#clawblr

[rebel-sqrrl]

Dear Mr. Wildbow,

Thank you for informing us that these girls might not be gay. Without this caveat, I would've forgotten that while a guy and girl together can be assumed to be a couple, two girls "hanging off one another" are probably just good friends. Gal pals. Maybe even roommates, but certainly not lesbians. Thank you for helping us all avoid this blunder.

[artbyblastweave]

fire emoji: Claw

I never finished Claw. Didn't even read a majority of Claw. Or a plurality of Claw. But I will say that Wildbow is one of very few authors from whom the basic setting conceit of Claw- a genre-world in the vein of Worm where instead of superheroes, every early-oughts war-on-terror-influenced Jack-Bauerlike airport novel primetime technothriller is happening at once, one-after-the-other, forever- sounds even remotely tolerable. In a vacuum that kind of thing sounds like an insufferable right-wing jackoff session, and a huge portion of what made Claw's implementation of that idea so great is the frog-boil reveal that that's what's going on- the dawning realization over the first arc and change that these characters are living at the margins of a society as cartoonishly dysfunctional and tumultuous as that whole fictional space implies. It was great.

[victoriadallonfan]

Which WB characters would fall for a crypto-scam?

[ishdaj]

Latest chapter of Claw was so incredibly good I had to do a quick fanart of it.

instagram

[estavionpira]

Wildbow serial settings

Worm:

Pact:

Twig:

Ward:

Pale:

Claw:

Seek:

[cpericardium]

Frankly shameful that Claw is not going to be a webserial about warrior cats

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

I find the seemingly common reading of the ending lines of Claw being Mia coming to an accurate understanding of who she is bizarre.

It's clear from early in the story but laid out most explicitly in 5.3 that a lot of Mia's worldview is shaped by her mother considering her a monster/demon after The Fall. Mia doesn't before the final chapter consider herself a monster but she implicitly accepts the framework of her mother that people can be monsters.

Her stubborn insistence that she's done nothing wrong, her desperation for people to agree that taking Ripley was justified and Carson's description of how Mia decided if she did enough good it would make up for taking Ripley are all motivated by a need to not see herself as a monster.

In the last chapter she's disconnected from everyone she cares about, in a prison where everybody hates her, repeatedly tortured and starved. And she breaks. She concludes that not even the damage she's caused people but the mere capacity of doing "a terrible amount of damage" makes her a monster and that she deserves everything she's suffering.

It isn't a grand moment of realisation. It isn't the beginning of Mia taking responsibility for her actions or her accepting her nature and casting aside morality. It's just sad.

[lilliankillthisman]

wildbow took two serials off but we're back with the genuinely unhinged style of sex scene we know and love from twig

[ewingstan]

I've probably said before how I think Claw would've been stronger had it left out the last two chapters and just ended with Natalie waking up in the hospital. I don't think that's an uncommon opinion on here—regardless of how one feels about the ending, it does seem to take a very jarring turn away from the pacing, focus, and to a certain extent characterization.

That said, if we needed to have Mia on trial, then execution aside, having Gio be the prosecution was a pretty good move. There's some ways their relationship progresses, like the implication that we should read the Hursts as grooming Gio towards violence in the same manipulative way Davie groomed Addi, that get a bit lost here in the final instance. But the big idea that Gio eventually gets drawn to—her role as the "little shadow," the person who finds themselves echoing whoever their around and picking up their ways of thinking reflexively—allows her to be both a character that Mia has helped immensly and gotten close to, as well as a character who when removed from Mia quickly picks up the "common morality" that would brand her an uncomplicated monster.

I maintain that the best reading of the last chapter is not that Mia is finally getting a "fair trial," that wildbow is telling the audience that we should see Mia as objectively a horrible person. Instead, its an expression of Mia needing to be seen as non-monstrous by the world when her actions are laid bare, and the world refusing her. She's pushed away by Gio because she's a strange and cold person who's hard for normal people to really see as a person, and because its easier to go about your life if you just shake your head, call her a monster, and removing her from your life. Just repeat back what everyone else would say about her. Even if you have the strongest reasons out of anyone to deny that she has an uncomplicatedly evil character, its so much simpler to look past all that. Blithely repeat the standard line on parental rights, even though you've been hurt by such rights worse than anyone. Repeat a barely-thought-out comparison between the Hursts and indigenous residential schools, even though it's insulting to all parties if considered for more than five minutes—even so, others are saying it, and if you believe it the break will be cleaner.

Mia got a judgement from someone who she did an incredible amount to help, and was found wanting. But ultimately, she was just getting the same judgement of the society who shut her out after the fall. The little shadow becoming a shadow of Mia's mother, looking at her like she'd killed her daughter and stolen her skin.

[tgirlblogger]

As the only person who ever thinks about Claw, I'd like to make a few Word of God statements about the book:

Mia is trans, she just transitioned before the fall and forgot about it. Her mother is a huge trans ally and so she just never informed her about it.

Carson is an egg. This isn't based on anything except that it would make for a t4t relationship like god intended.

Twig exists in Claw and they're called the Jamie Lambsbridge books (like Maggie Holt books as the stand in for Pact). Ripley's a fan.

Bolden got hit by the gay bomb ten years before the story started

The Horse Piss Ranchers go on to become a big polycule and everything works out for them

Gio becomes plural in about 5 years.

skitter-queen exists but zyzoda does not.

The Nightmare before Christmas is called the Nightmare before Clawmas and Jack Skellington is called Jack Clawington. This isn't because of anything Tim Burton just decided it would be this way.

Wildbow is dead.

[wbcannibalgf]

authors these days would rather WRITE their CLAWS than RIGHT their FLAWS. Share This Post if your wife left you because she found the Pig Effigy in the Basement

[rebel-sqrrl]

Huge fan of the big claw at the end of Worm (when Taylor turns into a bug). Really looking forward to the big worm at the end of Claw

[ariapmdeol]

mia

[victoriadallonfan]

Wildbow characters who would love sparkling water versus those who hate it

[ishdaj]

Really enjoyed the first chapter of Claw.

Read chapter 1 here: https://clawwebserial.blog/2024/03/09/the-point-1-1/

[estavionpira]

Oh you like WORM huh? Maybe stop trying to WORM your way into my DMs!

You like PACT? Has it left an imPACT on your social life? Get outta here!

You like TWIG? Have you TWIGged onto the fact that she's not into ya, pal?

You like WARD? Only thing that's doing is WARDing off human companionship!

You like PALE? Your dating market PALEs in comparison to... everyone else's!

You like CLAW? Stop trying to CLAW your way into her heart buddy, it's not gonna happen!

You like SEEK? SEEK bitches!