#hey caduceus come eat this snail

[okiedoketm]

after reading your clay family fic. i cannot enjoy anymore as yours is the best i’ve read. it’s now one of my comfort fics that i keep rereading

Oh my gosh thank you! I had such fun writing that, and working with @apricotsndots for the art. I still look back on it so fondly, and it makes my day that someone out there is enjoying it even now ❤️

I had a good chunk of the next chapter done, iirc, before my life got upended and I had to break. Maybe I can revisit the Google doc and do an AO3 update with a short chapter. Honestly, i came back to Headaches and Static (my other big CR fic) over a year later to finish and I’m still really proud, so a return is never out of the question for me!

This got rambly, but seriously, thank you for the kind comment! As a writer and a person I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.

(For anyone else who is curious, the fic is Hey Caduceus Come Eat this Snail, centering on a baby Cad written before we met his canon family)

[okiedoketm]

ahhh I love your “hey caduceus come eat this snail” fic so much!! not to be pushy or anything but do you think you’ll finish it? of course I understand if you’ve got other priorities or whatnot but I’d love to see how it ends!

Man thank you so much! And for all intents and purposes I REALLY want to finish it, I’m just - man life BITES sometimes. I swear on my life I have more written. I want to finish it. I just need the time to sit down and do it RIGHT.

So... yes?

[okiedoketm]

Chapters: 3/5 Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Relationships: Caduceus Clay & Clay Siblings, Caduceus Clay & The Wildmother Characters: Caduceus Clay, Clay Siblings, The Wildmother (Critical Role) Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Just Really Wholesome, Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant until Proven AU, Temporary Character Death Chapter Summary: Mama had said Caduceus would start to feel better in the morning. He’s real upset that she lied to him.

Chapter 3 of my collab with @apricotsandlemondots, the phenomenal artist making illustrations for this fic! Go check out their Critical Role art, it’s absolutely amazing.

[okiedoketm]

pls talk about your clay siblings hcs! what are all of their names, what are they like, what do they enjoy?

Oh we are about to have so much fun here.

For anyone who’s curious, this is referring to my efficiently named fic Hey Caduceus Come Eat This Snail, which I first wrote just for the cute Baby Caddyshack moments, then stumbled into plot and… well making headcanons for the entire Clay fam tbh. Details under the cut!

So I don’t want to give everything away, since I have another 3 chapters queued up, but I can give you the magic table @apricotsandlemondots (this fic’s lovely art gal) and I use to keep track of the Claybies. Names, human-equivalent-ish ages, etc.

When I started writing this (the day Taliesin gave the trash fire quote), we didn’t know much about the Claybies - and we still don’t - so if it wasn’t on the official wiki, I made it up! Only canon details I really had: Clarabelle (sister) “was weird,” Corrin (unknown gender) exists, and his Father’s name is Cornelius. Plus, Cad is a younger sib and has a lot of sisters.

Rad. From there I assumed everyone’s name starts with a hard “C” and I made them all Latin-based because that seems to be a trend and, well, I like Latin.

When it comes to characters, I honestly just let them develop as I wrote, with sort of a vague idea. My baseline parameters were that Calais, in true Disney-older-brother fashion, would be kind of a shit head, and CJ as the oldest would be involved in running the temple and therefore the most responsible, but also still a sibling at heart.

I’ll give a few details on each of the sibs, but I don’t wanna give it all away! (After everything is published I’ll come back to this and add anything that doesn’t make it into the final draft.)

Cleo (2) - basically she’s babie. she’s cute, under Corrin’s care, and isn’t talking yet. not much else to say about her except that apricot’s design of her melted my heart

Caduceus (7) - imagine our caduceus, but not all the wisdom yet? that’s my baby caddyshack. he’s dumber than a sack of bricks and I love him. 

Clarabelle (8) - the one sibling I had canon info on! it’s hard to make a character weird for her family when they live in a graveyard, tbh. my take was that she’s very independent and spacey, and is off unlocking the forest in druidic ways that confuse pretty much everyone. also i just took all the weird things me and my little sister ever did and imagined her doing it. she’d stick both arms in a bucket of glue just to peel it off.

Corrin (10) - You want to experience Corrin firsthand in the next chapter without any priming. trust me. 

Calysta (13) - other middle kid! in my experience, the midkid tends to be the most empathetic, so calysta’s got a big heart! cad also mentioned that one of his sisters made his armor for him, so i made her a paladin and gave her a sword bc lets face it the midkid is also the most likely to shiv someone outside of the family.

Camilla (15) - she’s close with Calais, and kinda a shit head by proxy! she’s a bit more petty and lazy than he is, but still somehow more likely to show concern and affection for her sibs. there’s a lot of complexity in her. i really do like her a lot she’s a low-key fave.

Calais (16) - my high-key fave just bc i created him first and he’s such a shit head i love him. he’s a teenage boy! they’re like 90% apathy and being the worst. yeah. he lives to torment his younger siblings. it’s the best. (fun fact: he’s named after his mother!)

CJ / Cornelius Jr. (19) - the business boy! spends most of his time with Cornelius Sr., learning the ins and outs of taking over the grove. he’s acutely aware of the responsibility on his shoulders, and takes the job seriously. that being said, he loves his siblings and isn’t above getting involved in antics from time to time! 

And i gotta say, @apricotsandlemondots‘s art really brings them all to life. The moment she sends me a design i literally can’t believe i didn’t think of the sibs like that the whole time. they’re great and sometimes when i need a pick-me-up i look at the Calais one and feel better. it clears my skin.

(side note, in the middle of writing this, talks machina happened and Taliesin dropped some juicy Claybie Content, including pranks? love that. apricot made art and it really did kill me)

Those are my headcanons for this fic! I’m sure by the time it’s all published it’ll be total au, but i don’t even care since I’m having such fun with these Claybies! what they enjoy is a bit of a spoiler in some cases, but you’ll find out soon!

Thanks for taking interest in our little Clay family! If you have any more questions I’m more than happy to answer them here!

[okiedoketm]

Chapters: 1/5 Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Relationships: Caduceus Clay & Clay Siblings, Caduceus Clay & The Wildmother Characters: Caduceus Clay, Clay Siblings, The Wildmother (Critical Role) Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Just Really Wholesome, Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant until Proven AU Summary: A young Caduceus Clay gets into some trouble. To quote the great Taliesin Jaffe: “Around his siblings, he’s a trashfire.”

Excited to announce a collab with @apricotsandlemondots, the phenomenal artist making illustrations for this fic! Go check out their Critical Role art, it’s absolutely amazing.

[okiedoketm]

Chapters: 2/5 Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Relationships: Caduceus Clay & Clay Siblings, Caduceus Clay & The Wildmother Characters: Caduceus Clay, Clay Siblings, The Wildmother (Critical Role) Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Just Really Wholesome, Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant until Proven AU, Temporary Character Death Chapter Summary: Caduceus is surrounded by nothing. He doesn’t like it. 

Chapter 2 of my collab with @apricotsandlemondots, the phenomenal artist making illustrations for this fic! Go check out their Critical Role art, it’s absolutely amazing.

[okiedoketm]

me: i really need to finish Hey Caduceus for next week so time to grind out some words

dark me: write it all for Headaches and Static

me: but I already established that one would update sporadically so readers don’t expe-

dark me: write 5000 words