#pgte is like VIBES

[st-just]

If I liked PGTE and automatically assumed I'd like Pale Lights too, how might I be wrong?

Going off the unhappy comments on the subreddit, I think the main ones are

1- Guide was very obviously riffing off standard the Generic Western Fantasy Setting your roomate's D&D campaign is set in. This made for a very easy introduction and a world that felt familiar to the intended audience. Pale Lights' setting is much more original, and throws you into the deep end with much less hand holding.

2- Guide sprawls, but it's absolutely overwhelmingly Cat's story, and the supporting cast is introduced around her at a steady pace. By contrast, here's @gwennafran's lovely and very useful reference sheet of the 33 characters relevant to the story's action as of chapter 3. Some people seem to find this confusing. (They are weak).

3- To the extent that the label means anything, Guide is theoretically YA, Lights is not. There does seem to be a difference in tone compared to Guide's early books at least - and the lack of textual meta narrative means the world definitely seems less whimsical and playful. Also the main characters have less, like, 'PC of a 1-20 D&D campaign' vibe than Cat - think Garret from the Thief Games and a future Count of Monte Cristo.

[lilietsblog]

so anyway im just going to scream about pgte queer representation again

cause guys we’ve got

- a bisexual most-definitely-aromantic-i-have-a-flipbook-of-evidence main character who’s the cutest blushing romantic to ever have eyes for approximately anything that moves

- her aroace-dont-@-me-i-also-have-a-flipbook-of-evidence-and-all-of-yall-saying-she-just-likes-flying-fotresses-better-than-sex-are-actively-proving-my-point enemies to vaguely-love-interests-maybe-i-mean-the-mc-literally-said-she-should-know-better-than-to-think-she-doesnt-love-her foil who uses flashing skin as a method of passive aggressiveness

- a cute as heck aroace autistic boi who’s in a romantic relationship

- with a heart-full-of-love very pan girl who respects his boundaries (once she gets to know him anyway. indrani pls dont pinch random ppls butts when you first meet them you’re awful)

- I am not talking about poly right now because it’s technically a separate thing from queer but the protagonist is also in a relationship (that is friends with benefits, where benefits include being disgustingly and adorably domestic) w/ said girl and stans her boyfriend and their relationship intensely, while the girl won’t stop shipping her / meddling in her Other Love Life because she wants her to be happy and is also terrible askdjfhaksjdh themmmmm

- a demiromantic demisexual disaster of an older man who’s a dad to one of the above, an uncle to another and technically if you squint a stepdad to the third, and killed the dad of the last one (not listed in order) (none of these people are related genetically to be clear, except for the dead one), and mentored his nephew about what being on the aro/ace spectrum is like bc having one (1) love interest does not make you not on the spectrum actually

While Papa had not been able to understand, not truly, for it was against the nature of an incubus to be as he was, his other father had seen in [him] similarities to what he’d once seen in his uncle. Enough to suggest a conversation. Not every kind of love involves bedplay or poetry, Uncle [that guyyyy] had told him. You can crave closeness with someone without craving them in other ways. Sometimes it just… fits. The intensity of it can be misleading, but you will learn.

- yeah so the autistic boi is also the adopted son of a warlock and an incubus. they are married. its controversial. incubi are not normally SENTIENT

- (this one is and they were the cutest couple as long as their son was single. now him & his gal take the cake)

- so. many. gay background and side characters

- unfortunately enbies and trans peeps are side character only but there is this vibe that like 3/4 of the side characters could be trans and we would never know bc guess whose business this is none of? anyone’s. maybe the big bad is trans. no-one in the setting has any reason to care

- also the one trans woman definitely mentioned to be such is currently off conquering her homeland. we stan a future empress. i mean imperialism is bad but so is obstructing a war effort to save the world so we stan anyway tbh

- using facepaint to indicate what gender you currently are in accordance with your homeland’s tradition? people who can read the facepaint use the right pronouns when you’re right there and everyone else / when you’re not there goes with “they”? that is happening

- “ma’am... please start a dynasty... get married... have kids... if u like girls better that’s fine we have the (miracle) technology just please... change your surname to something respectable and do a dynasty” “no”

- this is not even remotely close to everything that is happening

- i swear straight characters exist. i mean i mentioned one already (EDIT: turns out i didnt mention her. i removed that bullet point for some reason. tl;dr the protag had a ?crush? on her for a while) and there are no less than *counts on fingers* three others that statistically are shown to have interest in only girls/guys respectively

[necrowyrm]

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[fipindustries]

So I honestly kind of forget what your timezone is, this might be slightly early, but Happy Birthday!

So I didn’t have the time to read through any of the long stuff, sorry (picking my way through there’s a crack in the world now but no promises on how long that’ll take), but I did read a few of your shorter pieces! And since I’m trying to be slightly less predictable, instead of the Pale one, thoughts on The Agonist.

Okay first, to get the annoying comparison out of the way – you haven’t read A Practical Guide to Evil, have you? The whole thing about a stereotypical Dark Lord Of Evil valuing absolutely nothing more than being free was vaguely reminiscent of it. (On a separate note, when I first glanced at the title I thought this might be Baru Cormorant fanfic.)

More usefully

-Absolutely love the first few paragraphs, the whole zoomed out description of the war and the hero fighting his way up the tower and etc. Feels very, I don’t know, mythic? I don’t the, prose and cadence have the sense that they’d sound good recited aloud, sort of thing?

-I’m still not sure whether the mental image of the Lord casually walking down the giant pillar he was sitting on at a 90% angle is cool or just funny

-Not sure if the giant olive branches have any significance beyond irony, but they’re good for irony

-The bit where the Lord went from Capitalizing Every Word He Said to just speaking normally when he started actually considering what the hero said was good, but I’m a sucker for stylistic stuff that like. That said, feels like it would work better to make the switch after he removes his helmet? The first paragraph of speech without it is still pretty heavy on the grandiosity. (Also, somewhat mean to point out, but effect’s kind of undercut by a few typos in capitalization in the paragraphs around the switch).

-Speaking of personal appeal – do very much love the commander trying to stop him from walking away/the general sense of him abdicating as a betrayal to all his Evil Overlord obligations and responsibilities

-Does feel like should probably lay out the reason the Lord would be susceptible to the hero’s line of argument before it works? Like, even just alter the bit about him having no guilt about doing what he did to make the world work a certain way to instead/additionally be about him being free from any possible threat, demand, or higher power? Or idk.

-Does ‘Nihil Supernum’ have any, like, deep significance I don’t know? Google translate tells me it means ‘nothing supernatural’, and wikitionary says supernum means ‘heaven’, both of which feel like a non requiters.

-Was going to make a suggestion that the quote on the top could maybe use a bit of editing but hey ‘the eleven satanic rules of the earth’ are in fact a real thing and not something you made up

-The, I don’t know, feel of the ending is great. I mean endearingly grouchy badass + annoyingly chipper sidekick is an ancient dynamic for a reason, and I just love the whole ‘walking into the unset toward the next adventure’ vibe.

Anyway, that’s all very scattered and scattershot. But hey, glad I read it. Hope you have a great birthday!

Thank you so so much! So first of all i tried to read pgte but got really annoyed and bored with it and only got as far as cat going to the battle school but yeah the idea of the bad guy of evil that represents archetypical evil is certainly a popular one.

Also i wrote this way before reading baru cormorant so imagine my surprise when i saw that word show up there as well! And me thinking i was so clever for coming up with an original term.

Also you are not the first to point out that im good at mythological description (if you liked that you are going to love crack in the world) but i am extremely flattered by the fact that it makes you want to recite it out loud, to me tgat is the highest compliment there can be for prose.

Also all that you mention about the story sometimes being on the cusp of cool or funny that is 100% the balance i like to strike.

Nihil supernum i got from hpmor because is supposed to mean "nothing above" as if nothing greater, it was gil lamenting that this was the best the world could throw at him, he needed worthy opponents.

As for the ending, yeah this was meant to be a prologue and the main story would be the dark lord going on a tour of the ruins of his own empire, looking at the consequemces of his rule and having him reflect in a detached and bemused way how the hero desperatly tries to fix it all. He never learns any lesson out of this, by the end he is still as cold and indifferent ans all powerful, but most importantly: free