#and that is. so fabian to me

[rrat-king]

mr fabian seacaster himself 🫡

of course of course the darling boy of all time

fabian Hates silence. it's one of the big reasons he started hosting so much at the manor, to overwhelmed by how quiet it could get with only him in it. he likes to be surrounded by people and noise and constantly has music or white noise on and that is to say: fabian is the Speaker Kid at aguefort

[very-small-giant]

you have been bad friends to riz gukgak

[bacchuschucklefuck]

typical tavern scene

[minionsuncle]

Blarmy!

[ribbittrobbit]

these kids are incredibly stressed out

[doodleswithangie]

SQUARE UP!

[Image description: Fanart of a scene from Dimension 20's Fantasy High: Junior Year episode 14. The Bad Kids and The Rat Grinders square up in the middle of the school cafeteria. Alt text provided and copied under the cut. End ID]

Copied Alt Text

Image one: The Bad Kids and The Rat Grinders square up in the middle of the school cafeteria. Above their heads is written, "The Bad Kids vs The Rat Grinders."

Image two: From left to right - Adaine readies her magically glowing hand, Gorgug cracks his knuckles, Fig pages Colin Counterspell on her earpiece, Riz hisses, and Fabian steadies Kristen as she smirks down at Kipperlilly.

Image three: From left to right - Kipperlilly glares up at Kristen, Buddy looks on worriedly, Oisin has a hand on Kipperlilly's shoulder as he tries to intervene, Mary Anne has a deadpan stare, Ruben poses moodily, and Ivy smirks behind Oisin.

End Alt Text

[millacm]

mini bad kids ! I'm making this into a sticker to hand out to folks at D20 live in Glasgow !!

[lunarifie]

Do you think their bff necklaces are magnetic and sometimes connect without them noticing

[gods-favorite-autistic]

To me there’s like a line between the Bad Kids who were always themselves extremely authentically and that fucked them up socially (Riz, Adaine, Gorgug) and the Bad Kids who spent a good portion of their lives playing a part and that fucked them up mentally (Fabian, Kristen, Fig)

[ewwww-what]

They’re just on his mind, which could mean nothing

[schreibfederlaerm]

it's just really funny to me to imagine Fabian actually being a great big brother honorable nemesis.

like, putting a nemesis ward on the nursery with aelwyn's help since "it won't do if they die before their eighteenth birthday, will it?" (aelwyn, deeply sarcastic: "well of course, that is exactly why I put the ward on adaine's room." fabian, too deep in denial for sarcasm: "see? you get it")

gifting them a battle sheet baby blanket since they should start preparing for their battle early on (and yes it's extra fluffy, it's for a baby stop laughing everybody)

generally trying to teach them everything he knows "so their battle to the death will be a fair one"

giving their adventuring party the same lecture on tactics that the bad kids got from his papa

hunting down chungledown bim and any other nemesis so his sibling is the only one who could get a piece of his fund (he just wants it to stay in the family, shut up)

just. fabian being an amazing big brother but also if you call him that to his face he will cut you

[twinstxrs]

fabian’s insistence on calling someone to tell them about lucy & yolanda because he thought people just deserved to know, out of respect. both deeply sweet & incredibly gutting. (bill seacaster move over that’s MY darling boy)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

summer of junior year 06/11

[vivitalks]

i need to talk about the bad kids and the weight they carry from their parents. because all of them have baggage, whether they know it or not, and it's high time we had a conversation about it.

we all know kristen and adaine's parents fucked them up, but the truth, and maybe this is an immutable truth about the world and all worlds in general, is that every kid bears the weight of their parents' expectations on their shoulders. sometimes the burden is well-disguised; sometimes the pressure is mitigated by a loving relationship — but there's always baggage, and the bad kids are all so used to dragging it along that they don't even realize they're carrying it.

fabian's is easy to recognize. not a day goes by that fabian doesn't think of his father. of what his dad, his treasured papa, not only wanted but expected of him. fabian grew up under the pressure to write your name on the face of the world, to become not just good but Great, to be more than a man — to become a legend, maximum legend, to get it tattooed onto your neck so you never forget your goal, because this is the only way to make your father proud and maybe if you're just like him then your mother will decide to be your mother again. she promised to be better and then she abandoned you. she failed you completely in every way imaginable and her solution was to try again. maybe this child will grow up with a loving mother. maybe she'll get it right this time. but not fabian. fabian doesn't get love, he gets pride, and there's only one way to ensure that his parents are proud.

fig is staggering under the immutable knowledge that she was the catalyst to her parents' divorce. that all of this could have been avoided if she had just never been born. she has so much anger, and it started out directed towards sandra lynn, but now she knows it's anger towards herself, for daring to exist, for ruining a marriage and a life by the crime of being born. poor gilear, saddled with the knowledge that his only daughter isn't even his. and yeah, her mom is a fuckup, but at least that's because of choices she made. fig would have to be in control of her actions to be a fuckup - instead she keeps BEING controlled, from the Dominate Person that led her to nearly sacrifice riz down to the very simple act of being the unplanned child of an affair. she's worse than a fuckup: she's a curse. a plague. and all three of her parents would have been better off if she'd never existed.

wilma and digby thistlespring tried so hard to raise a happy kid. they didn't believe in the stereotypes about half-orcs. not our kid, they said. how could a child of ours be angry? but gorgug is so angry sometimes, and he barely has the language to explain that, much less the skills to manage those emotions. he was so loved, so doted upon, and he tried his best to be the gentle giant, but somewhere along the way he failed, and his parents had no plan for a system malfunction. why would they? wilma and digby never met a bad feeling they couldn't sing their way out of. gorgug could be like that, too, if he tried. if he put his mind to it. it's his fault that he can't keep his rage under wraps. and his parents love him, but they don't understand him, and that hurts them. gorgug is hurting them. the very nature of his being hurts them. he tries to mold himself into the shape of a perfect son, but like everything else in his life, it doesn't fit - he can't give them what they want; he can't become what they devoted all this time to nurturing. he is big and brash and bubbling over with rage sometimes, despite all of his parents' best efforts to teach him temperance and good-naturedness and how to be small, smaller than your body can be, how to tuck in your limbs and take shallow breaths so your bed doesn't break again (again, again, again) and he tries and he tries. it's never enough. he will never be the perfect son, so maybe there's no point in trying at all.

and riz. sklonda. look, how could he not be just like his dad? dad was a badass secret agent, the kind of person riz could only dream of being. he doesn't want to scare mom, but why shouldn't he want to be like dad? except sklonda is scared. she raised him, terrified of what would happen when he learned the truth. his rock, his confidant, his second-best friend (let's be honest, maybe first) — he can't worry her. she has enough on her plate; he can't be a problem for mom. so riz gets really good at taking care of himself. when she can't make it home for dinner, riz knows how many minutes the freezer dinner needs in the microwave. when she can't pick him up from school, riz knows where the nearest bus stop is. and he can't stop solving mysteries, but he can reassure her that he's safe, whether or not it's true — because she needs him to be safe, and riz can't be a problem. he has to be fine. he makes a living being fine. sure, he's in jail for months for a crime he didn't commit, but he's fine. he got kidnapped and almost ritually sacrificed, but he's fine now, mom. i saw dad and he was tortured within an inch of his celestial life and i was almost killed in Hell, but it's fine, mom, because dad is an angel, how cool is that? the important thing is that sklonda can always count on her boy. she can trust him to understand adult things, like the fact that they're poor, and that her demotion might spell bad things for riz's future, and his only shot now is to have a really beefed up transcript so he can maybe get good scholarships, and yeah, that's a lot — god, that's a lot, on top of the harrowing mystery unfolding this year — but. riz is fine.

there's a freedom in hating your parents, in knowing unequivocally that they were bad at being parents, perhaps bad at being people at all. everyone agrees that the abernants were vile, disgusting examples of people at all, much less parental figures. nobody is leaping to the applebees' defense. they failed their children, and their children owe them nothing.

but fabian, fig, gorgug, riz — it's harder when you love the people who raised you. it gets to feeling like the problem is you. like if you were different, if you were better, if you tried a little harder or did something a little differently, then things would be perfect, and that weight you stagger under would go away. if fabian weren't so sentimental. if fig weren't a tiefling. if gorgug weren't so angry. if riz weren't so reckless. you love your parents, and you owe them everything, and this is the least you could do. so why aren't you doing it? why can't you? why are you carrying this weight in the first place?

these four have parents who love them. but that doesn't mean their parents can't also have hurt them. it's inevitable; you grow past the expectations of your parents, and then into something new, something entirely your own, but the bad kids are still growing. they are loved. but they are burdened. both things can be true.

[wolfziedraws]

Alter Emos

[glove23]

what are you trying to forget, kipperlily?

individual group shots under the cut 💜