about your post about clarabelle and calliope's ages: i think that the combination of clarabelle looking like she's around 15 (paraphrasing matt in ep96) and that its been vaguely said that the order of the clays leaving was corrin and constance, then calliope and cornelius, and then clarabelle and colton (and that they all left within just a few years of eachother) rly implies that belle is the youngest. especially since the rest of the siblings seem to all be adults..
hi, anon, i agree that there is circumstantial evidence that clarabelle might be younger than caduceus and calliope, it just doesn’t yet outweigh the outright spoken indicators we have gotten for calliope, in my opinion. taliesin said explicitly last episode that clarabelle was the last to leave- colton seems to have left with cornelius while calliope also went off alone- and back in 96 that she did so about eight years ago. her looking mid-teens when we have no idea how long she has been petrified compared to the others (the longest, in my opinion but that is only supported by her placement in the cave and the fact that she has no idea what is going on when restored, especially when compared to colton) to me is not a solid enough indicator that she is the youngest, especially not when matt consistently corrects to her being older and calliope being younger (anecdotes are not data but guess what, i looked to be in my midteens until i hit twenty-five, and my younger brother always gave me grief for it).
calliope, colton, constance, and corrin all definitively made it to the kiln before traveling to the menagerie, the latter three were mentioned by name by the dusts and calliope is restored with a residuum seed on her, which can only be forged there. we have no idea about clarabelle’s timeline, especially compared to her siblings, who could have been aging while she didn’t. caduceus’ relative age has been brought down to early twenties, which makes an older clarabelle possible if not probable.
now, what i think happened (pure speculation on my part) is matt and taliesin had originally assigned the name calliope to the warrior sister and clarabelle to the wild child sister and that the warrior would be older while the wild child would be younger. but episode 96 came, covid was right on our tails, the other players were...unfocused, they were getting ready for a live show, matt was doing final touchups on the wildemount book, etc and matt just said calliope was outside instead of clarabelle when he had originally planned to have clarabelle with her dad. and that is why he said calliope was the younger sister. oops, well, matt goes with it, describes calliope then compounds the mistake by now mentally putting clarabelle in with colton where calliope should have been. so clarabelle becomes the older sister who is ‘visibly younger’ instead of calliope. but then we come to 130, where the players have been signaling they would visit the grove for weeks now. matt has had plenty of time to refresh himself on the girls and their relationships. flubbing who got what gift a year ago is going to happen, to be honest, it isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things where caduceus is concerned. continually flubbing which sister is older is, i would argue, much harder to do, and that birth order is pretty important to caduceus and his backstory (ie are the clay siblings clumped together age wise, has caduceus overtaken calliope in worldly experience, prowess, and age, did caduceus carve himself the responsible quiet kid as a result of a wild older sister or a fierce take no shit older sister, etc). matt is very, very good at keeping the important balls in the air and in his mind.
again, i would be more willing to chalk up the whole situation to a series of simple mistakes but as of right now, they keep happening in the same direction: clarabelle is older, calliope is younger. so either these mistakes are not mistakes or matt and taliesin really cannot keep track of the clays. i will be happily proven wrong if matt or taliesin clears it up. ‘til then, i plan on enjoying the current family dynamic and exploring what it could mean for our boy.
thanks, anon, and i hope you have a good day.
