Pale (“Lost for Words 1.1”)
Something I missed last time is that there's a little extra tab on Pale's site that includes extra supplemental material for certain chapters. The prologue's bonus content is pretty minimal, just a tourist brochure advertising Kennet's ski slopes and hotels, but it does explain that the town is in Ontario so that answers one question of mine. Also, there's this cute little spell component shopping list that someone folded up inside their brochure:
I love the helpfully labelled skull. Like, of all the things that they'd need both text and illustrations to keep themselves from forgetting, it's that.
With the prologue out of the way, it's on to the first arc of the story, "Lost for Words."
Lost for Words 1.1
This one starts with a nifty piece of banner art of its own.
Wildbow got himself a dedicated illustrator or two, and they seem to be pretty good at what they do. The eldritch screensaver is probably my favorite detail, but the tentacles waving around outside just barely visible behind the tinted windows are also pretty kawaii.
Along with the illustration is the name "Verona." The letter V recurred a lot alongside two other letters in the spell component checklist, so I'm guessing that Verona is the POV character for this chapter and that she's one of the three weirdoes who Louise ran into outside the ice rink. Notably, none of those three letters are an M for Matthew, but his wizard name might be Lombardi or Akhenaten something idk.
Let's see.
Hidden Face Woman is in a mood, it appears. Given that Verona doesn't appear to know her, I guess the former probably isn't one of the trio from the prologue after all. Also, No-Face can control the wind by leaning to the side. I had a classmate who could do that back in middle school.
On a positive note, I will say that the descriptions here are already a lot more vivid and followable than the prologue's. Clear scene setting. All the important details right there, front and center. Effectively spooky, horror movie-like mental image conjured.
Heh, okay, I like Verona. She's jaded in just the right way and has just the right kind of good attitude about it that I always love in this kind of story. I feel like this is probably the healthiest coping mechanism for someone in a spooky fantasy setting who knows they aren't that powerful.
Now, let's see if the caller is No-Face, or someone else. If the latter, Verona might try and surreptitiously get a distress call out using coded language or the like, in case No-Face is listening in somehow.
Lucy, Verona, and Avery. Seems like this is a different trio from the one in the prologue, and one that the latter has seen fit to monitor and/or intimidate by planting No-Face outside Verona's house.
If Verona has to remind Lucy that she can't lie, then Lucy must have only very recently come by this characteristic. Or else Verona is just fucking with her. The second one is probably more likely, going by the vibes.
Anyway, witch teen girl squad. They'll be covered in warts and hunched over a cauldron finishing each other's sentences in rhyme in some little shack in the woods eighty years from now, but for now they're in high school.
"Teacher, teacher, my hair just started falling out, help!"
Putting together a nice little buffet table for the fairies. Or goblins. Or...whatever picky eater spirits the girl squad are hoping to do a thing with. Probably the same as the shadowy little child-things that were crowding around the grownup trio in the prologue.
I too have very mixed feelings on those jerky stick thingies. That said, authentic venison sausage is mmmm. Would grant wishes in exchange for.
Hopefully that wasn't another binding magical oath, or they're going to need a replacement for the bald dead girl.
Maybe No-Face foresaw this and is just waiting to hand in her application. She got tired of Matthew and his GF.
Okay, that context changes things. No-Face has been creeping on at least two of the three of them for some time, and for Verona it's gotten to the point of just going "for fuck's sake if you're stalking us to murder us then just do it already holy shit."
Which, again. Pretty healthy attitude to have. And one that a supernatural entity might even respect enough to decide not to kill you after all.
Likes to be the master of her own small, well-defined domain and optimize it. That definitely lends itself to a certain archetype when it comes to fantasy magician types. She's going to be a lot happier when she can move out and set up her own little cottage core doom fortress.
I guess she's still working her way up to a clothes-fixing spell. That would also come in handy for the cottage core life. Baba Yaga Chic.
Hmm, okay, yeah, no, that might be a problem for the life trajectory I was imagining. She hates cleaning, even though she's very good at it. Guess she needs to learn a dishwashing spell, or make regular deer jerky payments to a kitchen goblin, or something.
F
Verona is really fixated on clothes. Her own clothes and making them Just So takes up a lot of word count. Wringing her hands over throwing out an old sweater. Calling attention to how boring her dad's clothes are.
Another detail I remember from Pact (and which I mentioned in the Swat Kats review) is that each wizard has a personalized focus that they do their magic with. Verona's is going to have something to do with clothing. Either something she wears, or maybe something she sews herself. Using a knitting needle as a wand? I could definitely see that being a thing. It also captures the self-reliance, the control over one's personal space, the generally constructive "can do" attitude...yeah, I think that would make sense for Verona from what we've seen of her thus far.
Cuts her own hair too.
Now, I wonder if her parents know about magic. I know that the Pactverse has bickering wizard lineages with designated clan heirs a la Type Moon, but I don't know if it only has that.
What the fuck, Verona's dad.
Is this like, him testing her? Some sort of game they're playing? A magic pact training thing? If not, holy shit this guy is a tool.
Tool.
And almost certainly not a wizard, given the type of things he's emphasizing, complaining about, and not mentioning. He'd definitely know about No-Face if he was a magic type person himself.
I wonder how Verona became what she is, then?
Well, anyway, her dad's a tool.
Hmm. Okay, maybe this isn't actually as one-sided as I thought. He definitely isn't appreciating what his daughter does, but it sounds like he really is being worked hard enough to not be in a good state of mind. Sure, he's an adult and she's his teen child, so you have to hold him to much higher standards, but she probably could be a little more verbally appreciative herself. I'd say he's still in the wrong, but not as much so as I thought when I had my initial gut reaction.
Okay now he's just being a prick, full stop. Even if she really was putting off a whole week of chores until today (which would kind of surprise me, going by how she's been characterized), he's just being a douche now.
Wonder what the situation with the mother who "gives him the bare minimum" is. Depending on the details there, I could be more or less sympathetic to her dad being this high strung and demanding.
He didn't even apologize. Bad look, Verona's dad. Pretty sure you'd be at least kind of a dickhead even if your work and marriage situation was better.
Lol.
Okay, I can see how Verona might wear down my nerves if I had to live with her now. Not that that makes her dad less of a jerk, but well...she definitely has some growing up to do.
It's realistic teenaged snobbiness, but it's also making me remember why I hated being a teenager. Everyone was acting out some version of this, myself included, and it's not fun being on either side of it let alone both.
How much snow is there on stuff, right now? It is still winter, right? Why are there piles of fallen leaves and visibly "grass-less" fields?
Maybe there's only a little bit of snow left on the tree branches, with pretty much none on the ground?
The loud, fiery-tempered black girl is sort of annoyingly stereotypical. Far from the worst example of the trope I've ever seen, but still, annoying.
Avery just looking down at them before vanishing again was pretty good comedic timing.
Looks like nobody besides Verona is dressed for the weather.
Kinda on Lucy's side, ngl.
Soooo teenaged. Much more convincingly so than most of the characters in Worm, from what I recall. The fact that this is a less fantastical setting probably helps with that; easier basis for comparison to the real world.
"Her." Probably not No-Face. The other lady? Matt's girlfriend? Louise? Probably not Louise. Either Matt's gf, or someone new.
Just watch now, Melissa is going to turn out to be No-Face's secret identity.
This whole conversation feels really weirdly boomer. Like, "hello my fellow kids" writing.
How old is the author? I always got the impression he was around my age, but this feels like it was written by someone considerably older.
Hah!
They're younger than I was imagining, or at least Avery is. Less high school and more middle school.
I was starting to feel a little called out by Lucy there, since my first ever makeout session was with my substitute science teacher at the time, but she didn't know me until I was in my mid-to-late teens so that's different.
Lucy. Lucy. Bad look. There are good looks that a person can have, Lucy, and the one you just had was not one of them.
Hmm. I had another sort of double-take there, when the text established that Verona was looking out for No-Face throughout their walk, and then had her spotting someone in the very next sentence. I think this would have been more effective if it established her searching the foliage as they passed earlier, maybe called back to it a couple of times by mentioning her eye movements or the details of the scenery she was inspecting, and then had the zombie boy appear.
Anyway, we white walkers now? I think we white walkers now. Snowy forest zombies, it's an aesthetic. I think I recall Pact also having a scene like this in its first couple of chapters? Zombies chasing the protag through a wintery landscape? Pretty sure that was a thing in Pact as well. This whole setting likes it some Song of Ice and Fire prologue I guess.
Now let's see if we'll have to fight this one or upvote it on the stupid not!FaceMash app or what.
Ehhhhh...while Verona's determined nonchalance is a persistant and likeable trait of hers, I'm much less thrilled with Avery and Lucy's dialogue here. Especially Avery's. It really feels like the Marvel Cinematic Universe style semi-irony, where the characters constantly go out of their ways to pre-empt the realistic reactions to things because they'd be "cliche," and just constantly feel like they need to remind you not to take anything seriously.
Hah! Okay, at first I thought they were talking about the spirit or witch that they're going out to meet playing a prank on them by having zombies (or illusions of zombies) shamble around in their path to freak them out. That would be a lot more plausible then the "classmate somehow managed to rig up a missing-jaw costume and waited out in the cold woods for them for however many hours." And certainly more than a movie doing this kind of intensive high-spectacle promotion in a town of five thousand people lol.
The whole gang is here! Plus some extras! There is also the "large male" (what a weird way to describe someone) with pale blonde hair carrying a heavy something.
Were the goblin-elf things Louise saw actually these child zombies? Creepy. More sinister than it seemed, and it seemed fairly sinister.
Anyway, whoever the "she" that summoned them to a meeting is, the adult trio seems to have been waiting for them. Or, perhaps, both covens were summoned by the mystery lady and are surprised to see each other here. In either case, No-Face owes the kiddies an explanation, assuming they aren't going to just wordlessly turn them into three more zombies. They were nice to Louise, but that might not extend to everyone else who walks in on them.
Verona likes their musical accoutrement. And implies that she knows enough about magic to recognize the song as a conjured effect, rather than the singing of an actual unseen eldritch being that's about to reveal itself. I don't think the other two are nearly as in-the-know as her.
Matthew is outraged at the insinuation that he'd kill a trio of kids without first issuing a formal declaration of war. He's a killer, not a murderer.~
So, Miss No-Face is indeed the one who summoned everyone here. Including the teen girl squad.
Who did Verona and her friends think had called them here, if not her? They knew it was a she, somehow. But they didn't put it together with the faceless phantom that Verona (and seemingly the others as well) had been seeing? Seems like a pretty easy connection to make, or at least to consider a strong possibility.
So yeah. Curious about the circumstances leading to this invitation, and what everyone was assuming before they went in.
Others! I knew it! Who else would be filling the winter forest with mutilated zombies, after all. I hope you brought some sharp obsidian along with the picnic, Verona.
More seriously, I'm not sure how I feel about the others referring to themselves as "others." Like, Miss NoFace doesn't think of herself as "other," does she? Define herself and other beings like her solely in their relationship to humans like that? I could see her saying something like "your people often call us Others" or the like, but to say that that's "the best description" of them really seems more like a human talking about others than an other talking about herself.
With that out of the way though, I really like this premise. It picks up the same whimsical, mostly-positive vibes from the prologue, and follows through with them to a scenario that I don't think I've encountered before. The spirits of this haunted wilderness need a new shaman to manage their relationships with the nearby town. It's not the (too misanthropic to take initiative in this matter) old wizard seeking apprentices, it's the spirits themselves trying to find a new human that they can work with to (seemingly) mutual benefit. Definitely could have been the premise of one of those seventies books.
The giant bleeding dog monster incident might be what convinced the spirits that they really need to take finding Charles' replacement seriously. Which means either he failed to deal with it satisfactorily, or they're just afraid of more incidents like this happening in the near future and his retirement date is already set.
One of the others in the woods is scary and wears a monocle. He's my favourite character now.
Like I said. Best character.
Oh wait, it's Miss NoFace talking again, not Best Character. The text wasn't clear about that. For a moment I thought it was revealing that Best Character was the one who gave them the invitation and instructions, and was the entity they earlier referred to as "she" even though his monocled face was described as masculine-looking.
I'm still curious why they didn't realize that Miss NoFace was the same entity who gave them the invitation. If they knew it was a she, and that there was a female-looking-thing watching them from the shadows during the same time period, it seems like they should have either a) not been afraid of her stalking them, or b) been too afraid of her to come into the woods today as instructed. I can't imagine why they'd have done the opposite on both counts.
Anyway, we also now know that the girl squad aren't witches yet. They either happened to be among the odd few teenagers who happen to be able to see the others and thus got Miss NoFace's attention, or Miss NoFace gifted them with that ability when she deemed them worthy candidates. Either way though, no practical magic yet; just basic training in how to learn practical magic.
From their dynamic, it seems like Verona and Lucy were already friends, and Avery is the one who their spirit guide spirit guided them to.
The Carmine Beast, eh? I still wonder what kind of threat that thing actually posed, either to humans or to others.
Huh?
What are the other two getting that she isn't? She asked her question. Then Lucy and Avery asked much easier clarifying questions that only made sense to ask with the context of that initial answer. They don't seem like they have any kind of special insight into this stuff that Verona lacks, and they haven't seemed to be handling it better emotionally either.
What's Verona's problem, here?
Oh yeah, don't mind me, Best Character coming right the fuck through. Verona over here paralyzed into an ecstatic trance by the overwhelming gigachad energy radiating off of that monocle.
lmao who cares we've already seen the crown jewel of the collection
Oh...she was just less able to see all the creatures than the other two were, until right this second? I guess? The way the scene was described up until now didn't make it clear at all that Lucy and Avery were seeing things Verona couldn't. The mention of "little faces in the trees" sounds like it's just referring to the childlike figures that Verona DID see, until the context that only comes after that passage.
There was no mention of, eg, her friends looking in directions that she couldn't see anything in. She saw some of the creatures, and heard the voices of others. What made HER think she was missing anything?
This story's lack of descriptions and telegraphing for important things is becoming a real recurring problem for me. And, once again, a surprising problem for it to have going by what I've read of the author's previous works.
This is way too much exposition all crammed in at once.
And the questions the girls are asking suggest that they're going into it with more knowledge than I have to begin with. Like, Lucy's inference that "taking responsibility for us" means that they'll incur a certain quantum of suffering for letting them come to harm, rather than it just being a stain on their reputations among other spirits or something like that? How the heck did she make that (apparently correct) assumption? I can only guess that she's going off of something that Miss-placed Her Face told them in the leadup to today's events. Why couldn't we have been there for THAT scene, and spread the infodump out a little bit along with making it much more effective at infodumping?
Huh?
"What's left of the Carmine Beast" is one of the more minor local spirits, and they somehow don't know who?
Can't they just, like, take a head count? See who showed up right after the Beast's fall? This community of others seems to keep in pretty good touch with each other. Could they have really not noticed when somebody new showed up, especially if they were specifically looking for that?
I guess it could be that not ALL of the local others are as social and community-minded as the ones who showed up to this meeting. But, in that case, it's weird that Miss would affirm that it's "one of US." Very misleading phrasing, even if not technically incorrect. Which I guess makes sense for a spirit doing some kind of can-only-lie-indirectly fuckery, but I don't think she has a reason to lie here when it would have been easier to just not mention the Carmine Beast's remnant in the first place.
Or...other possibility. Is there a word missing there? If she's supposed to have said that the Carmine Beast's murderer is one of them, that would make a whole lot more sense. Classic murder mystery setup; we know that one of the witnesses is actually the culprit, but we need to narrow down which one. The thing is...this chapter was published quite a while ago, and it's had plenty of readers and commenters. If there was THAT glaring of a word omission, it would have certainly been caught and fixed by now.
Yeah, I don't know.
So that's what was up with the animal doodles on the shopping list.
Does this mean they're going to have to wear these silly masks and cloaks whenever they want to do magic or consult the spirits? I kind of hope so, just for the lolz.
So, the answer is "sort of." They're more powerful when they're wearing their full stupid costumes, but they're not powerless without them.
Wildbow getting back to his superhero roots a little? :p
Witch hats too? Perfect.
So, that's 1.1. "Lost for Words" is an appropriate arc title.
Goddddddd I want to like this.
I think most of my issues come down to the story starting at the wrong place. After the prologue establishing the fall of the Carmine Beast and its significance, we should have started from the beginning of the girl squad's recruitment. Kick off the story with Verona getting her first cryptic message from Miss. We can get to know the characters as she and Lucy are goaded into teaming up with Avery (or whatever the initial combination was) and overcoming their skepticism and fear together. Miss watching them creepily from the darkness raises the tension as they spur themselves on. Exposition about the supernatural world comes in concise packages while the girls get to know each other and the reader gets to know them. Then, the last chapter of the arc has them going into the forest and getting the big payoff when all the Others reveal themselves and Miss tells them the last few important details, including the murder mystery assignment.
As it is, this was just really clunky and poorly paced. Which is unfortunate, because I'm quite interested in the premise, and I do like Verona as a protagonist with impressive virtues and realistic teenaged flaws. The idea of a murder mystery where the victim is basically the forest god from Princess Mononoke is also a really creative twist on a familiar concept. But, bad pacing, weirdly unforthcoming descriptions, and mostly dull prose with only a few passages that are really fun to read are making this a chore to get into, even if I want to get into it.
Maybe it'll flow better now that the big infodump is over and done with and we've got the premise laid out and the characters in position. There's still a couple chapters left in this comission, so we'll see.
Also, this really did end up having a lot in common with Katalapesis, didn't it? Invisible creatures, trio of teenaged lesbian witches, plot kicked off by an event involving a godlike entity, there's quite a bit. They're also alike in how they simultaneously embrace and try to mitigate the cheesiness that the urban fantasy genre has become inseparable from, to varying degrees of success.