#fantasy high episode 16

[several-ravens]

THIS WEEK'S DICE SHENANIGANS

let's honor the cock, guys

[18catsreading]

Watching Fantasy High: Prompocalypse and I don't think I've ever been so scared of the sound of a huge handful of dice being shaken before 😬😬😬😬

[verosvault]

🚨 SPOILERS FOR FANTASY HIGH SOPHOMORE YEAR!!!🚨

Dimension20 "Fantasy High Sophomore Year"

Episode 16 "My Green Heaven"

Timestamp: 02:26:59

Video Length: 2min. & 32sec.

Kalina WAS FOR SURE SO FREAKING SCARY!!! Her threats were REAL!!! She was LIKE-... SO HARD TO SCRY ON and ALSO SO HARD to HIT! She'd know SO much info from spying on people! She could tear people apart from the inside! Her words held WEIGHT! She NEVER gave an empty threat! It was real! She wasn't lying about the fact that she was going to kill the party if they came into the forest! She was only able to really hurt Kristen and Riz really badly! But also like- Ragh, Sandra Lynn, and Tracker all went missing and that could've been the nightmare king maybe? Or maybe it was Kalina...Idk! Either way it's freaking TERRIFYING!

Kalina for sure has been my favorite D20 villain so far! 💖💖💖 I was ALWAYS on edge during the scenes with her in it!!! You had to talk so smart with her and you had to pick and choose your words so carefully!!! But then again... She also knew so much from just spying on people and I'm pretty sure the amount of blackmail she'd done in her life was A TON!!! 😭😭✋✋

[fabiansrapier]

LMAO imagine you're just about to be crowned prom queen and then suddenly you just poof out of existence, banished into another dimension.

[milfsogyny]

kipperfrost real??????

for real though i kinda feel bad for kipperlilly! her reason for hating the bad kids is so wack that it makes me think thats shes not comfortable with herself to some extent. cause sometimes we get mad at stupid shit so we dont have to deal with whatevers going on internally.

and her adventuring party seems kinda adversarial towards her?? like it seems theyre not good communicators or they dont think abt the party as a whole etc. etc.

[adhdaugust]

Thank god Riz’s dad is good actually. I’m crying

[dropoutdottv]

This week on Dropout: on Monday, a new Game Changer with guests Mike Trapp, Ify Nwadiwe, Siobhan Thompson, and some very special cameos; on Tuesday, a new Um, Actually with guests Grant O'Brien, Keith Habersberger, and Zach Kornfeld; on Wednesday, episode 16 of Dimension 20: Fantasy High Junior Year; on Thursday, the episode 16 Adventuring Party talkback AND the premiere episode of Smartypants, with speakers Mike Trapp, Demi Adejuyigbe, and Vic Michaelis; and on Friday, Very Important People: Last Looks goes behind-the-scenes on Ally Beardsley's episode!

[dimension20official]

🚨TONIGHT! Episode 16 of Dimension 20: Fantasy High Junior Year launches on Dropout at 7pm ET / 4pm PT! Featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan, Emily Axford, Ally Beardsley, Brian Murphy, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, and Lou Wilson!

[adragoncalledcat]

Hey d20 fans!!!

Big Spoilers for the last episode of fantasy high, but I was very interested in learning the party’s damage and kill counts, so on my rewatch I recorded everything and thought I’d share it with you!

Also just a reminder that damage and kills don’t translate to how competent an adventurer is, every single player really shone in this fight and I just wanted to share some cool stats with y’all

Kristen Applebees: Damage - 16 : Kills - 9

Adaine Abernant: Damage - 155 : Kills - 2

Riz Gukgak: Damage - 264 : Kills - 3

Gorgug Thistlespring: Damage - 321 : Kills - 1

Fabian Seacaster: Damage - 342 : Kills - 4

And finally coming in, Figueroth Faeth with a whopping 20 kills and a total of 493 points of damage!!!

[erose-this-name]

Kabru is such a brilliantly written character, one of the best in Dungeon Meshi (which is a high bar as it is, most of the main cast are similarly genius). 

His thing is that he is very friendly and nice confident and maxed out his charisma stat, but is also kinda ambitious and manipulative. But not in an overtly malicious way. Which kinda scares me.

The most impressive thing about him, writing wise, is that it’s all show-don’t-tell. He very frequently uses his charm and empathy and understanding of how people think in really clever ways. We’re often walked through his thought process of how he does these social deductions. We’re never told he’s scarily charismatic, besides other characters reacting to him being scarily charismatic.

Kabru is a natural-born leader and social engineer with superlative skills in both, which makes him the perfect foil for Laios, who’s too autistic and unambitious that he’s not even the de facto leader of his own party that he’s the official leader of. He’s so bad at leadership that his party just, sort of, doesn’t have a leader. They just kinda argue and do stuff.

What’s also neat, and perfectly inline with Meshi’s general theme of clever and logical subversions of fantasy tropes, is that Kabru’s character design in no way clues us in on this fundamental character trait of his.

He’s sort of a human fighter / knight archetype, which in the language of fantasy RPGs is a class most would associate with being a white bread jock, chivalrousness optional. (Laios subverts the same trope in the same way. It’s really funny that the walking exposition dump of the group looks like the character creator default preset spec’d as the most generic class available.)

If Kabru was a bard or noble and Laios a wizard, their character traits would be far less interesting

Even better is that we would expect someone who looks like Laios to have Kabru’s personality, and vice versa. Their character designs are flipped; the confident super charismatic leader is a short wide-eyed twink, while the slightly naive and very autistic monster enthusiast is a tall conventionally attractive Aryan lookin’ mf. (see what I mean by Kabru being such a good foil for Laios?? No wonder everyone ships them, they’re perfect for each other!)

Yet, their designs also work for them. Kabru just has a face that’s easy to talk to, his piercing blue eyes and curly hair gives him a false sense of naïveté, while his iconic 👁️👁️ expression hints that there’s actually quite a bit going on inside his head. Meanwhile, Laios believably looks like someone who doesn’t know what hair conditioner is. His armor’s collar gorget thing is also pretty dorky.

You can’t trust people like that (I mean overly charismatic people with a manipulative streak, not blue-eyed twinks) because you can’t know what their real motives are. You can’t know they aren’t pretending, you can’t know they aren’t trying to or haven’t already manipulated you. How could you? When he has so much more social intelligence than you do, average socially awkward Tumblr user? He’s touched all the grass!

In episode 16 (spoilers, btw) Kabru finally meets Laios’s party, who he’s been trying to find and fight for the better part of the season, and he just decides that no confrontation is necessary. Like, immediately upon meeting the guy. Just from how Laios looked at him. He figures that since Laios didn’t seem to recognize him, they either have never met meaning he has the wrong guy, or Laios forgot meaning he didn’t think it’d be a big deal, meaning the treasure was a trap or something. Which is pretty in line with Kabru’s established ability to always roll nat 20s for every charisma and deductive reasoning check, so cool.

But he doesn’t even seem curious about which of those cases is true. (He might be interested to find out some of the treasure wasn’t dangerous, but accidentally got thrown off a bridge). Much to Rin’s dismay, he’d rather just not bring it up because that could upset the leader of the party he might be working with for the foreseeable future.

Actions speak louder than words. So, all we really learn in this scene is that Kabru’s goals and M.O. can change on a dime, and that he values reputation and political capital more than money and vengeance. More than his own party’s desire for those things. Not only is he someone with a silver tongue, but he knows its value and is determined to use it at every opportunity.

Kabru and his party might not be very good at fighting or surviving in the dungeon, in fact their frequent TPKs are a running gag. But, he also doesn’t need to be when he can just manipulate Laios’ and Shuro’s much more proficient parties into helping him.

So far, Kabru seems like the most likely one to become king of the dungeon or whatever the mcguffin is. He is the only protagonist so far who has said that’s an actual goal of his. He’s said that he doesn’t think someone like Laios who isn’t a born leader should get it.

In fact, Kabru seems to have very strong opinions on what kinds of people should be allowed to adventure in the dungeon, evidenced by the fact that he murdered an entire party over it, justified or not. Kabru seems to think that Kabru is such a leader, and he’s probably right about that, but what kind of leader? 

What would Kabru do with that kind of power if he gets it? Because I’m not sure. All I know is that he is the kind of person with the ability to use real political power to its full potential. For good, or for very, very bad.

I’m not saying that Kabru is evil or that he’s secretly gonna be the surprise villain. I dunno, I haven’t read the manga. He could just be a nice guy that’s just, like, is like that. Everything he’s done could be justified by the explanations he’s given. He actually reminds me a lot of one of my IRL friends, and I’d trust him with my life.

But, I can’t help but feel a distinct sense of unease whenever he’s on-screen. I try not to trust confident natural-born leaders like him right out of the gate. I don’t like that our instinct as humans is to blindly follow them without thinking about it.

Tyrants and psychopaths also use confidence and charm and a friendly demeanor to make people think they’re a good guy, while manipulating everyone into thinking their self-serving actions are altruistic. Benevolent, confident, skilled leaders do exist. But there exists many more snakes wearing their skin. Wolves rarely bother with sheep’s clothing, they dress as shepherds and sheepdogs.

Anyway, my point is that I think it’s kinda neat that it’s possible to overthink this much about a character whose probably just a nice guy that is the mirror opposite of an autistic person. Writing that kind of ambiguity is hard, and employing it in this way is inspired.

[18catsreading]

Riz: got it. We don't have to talk about sex anymore, dad.

Pok: if you have any questions --

Riz: I actively don't want to talk about it.

Pok: the last time I was able to talk to you, you were nine years old. You've grown up a lot, kiddo. I really miss you.

Riz: I missed you too, dad.

Pok: this is ok to talk, for a father and a son. I missed all of puberty, maybe not all, but I missed a lot of it.

Riz: yea, I don't know, I just don't. It just isn't happenin' yet. Like not even just the act is not happening yet. Like me wanting to do it ... Is not happening yet. And my friends are all like super horny.

Pok: yea, that checks out. Well, kiddo, if it never happens that's also okay. There's a lot to life to enjoy, and I already know that you matter a lot to your friends and a lot to your family so if you never end up having those desires, that's completely okay bud.

Ally: ah, you're killing me in this episode

Pok: but if you, it's also okay if it doesn't happen for years, you know? That's also fine. You're your own person, it's gonna happen on your own time or not, and either way is a-okay bud. I won't lie, I know that me and your mom would love to see some grandkids, but that has nothing to do with procreation. That can happen a lot of other ways. Would love to have that Gukgak name continue. Gotta have another little young one scrambling around for blocks under the sofa.

[verosvault]

🚨 SPOILERS FOR FANTASY HIGH SOPHOMORE YEAR!!!🚨

Dimension20 "Fantasy High Sophomore Year"

Episode 16 "My Green Heaven"

Timestamp: 00:03:59

Video Length: 1min. & 16sec.

BILL SEACASTER LOVES GILEAR!!! 😂😂🤣🤣💀💀

Fabian killed Bill! Bill killed Gilear!

Now, Gilear has to kill Fabian and then they'll all be even (but we all know he would never do that)!!! 😂😂🤣🤣💀💀

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - Thailand surprised me

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

May 2024 Wk 1

Ongoing Series - Thai

My Stand-In (Thai Fri iQIYI) ep 2 of 12 eps - I love love love Sol! Pink-haired baby idol blast from the past nursing a crush = absolute catnip for me. This is def my favorite Thai BL currently airing. And it’s probably because it has a sort of odd queer authenticity to both its gayness and its rep of the film industry. I mean, of course it’s sanitized into BL fantasy-landia, but there’s an underpinning of something real, for lack of a better word. Normally I prefer the fantasy of my dumb BL worldview, but in this one I’m kind of liking a little chew and grit.

All of which is to say: this is very fucked up messy gay, which normally I’m not wild about, but for some reason I’m really enjoying this version.

On the other side of the BL coin we have:

Wandee Godday (Sat YT) ep 1 of 12 - And I like it a lot. It’s fun and I’m enjoying it (possibly more than it deserves). I like how it’s a little absurdist. I like that it starts with a one night stand. I like all of the side characters. I love the asexual representation. Bonus LUBE! It’s a fun show. More FUN that GMMTV usually goes for.  

Two Worlds (Thurs iQIYI) ep 8 of 10 - The sketching in the cave scene was v sexy. And I’m enjoying this BL, but not for any other reason than MaxNat being MaxNatty all over my screen. 

1000 Years Old (Thurs iQIYI) ep 12fin - I don’t know what I feel about this one. Mostly just indifferent. It was meant to be the paranormal Thai BL pulp about vampires that we were all waiting for, and it ended up just being boring. Frankly, I'd rather be pissed off than bored. 6/10

Only Boo! (Sun YouTube) ep 4 of 12 - I truly love the naked lust on our side couple's pining friend's face. Usually only Japan get this thirsty.

Book is perfectly cast as Moo's older bro. They even look a bit alike but it might have been a mistake, because he’s so damn charismatic. Stole all the breath from the show for a bit. 

We Are (Weds iQIYI) ep 5 of 16 - No report until next week. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Unknown (Taiwan Tues YouTube & Viki) ep 11 of 12 - What a fantastic ep. This show really is killing it. I’m so happy with Taiwan right now. 

Carry on.

Blue Boys (Korea YouTube) 3 of ? - It remains lovely and I remain enjoying it immensely. It’s very Strongberry feeling. That's always a welcome sensation.

Living With Him AKA Kare no Iru Seikatsu (Japan Thurs Gaga) ep 4 of 10 - They are so cute and pretty much just boyfriends already regardless of what they each think. I'm scared that next week is the final episode, it doesn’t feel like it’s gone very far.

At 25:00 in Akasaka AKA 25 Ji Akasaka de (Japan Thurs Gaga) ep 3 of 10 - I liked it a little better this week. I guess I’m warming up to this one?

Boys Be Brave AKA Roommates (Korea Thurs Viki) ep 3-4 of 8 - Ah poor lonely neglected child. They are all such weirdos. I don’t understand any of these characters or their motivations except they are strange kind of cartoons of... something.

Love is like a Cat (Korea Mon Viki) eps 9-10 of 12 - The guy who plays the vet should be playing a vampire. That's it. That's all I have to say. 

It's airing but...

Lady Boy Friends (Thai WeTV grey) 16 eps - reminds me a bit too much of Diary of Tootsies only high school. Not my thing. DNF unless it turns a corner and is truly amazing.

Memory in the Letter (Thai WeTV) - 6 eps, when it's done, tell me if I should bother?

You Made My Day (Thai YT) ep 1 of 5 - supposed to have started on Friday but I couldn't find it, I also didn't try very hard.

In case you missed it

GMMTV announced the second half of their 2024 line up. I got excited and picked my favorites, details + trailers here.

Next Week Looks Like This:

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

May Releases

5/10 A Balloon's Landing (Taiwan movie) trailer - A frustrated Hong Kong writer, Tian Yu, meets a Taipei street gangster, Xiang (Fandy Fan from HIStory2: Crossing the Line), and the two of them embark on a journey to find the Bay of Vanishing Whales. Along the way, they discover unexpected twists and turns and close bonds, which brings out the message that "there is always someone like you in this world who is waiting for you.

5/16 Blossom Campus (Korea Thurs Gaga & iQIYI) ep 1 of 6 - Strongberry doing classic BL! Weeee!

5/19 OMG Vampire (Thai Sun ????) ep 1 of 10 - LeeFrank are back - not unlike the undead (as it were). But how do we feel about it? Unsure given their track record.

5/25 The Time of Fever AKA Unintentional Love Story 2 (Korea movie) trailer - HoTae & DongHee are back but unfortunately not in a cinema near me. Side couple from Unintentional Love Story, same actors, same character names. I love them. I NEED TO SEE THIS.

5/28 My Biker 2 (Thai movie YT?) - trailer

5/31 The Time of Huannan (Taiwan movie) - May not be BL

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

I love a shrimp peeling moment in my Thai BL. (Only Boo)

Unquestionably the best moment in BL this year. FIGHT ME. (Unknown)

(Last week)

Streaming services are listed by how I (usually) watch, which is with a USA based IP, and often offset by a day because time zones are a pain.

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire

If ya wanna be tagged each week leave a comment and I will add you to the template. Easy peesy.

[bored-trans-lesbian]

Kipperlily just kinda sucks now.

Spoilers for Fantasy High Junior Year, as of episode 16.

I, personally, have not been on the *hate kipperlily* train. I've been looking forward to her pretty much since we met her, a passive-aggressively busybody, a mean girl Riz. Is she evil? Is she just nasty? Will she eventually team up with the bad kids? Ect. And I'd like to say that now I just kinda don't care anymore, she's just... She's not fun to speculate about anymore. I have some info I think people aren't considering, so please read, and I'm also not complaining about the *writing* or Brennan's choices. This is a perfectly logical reveal, doesn't contrast anything, and I'm still excited to see the season unfold. But in terms of kipperlily lore I'm good, she's not potential anymore, she's just kinda shitty. Sorry she's a rage rez now, hope she gets better but kinda fuck her in general now.

Let me be clear, for all those *wildly* speculating about her motivations or making her into something she's not: she is just plain, jealous, full stop, when it comes to tragedy. She is not attuned to larger magical events, she does not have a point, she is fucking *wrong.* Why is she wrong? Consider the main thing she's upset about; that Riz has an adventure advantage because his dad was eaten by Kalvaxis, so he's motivated to adventure more than a normal person.

Let me remind 'yall real quick Riz *did not know* this had happened. Riz, thought his dad was just as relatively 'normal' as kipperlily's. He found out his dad was an agent *halfway through the year* and died in the service, and found out it was *Kalvaxis* that killed him, let me fucking remind you, in the finale from the dragon himself. Kipperlily, has known this for most of freshman year and hated Riz for it. This means she dug up *extremely traumatic* information on a fellow student and proceeded to project her insecurities on him, seeing him as having an advantage in life, while that kid *did not know* any of this and thought his dad, I don't know, died in a car crash or something.

She's wrong from the jump. She digs into people's personal shit for her own *satisfaction*, makes sweeping assumptions about people she doesn't even bother to talk to, and rails against the system for not being fair and rewarding her for *not* experiencing a tragedy. Love Brennan, love this story, fuck kipperlily. She is *not* a sympathetic suffering queen she has toxic insecurities and of all people *Jawbone* has been ineffective at clocking and addressing this problem. I'm all for people who need help getting it but it doesn't make her any less of a creep.

[cntbtchthevapegod]

STUNNING

Dimension 20 Fantasy High Junior Year: episode 16: Untapped Rage

[compactstreamer]

(source)

Transcript below the cut:

Roscoe: You could say Jerma985 is something of a performance artist. He creates huge, elaborate, surreal productions complete with cast and crew, and it's all streaming live for hundreds of thousands on viewers on Twitch. NPR's Alex Cheng takes us inside Jerma's latest big show, a baseball game between clowns and magicians, to ask how—and more importantly—why?

[clip of Sportscaster continues in background: Welcome to Carshield Field, where we have Jerma Baseball Association action for you!]

Cheng: At a baseball stadium in suburban St. Louis...

[Sportscaster: ...a big-time match-up between the California Circus and the Maryland Magicians...]

Cheng: ...a team of clowns in full face makeup and baseball uniforms runs out onto the field. Those clowns played a four-hour game of baseball in real time against the Magicians in the opposing dugout, and tens of thousands of viewers tuned into the live-stream on Twitch. There were breathtaking acrobatic displays...

[Sportscaster: Actually we've got three outfielders unicycling currently!]

Cheng: ... and even the umpire himself stepped up to the plate.

[Sportscaster: The umpire is about to enter this game for California?!]

Cheng: That umpire was the mastermind behind the whole show, Jeremy Elbertson, better known as the streamer Jerma985.

Jerma: I'm just, y'know, calling balls and strikes and doing all these wacky things. I'm just, in my mind I'm going "I hope this is funny. I hope this is funny. I hope this is funny."

Cheng: To create this high-production fantasy world, Jerma had to hire real baseball players, real circus performers, and actors from across the country who wanted to play make-believe. He gave his cast an outline of the baseball game, along with pages and pages of gags he'd come up with, but he let them make decisions on the fly.

Jerma: It's like a live comedy improv show.

Cheng: And Jerma says the real key is his relationship with his streaming audience on Twitch.

Jerma: I'm coming up with a scenario that I think is a fun time for everybody. That's all I care about.

Cheng: Cecilia D'Anastasio covers the video game industry for Bloomberg. She says these big, performance-arty shows are unusual for Twitch.

D'Anastasio: What Twitch's bread and butter is, is a streamer going about their life quite casually and playing video games and just chatting with their fanbases.

Cheng: So why does Jerma do these shows on Twitch, instead of making a movie or a TV show? Well, for one, the liveness of the platform creates a unique sense of unreality, and of course, money is always a consideration.

Jerma: Movies are expensive. Way more expensive than trying to get a bunch of people together to do a show on Twitch for a few hours.

Cheng: Jerma studied communications and video production in college. Then, about a decade ago, he started messing around on YouTube.

[clip of Jerma continues in background: Hello Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to episode one of Jermacraft!]

Cheng: Several years later, he switched his focus to Twitch. He mostly streamed normal gaming stuff, which he still does plenty of, but he also tried a couple of small, outside-the-box experiments, like hooking himself up to a lie detector to answer questions from viewers, or...

Jerma: I hired a fake family to come be my family at a family dinner.

Cheng: Jerma built a team of collaborators, some from his tight-knit viewer community, and together they started staging bigger and bigger events. Things hit a high point in August of 2021 with the Jerma985 Dollhouse Stream.

[Jerma Dollhouse theme music plays in background]

Cheng: Imagine a live-action version of the video game The Sims, on a sound stage, with a big cast and crew, and starring, of course, Jerma.

Jerma: The nature of that whole show was "I'm a person in a house, you get to decide what I get to do."

Cheng: Over three days of streams, Jerma's viewers made him simulate eating, sleeping. They even made him fight a bear.

[clip of Jerma in the dollhouse: You wanna do what?!?]

Cheng: Or at least, a guy in a bear costume.

[clip continues with Jerma yelling, bear grunting, and audience applause]

Cheng: The show was a smash hit. The third day of the Dollhouse peaked at over 100,000 concurrent viewers. That's a lot for Twitch. Cecilia D'Anastasio at Bloomberg says popular streamers can make good money on the platform.

D'Anastasio: Subscriptions, donations from fans, advertising, sponsorship deals.

Cheng: But Jerma's big shows are way more expensive than sitting in a gamer chair playing Elden Ring. They may not be on the scale of a movie, but Jerma says some of his productions can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so he has to find big-money sponsors for his events.

Jerma: It can be a real challenge trying to convince a team of marketing people, "Hey so there's this idea, it's gonna cost a lot of money, and it's gonna be really fun, don't you think?"

Cheng: And some big sponsors are seeing the potential. Jerma says the shows are paying for themselves. For the Dollhouse stream, Coinbase chipped in, and Jerma found new sponsors for the baseball stream. Here's D'Anastasio again.

D'Anastasio: It's not that the streaming space is maturing, it's that it has matured.

Cheng: But even if Jerma's big shows are making money now, he knows there are no guarantees in the world of live-streaming.

Jerma: Nobody really knows how long this is gonna last. Does this evolve and become even larger than it is now, or does it go bust at some point?

[clip of Sportscasters continues in background: And oh my goodness, everyone clearing the dugout!--oh, clearing the bench--the Maryland Magicians... oh my goodness, this is bad!]

Cheng: Why fight for a vision that's so hard to explain and even harder to realize? Like making clowns brawl with magicians on a baseball diamond.

[Sportscasters: Oh boy--utter chaos!--This is just an all-out brawl, the mascots are stripping down...]

Jerma: Why not? It sounds like fun, and it seems like something that could make a lot of people happy, so I'm gonna do it.

Cheng: Alex Cheng, NPR News.

[instrumental outro music plays]