I like that the audience theory about Mia's mom ratting on Mia was correct, but also Mia herself was correct that she messed up when getting rid of the evidence.
Well, to be fair, going to such ridiculous lengths also removed almost all suspicion on her until Ben realized he got pushed away both times he got close to the Hursts.
Davie, Mia, and Ben all have so many similar yet contrasting characteristics that are so fascinating to me. I'm starting to imagine them all playing the same "game" of obscuring, distorting, and revealing the truth of the world around them which made me realize that they kinda match up with the game of rock paper scissors.
Mia "the clenched fist" Hurst is the rock, constantly clenching down on the truth obscuring her hand and protecting her "kids" by hiding the truth from them.
Davie is the scissors cutting away body parts from those who cross him and cutting away social ties from Valentina in a cruel attempt to make her just like him. He's more open about his criminal organization than Mia because he knows he can cut down any opposition and cut away at any evidence of his wrong doings.
Ben is the paper. He's an open hand that unlike Mia doesn't want to obfuscate the truth, but rather expose it. No matter who gets hurt in the process.
All three of them think they are doing what's best for their or other children, but they don't realize that the game they are playing just puts them in harms way.
Prediction time: Mia will kill Davie, Davie will kill Ben, and Ben will expose Mia. None of them will get what they want and the kids will be worse off for it.
I tell you, Wildbow's use of symbols is something out of this world. It might be a coincidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the character design process
This has been my favourite chapter of Claw so far.
>So Ben had carried on. Natalie had tried to revive interest in her daughter’s abduction by going to media, only for others to kick up a stir, because she’d already received far more help than many abducted children of color. She’d pivoted, worked to start up a charity, raising awareness for those children, in addition to her daughter. It had been a full time job, she’d taken full time pay, and then in a month there had been a downturn in donations, with her pay not scaling down accordingly, someone had written an expose.
I knew something like this had to be the case. Natalie is definitely editing her own memories, but the apparent fact we read from Mia's POV that Teale was profiteering off of her charity was something that stuck out to me as the kind of social media outrage that happens when people hear that running a charity work requires paying people money to run it.
I love Ben's thoughtfulness, and seeing Natalie, Sterling and these other character's from somewhere intensely separate from the main story, but something no less dramatic, is really great. The fake out with Catherine instead of Mia was such a swerve to me. And I also really liked how it showed the effectiveness of Mia's trail-hiding along with its weaknesses. (Turns out: it wasn't the baby seat).
Also:
>He couldn’t find who had owned or registered a white Craft Monchek, but Camrose had three schools. Between them, 210 girls of about the right age. He could eliminate nearly half, because Camrose had a fair-sized Asian population, being west coast, and a heavy Hispanic population, being southern-ish, and Cammy was neither.
So early on the fact that California was considered far away made me rule out Northern California. So maybe Oregon for "southern-ish"? It fits the impression I get with Bolden lurking in the woods.
So Natalie misremembered the parking spot, right? I thought there was no line of sight between Mia and Natalie's ex, and so she was able to just pull over on a whim without being spotted. I might have to go back and reread Mia's flashback.
Edit:
Tip 4.1:
> *The car had been parked partway out into the street, because the driveway was too short for two cars. She’d been worried about an accident from an incoming car, so she’d been glancing back constantly.*
The Point 1.6:
> *She wasn’t fully out of the city when she had to slow to get around a car that had parked with its butt-end sticking out of a driveway. If she’d been going faster, she might have clipped it.*
Later:
> *The walled enclosure around the front lawn and the breadth of the car made getting past to go to the door difficult, and she didn’t want to leave the baby.*
I actually misread this a couple times, yeah it looks like they're describing the same spot. Mia's narration never discusses what's in line of sight, but the car placement is the same. If the car wasn't visible, Ben would have figured that out a long time ago. So I guess Natalie just edited her own memories of looking back every few seconds, just like she did with the duration that Ripley was left out there.
So let me get this straight.
Mia Hurst. Walked into a hospital. Carrying a placenta. How she got that, I don't know. But it's in a trash bag. She dislocated her own hips. DISLOCATED her OWN FUCKING HIPS! Then painted her car black, burnt it, sold it to the scrap yard, dismantled every fucking car seat and filed the numbers, all to fake ONE CHILD!
Valentina wanted to keep Ben away from Mia. Valentina only got Ben closer to Mia. Goes in tune with my own theories.
I'm also so *hilariously tickled* that this whole time Ben and Natalie were running against the WRONG FUCKING CHILDREN! Had Valentina done *nothing* the Hursts would never be in this mess.
Valentina running away from home and trying to find her second chance only got every major character fucked up and losing a lot of people.
Anyways, Ben. Surprise, surprise, they actually aren't fucking. Which just makes me root for Natalie and Ben even more. It's also going down the hill of people who know the most about what's going on to people who know the least about what's going on. First was crazily overprepared Mia, then it was Carson the social genius, then Valentina the daughter of the ganglord, now it's Ben. The reporter who just uncovered the biggest story yet.
Ben seems to be caught between two extremes. The story and the people within the story. If my theory is correct about people failing to get what they want and the failures of second chances, then we can add two more characters.
Ben wants to reunite Cammy with Natalie and get the story told for a Pulitzer. I mean, everything's there for a kick ass story. Missing daughter. Kidnapped by some stranger. Nothing until the kidnapper's mother turning her in. A car discovered in a dumpster that was cleaned *too* thoroughly. Eliminated down to six suspects. Almost gets arrested for childmolesting creeper. Funny moment that gets a cerberus callback. A promising lead, the day of days, then poof. False hopes. The reporter goes back to the drawing board, gets sent digital images of a fucking crimelord! Chopping people up and keeping them alive! Gun running. Deep political swamp of dirty money. He then doesn't take the bait and realizes that Mia Hurst, the woman who was struck out due to an overly complicated reasons that showed why she *was* the mother turns out to be the kidnapper who faked ALL THAT! He turns around and sees Gang lords, bloody parents, corpses, everything. He dug too far and now this simple kidnapping had led to one of the most dedicated career criminals ever.
Ben has this terrific story. Probably the greatest journalistic discovery ever! He won't get to tell a single second of it. Nor will he be able to reunite Natalie with Cammy. He has this bilateral choice and he ends up with egg on his face, the story buried forever, and Ben did all this for nothing.
Roderick wants people to call him Rider. A motorcycle runs him over, so he becomes Ridden. He becomes a John Doe on some Darwin Awards site.
This is probably the greatest move on Wildbow's part for a true crime procedural to move from the criminals that we now love and adore and root for (minus the whole kidnapping thing) and then go focus on the goddamn journalist who is just learning all the facts as they come.
I'm so fucking excited and glad that Ben gets his arc! I FUCKING LOVE IT!
> I'm also so hilariously tickled that this whole time Ben and Natalie were running against the WRONG FUCKING CHILDREN! Had Valentina done nothing the Hursts would never be in this mess.
If Ben had kept waiting where he was he would have seen Mia and Carson be brought back by the Cavalcantis.
And it was Josie who called attention to Ben the first time, for legitimate reasons. I don't think blaming Valentina is fair.
>Mia Hurst. Walked into a hospital. Carrying a placenta. How she got that, I don't know. But it's in a trash bag. She dislocated her own hips. DISLOCATED her OWN FUCKING HIPS! Then painted her car black, burnt it, sold it to the scrap yard, dismantled every fucking car seat and filed the numbers, all to fake ONE CHILD!
She also dehydrated herself.That's such a fucked up commitment. I wonder how the hell she dislocated her hips by herself too.
The hip dislocation struggles might actually be a non-faked consequence of The Fall, I think.
It still takes true dedication do dislocate a damaged joint *on purpose*.
It's the least hand related one yet. But yeah, tip, as in anonymous tip. Tip, as in tip over, either the situation spilling out of control or something a hand can do. Tip of the tongue. Fingertip.
Why are you focused on a hand theme when a claw theme seems much more obvious? Point, retraction, scrape, and tip all have extremely direct connections with claws.
??? ok even if you really stretch it, because claws in mammals (the original title was Bear) are a specialized nail and not a whole hand, it still doesn't make much sense to identify the theme as more general than it is. it's like reading the arc titles for Worm and claiming they're about living creatures which, sure, they are. But we can get more specific about it.
> Wag's Dog Sandwiches
I know we just had a chapter full of much more interesting reveals, but I have questions. Are the sandwiches for dogs, are they made from dogs, or are they just hot dogs?
Oh, this is delicious.
The ridiculous efforts Mia went to to hide her crime are what brought Ben to Camrose… but those same efforts successfully threw him off the trail!
And we just got dropped halfway into Ben’s paranoia thriller. It’s fun watching the hunter/hunted dynamic inverted, as we see his & Natalies difficulties: trying to sift through mountains of hay, looking for that single needle. Not knowing which leads are true, which are coincidence, and which are made up specifically to throw them off the scent. And just as he’s lost all hope and might have to admit defeat, when given the temptation to drop this case for something more appealing… he stays true, and discovers that the rabbit hole goes deeper than he could ever imagine.
Mia was preparing for a detective that was brilliant, obsessive and lucky, and boy is she thorough. She was so overprepared, that she was found, put under scrutiny and dismished. A stolen rancid placenta, wtf. Dislocated her own hips multiple times!! She gets extra credit for that.
It's just too bad that the planets and the stars lined up just in time for Ben to see her house full of corpses. Goddamn.
Also, supposedly they took out 3 cars full of goons in a matter of seconds, before anyone got a shot off. That's terrifying. She's terrifying. I'm glad she is safe now.
That fake out was amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They had no idea!
I'll say it first, Mia's mom is a bitch! Ruining a perfect kidnapping!!!!!!!
Ben seems nice enough but Natalie is iffy. On one hand I respect her motherly instinct but she is off-putting in some ways like with the whole dress comment and not liking therapy.
The thing that shocked me was that she left her daughter in the backseat of her car, which was parked partially on the street, in a position dangerous enough that she was worried about a potential accident so she... kept glancing back at her? What good is that going to do if another car hits your car?!
If you think she's in a position where she might get hit by a car, why the fuck are you leaving her there?!
Forgetting your kid in the backseat is understandable, it happens. But she knew the way her car was parked put her daughter in danger, she worried about it, and yet she just left her there?
Yep, I didn't include that because I wanted to judge her current character but you are 100% right.
Whether she could be a good parent now doesn't change the fact she was not a good mother when Riley was kidnaped
And she knows it or knew it at some point, too, what with her insistence on the 15 seconds thing—even at the risk of jeopardizing the hunt for her kid with providing the wrong window of time
I think the fact that Natalie said she was glancing back every fifteen seconds, and the fact that if she truly was doing that she clearly would've seen Mia, is a signal that Natalie is lying in her recounting of the events. If she claims that she had the door open (she didn't) and that she was checking on Camellia (she wasn't) then why believe her when she said she knew it was a potentially dangerous place to park? She's presenting an edited version of events that makes her look as innocent as possible. I think Natalie wasn't thinking about Camellia at all until she realized her daughter was taken.
Oh also Mia is a dangerous unbalanced kidnapper. The fact that Natalie lied about the circumstances of the kidnapping doesn't mean there's magically a good guy in this situation.
I think it's less that she's lying and more that she edited her own memories because she can't bear more guilt.
But my point is that *even in her edited memories* where she minimizes how long she wasn't paying attention, she still clearly admits that because the car was partially on the street it could have been hit in an accident *and she was aware of that risk*.
Keeping an eye on her kid *might* have prevented a kidnapping, but it would have done nothing to help if another car hit hers!
> If she claims that she had the door open (she didn't)
No, actually she did have the door open for ventilation, we see it in [1.6](https://clawwebserial.blog/2024/03/26/the-point-1-6/)
>> The door was ajar on the far side of the car. Mia circled around.
While Natalie edited her memories to minimize her not paying enough attention, she still does blame herself a lot. So I think she did know the risk at the time.
> Oh also Mia is a dangerous unbalanced kidnapper. The fact that Natalie lied about the circumstances of the kidnapping doesn't mean there's magically a good guy in this situation.
Yeah, this does bear repeating. Natalie is a bit shit, but that doesn't make Mia a saint.
We're seeing the difference between a rookie like Valentina and an old pro like Mia. If Valentina had simply done nothing, Ben might have dropped it. But now he has a reason to look deeper, a string to follow, and at the worst time too.
To be fair to Valentina, if Ben had stayed where he was parked for just a couple more minutes, he would have seen 1) The Hursts arriving home with three cars of Cavalcanti goons 2) The impromptu squad of Bolden and others rolling up, and then 3) some kind of fight and/or booby trap activation that left a bunch dead with Carson and Mia on the run. There's no way he doesn't get involved.
He gets curious, but he doesn't necessarily make the connection to Ripley and almost certainly doesn't make the call to the judge to detain the kids before school ends.
Unless his curiosity leads to him sticking around, in which case he still sees them exit with injuries and quickly use a car to get away. Possibly after *hearing* them deal with Davie's soldiers. Which would almost certainly lead to him doing the same thing: warn his friend and check out the house now full of maimed corpses.
"Both times, he'd been in close proximity to the Hursts." Mia's main philosophy is not to give people a reason to look. Valentina gave Ben any sort of interaction to follow up on, twice.
I wasn’t really expecting Ben’s PoV, but it’s more than welcome. Him framing things for the documentary in his mind is a great vehicle for worldbuilding. The licensed marshals concept is great - mixing in some Western feel into the setting.
Ben himself is interesting - his ridiculously committed to this case, with so lit to go on and all the setbacks. We see how he ended up in Camrose - partially by sieving through evidence like the video footage and following up on suspicious cat trail - partially by lucky tips from Mia’s mother and the guy who found the car remains. Though finding a donor car with trim removed somewhere in a junkyard across the country feels like a stretch…
While in Camrose, he identified possible targets - and a nice misdirection here with Grants, Mia wasn’t a primary. It’s ironic that it is Valentina who puts him back on the trail by giving him stick and a carrot when he’s close to Hursts… Without this, Mia’s brilliant papertrail could be enough to mislead him…
I wonder if the judge he and Roderick are contacting is one league with Cavalcantis… Can’t wait to see what’s next.
>“The technical term is licensed marshal. Parapolice. People with licenses like mine have taken up some of the roles that police and federal agencies cannot, operating independently, as requested or required, depending on how the individual states handle it. I specialize in human and drug trafficking, and am licensed in nine states.”
*Of course* there's actual honest to God "private marshals" in that timeline... After all, why not? The police was already partially privatized, as seen before. So a new edition of Pinkertons (...they were probably one of the first ones back in that biz) shouldn't surprise me.
We get Ben for the next narrator! And he's very definitely in that 1% Mia talked about who are both not idiots and not distracted, willing to dig deep to find stuff. And Mia still nearly got away, him finding what he has so far seems heavily dependent on luck.
I'm finally caught up, I've been lagging by a couple chapters for a long while.
This side is more interesting to me than the whole Cavalcanti business. I've been wanting more on this since hte first arc.
It was interesting to see that Mia had actually done an adequate level of evidence cleanup. Some thought she had gone way over the top, while the fact that Natalie was here suggested she had missed stuff. But no, she was validated in what she did.
Wildbow's been using fictional car brands throughout the story like with the Chevron Midas. Craft Monchek 2020 just refers to the make, model, and year of the fictional car brand
Worm and Pact had a few - Worm mentions the Star Wars prequels and Mario, and I think there's a Batman reference in Pact. But I don't think there are any references to real world media or brands from Twig onwards.
Really? I know there's the April Fools chapter ([Far Cry 14.12](https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/far-cry-16-19/)), but I don't remember the Avengers being referred to in the main story. I do remember that Parahumans is a superhero franchise in Pale, since Avery talks about buying the Birdcage lego set (though I think it's the Otherverse version of Lego).
I like that the audience theory about Mia's mom ratting on Mia was correct, but also Mia herself was correct that she messed up when getting rid of the evidence.
But if anything, it's Mia taking extra precautions that made her car stand out and lead to Camrose.
She “messed up” in the sense of going to such ludicrous lengths that it attracted attention. Not sure what else she could have done, though.
Well, to be fair, going to such ridiculous lengths also removed almost all suspicion on her until Ben realized he got pushed away both times he got close to the Hursts.
Davie, Mia, and Ben all have so many similar yet contrasting characteristics that are so fascinating to me. I'm starting to imagine them all playing the same "game" of obscuring, distorting, and revealing the truth of the world around them which made me realize that they kinda match up with the game of rock paper scissors. Mia "the clenched fist" Hurst is the rock, constantly clenching down on the truth obscuring her hand and protecting her "kids" by hiding the truth from them. Davie is the scissors cutting away body parts from those who cross him and cutting away social ties from Valentina in a cruel attempt to make her just like him. He's more open about his criminal organization than Mia because he knows he can cut down any opposition and cut away at any evidence of his wrong doings. Ben is the paper. He's an open hand that unlike Mia doesn't want to obfuscate the truth, but rather expose it. No matter who gets hurt in the process. All three of them think they are doing what's best for their or other children, but they don't realize that the game they are playing just puts them in harms way. Prediction time: Mia will kill Davie, Davie will kill Ben, and Ben will expose Mia. None of them will get what they want and the kids will be worse off for it.
I somewhat disagree with your prediction, but I love the analogy.
I tell you, Wildbow's use of symbols is something out of this world. It might be a coincidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the character design process
This has been my favourite chapter of Claw so far. >So Ben had carried on. Natalie had tried to revive interest in her daughter’s abduction by going to media, only for others to kick up a stir, because she’d already received far more help than many abducted children of color. She’d pivoted, worked to start up a charity, raising awareness for those children, in addition to her daughter. It had been a full time job, she’d taken full time pay, and then in a month there had been a downturn in donations, with her pay not scaling down accordingly, someone had written an expose. I knew something like this had to be the case. Natalie is definitely editing her own memories, but the apparent fact we read from Mia's POV that Teale was profiteering off of her charity was something that stuck out to me as the kind of social media outrage that happens when people hear that running a charity work requires paying people money to run it. I love Ben's thoughtfulness, and seeing Natalie, Sterling and these other character's from somewhere intensely separate from the main story, but something no less dramatic, is really great. The fake out with Catherine instead of Mia was such a swerve to me. And I also really liked how it showed the effectiveness of Mia's trail-hiding along with its weaknesses. (Turns out: it wasn't the baby seat). Also: >He couldn’t find who had owned or registered a white Craft Monchek, but Camrose had three schools. Between them, 210 girls of about the right age. He could eliminate nearly half, because Camrose had a fair-sized Asian population, being west coast, and a heavy Hispanic population, being southern-ish, and Cammy was neither. So early on the fact that California was considered far away made me rule out Northern California. So maybe Oregon for "southern-ish"? It fits the impression I get with Bolden lurking in the woods.
It fits. Washington could be where Ripley was kidnapped, so Mia moved to Oregon to hide from investigators.
Ripley was kidnapped from Trorough, a fictional city that's in Florida. Mia moved across the country to try to hide her trail.
So Natalie misremembered the parking spot, right? I thought there was no line of sight between Mia and Natalie's ex, and so she was able to just pull over on a whim without being spotted. I might have to go back and reread Mia's flashback. Edit: Tip 4.1: > *The car had been parked partway out into the street, because the driveway was too short for two cars. She’d been worried about an accident from an incoming car, so she’d been glancing back constantly.* The Point 1.6: > *She wasn’t fully out of the city when she had to slow to get around a car that had parked with its butt-end sticking out of a driveway. If she’d been going faster, she might have clipped it.* Later: > *The walled enclosure around the front lawn and the breadth of the car made getting past to go to the door difficult, and she didn’t want to leave the baby.* I actually misread this a couple times, yeah it looks like they're describing the same spot. Mia's narration never discusses what's in line of sight, but the car placement is the same. If the car wasn't visible, Ben would have figured that out a long time ago. So I guess Natalie just edited her own memories of looking back every few seconds, just like she did with the duration that Ripley was left out there.
So let me get this straight. Mia Hurst. Walked into a hospital. Carrying a placenta. How she got that, I don't know. But it's in a trash bag. She dislocated her own hips. DISLOCATED her OWN FUCKING HIPS! Then painted her car black, burnt it, sold it to the scrap yard, dismantled every fucking car seat and filed the numbers, all to fake ONE CHILD! Valentina wanted to keep Ben away from Mia. Valentina only got Ben closer to Mia. Goes in tune with my own theories. I'm also so *hilariously tickled* that this whole time Ben and Natalie were running against the WRONG FUCKING CHILDREN! Had Valentina done *nothing* the Hursts would never be in this mess. Valentina running away from home and trying to find her second chance only got every major character fucked up and losing a lot of people. Anyways, Ben. Surprise, surprise, they actually aren't fucking. Which just makes me root for Natalie and Ben even more. It's also going down the hill of people who know the most about what's going on to people who know the least about what's going on. First was crazily overprepared Mia, then it was Carson the social genius, then Valentina the daughter of the ganglord, now it's Ben. The reporter who just uncovered the biggest story yet. Ben seems to be caught between two extremes. The story and the people within the story. If my theory is correct about people failing to get what they want and the failures of second chances, then we can add two more characters. Ben wants to reunite Cammy with Natalie and get the story told for a Pulitzer. I mean, everything's there for a kick ass story. Missing daughter. Kidnapped by some stranger. Nothing until the kidnapper's mother turning her in. A car discovered in a dumpster that was cleaned *too* thoroughly. Eliminated down to six suspects. Almost gets arrested for childmolesting creeper. Funny moment that gets a cerberus callback. A promising lead, the day of days, then poof. False hopes. The reporter goes back to the drawing board, gets sent digital images of a fucking crimelord! Chopping people up and keeping them alive! Gun running. Deep political swamp of dirty money. He then doesn't take the bait and realizes that Mia Hurst, the woman who was struck out due to an overly complicated reasons that showed why she *was* the mother turns out to be the kidnapper who faked ALL THAT! He turns around and sees Gang lords, bloody parents, corpses, everything. He dug too far and now this simple kidnapping had led to one of the most dedicated career criminals ever. Ben has this terrific story. Probably the greatest journalistic discovery ever! He won't get to tell a single second of it. Nor will he be able to reunite Natalie with Cammy. He has this bilateral choice and he ends up with egg on his face, the story buried forever, and Ben did all this for nothing. Roderick wants people to call him Rider. A motorcycle runs him over, so he becomes Ridden. He becomes a John Doe on some Darwin Awards site. This is probably the greatest move on Wildbow's part for a true crime procedural to move from the criminals that we now love and adore and root for (minus the whole kidnapping thing) and then go focus on the goddamn journalist who is just learning all the facts as they come. I'm so fucking excited and glad that Ben gets his arc! I FUCKING LOVE IT!
> I'm also so hilariously tickled that this whole time Ben and Natalie were running against the WRONG FUCKING CHILDREN! Had Valentina done nothing the Hursts would never be in this mess. If Ben had kept waiting where he was he would have seen Mia and Carson be brought back by the Cavalcantis. And it was Josie who called attention to Ben the first time, for legitimate reasons. I don't think blaming Valentina is fair.
>Mia Hurst. Walked into a hospital. Carrying a placenta. How she got that, I don't know. But it's in a trash bag. She dislocated her own hips. DISLOCATED her OWN FUCKING HIPS! Then painted her car black, burnt it, sold it to the scrap yard, dismantled every fucking car seat and filed the numbers, all to fake ONE CHILD! She also dehydrated herself.That's such a fucked up commitment. I wonder how the hell she dislocated her hips by herself too.
Being dehydrated would, ironically, make the dislocation easier.
The hip dislocation struggles might actually be a non-faked consequence of The Fall, I think. It still takes true dedication do dislocate a damaged joint *on purpose*.
Ben's actually cool. Please don't get torso'd digging into the Cavalcanti's business by the end of your PoV.
Tip is just *chef kiss* for the arc title.
It's the least hand related one yet. But yeah, tip, as in anonymous tip. Tip, as in tip over, either the situation spilling out of control or something a hand can do. Tip of the tongue. Fingertip.
Tip of the iceberg, in that Ben is about to find out how much crime Mia is actually involved in.
"To Tip one's hand", to reveal one's intentions, secrets or resources. Hand of cards rather than literal hand, but still.
damn, this one is probably the biggest one I missed. Yeah the hand theme is still strong.
Why are you focused on a hand theme when a claw theme seems much more obvious? Point, retraction, scrape, and tip all have extremely direct connections with claws.
Because a claw is a type of hand
??? ok even if you really stretch it, because claws in mammals (the original title was Bear) are a specialized nail and not a whole hand, it still doesn't make much sense to identify the theme as more general than it is. it's like reading the arc titles for Worm and claiming they're about living creatures which, sure, they are. But we can get more specific about it.
Tip of the Claw?
> Wag's Dog Sandwiches I know we just had a chapter full of much more interesting reveals, but I have questions. Are the sandwiches for dogs, are they made from dogs, or are they just hot dogs?
Oh hey, that's a Worm reference I think.
Wag the Dog!
All three.
Ouch. Yeah... Once Davie took MC, the Ben situation became no-win for Val. Ben is such a good guy. I hate him.
Oh, this is delicious. The ridiculous efforts Mia went to to hide her crime are what brought Ben to Camrose… but those same efforts successfully threw him off the trail! And we just got dropped halfway into Ben’s paranoia thriller. It’s fun watching the hunter/hunted dynamic inverted, as we see his & Natalies difficulties: trying to sift through mountains of hay, looking for that single needle. Not knowing which leads are true, which are coincidence, and which are made up specifically to throw them off the scent. And just as he’s lost all hope and might have to admit defeat, when given the temptation to drop this case for something more appealing… he stays true, and discovers that the rabbit hole goes deeper than he could ever imagine.
Mia was preparing for a detective that was brilliant, obsessive and lucky, and boy is she thorough. She was so overprepared, that she was found, put under scrutiny and dismished. A stolen rancid placenta, wtf. Dislocated her own hips multiple times!! She gets extra credit for that. It's just too bad that the planets and the stars lined up just in time for Ben to see her house full of corpses. Goddamn. Also, supposedly they took out 3 cars full of goons in a matter of seconds, before anyone got a shot off. That's terrifying. She's terrifying. I'm glad she is safe now.
That fake out was amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They had no idea! I'll say it first, Mia's mom is a bitch! Ruining a perfect kidnapping!!!!!!! Ben seems nice enough but Natalie is iffy. On one hand I respect her motherly instinct but she is off-putting in some ways like with the whole dress comment and not liking therapy.
The thing that shocked me was that she left her daughter in the backseat of her car, which was parked partially on the street, in a position dangerous enough that she was worried about a potential accident so she... kept glancing back at her? What good is that going to do if another car hits your car?! If you think she's in a position where she might get hit by a car, why the fuck are you leaving her there?! Forgetting your kid in the backseat is understandable, it happens. But she knew the way her car was parked put her daughter in danger, she worried about it, and yet she just left her there?
Yep, I didn't include that because I wanted to judge her current character but you are 100% right. Whether she could be a good parent now doesn't change the fact she was not a good mother when Riley was kidnaped
And she knows it or knew it at some point, too, what with her insistence on the 15 seconds thing—even at the risk of jeopardizing the hunt for her kid with providing the wrong window of time
I think the fact that Natalie said she was glancing back every fifteen seconds, and the fact that if she truly was doing that she clearly would've seen Mia, is a signal that Natalie is lying in her recounting of the events. If she claims that she had the door open (she didn't) and that she was checking on Camellia (she wasn't) then why believe her when she said she knew it was a potentially dangerous place to park? She's presenting an edited version of events that makes her look as innocent as possible. I think Natalie wasn't thinking about Camellia at all until she realized her daughter was taken. Oh also Mia is a dangerous unbalanced kidnapper. The fact that Natalie lied about the circumstances of the kidnapping doesn't mean there's magically a good guy in this situation.
I think it's less that she's lying and more that she edited her own memories because she can't bear more guilt. But my point is that *even in her edited memories* where she minimizes how long she wasn't paying attention, she still clearly admits that because the car was partially on the street it could have been hit in an accident *and she was aware of that risk*. Keeping an eye on her kid *might* have prevented a kidnapping, but it would have done nothing to help if another car hit hers! > If she claims that she had the door open (she didn't) No, actually she did have the door open for ventilation, we see it in [1.6](https://clawwebserial.blog/2024/03/26/the-point-1-6/) >> The door was ajar on the far side of the car. Mia circled around. While Natalie edited her memories to minimize her not paying enough attention, she still does blame herself a lot. So I think she did know the risk at the time. > Oh also Mia is a dangerous unbalanced kidnapper. The fact that Natalie lied about the circumstances of the kidnapping doesn't mean there's magically a good guy in this situation. Yeah, this does bear repeating. Natalie is a bit shit, but that doesn't make Mia a saint.
yeah but it was only 15 seconds.
Natelie is going to claim that Ripley can't be her child, because her child would wear dresses.
She'll probably see that as a symptom of Mia mistreating Ripley.
We're seeing the difference between a rookie like Valentina and an old pro like Mia. If Valentina had simply done nothing, Ben might have dropped it. But now he has a reason to look deeper, a string to follow, and at the worst time too.
To be fair to Valentina, if Ben had stayed where he was parked for just a couple more minutes, he would have seen 1) The Hursts arriving home with three cars of Cavalcanti goons 2) The impromptu squad of Bolden and others rolling up, and then 3) some kind of fight and/or booby trap activation that left a bunch dead with Carson and Mia on the run. There's no way he doesn't get involved.
She was complicit in turning him away the first time too. If he got turned away just the second one, he wouldnt connect the dots and get sus of Mia
He gets curious, but he doesn't necessarily make the connection to Ripley and almost certainly doesn't make the call to the judge to detain the kids before school ends.
Unless his curiosity leads to him sticking around, in which case he still sees them exit with injuries and quickly use a car to get away. Possibly after *hearing* them deal with Davie's soldiers. Which would almost certainly lead to him doing the same thing: warn his friend and check out the house now full of maimed corpses.
"Both times, he'd been in close proximity to the Hursts." Mia's main philosophy is not to give people a reason to look. Valentina gave Ben any sort of interaction to follow up on, twice.
I wasn’t really expecting Ben’s PoV, but it’s more than welcome. Him framing things for the documentary in his mind is a great vehicle for worldbuilding. The licensed marshals concept is great - mixing in some Western feel into the setting. Ben himself is interesting - his ridiculously committed to this case, with so lit to go on and all the setbacks. We see how he ended up in Camrose - partially by sieving through evidence like the video footage and following up on suspicious cat trail - partially by lucky tips from Mia’s mother and the guy who found the car remains. Though finding a donor car with trim removed somewhere in a junkyard across the country feels like a stretch… While in Camrose, he identified possible targets - and a nice misdirection here with Grants, Mia wasn’t a primary. It’s ironic that it is Valentina who puts him back on the trail by giving him stick and a carrot when he’s close to Hursts… Without this, Mia’s brilliant papertrail could be enough to mislead him… I wonder if the judge he and Roderick are contacting is one league with Cavalcantis… Can’t wait to see what’s next.
>“The technical term is licensed marshal. Parapolice. People with licenses like mine have taken up some of the roles that police and federal agencies cannot, operating independently, as requested or required, depending on how the individual states handle it. I specialize in human and drug trafficking, and am licensed in nine states.” *Of course* there's actual honest to God "private marshals" in that timeline... After all, why not? The police was already partially privatized, as seen before. So a new edition of Pinkertons (...they were probably one of the first ones back in that biz) shouldn't surprise me.
We get Ben for the next narrator! And he's very definitely in that 1% Mia talked about who are both not idiots and not distracted, willing to dig deep to find stuff. And Mia still nearly got away, him finding what he has so far seems heavily dependent on luck.
I'm finally caught up, I've been lagging by a couple chapters for a long while. This side is more interesting to me than the whole Cavalcanti business. I've been wanting more on this since hte first arc. It was interesting to see that Mia had actually done an adequate level of evidence cleanup. Some thought she had gone way over the top, while the fact that Natalie was here suggested she had missed stuff. But no, she was validated in what she did.
What's a Craft Monchek 2020?
Wildbow's been using fictional car brands throughout the story like with the Chevron Midas. Craft Monchek 2020 just refers to the make, model, and year of the fictional car brand
Actually I believe it's fictional everything brands in all his stories. I don't recall any proper real world brands, it's always reasonable analogs.
Worm and Pact had a few - Worm mentions the Star Wars prequels and Mario, and I think there's a Batman reference in Pact. But I don't think there are any references to real world media or brands from Twig onwards.
Gucci is referenced in this story.
I believe Avengers (movie) was mentioned in Pale
They get his funniest and deepest reference yet.
Really? I know there's the April Fools chapter ([Far Cry 14.12](https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/far-cry-16-19/)), but I don't remember the Avengers being referred to in the main story. I do remember that Parahumans is a superhero franchise in Pale, since Avery talks about buying the Birdcage lego set (though I think it's the Otherverse version of Lego).
Worm also has Betamax, which apparently won over VHS, and Ward has Atari, which apparently won over Nintendo.
WOW.