.
Now, if she'd brought a moose mask that would require much less explanation, since those are famously violent. It would also be hilariously, beautifully, *spectacularly* Canadian. If she wore a moose mask and brought maple syrup instead of honey then this story would probably end up getting an illuminated manuscript of it made for the National Archives of Canada.
It was odd of her to leave by crossing over the coin? What is Lucy's frame of reference for that being "different," with the fairy lady being only the third Other to do the thing so far?
Anyway, she left them a little crystal thingy. That's cool.
Not sure if I'd trust those spices. Toadswallow is a bro who would never mess with your spices, of course, but the others I don't know about.
Toadswallow favoring the hourglass might have to do with his connection with children and the education thereof. The other goblins choosing the skull could relate to their violent/shocking natures, or it could have some more esoteric meaning.
Ringu Girl's movements make me think Silent Hill. Wonder what she is, and what that thing means?
Hmm. What ARE Matthew and Edith, anyway? I got the impression that he was human and she was nonhuman, on account of him working at a store and being known to the townsfolk while none of the normies have ever seen her, but that might be completely wrong. He seems to count as an other rather than a human for the purposes of the ritual.
Their relationships with the coin and skull symbols, I couldn't yet speculate.
With fifty to one hundred zombie children crowding over the buffet, I don't think Lucy would be able to see if they were going for the milk or not.
Aura perception online.
That explains the chapter art. The blood everywhere is presumably left over from that time when the moon was bleeding all over everything and the wolf god was dying. Might take a while to wash off. The banners and blades and ruins, I'm less sure about. The imagery says aftermath of a battle, so maybe it's an echo of the fight between Carmine Beast and whoever killed him?
Nevermind, not aura perception, just anime.
Lucy is mixed race? It's kind of weird how much attention Verona's POV descriptions called to Lucy's blackness. I guess rural Ontario is a white enough region that anything other than that just really sticks out.
Oooh, look at Miss' face with the Sight. Come on, you knooooow you want to.~
I've made my thoughts on these two's respective cognitive abilities clear already. Nothing in this paragraph contradicts them, to say the least.
The characterization of the three girls is sort of all over the place when it comes to how they react to the supernatural stuff. It feels like this might be another symptom of the story starting in the wrong place. There's no clear sense of what they've already gotten used to and what they haven't, and I kind of get the impression that the author isn't clear on those details either. I thought they were going to take this opportunity to get to know everyone a little first?
Anyway, Louise is a witness, though I'm not sure what she saw that everyone else with the Sight wouldn't have. Big Doggo was already dying by the time she saw it, no?
Miss' true name is Hastur, I see.
How can you form a suspect list if you don't even know where and how the crime took place, or met anyone who you have reason to suspect beyond "they knew the victim existed?"
Not sure what Miss did in the last few paragraphs that was so incriminating, aside from seeming to be the most powerful of the local entities and thus the most capable of injuring a god. Not sure what detail Lucy just fixated on.
She was out and about on that night, but so was seemingly everyone else in the local spirit world (Matt and Edith were out that night. The ghost children were running around all over the place. The clustered figures of uneven size that Louise saw on the stairs had to have been the goblins. Etc), and who could blame them? It's not like the death of the Carmine Beast was something an entity capable of seeing it could easily miss, or would be inclined to not react to.
The thing hurting this ending the most, though, is still the push and pull between the girls having to acclimate to this world of magicians and spirits, and them wanting to focus on the investigation. It's too much at once, and none of them are reacting to it in a way that feels natural to me. Why didn't this story start with Miss first contacting them? That would have been the obvious starting point, and would have made all of these problems much easier to avoid.
Anyway, that's the chapter. One more in queue after this. I'm getting much more invested now that all these fascinating possibilities about the supernatural world are opening up, but the execution really did hobble itself in a way that makes other stretches of the story hard to read and the three lead characters hard to get to know.