To Caduceus Clay

Critical Role, Campaign 2

Geek & Sundry

I don't know for sure if you're ace, but I find myself pinning my representation hopes on you with every passing episode. I wrote a 6-page essay (minus the still) on the four episodes after you showed up. 16.75 hours of footage lovingly combed through for every breadcrumb. I know your creator always makes queer characters and doesn't answer what they are. A challenge to the audience after years of having to explain himself. So I wait, and watch, and take notes, and hope.

I didn't used to bother looking because I never found myself. Who wanted to tell stories about someone who didn't give a fuck literally? But then there was Keyleth. And then there was Lark Sage and Strix, Holly Conrad and Sam de Leve. And there was Molly, who opened up doors I'd just assumed weren't there. Somewhere in there I forgot to stop looking for myself in the kind faces of the one media company that cared.

We needed the warm hug of your existence when you came. For that alone I would love you. In two weeks, you earned a place among my first tattoo. For that alone I would be grateful. I, who had grudgingly made friends with death these last four years, who sat among the tall trees of her tombstone garden praying that the snowdrops ate well of our flesh, needed your blessed graveyard tea ceremony to the Wildmother. I needed the echoes of my Buddhist faith, that everything is destroyed by its creation and interconnected to all else, where I had sheltered from the imploding shitstorm of my life.

I heard your careful, thought out words and as much as I tried to push them away the implications clung to me. I caught your creator-actor's code switching around sexuality, and how you recoiled at the notion of having kids. I saw you hide your eyes from people making out. I grabbed my notebook at the flat statement you're a virgin after 100 seasons young. But even pouring my heart out into the evidence I keep telling myself I am making a mistake.

Hope is a hill your dreams die on when you're wrong. I have learned this so many times in 4 years of hell. Of failing health and failed relationships. But here I am. You're already tending the grave on the hill I will die on for you being ace. You, who serves nature: the cycle of life and death, the beetles and moss destined to gnaw our bones. You, who knows so well the means by which we come and go. You, I pin my hopes on. That your creator gave his friend a needed gift. Make good tea of me if truth withers me. My longing will taste of rainbow flowers on a shady tombstone hill in Melora's endless spring.

With ace love,

Deramin

🖤💜♠