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shsl-heck · 2 years ago

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Pale Live Read Part 3. Stolen Away

After like 10 days I’m finally posting this! The arc was great I just got distracted and didn’t start reading it until a couple days ago, then it turned out I had a lot of thoughts. Once again warning for heavy Pact spoilers since my thoughts are heavily influenced by reading it before this.

Greg isn't in their class anymore and no one seems to remember him. So presumably the choir severed his connections to everyone not at the ritual location. Very Urr adjacent feeling. This is definitely something I can see being listed alongside Corvidae as an Other people assumed was a demon at first. I'm 99% sure it's not though. It seems to lack the ambient corrupting effect they have.

The fact that Lucy used to blame herself for all the problems in her life but now chooses to get angry and do something about it is interesting to me. I'd argue that it's honestly healthier to get mad like that than to wallow in self loathing like Avery does. Lucy is giving off very much an "if there can be no victory then I will fight forever", or even an "I had to try" vibe if we want to tie it into a certain other web serial.

Verona's dad continues to be the worst. Acting like that because your daughter forgot and didn't get you a birthday gift is just beyond my comprehension. Like I get he's got his own issues but Jesus christ, he needs to put on a brave face and do what has to be done for his daughter's sake. This is like peak parentification.

On a much lighter note I love these girls' friendship. It's so nice to read a Wildbow story where the central characters like each other and aren't constantly destroying every relationship in their life.

They used to do a similar fake nation project at my school in geography class. Not really relevant to anything but I thought that was neat.

I really like Reagan. Hopefully she doesn't get killed or worse by the Choir, and I doubt she's Innocent anymore, so it might be interesting (and not too karmically costly) for the girls to send her in the direction of the magic school Miss mentioned. She'd make a good practitioner I think.

Okay now Lucy is distrusting Verona because she's talking to Miss on her own. This is closer to the Wildbow protags I'm used to lol.

They're going to see the faerie! I'm sure this will end well for them. In all seriousness though, after The Girl in the Checkered Scarf's interlude from Pact I'm a bit nervous about long term consequences. If anyone can weasel out of the oath at the awakening ceremony it's probably a faerie.

Just noticed the name of this arc which makes going to see Faeries even more ominous.

I know I just talked about them being dangerous but Marcica and Guilherme are delightful. The exiled faerie of Jacob's Bell were obviously a little menacing, but the two in Kennet have a great little Odd Couple dynamic going on here that makes them seem less threatening. That just makes them more dangerous though.

Marcica is being more generous than I'm comfortable with. The gifts are uh, of varying quality levels but it's still a lot. Verona's is especially worrying given she already wants to become something other than human.

Alpeana lives with the two fae? I desperately need a version of Pale that's just a sitcom about these three being roommates.

Marcica's interaction with Avery here, teaching her to use glamor, is actually a very nice moment. Her sharing her thoughts on gender and expression while basically doing Avery's makeup really feels very intimate. We know there's a trick here, but I can't fault Avery for falling for it. The way Marcica advises her to just go with what happens and work with instead of against the glamor also explains why her court loses the least to Winter. Presumably immortality is less miserable if you're willing to play along and just accept things.

I don't know if I like what Avery is doing with Pam here. She's like 12 so I get that these things have not occurred to her but it's a little creepy, and the kind of thing that could come with long term consequences. Pamela already has a bunch of self esteem issues and I can easily see her questioning the "why" here as time goes on.

Lucy maintaining her appearance out of spite feels like something that could easily become super self destructive. I also feel the need to point out that it's not actually that different from if she went the route Avery is and blamed herself. In that case it would be her fault she was ranked last, and so she has to try harder to be likable and attractive. Instead she decides to say fuck them (which I again think is a good idea), but she still ends up trying to improve her appearance to prove them wrong. It's the same end result, just different justifications! I don't think Lucy has let go of who she used to be as much as she likes to think she has.

Her family dynamic is really interesting too. Aunt Heather gets introduced and I actually like her a lot. Of the three girls she seems to have the best home life but that says more about how bad their situations are than anything about Lucy's. I really want this to work out but I'm not optimistic about the chances. I'm even less optimistic about whatever went down with this Paul guy. Presumably he's the reason Lucy's mom was so devastated that one night.

Okay I know they saw a classmate maybe die, and John pulled a gun on them but so far these girls have had it pretty easy when it comes to dealing with the practice. Because of that I think it's easy for Avery and Verona to not realize the risks they're taking, or that this relative safety won't always be guaranteed. Lucy seems to understand a little better in terms of the harm the Faerie might do to Pamela, but doesn't seem to put together that one of them pretending to be Kell would also turn Avery saying "you won't see this face around here again" into a lie. Right now the Others of Kennet can't hurt them directly, but none of them, not even Lucy seem to realize what they're messing with, or that the training wheels are still on. Just compare their uses of glamor to Blake's. Verona turned into a mink and snuggled, and Avery had a weird pseudo date. Blake broke into the house of a rival family in order to stop a ritual targeting him and barely managed to get out by disguising himself as a child and working around the no lying rule in clever ways after he stopped them by calling 911 instead of using Practice. Both of these are very early in the story and really demonstrate how disconnected the girls are from the very real danger Others and Practitioners can bring.

That was a long tangent but uh suffice it to say that Lucy is right about Avery and Verona needing to think more. Lucy may honestly be underselling it a little by accident (not that that would be her fault).

Lucy is absolutely not over blaming herself after seeing this conversation with Paul. It's heart wrenching to see her like this, and even worse when you realize how long she's had to hold onto all of this. The worst part though is that seemingly all of what she said was true, or true enough for the spirits at least. I sincerely hope Paul gets hit hard by that curse.

Ms Hardy is weird. Maybe this is a cultural thing but her not wanting to talk privately with Avery because that would be crossing a personal boundary is more than a little ridiculous. Like you as a middle school teacher are there to help your students learn and grow during one of the most complicated times in their lives, and a student privately asking you for advice about something is in no way a violation of your professional ethics. If you personally don't feel comfortable engaging with kids one on one when they have issues then you should have a different job. Honestly, bringing up the possibility of having another teacher, or even worse, other students (especially when you already know their home life is not great and they have a history of being ignored and emotionally neglected) is far more of a potential violation of the trust put in you. I've just gotten more fired up as I wrote this section so honestly I'd like to formally say fuck Ms Harding. Is this a common opinion? Or am I going to start disc horse by saying this?

Sheridan and Avery's conversation was nice. It really captured a certain type of small town ennui, and the odd sorts of relationships between siblings who have a decently significant age gap.

And the trend of humans being awful continues with yet another appearance by Verona's dad. Him just knocking three times to summon her, and especially when he started talking about his anniversary and Verona's mom not wanting to have sex or even get a massage is so sad, but in the way that triggers your disgust reaction when you see it, which is something that happens a lot in real life but not in fiction. Misery is frequently gross and ugly, and that's not necessarily any kind of failing of the immiserated (though it is in this specific case). I feel the need to clarify bc this is tumblr which notably has excellent reading comprehension as a user base.

Very funny to see Verona ask Avery about what she wants her life to look like in twenty years. It makes me think back to Pact when Rose said "I don't think anyone is pretending Blake is long for this world" to which Blake's only objection was "I'm pretending!" Like these two stories and sets of protagonists are so different, and so are their situations. I hope the girls manage to make it out if this and live full happy lives without losing too much in the process, but my impression of the Otherverse from both Pact and Pactdice is that there's not a great chance it happens.

Return of the queen! Alpeana is back again! Someone asked on the last post who my favorite Other in the story was and my response was tentatively Alpeana, but I can now more confidently say that her, Marcica, and Guilherme are all up there as current favorites.

The Ruins are neat! As someone with a love of decomposers I can't help but enjoy learning they break down things like Echoes similarly to how the Abyss broke down more physical things. It does make me wonder if there was some sort of argument about Blake though. He existed as a physical person, but he was also a vestige. I feel like it would make sense for him to go to either so I'm curious how it worked out. We do see it raining in the Ruins and the part of the Abyss Blake landed in was The Drains. Those are both watery in theming, maybe the Drains is the part of the abyss closest to the Abyss. Runoff from the Drains falls down into the Ruins as rain or something like that? It would even make sense if we assume that once the Abyss was finished grinding down the person Blake that the spirit/vestige-y bits would go down the drain into the Ruins so it can be fully decomposed.

I love Lucy shooting the eye here and the detail that it would likely sting or blind one of the spying practitioner's eyes. It's a very cool moment and oddly enough, almost the exact same thing happens in a surprisingly excellent middle grade book called The Candy Shop Wars, which is about a group of kids recruited by an elderly candy making witch who's super shady to be her minions. I wonder if Wildbow read it and this is a reference, or just a fun little coincidence.

Collette is probably going to be hurting for a while. This eye stealing Other seems pretty nasty, and I imagine that eyes and more broadly Sight is pretty important for an augur. That's of course assuming Guilherme doesn't do something worse which is a possibility. I'd much rather have to deal with even a bounced back eye monster than a Faerie.

Cherry is kind of cute. I'd say she needs more confidence but encouraging a goblin to be confident seems liable to end poorly for all involved..

Munch's honesty about targeting bad people not actually making goblins "good" is refreshing in its honesty. I love the faerie in this and Miss is great but it always feels like they're the ones pulling the strings. Also, the goblin queen he mentions here is the same one from Maggie's interlude right? Like it's the blood and darkness one for sure.

These goblins having to adhere to pg 13 language is incredible and I love it.

So the Carmine Beast was there when John killed Yalda, which I don't think we knew, and it actually helped pick its own potential successor which is interesting. Did the Carmine Beast know all the way back then that it would be dying soon? ("Soon" relative to the timescale Others work on at least). Does Yalda's death indirectly lead to the Carmine Beast being gone? Like my understanding is that Black Dogs like her cause lots of sickness and curses to the people who are responsible for hurting them. If John killed Yalda on the orders of the Carmine and other judges would part of the curse transfer to them? I don't think she would be strong enough for her curse to actually like kill the Carmine Beast, but it could have weakened them and made it easier for someone else to do it.

It seems like somehow Edith knew that the Carmine was gone before Munch came to tell her. How? We haven't seen a lot of her and Matthew since the beginning of arc 1, which makes me suspicious that Wildbow might be keeping them in the background for now only to reveal that they played some big role in the death of the Carmine Beast later on. Those two (especially Matthew) do seem to be the ones with the most knowledge of the Practice… (Other than maybe Miss who I don't believe was knowingly involved)

Verona laughing and giving the goblins the finger after they tell her she needs to be rude when saying goodbye to them is just such a fun moment. Seeing characters interact almost casually with Others is strangely heartwarming. (Even if that interaction is flipping off goblins)

I feel like I get Verona a lot more now. Hearing her talk about the existential dread of going to highschool and college just so you can get a job you hate and take on massive debt, and (if you get lucky) stumble into a strained relationship that's likely to end in disaster.

Lucy has an affinity for slasher movies! She also has rules about them being fair. At first I thought "oh if she likes these kinds of movies maybe she'll try working with bogeymen", which would fit with her being the one who likes curses and more violent magic. As she kept watching though we got our explanation of her very Hammurabi-adjacent system of fairness. When I think back, yeah she's interested in curses and such,but generally it's been to punish them for something specific. Maybe she and Paige should hang out and Lucy could become a law mage meting out punishment to those who transgress.

I'm really invested in Lucy's family dynamic at this point. I want it to all work out for them. Everyone involved is trying their best to keep it together and take care of each other, but it's hard! It shouldn't have to be hard, but it is, and for reasons mostly out of this family's direct control.

We're discussing familiars again. This time in the context of Avery bringing one to the trails with her. She brings up my bestie Alpeana, but I don't think she'll actually pick the mare to be her familiar. I do kind of hope one of the other girls does though. No matter what, I think we're getting close to the first Essentials ritual and it's going to be one of the girls (probably Avery) taking a familiar.

Miss is Lost. Neat. I don't feel like I know enough about that to say anything insightful yet, but I'm interested in hearing more about her time wandering the Paths. She made it through the Forest Ribbon Trail by instinct alone which is incredible, and she's constantly avoiding being slotted into a ritual or something by the universe. We already knew Miss was knowledgeable and I assumed she had a decent amount of skill using whatever abilities she has, but this makes her seem like she's on a whole other level compared to most Others we've seen in Kennet and Jacob's Bell.

Snowdrop is a delight. I love this angry possum. She hates Avery so much and it's a lot of fun. She's also giving lots of seemingly bad advice. Is the trail different than usual somehow? Like can the Belanger's mess up the ritual somehow? Or did the girls just screw up?

The basket being hidden like that is a real dick move by the trail. Also, I don't know what's going on here! The giant babydoll head or whatever is freaky, and it doesn't seem to be talking. I'm not sure if that's a blessing or curse in this situation. Tattoo guy and the lady holding the opossum are both kind of weird too, then there's just a guy. Tbf though him just being some guy probably makes him the weirdest one in this context.

Changed my mind, the opossum lady is the creepiest Lost here right now. She asked "don't you want a boon companion who can't lie?" So that's seemingly confirmation that Snowdrop can lie, which we could kind of assume already but still.

Holy shit the cat skull was even meaner than the basket. This trail fucking hates her. Doing the opposite of what Snowdrop says seems to be working though. Is that the possum trick? Not just being able to lie, but always giving the worst advice possible?

The doll head is Nicolette! All of a sudden everything has gone wrong. Snowdrop has been snatched by the Belangers, and Avery somehow messed up negotiations. I'm beginning to think picking an old wolf was a mistake. A younger one might have been faster, but it being less cunning seems more important.

The comic is ominous, but I'm not totally sure what's going on in it. The branch with no ribbon is gone. Is the wolf trying to keep Avery from finding the detour?

Nicolette interlude! It seems obvious in retrospect but I didn't see it coming.

The Belanger Circle seems like a real boys' club, which I think was a smart decision on Wildbow's part. It instantly makes me a lot more sympathetic towards Nicolette. Like I'm now completely on her side when a paragraph ago she was the trio's first real enemy.

Is the whole church Alexander's demesne? That's impressive if so. Even a large room invites quite a few challenges based on everything we saw in Pact. It doesn't quite fit with the vibe I'm getting though. So far Alexander reminds me more of Duncan Behaim. That's to say he doesn't seem like a particularly good practitioner, more like the kind of person who's powerful chiefly because of the clout the Belanger name gives him, or the amount of people he has dirt on. He feels like every rich failson I've ever seen.

Chase comes from a practitioner family other than the Belanger Circle which is interesting. Fits with my idea that Alexander relies on relationships with other practitioners for influence. Chase's motive for picking Nicolette is really gross, but also Wildbow be normal about fat people challenge.

So the eye thief Other was a collector. Interesting. It didn't seem to have anything other than the necklace on it so I wouldn't have guessed that was the case. It certainly did a number on Nicolette even without items.

Nicolette's parents are officially joining the ranks of Verona's father, Carol Dallon, Heartbreaker, and most of the Thorburn line as "just the worst parents a kid could ask for".

The Hallow in her head is scary! It could cause a lot of problems down the road if she ever slips up even a little.

Fuck this Belanger Circle nonsense. I think Nicolette should be allowed to beat them all up. The way they talk to her is so skeevy it just makes my skin crawl. Alexander is the worst one though. He's doing the thing where he acts nice and protective but we also know that he wants the exact same thing Seth, Tanner, and Chase do. Maybe even worse depending on who he'd marry her off to if not himself. This makes the Duchamp Coven feel feminist.

I need Seth to get his shit wrecked. I need all of the Belanger Circle to get broken and brought low. Someone get Pauz in here. I know that would be giving demon's ground but I think it would be satisfying enough that it's worth it. In the meantime though at least the Omens she set on him will cause some problems.

No wonder Nicolette seems so well disciplined for a relatively new Practitioner. She had to strictly set rituals for herself to claw back sanity from the spirits in her Hallow before she even knew things like that actually existed. She's had to struggle for every scrap of power she has and it shows.

Miss is managing to stay out of sight of the augurs which is a big relief. Also very funny that the animal masks are throwing the Belanger's off like this. I wonder if that was why the Kennet Others had them do their awakening ritual like that in the first place.

Alexander was the one who got Charles forsworn apparently, which also means Alexander supports the private prison industry. Yet another reason this guy is cringe.

I know I've been taking Nicolette's side a lot in this interlude but like come on. They warned you to back off! You tried to mess with them and now you've been seriously messed up by the nettlewisp. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I only wish this didn't give Alexander more points on her.

Even though Alexander was friends with Charles he doesn't seem to know much about Kennet and the truth of its "patron".

Now the Belangers have Snowdrop and are trying to interrogate her, but they don't understand her gimmick. I think I know how this is going to turn out and I'm very eager to see it, especially now that Alexander has left.

"You'll stay put and won't touch anything and be good?" "Yes. Absolutely." I love this God damn possum. She's skyrocketed past Alpeana, Marcica, and Guilherme to become my favorite Other in the story so far.

Holy shit. Snowdrop just destroyed Nicolette's whole life if she can't catch her and fix the destruction. On the one hand go Snowdrop, but on the other I'm absolutely terrified of what this could mean for Nicolette.

Looking at the comments apparently a lot of people hated Nicolette? This is weird to me, but I'm also a big fan of Rose in Pact so I shouldn't be too surprised to find out my thoughts on a character like this are more positive than a lot of readers'.

I loved this arc. So much happened in it, (especially towards the end) that I almost forgot some of the earlier chapters were part of the same arc, but that’s not a bad thing. It only makes it hard for me to summarize my thoughts here at the end. Lots of cool character building going on here as always. Avery, Lucy, and Verona are all great, and it’ll be interesting to see how they rank compared to Blake and Taylor by the end of this. Uhh, it was nice to meet more of the Others around town since we hadn’t got to see much of them, and I’m curious to see how the girls react to now having to deal with the Hungry Choir and the Belangers at the same time. That’s about it for my thoughts, but I do notice these seem to be getting longer so I may switch to doing one of these for each half of an arc. Let me know what you think of that though.

#pale wildbow #pale web serial #pale live read #pact spoilers #I'm absolutely in love with this story so far #but bring Louise back!#I want to see more of her

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