#fhsy meta

[midnightfox450]

Ayda: I have notes from three previous lifetimes. ...They go back about 150 years and the very earliest note starts with an apology, because me, or she, destroyed all of my previous notes. ...She said she wanted to start over, be someone new, and then decades later she regretted it and started keeping notes again. [wipes tears] I hate her so much.

Do you ever think about how the first words Ayda ever learned were probably "I'm sorry". The very first thing Ayda learns about herself, the foundation on which she has built her own self-identity, is that she is wronged. She was wronged at (re)birth by a previous version of herself and every version after her will be wronged as well. There's still a chance for her to wrong herself (and every "herself" after that) again. For a mistake she made to be played on loop ad infinitum, always coming back to haunt her. And just shy of chronomancy (her father's domain, not her's) there's no way for her to change that. So she learns the best thing she can do in any given situation is apologize.

[CW: discussion of parental abuse and self-loathing language under the cut]

The first lesson young Ayda (so curious, so hungry for knowledge and understanding) ever learned from Ayda Sr. Sr. Sr. was that she will never be able to know who came before her. Those previous notes were the only chance of finding out who those people were. Because legacies are made by the memories of those who knew you. And those Aydas *had* no one to remember them. They likely had no partners or close friends, and the only person with an intrinsic connection to her, her father, is so scatterbrained he can barely even maintain a coherent timeline of his own biography, let alone his children.

So Ayda hates the version of herself who robbed her of that. Robbed them all of that. She walks through her incredibly flammable library every single day with the knowledge that there are circumstances out there that could push her to just burn it all down. And all she'd have left was the ability to apologize.

(I've always been interested in why Ayda chose to become a librarian for *pirate culture* specifically. Why she would dedicate herself to documenting what would otherwise become undocumented. Maybe not every version of her ran the Compass Points. Maybe this was the inciting incident).

When Fig is forced to attack Ayda disguised as Aguefort, her first impulse upon seeing her father raise his hand to strike her was to say "I'm sorry". Not "Why are you attacking me", not "You are a horrible father". "*I'm* sorry". She has never met this man in her entire life and yet she immediately assumes she must be in the wrong if he's reacting to her with violence. Because to her, her very existence invites anger. Invites abuse. Invites hatred.

Why would it be unreasonable or illogical for everyone else to hate her? She hates her. She certainly hates at least one previous version of herself, and they're basically the same person. The future versions of herself will probably end up hating her too.

"I understand your hatred. I'm easy to hate. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I am wrong and have been wronged and am now wronging you by existing."

[kitsu-katsu]

Riz's whole arc with Baron starting from him lying about dating somebody to fit in and then transforming into Baron being a representation of Riz's fear of being left alone and behind, never more important than a hypothetical lover to his friends he's trying his damndest to keep together, working himself to the bone to keep them afloat and prove himself valuable to them because at his core he feels once everyone's found a lover he'll be left in the dust, an intrinsically visceral aro fear, all about not being accepted or not being understood for not wanting or not being able to feel that kind of connection the way everybody else seems to. He lied about dating. He's afraid they'll leave him behind for lovers like he will never have. That he won't compare to a romantic partner in his friends' eyes one day. It's all about the lack of romantic partnership

Some people with zero media literacy: He's not aro because Brennan actually said he's ace, so nothing's confirmed! He's just ace. His arc is about being ace actually because Brennan said so. Brennan said he doesn't have a romantic partner because he's ace. There's no way this is a thing about people always confusing the term aro for ace. Nope. He's just canonically not aro. Just ace

[capuchinbutterfly]

Okay, but hear me out… I’m rewatching Fantasy High: Sophomore Year, and in her first episode, Ayda Aguefort got crazy emotionally excited at Boggy the Froggy, and Adaine dressing him in his tiny backpack…

…she and Mary Ann Skuttle would 1,000% sit and talk Quokki Pets. Maybe she walks by when Mary Ann is feeding one, playing with it, Whatever One Does™, and stops, eyes wide and dilated, inhaling sharply, “WHAT!!- is that” and they hit it off from there.

So. She learned the familiar spell from Adaine... Mary Ann brings her a Quokki Pet of her own. But Ayda doesn’t do gifts, so she insists that to accept the pet, she must be able to either pay for it in value or trade something. Mary Ann doesn’t even hesitate before agreeing “Sure” to a trade. Later on, in the middle of who knows what, Ayda straightens suddenly, feathers bristling. “I have it,” she says, and without further explanation, promptly flies off and disappears.

She returns shortly afterward, having conjured a familiar that looks exactly like Mary Ann’s favorite Quokki Pet.

Ayda learns a person can have more than one best friend.

.

.

.

[smol edit: I don’t think Find Familiar actually works this way, but when have I ever respected rules of canon 🤷‍���️]

[thisisnotthenerd]

d20 finale thoughts.

for being the ‘horror season’, the intrepid heroes really go all in on the comedy in neverafter. i was laughing through the finale, in between some high stakes roles, npc and pc deaths, and wave after wave of enemies.

now that i think about it, this finale just shows how much the intrepid heroes have really tightened up their strategy as players, to the point that they can pull really crazy bits in the midst of battle and still hit a victory at the end of the day. for every ih season, they’ve had to step up the final battle to make it something that’s conceivably a challenge to the players

like in fhfy, they had some quips in the final battle, and a clutch beardsley roll to kick off the final ep, but it’s all battle focus. more individual attacks, and just trying to keep everyone alive pre-aguefort intervention. they had a few smaller enemies to deal with, but the primary issue was kalvaxus.

with tuc, it’s a similar scenario, but they have more options in terms of calling allies and a more complex environment. the individual appeals from the american dream, as well as the continuation of their fight with robert moses make this a more involved combat than fhfy. they were more confident coming in.

with acoc, the balance between troop mechanics and individual combat was the new challenge--the gimmick of the battlefield being the one they had previously fled from, as well as the task of getting rid of the leaders as well as the general troops added a new dimension to the ih final combats. edit: the intra-party tension added to this battle in particular; saccharina & ruby really defined the end of the campaign.

once they hit fhsy, battles became longer and carried out over more than just the two finale episodes. with theater of the mind, brennan could give them a longer sequence of individual and group combat. it starts with the nightmare forest individual fear scenes, layers on the need to rescue their attacking/trapped allies, as well as the continuity of the lore going on throughout the battle. i would say this style of battle, with multiple waves to exhaust the intrepid heroes, set a precedent for future combats.

with tuc II, the longer battle sequence continued, but more condensed. tony simos @ gramercy took 1 and a half episodes to get through, and so did null at the dragon’s hoard. again, each battle had layered mechanics e.g. having to stop the umbral engine overload and then having to birth the dragon. this style of battle aligns with what we saw in previous final combats, and has just the funniest instance of a divine intervention that i’ve seen.

in starstruck, they have talespire. they also have a lot of enemies, with their guns, trained on you. there were a few layers to this combat. again, the extension from a previous battle episode, the split between minis and ship combat, and of course, who could forget margaret encino, turning their enemies away with the power of emails and girlbossing her way into a campaign office. literally overwhelming odds that they managed to pull through including a 2 on the die from gnosis.

and now with neverafter, they had waves of powerful enemies, going from a siege to a tower defense from one episode to the next, the baba yaga, the ally persuasion mechanics, and the objective of holding concentration on bottle of ink that has hand(s), while either convincing or killing everyone else. the actual battle was not the hard part--as evidenced by the shenanigans they pulled off by the skin of their teeth. it was just the singular goal, and more rp than previous final combats. they also just crit. so much. no need for a beardsley crit when you’ve got siobhan one-shotting fairies and zac killing god and rolling an 18 that makes a new universe.

in short, as d20 has grown, so to have the intrepid heroes (+brennan). i’m excited to see where they go from here.

[hellishfig]

realizing over time that, while a crown of candy is still one of my favorite seasons of d20 (if not my absolute favorite), fantasy high: sophomore year is equally a favorite, and will almost certainly be the season i end up rewatching the most

because a crown of candy set up interesting dynamics and the elements of perma-death and secondary characters, but we only had the house of rocks and their assorted hangers-on for a season (as PCs)

whereas fhsy has the background of the first ever season of dimension 20, and returning to a dynamic we already knew so well in order to deepen ours and the players’ understandings of the characters

acoc is about lives cut short and those left behind being forever changed by those losses, and the inner conflict of craving revenge to the point that it’s all you think about, ignoring even the possibility of future happiness, because how can you be happy when you’ve lost everything you held dear?

but fhsy is about kids growing up and learning themselves anew, discovering that the ideals they upheld and the people they looked up to aren’t perfect (or often even good), but also how reaching out with a kind hand and word can build the strongest relationships, and while many people make cruel decisions out of malice, sometimes even that which you feared and hated most was something that was also just angry and afraid

acoc was about being born into, as, and with something you never chose, being hated and hunted because of it, facing irreversible and devastating loss, and choosing to live on in spite of it because there are still people alive who love you and are loved by you. fhsy was about coming into your own with the help of the people you love, and proving that, despite arthur aguefort’s insistence that chronomancy is the most powerful of all magic, love is the force that makes it possible for anyone with any amount of magic to be strong enough to save the people they care about

both are about hope in the face of fear and love in the face of hatred, but sometimes i prefer a story where all the people we care about suffer but are still there at the end, forever changed but not stopped by a long shot

[dropoutconfessions]

Just want to say the Ophiuchus joke in UC s2 is very transmisogynistic. MisMag 2 is also very icky on that front, why do we need a second season based on the transphobia books??. Trans ppl who point this out ok Tumblr get attacked by terfs (should tell which way the fandom is heading). On reddit they get downvoted to oblivion and attacked by diehard fans who believe that dropout can do no wrong. It feels like it's going the same way fandoms like mbambam did where they slowly forced all of the transfemme people out.

i have made my opinions on both clear, so i'll keep this brief, and generally just based on what information we know to be true: Mismag season 1 was a parody of Harry Potter and it's flawed authoritarian and bigoted world building. It has not been confirmed that Chapter 2 will be the same. While it is returning to the same world, it's possible things are different (FHFY and FHSY has radically different vibes for example) and they'll be moving on to drawing inspiration from other magical school stories. There is no Ophiuchus joke. That wasn't a joke, it was a detail of an npc, Maddie Park. On a meta level, it may have been a comeback from Brennan because Ally made him confirm the zodiac sign on an NPC. The detail could be transphobic, I can't read brennan's mind to deconfirm this, but it was not a joke. That isn't to discredit you, I just want to be clear with the facts and all. Although I will admit people in this fandom have been pretty transmisogynistic/misogynistic at times from personal experience, and as time goes on, it has gotten worse. Got called a creep the other day, which once again gang, asking you to cite your sources, I'm not a mind reader. If you think I'm weird and are going to use it as an insult in my dms, please explain in what way, you might even be right <3

[thepringlesofblood]

little tidbits of Ragh, Porter, Jace, and Kalina lore from the past two seasons that you probably forgot about

SPOILERS for freshman & sophomore year obvs, as well as up to ep 16 of junior year [which is when I am writing this so if shit changes that's why]

Ragh got the Kalina disease from Porter

Kalina said Lydia Barkrock's name in FHSY - she says "I'm going to go kill Lydia Barkrock"

(source: 2:18:52 of ep 6 of FHSY)

What Ragh saw on prom night freshman year that made him a threat to Kalina: Jace and Arianwen talking to a third, invisible person. Then Porter steps in and does a type of barbarian healing spell that involves blood transfer, infecting Ragh. Then, as Ragh is walking home, Kalina threatens him, as he can see her now. So. BOTH JACE AND PORTER ARE AND HAVE BEEN EXTREMELY SUSPICIOUS INDIVIDUALS FROM THE START.

(source: 49:53 of ep 4 of FHSY)

We have never properly addressed the fact that Fig (and Emily Axford) did not start hating Porter completely out of nowhere. The triggering event was the Corn Cuties Incident at the very beginning of freshman year. In the immediate aftermath, after they go get Vice Principal Goldenrod (aka Kalvaxus), he orders Jace and Porter to keep watch over the crime scene. Fig rolled an insight check to see how Porter was reacting to the whole situation (Jace immediately started screaming at the sight of all the corn and blood and bodies). Brennan tells her 'Porter doesn't look all that surprised'. This is the spark of the Porter distrust.

(source: ep 3 of fantasy high, 20:49 for the insight roll, 32:30 for Jace & Porter going through the crime scene while Riz is hiding and observing)

will update with anything we learn, no guarantees on when tho

speculations meta under the cut

now i hear you screaming crying throwing up saying that Porter has actually been kind of cool lately, and I understand. personally i have not forgiven him for not signing gorgug's mcat in the first place, but i can see gorgug has, and thus many of you have. he does have some good things to say about the importance of anger and being able to channel your aggression.

however, I thought Vice Principal Goldenhoard was kind of cool before the finale of season 1, and I thought A Certain Frosting-haired Motherfucker was kind of cool before ep 9 of acoc - Brennan is excellent at making you trust people you should not be trusting. Also, although we know Porter wasn't in on the palimpsest plan [he gets sucked into one], that doesn't mean he wasn't in contact with Kalina at all.

there's one scenario I can think of in which Porter would be innocent, which I consider to be unlikely but possible.

We're post-Prompocalypse.

Jace has to be evil for this to work. imo Jace is demonstrably some level of evil (the talk w Kalina and Arianwen) but just in case you're on the fence. He also has to know that Porter is infected.

Porter is there, and does not know that he is infected.

If he hasn't been collaborating with Kalina, why would he? It's established that the Shadowcat Plague has no symptoms other than "you can see Kalina", and was spread far beyond just Fallinel.

[e.g. in fhsy, they do a livestream of Kalina, and responses are mixed between people who can see her and people who can't (1:11:38 ep 17)] so he could just have it by happenstance.

Alternately, it's possible that Jace infected Porter at some point over the course of the school year. I'm not saying they fucked (I mean they could've but I don't think that's what happened). It's established that spit can do it too - in the nightmare forest, Kalina tries to get Kristen to bite Riz to reinfect him (20:44 ep 17). Sharing a cup, a bottle, a fork, a whistle, anything your mouth goes on could've done it. Or Porter could've done the blood-sharing healing spell to Jace at some point.

Regardless, Kalina tells Jace that Ragh needs to be infected, Jace tells Porter to go heal Ragh, keeping himself uninvolved.

otherwise it is just too coincidental that Ragh is infected exactly when Kalina needs him to be. Either Porter's in on it, or was manipulated by Jace.

and then Fig's dirty 20 insight check to see that he doesn't look surprised would have to just be him going 'yeah it makes sense that arthur aguefort would do something this batshit, just another day at aguefort adventury academy'

[i-burn-like-an-ember]

I found some quotes that I wrote down while watching fhsy, figured I should post them here.

“When you’re here you’re family, it’s called being gay”

“Because Fig is fun”

“Skateboard”

“Yeah”

“I’m called baby now”

“Hiss at her litigator”

“Alright baby, that’s an 18, honey”

“Can I do the same?”

“No you may not, only Zac”

“I told everyone we kissed, is that normal?”

“Fuck”

“I’m gonna keep you pinned to the deck and I’m gonna get Chungle Down Bim to shit in your mouth”

“It’s live baby, no one can stop us ✌️😜”

“Do not meta game with my freaking dad”

“Johnny spells was in this airship for 3 seconds”

“A 7 is a Murph 10”

“Oh my god are you some kind of mean queen because you’re gonna die”

“Toxic masculinity is dead, I dance now” (HE SAID THE THING)

“1 d4 of gay spit”

“Oh the jocks are being feisty”

“How do you have shield?”

“I don’t know” *holds up shield of faith card*

“Drink your dice dude”

“Don’t go to the tree Kristen, come back to hell”

“Tracker put your blood in my mouth”

[perksofbeingalittletwat]

I love FHSY with my whole heart but what makes me upset about it is I think Brennan over-emphasized the PCs relationships with NPCs in a way that made sense in-game, but didn't make sense from a player perspective. Not even to his fault, just a misstep I don't think any other season has had a chance to really correct.

So there's a couple of layers here, there's the in-universe reality, there's the Dome and the people in the Dome, and there's also the meta-reality of the people in the Dome creating a unified Product or Season together.

So from the top down, Brennan is making sure that the story happens at a fairly regular pace to keep with the number of episodes he's been allotted, pacing things to keep within the time period he gets for each stream, and most importantly for this I think, crafting ways to have cliff hangers at the end of episodes so that people are excited to come back. This is also influenced by the taped season convention of RP-Combat-RP-Combat episodes.

In the middle is the real conditions of the Dome, in which the six players+Brennan are the most obvious people in the room. The PCs have a lot to juggle here, they have to be in character, they are in character solving a mystery, they have to be attentive to how Brennan is crafting episodes and seasons which plays a lot into how they react to things, and they also have to be funny. And to be funny is to be in contact with the people around you especially in an improve setting.

So these two meta-layers are in conflict, the Intrepid Heroes are fulfilling their roles of being in character and being in the room, and Brennan is fulfilling his role of being in the room and being above the game, but in order to do that Brennan CANT play Tracker or Zelda with the level to detail that the IHs do their characters. That's just how the game works. He has to be everyone so in some ways Tracker and Zelda or Sandra Lynn or Gilear don't exist with the same level of durability and reality as the Bad Kids at any given moment.

And so when Gorgug doesn't tell Zelda he's leaving town (because it had been over an hour since Zelda was last mentioned, and because Riz and Fig had disappeared (people who were in the room)) it wasn't because Gorgug the 'person' didn't care about Zelda, it was because Zac the Player had his three other jobs to do.

The same way when Kristen didn't tell Tracker about Sandra Lynn and Garthy (it might have related to the mystery, there were tons of bits during that time, Fabians Bad Day occurs, etc) it wasn't because Kristen hadn't told Tracker, it was cause Ally the Player was busy. Ally even says "Wait was there another reason?!" When Tracker/Brennan asks them why they didn't tell Tracker.

Again it's not anyone's fault it's just a hard game to play, especially as a cohesive media product, especially as a cohesive media COMEDY product, but it also feels so jarring as a viewer to have Tracker and Zelda get pissed by PC inattention but not have Cathilda or Ragh do the same. Or even Adaine, who's name her fellow players can't even remember half the time. It feels like punishing the players for being focused on the mystery and plot being set before them and not the radial emotional consequences.

Its some great teen angst though. Like it works for story beats. I just don't think it was like. Agreed upon as part of the story and so I'm uncomfortable.

[kindlespark]

hello, this is the anon who sent august that really long fhjy ask - thanks for your thoughts!! they helped me understand some of the season's strengths that weren't as apparent to my tastes - i think you're so right that the temple was a high point and i greatly sympathize with the sentiment of like, it all could've been so much more compelling if the bad kids had keyed into that more (which i think is also partly on brennan's presentation of info as GM, ofc - not saying it's anyone's responsibility alone). i'm still not sold on porter that much, but i can understand your perspective and i do appreciate some of his moments - i enjoyed him being a terrible teacher to gorgug because of the tension it created within the party (isn't this bad teaching? is it not? that self-doubt was really dramatically satisfying, especially in the twist payoff). i also think you're right that the finale truly muddies the waters of what the ratgrinders' thematic positioning was - as much sense as it makes that they're genderbent foils, it feels like each member gets less and less pointed - kipperlily and riz are the clearest parallel followed by kristen and buddy, but then like ruben and fig's interactions were essentially just bits, oisin and adaine basically boil down to differing access to generational wealth, and then gorgug/maryann and ivy/fabian are basically just like rage/apathy and ranged/melee. and i don't necessarily think fleshing this all out would've made the season good, but i think (and i want to say this came up in the podcast) it was overambitious/overcomplex to combine the ratgrinders' story with porter's - hence the very confused finale. on a more positive note, i actually totally agree that the downtime system was fun and thematic! the reason i cited that aspect as a negative is more because of the eventual execution, where a lot of the ratgrinder elements got sidelined and relegated to "we'll resolve that later" - as flavorful as it was, there were times when i felt like it didn't mesh with the beats brennan expected or it stymied the group's efforts to investigate things in favor of siloing them. this is a more meta criticism but another reason i don't quite gel with the porter story is because it's the reason brennan asked emily to play as fig this season even though she didn't want to, and while i trust that she genuinely chose to go along with him in that, it definitely felt like she (and brennan) struggled to find a new throughline/arc for fig (especially since the ruben thing went nowhere) and i don't feel like that sacrifice was worth what we got with regard to porter (and ruben, as her foil) - when i think of fig's storyline this season it just feels kind of empty/reactive. anyway, i hope it's clear i don't say this to argue with your opinions and i certainly don't begrudge anyone hoping for a satisfying narrative from d20 especially considering their past successes (i couldn't agree more that fhsy and tuc are some of their finest work in this regard - easily two of my favorite seasons alongside acofaf!). i'm still exploring my relationship to subtextual readings of actual plays - i love literary criticism so i appreciate many fan theories as emotional/philosophical exercises, but with TTRPGs i often have a harder time as compared to pre-written material given their more improvisatory/fluctuating nature. as such, the shooting schedule looms large here, and i mourn What Could've Been if the cast had gotten to rest and reflect between sessions right alongside you... ah well, there's always another season <3

hello!!! thank u for a really great ask!!! sorry it took me so long to get to it, i literally haven't been logged into tumblr on desktop since i saw it and typing up a good reply on mobile would've been impossible LOL

i pretty much agree with all your points here; especially the one with fig's arc this season. i think emily should've trusted her gut and retired her after her near perfect arc in fhsy, and that brennan shouldn't have had her in this season just for the porter reveal (which could've been a fun twist even with a new character, given that emily would've still had her suspicions). her arc this season is rly meandering and inconclusive which is such a shame. the problem is that i just REALLY love porter as a villain LOL. or rather, i love porter as a concept of the villain he could've been but that was never really treated seriously as such by the show. he represents so much of what i thought this season's themes would address--he's a symbol (as a teacher) of the unfair and fucked up school system and the power it holds over kids, as well as the concepts of rage and manipulation and radicalisation and revenge. that shit is super interesting to me (also as a teacher), and if all of this was engaged with it would've been incredible. alas!

but yeah me and august were talking abt ur ask like ur literally right and we wish we had ur foresight for the season tho LMAO. like perhaps my blinders were on because truly up until the last three episodes brennan was giving me everything, conceptually, that i wanted. i wanted trg to be sympathetic villains, and they were! i wanted kipperlilly and lucy to be best friends and have tragic yuri potential, and they did! i wanted jace to also be a victim of porter's, and he was! there was a moment before the last three episodes where i was convinced nothing could go wrong and this would be my favourite d20 season ever LMFAOOOOOO OH HOW THE PRIDE COMES BEFORE THE FALL

wrt literary criticism and d20, i totally get what you mean. i've been a real hater about this season but i'm usually pretty forgiving about the improvisatory and comedic aspects of d20 seasons believe it or not LMAO. m&m is one of my favourite d20 seasons of all time, i do not care that the ending flopped spectacularly bc of the tone, dice rolls and bad jokes. acoc is another one of my favourite seasons of all time, but the back half of it is super lacklustre in comparison to the first half, and i was completely zoned out of the rushed and anticlimactic final combat until calroy came in. these things did not taint my enjoyment of the show--it's always been forgivable and understandable to me because well, yeah, comes with the improv liveplay territory!! i love analysing the shows thematically and have my critique but ultimately understand there's things no one can predict or account for. i think fhjy's case in particular was just so egregious to me; the themes felt so much more obvious, the character hooks right there, the set-up so good, that i truly had never been so disappointed by a d20 finale helppppp

like i'm used to d20 seasons not having themes that are perfectly executed or followable; when i make my posts about wishing that fhjy was about the unfair school system, it's more like... wishing that anything could've happened that would've made it possible to come to my own conclusions on that theme. i'm ALWAYS reading too deep for my analysis of d20, and i'm super aware of it--this is part of the fun of it for me, thinking about implications and characters the creators didn't have time to, fleshing out ideas and subplots that didn't go anywhere, death of the author and all that. it's just that this season's main plot and themes, more than any other d20 season for me so far, felt so completely incoherent, despite its direction being so completely obvious to me, that i couldn't even pretend to come up with coherent analysis for it and i was left absolutely flabbergasted LOLLL

and maybe that's on me! it's definitely not a mistake i'm going to take into another d20 season, i've actually made my peace with the fact im probably never gonna get another fhsy or tuc or even acoc from d20 again (or at least the main IH cast) and that's okay..... i actually almost relapsed into taz the other day i was so desperate for a good ending AHJFSKFSFSFS

anyway this got long sorry i had a lot of thoughts. thank u for ur messages anon!

[aq2003]

this is probably gonna be a controversial opinion (or maybe not? idk) but i think neverafter probably would have been a lot more full-tilt horror w/ less comedy and more drama-oriented players. im not saying the season is bad by any means or that the intrepid heroes weren't a fit for the story - the meta narrative abt agency and the reality of a "character" is great and fits perfectly with the players + how they approach dnd. but they also a) stick together through any means possible and b) tend to take horror elements and build on them in a comedic way (like how the baba yaga started out creepy but then yes-anded off a cliff into something really silly). again it works perfectly w/ their message of "taking the story into your own hands!" but also i think that's why neverafter has much less of a horror vibe than expected. imo the best "horror" in dnd shows that i've seen happens in isolation (riz and baron/kalina in fhsy), w/ the dm having more power in their hands in that situation to set the mood (cerrit and vespin in exu:c), or w/ players that actively play into the horror bc they want to lean into the drama and are willing to see their character in Situations™ (zerxus and asmodeus in exu:c, ame and the ship's captain in wbn). so i don't think neverafter was a spawning place for that despite being the "horror" season . and i think that's okay because the overarching message is just kind of about characters finding out they're supposed to live their lives in increasingly horrific ways and fighting against that

[midnightfox450]

Ayda asking Adaine if she's "hard to be around" in ep 7 of fhsy is such a heartwrenching look into her character that I'm shocked we got it within the first episode she's introduced in.

Like that entire episode you can tell she wasn't meant to be that deep of a character beyond "she's kooky just like her dad! 🤪". Her antisocial nature is amplified to a pretty stereotypical/dehumanized extent, to the point where she's uncharacteristically mean to the bad kids (& they're uncharacteristically mean to her back).

But then Adaine offers her some kindness. And there's that little exchange that says so much.

Ayda thinks of herself as hard to be around.

She says it so matter-of-factly, almost as if she's used to hearing it from other people. She is not the same as her father. This is not the case of a person who is unapologetically "weird" and doesn't even realize it. Ayda is aware that she is not normal socially. She doesn't have the words to articulate why that is just yet, so she blames herself. She's insecure. And she's just so lonely.

Ayda gets a lot more depth and development as the series goes on. But the core of her character has always been an autistic teen girl who doesn't know yet what a treasure it is to be around her.

[kitsu-katsu]

I think my biggest issue with fabriz as a concept is the fact that not only do people do the classic "this character is aro but it's ok if while shipping him I call the relationship a qpr!" And just make the relationship the SAME as with any allo character and have no consideration of Riz's canon uncomfortableness and fear towards the idea of romance, but also the motivation of "but they have so much chemistry!! What if I just want the to be soft and grow old together?" Because... That's such a big tell on how you see things.

It's a big tell on you not getting what Baron said to Riz. Why is it that you can only envision the "growing old together", maintaining closeness and companionship as the years go by, only by having them be paired up? By having it be exclusive, it be them two as a monogamous relationship where they live and sleep together and kiss every day?

Why is it that you look upon the character who's biggest fear was "your friends will all pair up and leave you alone because the romantic relationships are worth more than your friendship and you will be forgotten because you don't want to parttake in this. You are most unlike your parents in a happy union", and say "he can only grow old with one of his best friends and be happy if they're in an exclusive, monogamous, amatonormative romantic relationship "qpr"?

[vethbrenatto]

is it just me, or do the neverafter episodes feel very short? i don’t know if it’s bc i started watching critical role and i’m now used to long flow of combat + roleplay, but i feel like the episode breaks between roleplay and combat scenes are taking me out of the story a little bit? maybe it’s just me thou !

I think it's just a different format! I don't find Neverafter eps short at all. I'm not sure if you're familiar with other D20 seasons, but they used to adhere to an extremely strict combat-RP-combat-RP episode order which I did find quite limited, but over the seasons have become much, much less regimented.

Personally, I think I air more on the side that CR episodes feel excessively long than D20 ones short, and that's probably just personal preference. Having seen all of CR and all of D20, CR definitely has a lot more live deliberation, sort of player-meta energy.

It's kind of like with CR, you're at the table of one of their sessions, which exactly what the show was always trying to be since its inception- a live-streamed D&D session. The budget has of course gone up over the years and we have lost a bit of the original energy, but it still has this clear feeling of being the D&D session straight to your eyeballs. No changing cameras, no edited in effects (unless it's editing merch onto Ashley Johnson's body), just the continuous flow of consciousness.

Compared to D20, which is more clearly trying to be a narrative, high-production value show. It is also actual play, but doesn't give off an air of sitting at the table with them as much (with the exception of FHSY, which was livestreamed on Twitch). Much like CR, it is exactly what it intends to be and has been from the jump, always possessing these high-production elements like the dome, fancy battle sets, and multi-cam shots, it's just that what it attempts to do is different than what CR sets out to do.

Whichever feels more satisfying to you tends to be personal preference, I like them both, but getting back to your original point, I do feel CR goes long and like to split CR episodes up into two 2 hr sessions if I can. If one of your Neverafter struggles is feeling it's too short maybe let a few episodes stack up (or the whole season) and watch on a binge, it might feel more cohesive to you.

[mongeese]

Sorry I’m in the middle of the final leviathan episode and I’m going insane over the fact that Fabian lost all his class benefits and is no longer a fighter in any meaningful sense. Like, he had the worst day of his life and it broke him so thoroughly he is no longer himself. He wanted to prove himself to all the pirates of Leviathan, wanted to uphold the Seacaster legacy, wanted his father’s followers to follow him as well, but instead he got almost 20 people killed and was completely humiliated in the place that he always equated with his father. He’s let down his father’s memory in the worst possible way. And that destroys him. At this point, he’s been broken down to nothing (or he believes he’s nothing, at any rate). He’s not a fighter. He’s not a champion. He’s just an exhausted and defeated and scared kid who thinks he’s no longer worthy of the name Seacaster.

And the reason it destroys him so completely is because for his whole life, Fabian has considered himself as an extension of his father. He’s Fabian Aramais Seacaster, son of Bill Seacaster, the greatest pirate who ever lived. Even though he’s confronted time and again by the ways they are not the same, Fabian can’t bring himself to believe that there is any choice for him but to continue his father’s legacy, something that becomes doubly true when his father dies. And so when he fails doing that in a way that is so incredibly brutal, he loses all that he is. He’s just Fabian, and in his eyes, just Fabian is nothing. And then they make that real in the gameplay. Lou Wilson you’re a character building genius and I’m going to kill you

[billys-pilgrimage]

Today I am thinking about how Brennan probably had an entire subplot surrounding Alistair Ash that was probably chucked once Bill’s warlocks were massacred BECAUSE:

Alistair Ash told the Bad Kids that he had blood from Dispater himself which was kind of glossed over since none of them knew who that was, but in the general Forgotten Realms lore he is the LORD of the second circle of hell and the Duke of the Iron City of Dis, which as we all know is where Riz’s dad was being held.

In conclusion, if The Bad Kids kept Alistair alive and showed up in hell with him he probably would’ve been a fast-pass to get passage with Bill into the Iron City of Dis and free Pok Gukgak without like, a war being started