#fhjy discourse

[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.

[anachronistic-cat]

can we tag our discourse posts p l e a s e

tag it fhjy discourse or d20 discourse or something but please stop maintagging especially without any filter

[azurecanary]

Honestly the FH: Junior Year discourse is incredibly hilarious when you realise BEFORE IT AIRED, Siobhan said in her bts that it's the fun season and is not made to be taken seriously

And then people took it WAY too seriously

[latr1nal1a]

people yelling about the bad kids actions like "the rat grinders are just kids!!!" and what do you think the bad KIDS are??? 🤨🤨🤨 they're all kids actually and they're impressionable and emotional and irrational like sorry tbk want to kill people who just tried to murder like half of the school using an ancient powerful grandma dragon???? ON FABIANS BIRTHDAY NO LESS!!

also I really enjoy the rat grinders and I wish we got to see more of them!! I think a redemption arc or even just seeing more of their perspective would be SO satisfying and I would eat it up and bawl my eyes out But. we've had a lot more time with them than the actual cast has. we get a whole week between eps! and people have been putting in their headcanons and going into deep interpretation mode and everything so obviously we're more attached. the only content of the rat grinders the cast is getting is them trying to Destroy The World and Kill Them. Would love more emotional investment in them from the cast (and I bet that could've happened if stuff was steered a little differently but that's its own thing) but it didn't happen and it's still in character!

and now y'all can write sad sad fanfics about the rat grinders possibly having to face Lucy again after dying and their rage curses wearing off n isn't that soooo appealing cmon guys get in the Google docs!!! take advantage!!!

[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 >:(

[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

[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.

[islandoforder]

on a train to the seaside, crocheting a sundress, and listening to the complicated women podcast which is real and on spotify

[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.

[i-said-blimey]

I get that people love the rat grinders

and want to see them redeemed because they were being misled by their teachers

And maybe I would have been on that side if it hadn't been for KLCK. If it wasn't the slashing her own AP member's throat, it would the complaining about Riz having a hard life as if that somehow gave him advantage. If it wasn't the endangering students at the party, it would be the trying to bring about the apocalypse. I have as much sympathy for her as I have for Penelope, Biz and Dayne in freshman year.

In conclusion:

I don't really care much about the rest of TRG. Except maybe hating Ivy for being a fantasy racist. I even thought Oisin and Adaine would be cute together before it turned out there was nothing there at all. Ruben is insufferable but what teen boy isn't. I just don't think that him being a teenager makes him a wooby whose actions need to be ignored or justified.

I'm not saying it's bad to care about TRG or whatever. i just don't get why people are acting like TBK are awful for killing TRG when TRG have been making their lives miserable. And are also actively trying to bring about the apocalypse. Or worse that BLeeM and IH are horrible for not shifting the story from mystery solving to focusing on redeeming TRG

[song-of-baldy-ron]

D20 Twitter is still struggling with their “this latest season was bad because it did not confirm my personal headcanons/ I don’t know how to simply not like something without manufacturing a reason” takes I see

I don’t love every season of the show (I still can’t get into ACOC years later) but I’m not gonna say Brennan and team did a bad job just because I don’t personally vibe with the story.

[coweggomelet]

i'm honestly so curious to know if any of the people criticizing brennan and the intrepid heroes about junior year have played dnd before. cause like, there are things about the season that i was a little disappointed about and things that felt a little random or poorly paced, but that's honestly to be expected when you play dnd. it's not gonna be all amazingly narratively structured or tie up every loose end, even in a game with more time than dimension 20.

literally in every single campaign i've played, the pcs brutally murdered people who didn't deserve it, teenagers included. because the morals are different in dnd. people can do horrible things in game but be kind, caring, wonderful people, because doing things in a game doesn't reflect someone's views or actions in the real world. and dnd as a system does encourage that kind of thing, just brutal murder, and that's a reasonable criticism (that should be talked about) of the way it's built, as are many of the other criticisms about it. but honestly, if you're gonna sit down and watch a dnd show and expect them to do something other than play dnd, you're going to disappoint yourself.

being disappointed about where a season went is completely fine, i'm a little disappointed we didn't see more of lucy, or more of cassandra and kristen's journey with failing her and trying to make up for that, or getting the rat grinders on the bad kids' side before the final fight and having a bunch of fun angsty teen banter while being forced to fight together. but i'm not gonna blame brennan or the intrepid heroes about that because ultimately, they're playing a game. yes, they're making a tv show, but that tv show has the format of a game of 5th edition dungeons & dragons, and therefore it's going to play like a game of dnd 5e. they're going to play the game, and i, personally, wouldn't want them to do anything else.

[heytherecentaurs]

It’s hard to have a nuanced and level-headed compassionate reaction when people are actively trying to kill you. Whatever the Rat Grinders were before they aren’t that now.

(Discourse beneath the cut.)

I think conversation about what the rat grinders deserve is reasonable. They were manipulated and exploited. Maybe they deserve redemption. But why should it fall to the bad kids to give it to them? Also just because you’ve been manipulated doesn’t mean you’re less responsible for your actions. Teens radicalized by the far right are still responsible for their actions. “I was manipulated” isn’t a great defence for murder. Also everything about the Rat Grinders comes from a place of privilege and a belief they are owed something. They made the choices and bought into the ideology because of their sense of entitlement and this really common insidious belief I see on the far right of denying they have privilege and viewing themselves as some kind of oppressed class.

I interpret the rage and fanaticism as an analog for radicalization. The death of the people they once were and the rebirth of fanatics. It started out small, making choice after choice until it reached a point of no return. The Rat Grinders gave away pieces of themselves until they were new people. An ideology didn’t make them hateful spiteful self-entitled people. They accepted the ideology that fit their personality. Does who they were make them owed redemption? Obviously saying no was an option. Lucy said no; she healed the rats. She tried to follow KLCK but reached a breaking point. Have they ever shown remorse? Has there been any indication that they ever wanted to turn back from the path that led them to their conflict with The Bad Kids? Doesn’t seem like it. Where in this story has Kipperlilly been anything more than Kyle Rittenhouse with a blonde ponytail?

If they are to be redeemed, who they are now needs to be destroyed. Another death is required. And it should not be up to the bad kids, a group of teens to see that the rat grinders are deradicalized. Somewhere some reasonable adults need to take responsibility and control over things and deal with the situation. The bad kids may be able to fight to save the world but they don’t have degrees in therapy or any kind of deprogramming knowledge that’s gonna stop the rat grinders from killing them and Elmville along with them.

I like the rat grinders as villains but they are villains in a D&D game. And just because you may find them sympathetic doesn’t mean they automatically deserve redemption. It just makes their deaths tragic and avoidable and that’s fine. A lot of people die tragic avoidable deaths because of their own character flaws and because they trusted the wrong people. That’s allowed to be the case. They can be tragic and still die. Hell they can be tragic and still deserve to die narratively.

[thewhalesaredoingfine]

Would like to remind dimension 20 tumblr that both The Rat Grinders and The Bad Kids are... children, and I think it's important that in your discourse, maybe look at things from an angle of child development.