#fantasy high discourse

[rebuke-me]

i think im gonna be mildly petty. i think my biggest issue with the fh webtoon is the fact that all the characters are coming off as what they are either pretending to be or are mischaracterized as. like.... fabian is so much more of an asshole, and its succeeding, because he doesnt have the awkwardness that he has in the original show. fig actually seems to be the edgy cool kid when the whole bit is that shes such an open book and is really bad at acting edgy. kristens whole thing about being sweet and demure and the pinnacle of helioc followers is just stated as fact because she doesnt show any of that intense chaos. gorgug is the closest to early fh show gorgug, but even he feels vaguely off. the little we see of adaine is just the socratic ideal of Girl With Anxiety because we dont get to see her being mean and petty and vengeful. and riz, through becoming the main character/protagonist/pov character, is just so... he seems like hes the perfect teen sleuth character when he kind of fumbles over and over in the show? he comes off the best and i cant pin down why he feels Wrong to me but he still does.

maybe thats the point of the first few episodes. maybe itll get better. but as of right now im just... mildly frustrated about it. i am bad at articulating what im feeling but yk

[hi-intrepid-heros]

I am actually speechless at how dangerously stupid some dimension 20 fans are.

Dude. You're seriously saying that Brennan Lee Mulligan, the man who singlehandedly crafts and curates the stories you have the privilege of getting to hear, is wrong for... Having a moral to his stories? For the fans overwhelmingly agreeing that when the storyteller says "Here is a terrible villain" that we believe him?

You can say you "don't want dropout to stop intertwining activism and progressive ideas in their work" (being anti-child murder is progressive??) as much as you want, but it doesn't hold water when you drop that sentiment the second people tell you that your obsession with relating to the irredeemable villain may be kind of unhealthy. If you're the type of person to become a turncoat on creativity when it makes you uncomfortable, you are exactly the kind of villain Brennan has been writing about.

[brionbroadway]

i support fabian's rights and fabian's wrongs

[mourning-at-night]

jace i don’t feel good was so funny but also made me so sad. like that’s a teenager with a strawberry squishmallow keychain and a tamagotchi and she doesn’t feel good and she's tugging on a teacher’s sleeve about it. a teacher who should have been responsible for protecting her in the first place and didn’t. who is manipulating and using her and her friends to help fulfill the desires of a wrathful power-hungry egomaniac. porter and jace it’s on sight >:(

[bebrave-live]

If I had a nickel for every time the idea of shooting out one giant sperm has been proposed on a Dropout show this year, I would have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's REALLY FUCKING WEIRD that it's happened twice.

[unlikablefemaleprotagonist]

siobhan came in clutch so many times this episode. from the killer scatter to making a fool of jace to the brain worm (rip rfk junior you would have loved fabian seacaster's secret sylvan gift) to the dead-on thematic RP

if nobody's got me i know siobhan thompson's got me

[ominous-horse-noises]

main takeaway from certain fan reactions to the finale is this:

the final scene with ankarna was so meaningful to the bad kids' arcs and how they made peace with being wronged by people they loved, and if all you can focus on is that the rat grinders didn't get much screentime, then you don't love dimension20 and you don't love this world: you want to be playing your own hs themed dnd campaign and you're mad the oc versions of the rat grinders you made up in your head acted ooc. these are not your characters and this is not their story.

[jarvesque]

I think you can clearly tell which fantasy high fans have never actually played a session of any TTRPG from the reaction to the Junior Year final battle alone

[mazeyphaedra]

helpppp kipperlilly copperkettle’s dad is literally just some guy and her mom works at the finance office. she is NOT a nepo baby!!!!!! she’s an embezzler

[sketchlm]

Honestly seeing discourse about the Bad Kids killing the Rat Grinders is very funny because... They've killed so many people. Like sure there's a discussion about in-character motives and everything, but also the BK's just kill a ton of people. Most people don't play DND and consider 'non-lethal' options. Brennan kept reiterating it at the start of the season. Murder is literally above redemption on almost everyone's list of priorities in Spyre. Aguefort literally establishes the concept of 'adventurers' as just violent wanderers that go around and kill things that they feel like need killing, this is literally what they go to school for.

The season started with them killing a bunch of fervent cultists, and the Bad Kids only started considering mercy when they started getting tired. I wouldn't have minded the Rat Grinders getting a redemption arc, and maybe they'll get revived somehow, but also the Bad Kids barely consider mercy to people they don't know, so people they HATE getting that sort of treatment already seemed off the table. Not to mention, this is instantly after the Rat Grinders tried to kill the Bad Kids and the entire student body, and are in the midst of casting a wild, out of control spell to raise a new god of wrath.

They literally killed Ragh and only decided to spare him because they went a little too far with their torture power play after they revivified him after brutally killing him. Aelwyn was too slippery to keep down consistently. Literally every character roughly their age that they're antagonistic towards that's still alive is part of the exception, not the norm.

[whereserpentswalk]

Don't shame people for writing or enjoying more grounded settings. People writing speculative fiction that cares about realism in certain aspects isn't stopping you from writing something that doesn't care about realism. "It's fantasy that shouldn't matter" isn't universal, if someone cares about that part of their worldbuilding you don't have a right to say they shouldn't. Just like how somebody talking agaisnt your world for being unrealistic in a place where you don't care about that level of realism sucks, it sucks an equal amount to dismiss someone striving for realism because you'd personally be fine with those aspects being unrealistic.

"Just let people enjoy things" applies to hard science fiction and low fantasy as much as it applies to soft science fiction and high fantasy.

[jq37]

The most hilarious thing about all the Kipperlilly discourse going around (is she valid in her Mental Health Issues, is she white-coded, can we make fun of her name, is tragic yuri Frostkettle real, is she irredeemable) is that she's successfully made it so that you can't NOT talk about her. I think she'd be very pleased with that.

Kipperlilly can rest easy knowing that on another plane of existence beyond her comprehension, there are a bunch of nerds who are absolutely obsessed with her.

[kipperlillyforpresident]

a word on Ivy Embra // FHJY EP 19 SPOILERS

So like. I am a Kipperlilly blog (obviously). I don't usually make or reblog posts that aren't about her. But my reaction to this episode was visceral enough that I wanted to get my piece out on this topic:

I think it's really fucked up that Ivy Embra's death was defined by

a) how ugly everybody thinks she is

b) how little Fabian wants to have sex with her.

It is... well... it just sucks. It does not feel fun or cool to see a female character treated in such a dismissive and cruel way. All of the Rat Grinders are treated like this, of course, but Ivy's felt particularly gross.

And I really hope that we as a fandom don't echo that sentiment...? Regardless of whether you like her or think the Rat Grinders are redeemable. I just... hope that we don't mock her for being ugly and not having sex with Fabian. I hope that we can engage with her in like, literally any other way.

[theindefinitearticle]

The shadows of great and terrible d20 discourse are passing beneath me but luckily under airitime law they cannot touch me

[spooky-dice]

there’s nothing wrong w hc’ing riz as alloromantic from a canonical perspective and i’m largely a live-and-let person, but some posts make me feel like some of you should inspect why you feel aromanticism makes a character less compelling, less relatable, or less sympathetic.

does a character not being shippable make them less connected or interesting or has amatonormitivity convinced you that romance makes a person more whole and that platonic relationships are inherently less valuable or complex than romantic?

technically speaking, riz has never been explicitly confirmed aro. there is however, a good amount of canonical coding that implies he is. coding is sort of a tricky thing to determine if it is canonical or not, depending on whether it was intentional or not, and historically speaking, intentional queercoding was usually outright noncanonical and contradictory. given d20’s MO when it comes to queer characters it is likely the coding is deliberate, but it is not confirmed within text.

personally, i think the text does not require an explicit canonization to be aro representation. i would like it! but to me, riz’s story is already an aro story and it means a lot to me because it is one of the ONLY ones i can think of and the ways it explores aromantic loneliness. aro/ace representation in public media is still in its infancy, and despite recent pushes for queer rep, there is still an all-time total of zero (0) aro main characters and >10 side characters in film and television.

also, i think people should be mindful about levying phrases like “he’ll grow out of it” “it doesn’t matter” etc, because even if your intention is to talk about riz, real aro fans can inadvertently catch strays, and the safety of real queer people should take priority above all else

[lishenkaaa]

i can't believe thinking that the ratgrinders' deserved a bit more empathy from the bad kids is a controversial position because the bad kids already forgave this exact situation??? did we all forget about zayn darkshadow???

like he was literally a recurring antagonist during freshman year and was specifically behind the combat at the black pit and everyone thought he was evil UNTIL we find out he was being coerced by coach daybreak who then had him MURDERED!!!! and then he literally ends up befriending the bad kids and living at mordred manor like 😭 the only major differences between his story and the ratgrinders' is that they are (or i guess for some WERE) still alive

idgaf if you think the ratgrinders are irredeemable and deserve to be sent to hell and never return, but you have to admit that it's not unreasonable to be a bit disappointed when a show that has previously illustrated how CHILDREN can be manipulated and exploited by the adults around them, and how they should be extended empathy and understanding, has for some reason forgotten this lesson