do you need to (or is it beneficial to) read other wildbow stuff before reading Pale? I know people talk about Worm a lot. What's the best place to start with *gestures* all of that stuff?
Oh you absolutely do not!
...have a big post describing/reccing all the different things somewhere, but tumblr's search is being uncooperative atm, so
Super ultra condensed versions, I would start with one of
Worm - Bug-controlling girl is bullied in high school, has no friends, accidentally joins a team of quirky teenage supervillains and convinces herself she's going undercover. Contains: superheroes with cool/clever powers, a hilariously/terrifyingly pragmatic protagonist, constant escalation, Olympic medalist feats of rationalization, some light war crimes. This is the one with the big fandom, and also all the fanart (disproportionately high quality and amazing) and all the fanfic (...not). Start here to understand the memes.
Pale: Three teenage girls are recruited by the local monsters in their decaying northern Ontario tourist trap hometown to become witches and pretend to investigate the suspicious death of the regions most powerful spirit of violence, mostly so they tell any other nosy wizards of whatever variety who poke around that it's already being looked into. Girls turn out to be inconveniently heroic and competent and try to actually do the job. Contains: Dark urban fantasy, my favorite kitchen sink set of metaphysics/magic system from anything, a setting where basically no one is allowed to lie and consequently everyone's extremelly good at deceiving each other, Teenage Hijinks(tm), three protagonists trading off the POV each with their own bespoke issues. This is the one that's currently being updated, so it's what most of the live chatter is about. Also the best in terms of like, prose and character work imo. It's also the longest by a decent bit by now.
His other works are
Ward: Direct sequel Worm, you absolutely have to read Worm first to understand it. The two of them together are usually said to take place in the Parahumans setting, but that's also kinda sorta the general fandom name/tag, since he insists on all works being titled four letter common nouns out of I assume some religious prohibition on SEO
Twig: The unloved middle child. Totally stand-alone work, unrelated to anything else. Biopunk alternate 1910 starring a bunch of experimental superweapons adorable precocious children. Read this is your take away from worm was 'You know, this is good, but it could really use more unreliable narration and body horror.'
Pact: The previous unloved middle child, but has been getting much more attention now that Pale's a thing. Totally unrelated to Worm or Twig, shares a setting with Pale, but they're totally unrelated with only one very minor arguable cameo between them, and you can read either first without issue (Pale is on the whole better,but Pact is significantly shorter). Dark Urban Fantasy/Horror starring Blake Thorburn, Unluckiest Man In Canada, who sees his estranged family for the first time in years so he can tell his dying grandmother to go fuck herself and wakes up several months latter to find out a) she was a witch, b) she left him everything, c) his reflection has been replaced by a twin sister who lives in mirrors and d) karma is real, heritable, and he is its newest chew toy. Read if you finished Pale or Worm are you thought 'this was good, but the protagonists just have too much downtime and too many healthy relationships, and everything was too hopeful and easy for them.'
...not sure how helpful that was, but yeah, start with Worm or Pale, depending on which seems more interesting to you.