Some Things That Are Great About Pale, If You're Unsure About Reading It:

Notes I’ve taken on arc four of Pale:

I think this was my favourite arc so far and that last chapter was my favourite chapter so far. Now that the characters and their relationships are all well established, I feel like, it can really focus on the emotions of the characters and play with their relationships. Which I absolutely love and which I think is the authors biggest strength.

So about the arc: It is cut into two pieces, with the first four chapters being set (mostly) in Kennet and focusing on the party. This part was absolutely great and I really like the dynamics the trio has with their classmates, Melissa and Jeremy in particular. (Same is also true about their new „classmates“ at the BHI.) The second half, set in the BHI, was really exciting in terms of worldbuilding and magic and almost tricked me into thinking school is useful or fun. What I liked most about this part was seeing the different attitudes of the Practitioners towards Others, others and morals in general.

I was about to say that Avery is my new favourite because of her character development with the forest ribbon trail, snowdrop and her relationship with her family, but the last chapter where the girls create echos of themselves really cemented Verona as the best. I really appreciate having a good person protagonist who has problems feeling emotions like other people.

Also I am not quite sure whether Verona wanting to become an Other is allegorical for dysphoria, suicidal thoughts or not an allegory at all. Either way she continues to be the most relatable character and I love her.

melissa oakham fandom on this website is somewhat lacking

I love the way Fernanda Whitt just autisticly gaslight, gatekeep, girlbosses her way through her chapter.

And also: She deserves so much better. Like. She tells Laila that she is her best friend and Laila is like „Uhh, yea. We are friends. I knew that.“ And then she fucking dies. What the fuck.

alec would be a huuuge soyjak poster. he would say soyjak meme things out loud all the time. sending them in the undersiders group chat. it would be awful. cherish would come to recruit him and he'd be like cringe slaughterhousecels seething over based undersiderchads and cherish would just leave right then and there. to the disappointment of the rest of the team who were all secretly wishing he'd join the nine so they could legally kill him

this is so fucking funny to me. who wants to join the ancient athenian evil dining club with me

who keeps giving her these things

You know how the word "feline" refers to cats, and "canine" refers to dogs? There are a whole bunch more animal adjectives, and here are some of them:

equine -> horses

bovine -> cows

murine -> mice/rats

porcupine -> porcupines

wolverine -> wolves

marine -> marmosets

saline -> salmonella

cosine -> cosmonauts

citrine -> citrus

combine -> combs

famine -> your fam

bromine -> your bros

palpatine -> your pals

alpine -> alps

christine -> christ

asinine -> asses

machine -> the speed of sound

landmine -> explosions

migraine -> migrants

trampoline -> tramps

dopamine -> dopes

medicine -> the Medici family

praline -> prey

masculine -> mascara

feminine -> femurs

latrine -> latissimus dorsi

fettuccine -> fetuses

poutine -> sadness

turbine -> turbans

engine -> england

supine -> soup

valentine -> valence electrons

Follow for more nature facts!

Lung and Leviathan! Lots of fun painting the big Kaiju.

the more that i think about it, the more i feel like the undersiders are a really good litmus test for ability to understand/be sympathetic towards neurodivergency w/o reacting w/ hatred when it’s unpalatable. like, yes. they do in fact do a lot of violent and terrible things. but they’re from “trauma viscerally literalized as superpowers which are taken to extreme usages to better represent how devastating and emotionally total being traumatized feels” the book–it makes sense that every character is messy, it makes sense that every character does and thinks shit that extremely fucking sucks. trauma extremely fucking sucks! bitch literally tearing a man’s arm off because she’s been taught her entire life that people will always mock and hurt her for who she is and has learned to use aggression as pre-emptive defense feels significantly more relatable to what i was like when i was an autistic teenager than any quirky-funny representation of autism out there, and she’s not even explicitly autistic. 

like, yeah, taylor has a paranoid and irrational worldview. lisa is hypervigilant and secretive and manipulative. brian can barely function & still refuses to be vulnerable. aisha acts out and it being for attention doesn’t make the behavior any less grating. rachel is aggressive and stubborn and violent. alec doesn’t understand ethical or social boundaries. those are all things i’ve seen people complaining about, saying they hated those characters for it, saying that it was fucking irritating to read about. which is like…Yeah, That’s How Traumatized Teenagers Act! 

taylor had any ability to be “rational” about social interactions eroded from the years of irrational cruelty she faced. lisa micromanages her loved ones’ wellbeing because the last time she didn’t, her brother died. brian genuinely doesn’t know how to function at all if he’s not trying to be strong because it’s the only coping mechanism he’s been taught. aisha, chronically abused and neglected, is trying to assert autonomy & gain attention in the only way she knows how. rachel has learned that the only way she’ll be afforded any respect is if she takes it by force. alec says & does wildly inappropriate things because 13 years of grooming taught him it was normal. 

& yeah, all of those things suck to deal with, but that is in fact because trauma sucks to deal with. litmus test for ability to realize that and be reasonably generous about the fact instead of shitting on the involved teenagers for having a hard time being perfect people after experiencing things built to make them feel less than human.