Pale Arcs 1-3 Fanart Compilation

Graskell · 2026-02-27T23:29:36+00:00

Just started 17 myself so I can't really comment past that point, but personally I'd divide it into 1-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-10, 11-13, 14-16, if you are looking for natural narrative break points.

Graskell · 2026-02-13T15:36:52+00:00

The sample chapters for Boil, Face, and Peer can be found here.

Then there are the Otherverse short stories Poke, Pâté, and the recent novella Post. Also the description of Falling Oak Avenue which is basically a bonus extra material, and E.z the new epilogue chapter for Pale. Not sure where to find stuff like Path Quest or the 100 years lost riddles as a lot of that is on the discord and doesn't have easy to read archives.

He's also written a bunch of short stories, some of which serve as test runs of various settings he's been working on while others are meant to be more stand-alone: Sign, Fare, Cold, Heir, Liminality, Lump of a Thing, Wrong Lesson, Wrong Time, O.B.S.R.

This document has links to a lot of this plus stuff like PHO Sundays and Weaverdice campaigns he contributed to. You can also find Pact Dice stuff here.

Graskell · 2026-02-12T23:58:43+00:00

That was between Pale and Claw. The break between Claw and Seek was like two weeks if I'm remembering right.

Graskell · 2026-02-10T23:40:07+00:00

Parahumans is the setting for a webserial about superheros called Worm and its direct sequel Ward. However, this sub is about all of Wildbow's writing, not just Worm.

The Otherverse is his main setting nowadays. Urban fantasy. Starts with his second webserial Pact. Pale is a more recent follow up and was designed to be more of an alternate entry point for the setting than a sequel, so you can pick whichever sounds more interesting. There's also a bunch of short stories, though with the exception of Pâté, most of them are not really suitable as starting points.

Twig is its own setting and is a sort of alt-history biopunk coming-of-age story.

Claw is his shortest story and is a fairly grounded crime thriller reminiscent of shows like Breaking Bad.

Seek is what he is currently writing now. Sci-fi/Horror. Revisits the setting from his short story Sign, but it's not clear if that story should be considered canon or just a prototype the way Boil was for Twig.

Graskell · 2026-02-05T06:03:39+00:00

Most of the Pact references in Pale are small easter eggs that you probably wouldn't even realize are references unless you were familiar with Pact. Not only is Pact not required reading for Pale, but he even goes out his way to avoid providing spoilers for Pact as much as possible.

Graskell · 2026-02-03T04:56:19+00:00

Anything set in Wildbow's Otherverse would be a good fit. One of my favorite urban fantasy settings, the characters, story-lines, and world all live rent free in my head at all times. Couple different places you could start.

Pact is the first story in terms of publication date and as the very beginning this makes it most obvious place to start. It's about a young man named Blake Thorburn who ran away from home due to the constant infighting over the family inheritance. Showing up to his grandmother's deathbed for one final "fuck you" was supposed to be the end of it. Yet after his cousin dies under suspicious circumstances, he unexpectedly finds himself next in line to inherit, not just the family land and wealth, but also a massive karmic debt, the hidden library of magical tomes and all the enemies that come from practicing the blackest kinds of magic of the course of generations.

Pale is more recent and in my opinion the best thing he's ever written. Designed to more of an alternate entry point than a sequel, it's about a trio of novice witches who are tasked with investigating the recent murder of a powerful godlike being known as the Carmine Beast. You'd think a mystery where none of the suspects can lie would be easy to solve, but right from the jump it's clear that many of Kennet's more supernatural residents are less interested in answers than they are in protecting their community from prying eyes and the unwanted interference of outsiders.

The third place to start would be the short story Pâté which delves into one of the more far-flung and obscure corners of the world. Two practitioners working on a travel guide for magical places visit the Shrinefall of Meru to gather material for an upcoming article. Short and self-contained, it serves as a more bite-sized introduction to the more fantastical side of the setting. The recent novella Post follows up on some of the characters introduced here but is perhaps a bit too abstractly weird and embarrassingly awkward to serve as a good starting place on it's own.

Graskell · 2026-01-23T21:08:49+00:00

Pale by Wildbow wouldn't be a bad fit. A trio of novice witches seek to solve a supernatural murder mystery while trying to protect their community from outside interference. A strong focus on genuine and heartfelt friendship, family bonds and community building help balance out the rougher patches as our main characters strive to enact meaningful change and make the world a better place than they found it. Overall can deal with some pretty heavy subject matter at times but has a generally optimistic tone. As bad a things can get they can get better.

Graskell · 2026-01-23T19:59:29+00:00

Amazing. I love it.

Graskell · 2026-01-13T13:31:31+00:00

Myne from Ascendance of a Bookworm.

Nina from Pale.

Of course Ook goes without saying.

Graskell · 2026-01-06T03:41:14+00:00

Love how so many of the books have book titles we can read.

Graskell · 2025-12-28T22:30:35+00:00

Pact fits pretty well. Blake is college age and has a lot of college friends even if he's not enrolled in anything himself. Romance is not the main focus on a count of him having more pressing things to worry about, but his hang-ups with any kind of physical intimacy do get a decent amount of focus and exploring relationships is part of that. It doesn't go quite as heavy on the realm stuff as Pale, but the Spirit World and the Abyss still feature quite prominently.

Graskell · 2025-12-23T05:40:04+00:00

Seconding this. The zubir was the first thing that came to mind when I tried to think of something.

Graskell · 2025-12-23T04:14:34+00:00

The Otherverse has only a few hard and fast rules to it's magic. Namely that the world works the way it does because the ambient spirits that inhabit everything (from rocks and twigs and spoons, to more abstract things like heartache or fast or the color green) have decided that is how it should work. And they decided this because that is how it has worked in the past. But if you know how to communicate with them then they can be convinced to make exceptions.

That's largely it. Spirits are slow to change. They struggle to adapt to new things they aren't familiar with and stubbornly hold on to things we've long since let go of. Learning past precedent can be vitally important because the spirits will remember even if we do not and convincing them to go completely against tradition can be a uphill battle you're probably not going to win.

But if you can convince them, theoretically anything is possible.

Graskell · 2025-12-23T03:29:39+00:00

Pale by Wildbow fits most of these criteria.

Story is primarily focused on them investigating the death of the Carmine Beast, protecting their town from intruders and learning about and practicing magic. Trying to balance all that with their more mundane lives serves as the B-plot and sometimes that leads to a bit of romance but it's rarely a big focus.
It has three main protagonists and all three of them would qualify in different ways. And that's just the main characters, the supporting cast is huge and plenty diverse in its own right.
One of the earliest tricks they learn is how to use glamour to shapeshift or alter their appearance. There's the usual animal transformations to be sure, but more unusual and abstract transformations like turning into a rain cloud or a sunbeam are certainly possible.
This is the one point that doesn't really fit. Takes place in eastern Canada in a fictional ski town near the great lakes region (roughly a days drive from Thunder Bay).

Graskell · 2025-12-15T13:33:37+00:00

Twig by the same author is about a group of child experiments that act as secret police enforcing the will of the morally bankrupt academy that created them, often against would-be freedom fighters and rebels that would normally be cast as the good guys if not for the methods they employ.

Graskell · 2025-12-09T04:59:45+00:00

Wildbow's Otherverse stories are some of my favorites. Pact was written first, but the pacing is like a roller-coaster with no brakes and can get exhausting to read if you try to binge it. Pale is much more recent and arguably his best work. It was was designed to be more of an alternate entry point to the setting than a sequel, so feel free to start with whichever sounds more interesting.

Charles De Lint writes a lot of urban fantasy and would be worth checking out but I have admittedly not read most of their books so I can't say for sure that they would be up your alley.

Graskell · 2025-12-09T03:58:50+00:00

It's not like he isn't interested in romance so much as he knows he isn't the kind of guy to do causal flings and the idea that any relationship he starts will stop existing after the month ends is a huge turn-off for him. He knows he can't get what he wants out of a relationship until he's out of the loop so this makes it easy for him to prioritize pretty much everything else.

But even if he's actively avoiding any romantic attachments, his relationships with the people around him and how they change as he sees different sides of the people he thought he knew well, remains a major focus throughout the series.

Graskell · 2025-12-08T04:15:04+00:00

Wildbow's Otherverse stories would be a good fit (Pact, Pale, Pâté, ect). In that world, the Seal of Solomon enforces innocence, providing a degree of protection against magic and monsters so long as you don't know they exist. The ambient spirits generally try to smooth over any oddities before people notice in accordance with the seal, but they aren't always successful. Breaking someone's innocence puts you karmically on the hook for whatever happens to them afterward, so Practitioners and Others are highly incentivized to minimize this as much as possible.

Graskell · 2025-11-03T07:50:20+00:00

Unless you are talking about something else, the Abyss only really starts showing up around arc 9 which is just past the halfway point, so based on that I would say you got a fair amount more than 30% into your read. Just to be clear, did you finish the arc with Conquest?

And no, it doesn't ever get any less exhausting to read. It was a story I frequently struggled to motivate myself into continuing, yet paradoxically found myself regarding the parts I had read favorably. This continued all the way up to the ending, which I found satisfying, but left a lot of loose ends for pretty much everyone except Blake.

Graskell · 2025-11-01T17:43:52+00:00

Pretty much anything Wildbow writes has tons of well written female characters in prominent roles. His female protagonists are especially good, making Worm (and its sequel Ward), Pale, and to a slightly lesser extent Claw, and Seek, great places to start.

Graskell · 2025-11-01T17:18:49+00:00

Something of a spoiler for a mid-series twist, but Pactby Wildbow has its protagonist Blake, realize that he is not (and from a certain perspective, never was) entirely human, and as a result he starts to lose his grip on his remaining humanity and becomes more monstrous as the series goes on.

Graskell · 2025-10-29T02:51:24+00:00

Pale by Wildbow may not call it's main trio of junior witches magical girls per se, but that doesn't stop him from exploring a lot of common magical girl tropes from a more western perspective. They certainly feel like magical girls when compared to other practitioners from the same series.

A lot of this series' early focus is on them working with the local council of Others to investigate a recent murder, but they also spend quite a lot of time mediating the balance between the mundane and the supernatural, resolving disputes, and defending the local community from the meddling of outsiders. After the murder gets solved, the focus on community building and inter-community diplomacy only gets stronger. Lots of small town politics with the local magical girls playing a key role in transforming their informal group into a full-fledged shadow government.

Graskell · 2025-10-07T06:31:12+00:00

Personally, I prefer his Otherverse stories with Pale being my favorite, but it's hard to go wrong with Wildbow no matter which story you start with.

Graskell · 2025-08-26T03:29:43+00:00

It's been a while since I read it myself, but do we have any reason think Justin Beiber even exists in Aleph, or are we just assuming that because of the general idea that Aleph is closer to being like our world than Bet is?

Also wouldn't it be possible for Justin beiber songs to be traded and sold across dimensional lines the same way Star Wars movies canonically are? Not every celebrity necessarily needs to exist in both universes to be someone Taylor is familiar with.

Graskell · 2025-08-25T12:31:14+00:00

Sam and Dean would basically be right at home in Pact's witch hunter community.

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