D20 Fhjy Spoilers - Tumblr Posts

i don't really post about serious stuff in general but i can't stop thinking about lucy frostblade. like when the bad kids found her body it was so genuinely upsetting cause it felt so different from every other death or disappearance in the show. like she wasn't killed in some dramatic combat with minis and the box of doom, she didn't die in some goofy way like slipping off a cafeteria table, she wasn't some villain or random henchman enemy whatever she was literally just a child. like yeah there's some fantasy plot stuff with what killed her but for the most part the whole scene just felt too real. like it felt like hearing about the death of an actual kid. idk how to really say all my feelings about it but man it was just a heavy moment.

when brennan said the words "300 word essay" i think my soul left my body

the finale has been such a let down because brennan truely was shouting at the intrepid heroes all season "THE RAT GRINDERS AREN'T EVIL THEY'RE JUST CHILDREN WHO HAVE BEEN TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF BY THE ADULTS AROUND THEM WHO USED THEIR ADOLESCENT RAGE AS A MEANS OF FURTHERING THEIR OWN SCHEMES!!!!"

and they said: "soooo what I'm hearing is we should brutally murder them and completely nullify the entire theme of the season of rage not being the answer?"

like I was finding it hard to stay motivated to actually finish the episode because the story built up before was honestly some of the best in all of d20 and then they just completely threw out all character development and theming in the finale for the sake of bits. like yes it's a comedy show but can we take it seriously for just a few minutes?

I can't stand the way a section of the d20 fandom talks about the rat grinders. It's important to mention it's still pretty unclear how the rat grinders exactly died. We don't know where they were killed, if they were alone or if porter or other authority figures were involved, if it was a mishap in the mountains of chaos or not like we just don't know enough to make a lot of these hard and fast judgements about their motives and actions. A lot of people seem to think that they all chose it for some reason or that kipperlily sacrificed them or whatever but there's been next to no definitive canon evidence that the original rat grinders deaths were somehow initiated on any one of their member's part. Like in the comments of a really good frostkettle artwork that was of lucy comforting an angry-crying kipperlily someone was like "aNd tHeN sHe bRuTalLy KilLeD her!!!1!1!1!!" which first of all stfu don't comment stuff like that under other people's art and keep it to yourself and second THERE'S LITERALLY NO TEXTUAL EVIDENCE FOR THIS. People, I think somewhat understandably from looking at it from a very surface level, look at kipperlily's killing of buddy wonder if she played a more active role, but in jawbone's case files it pretty clearly states there was a night and day sudden transition from kipperlily expressing anger over some admittedly pretty childish things to genuine homicidal rage after something in sophomore year which doesn't allign with ideas of kipperlily orchestrating all their deaths in some elaborate machiavellian scheme from the very beginning. Anyways the rat grinders are really tragic and compelling characters that don't deserve being cursed to literal eternal damnation as 17 year olds after being brutally murdered by a (formerly) nameless god of rage and given the choice between oblivion with no afterlife and being resurrcted as servants of it and they way the some of the fandom talks about them (and even the intrepid heroes makes tbh) makes me want to pull my hair out

I love Lou and Emily so much as players and they've had so many incredible roleplaying moments but truely what did ivy and ruben do specifically that warrented deaths that brutal? Like just really weird vibes there.

one thing I have loved about this season is that it's canon that fabian very unironically listens to and enjoys my clerical gnomance emo fabian is so important to me

emo lou wilson is such a good look

only 30 minutes in so far and brennan keeps refering to the rat grinders as "down" and not dead so I'm becoming delusional that maybe it's not as over as I thought for the rat grinders

I think k2 managed to shatter star actual irl brennan

you know I'm a little eh on how unresolved kiperlily's arc feels but otherwise pt 2 was pretty good imo

gorgug and mary ann enemies to lovers is not what I was expecting but I honestly love it so much

I don't know how to deal with fhjy being finished now what am I supposed to hyperfixate on? what do I do with my life?

I love that kristens god in only 60 ish episodes of dnd has gone from corn jesus -> block letter yes! -> block letter yes? -> philosophy majors -> mysterious reformed nightmare skeleton entity who wears a tie dye t-shirt -> a lesbian couple

I've been thinking about FHJY recently and one thing I can't stop coming back to is how the bad kids (and kinda the intrepid heroes) haven't processed that they're not low status anymore. It's a bit like Zelda said in c2 to Gorgug where she is frustrated with him because he hasn't processed that he's extremely popular and is still stuck in the "backpack kid" mindset and can't understand how some of the stuff he does makes her feel insecure. The party as a collective hasn't moved past this self perception of being the "plucky loser freshman fighting back against the school!" not realizing that they're now not only extremely popular and influential both in and out of school, but are also upperclassmen.

Partly it's because it's a show made by comedians and will always have a comedic undertone in some respects but in freshman year when they were making jabs at people like ragh and penelope they were very low social status freshman and it was very much a punching up type deal. It's like in the MisMag holiday special where the magical misfits go really hard on Axelby thinking of him as part of the messed up wizarding world and end up just being unnecessarily cruel to him and feel bad about it. When they have that mentality of being kinda snarky to everyone they're sometimes just being bullies. During junior year they still think they're always punching up and don't realize they're now just punching down.

I feel like it's especially prominent with their first interaction with Kipperlily. Obviously as outside viewers and the IH as players knowing this is a story and the tone of the scenes we can infer from context clues that with the narrative foils in the rat grinders being set up that Kipperlily is most likely an antagonist. In universe though, Kipperlily has done literally nothing to be mean or antagonistic towards them to their knowledge at that point and Kristen immediately says that her name sounds stupid and decides to run for class president out of spite purely because they decided she seems a little stuck up. They're still in the mindset of thinking they're like freshman being sassy to the popular senior but in reality they're just verbally berating another kid with basically no provocation other than KLCK just having a funny name and being kinda type A.

some of yall would NOT be able to handle the complicated women podcast and it shows

I know it would never really work as a season of dimension 20 in terms of tone but part of me wants to see a version of Junior Year where there's actually no conspiracy at all. Like Kipperlily is just a normal kinda uptight girl, Porter is just an asshole, and Lucy's death was actually just a tragic accident.

I feel like it would be such an interesting commentary on the bad kids and kinda the nature of Aguefort to see a season of them going insane trying to prove this massive conspiracy at school when the reality is they've become so used to adventuring and saving the world that they legitimately can't tell the difference between world ending threats and the regular day to day problems of highschool anymore.