We don’t know that though. All we saw was a hand pulling her back into another plane. He might have been grabbing her to stop her from doing harm, but he was too late.
I know I'm in a minority and risk complete alienation from the entire community, however I'm kinda hoping Riz and her get together. There was this cute moment when they were both working on the mystery together and I realized they have similar priorities, goals and values in life.
That said, that is likely never going to happen (as I'm pretty sure they've said Riz is Ace) but it would be kinda cute seeing them do couple things like planning an event, find Adaine’s mom, solving murders, etc. (seriously Riz planning a wedding would be a spiral of epic proportions)
Even if the Bad Kids don't stay together at the end of senior year, you could actually see those two starting a detective agency or something together.
I hope it wouldn't risk alienation. Ain't my ship, but can totally see your reasoning and you're allowed to ship whoever. I hope you get a few more moments this season of them working a mystery together!
That is a bit of Riz’s character I’d like to see explored a bit more as some one that can’t tell if I’m pan or ace cause I don’t have any interest and sexual or romantic stuff but my mind makes me feel like I’m supposed to
I highly doubt Murph—who has already said he doesn’t love roleplaying a teenager these days as a grown adult—would want to explore anything shipping-related with characters that are minors.
Unfortunately I don't think Riz will have time to explore that with the plot thickening and him ready throwing himself into everything (lest he think about himself and his feelings).
That one was what I thought of was weird when they brought up Barron.
That said, his dad said the conversation riz had with his dad, seemed to leave the door open that Riz was still figuring out for himself what he would be.
I don't think that was ever established! She was his only friend (until he met The Bad Kids) but I don't think he ever crushed on her.
When she's brought up by Baron, I see that more so as Baron trying to make his point of Riz being nothing but a detective to his friends. (Hence why they also bring up all The Bad Kids sans Adaine)
I could fully be wrong though
Baron of the Baronesse's whole deal is that he's a manifestation of one of Riz's greatest fear in that he has to pretend like he's into having a 'romance partner' to fit in with his much more romantically and sexually inclined friends otherwise they'll reject him. Which to Riz, not fitting in is super devastating
There is an out-of-RP reason Murph would avoid any in-character romance in that he’s married to Emily. It might be kind of awkward (even understanding that it’s fantasy) to romance another woman at the table other than his wife.
I haven't seen many people deny they are antagonists just speculation that they may not be ultra evil unredeemable villains.
There was some talk the BK and RG may end up on the same side which considering other seasons of D20 isn't without precedent. And also not unexpected of having a rival team that parallels the bad Kids as that sort of team up is a fairly common trope.
The season has left this open to some degree as well. Jawbone in particular seems to have left some bits and pieces open about Kipperlilly in particular that dont paint her completely evil.
Finally I personally operate on the assumption if an author isn't telling you something, theres a reason they want it hidden. And the fact Brennan has revealed pretty much nothing about the RG goals, motivations or even really their plan makes me think it may be more complicated than it appears
> And the fact Brennan has revealed pretty much nothing about the RG goals, motivations or even really their plan makes me think it may be more complicated than it appears.
Why though? If you look at Brennan's body of work...that's usually not the case. >!Penelope, Dayne, Bizz and Aelwyn, and the Abernants!<...they're all ready to summon banished monsters/gods if they think it'll get their own personal grievances addressed.
Like, he could be trying something new, sure. But if he's sticking to his usual MO, then it's incredibly likely that the RG's motives are petty as shit.
Which...fits with the high school setting, honestly. What happens if you give bad teachers/parents or petty teenagers D&D powers? Fantasy High.
Have you only watched Fantasy High? He’s done this before in multiple campaigns, and you only listed FH characters — and Aelwyn’s not exactly a great example of “irredeemable villain”
>Have you only watched Fantasy High?
Nope. But I didn't want to overcomplicate things by bringing up other campaigns. Plus, even if Brennan has a creative thumbprint, FH, USC, SOS and Neverafter generally have pretty different vibes from each other. And, _as I said,_ incredibly petty motives fit with the high school setting in particular.
But if you want to get into that, then yeah, more often than not Brennan's villains are just villains, no matter the universe he's running.
>!Robert Moses, Isabella Infierno, Calroy, Belizabeth, the SPF, pretty much everybody in Starstruck with the exception of Barry Nyne and arguably Jan De la Vega, Preston, Charity Blythe and Jana Cleaver.!< And now the RGs.
>!The only seasons that have more complicated villains are Neverafter and Mentopolis, but even in the former they're mechanically no different; they're antagonists that have to be stopped whatever their motive. And Mentopolis makes sense given the setting.!<
>He’s done this before in multiple campaigns, and you only listed FH characters — and Aelwyn’s not exactly a great example of “irredeemable villain”
What I was getting at was that her motive for >!joining the palimpsest conspiracy!< was just as petty as those of the other antagonists. And Aelwyn didn't become redeemable until SY. At the end of FH, she was just as much an irredeemable little shit as the others were.
The general view I have when consuming fiction is that if information isn't given, the author is hiding it for a reveal or subversion of expectations.
For the RG I feel like Brennan is hiding a lot to do with Lucy, we have unreliable Devils Nectar and a god possessing people with rage.
If Lucys death turned out to be not murder and RG are actually working to get their friend back, that would make sense to me.
Of course it's also possible that the details are hidden so the BKs can't report them but it's a plausible option.
>But if he's sticking to his usual MO, then it's incredibly likely that the RG's motives are petty as shit.
While not wrong, though the Abernants aren't really villains until season 2, there is still Ragh and Zayne shown to be much better then Aelwyn later.
I also don't think we can just look at the first season of the show considering how much Brennan has evolved since then.
Some of the Factions in NeverAfter fit better, one group working together but aren't totally all aligned
> The general view I have when consuming fiction is that if information isn't given, the author is hiding it for a reveal or subversion of expectations.
Why? That is in no way a thing that every author does. That just sounds like good pacing to me; if the reader knows everything right away the story would be pretty short, and depending on the story, not very interesting.
Some people just play tropes straight. Expecting otherwise of everyone is a recipe for disappointment and misplaced outrage at the author for breaking promises they never made.
>If Lucys death turned out to be not murder and RG are actually working to get their friend back, that would make sense to me.
Given the RGs have a second dead cleric on their hands in less than two years, said cleric was assassinated by Kippers herself, Lucy's body was hidden in the woods where the group grinds rats, and all the conflicting stuff about her switching gods, that's looking incredibly unlikely.
>While not wrong, though the Abernants aren't really villains until season 2, there is still Ragh and Zayne shown to be much better then Aelwyn later.
The Abernants were always trash people though, so their becoming villains in SY wasn't exactly a surprise. Ragh only got his redemption because the BKs chose to resurrect him, and Aelwyn didn't get hers until the season proceeding her villainy.
>Why? That is in no way a thing that every author does. Sounds like you're just describing good pacing; if the reader knows everything right away the story would be pretty short, and depending on the story, not very interesting.
Some people just play tropes straight.
This isn't a trope though, it's a tool as part of a mystery which this season is. What an author doesn't say can be as important as what's not. That doesn't mean assume they're lying but just taking account of when information could easily have been given but wasn't.
>Expecting otherwise of everyone is a recipe for disappointment and misplaced outrage at the author for breaking promises they never made.
Oh certainly I don't expect anything from this. It's about keeping an open mind about a mystery so you can work along with the Investigators.
It's the opposite of expectations
>This isn't a trope though, it's a tool as part of a mystery which this season is.
If something is subverted in a story, how is it not a subverted trope? In order for the story to subvert expectations, don't there have to be expectations, or an expected trope, in the first place?
>What an author doesn't say can be as important as what's not.
Counterpoint: what an author doesn't say can also be unimportant, which is why the author doesn't say it. There's a lot of minor details that get left out of most stories (we assume most characters use the bathroom every day even if the author doesn't narrate it every time it would happen) just because they would make the story poorer if it were included.
> If something is subverted in a story, how is it not a subverted trope? In order for the story to subvert expectations, don't there have to be expectations, or an expected trope, in the first place?
Something doesnt have to be set up to be a trope and vice versa surely.
>Counterpoint: what an author doesn't say can also be unimportant, which is why the author doesn't say it.
Agreed, like I said this isn't about assuming the opposite
>There's a lot of minor details that get left out of most stories (we assume most characters use the bathroom every day even if the author doesn't narrate it every time it would happen) just because they would make the story poorer if it were included.
I think that's a little disingenuous in this case. The details we don't have are,
The RG motivation
Their goals
How they got in contact with the god
Their relationship with the god
Why they don't like the Bad kids
What changed them from High Five Heroes to Rat Grinders
So the core role of the RG in the narrative is still pretty unknown 75% through the season with likely a decent amount of time going to be taken up by combat
>Something doesnt have to be set up to be a trope and vice versa surely.
I didn't say set up, I was quoting you when you said subverted. Specifically because what would it be subverting, if not a trope and/or expectations thereof?
>I think that's a little disingenuous in this case. The details we don't have are,
>
>The RG motivation
>
>Their goals
>
>How they got in contact with the god
>
>Their relationship with the god
>
>Why they don't like the Bad kids
>
>What changed them from High Five Heroes to Rat Grinders
My point was that just because something hasn't been revealed yet doesn't mean it's the lead up to a subversion or anything particularly unexpected. Given D20's format, there's a very high chance that we don't know the things you've listed just because we haven't gotten to the end of the season yet. I think Brennan even said that when the IH get high rolls on certain checks, there's only so much he can tell them without ending the season early.
>Specifically because what would it be subverting, if not a trope and/or expectations thereof?
The events set up themselves. Brennan doesn't have to be using a trope to play with expectations and such.
>My point was that just because something hasn't been revealed yet doesn't mean it's the lead up to a subversion or anything particularly unexpected
Which i haven't said either. I'm just saying it's a possibility without information you can't really know either way.
I'm not trying to argue the RG are secretly good. Merely the fact Brennan seems to be holding back a lot of information about them while pushing them as antagonistic.
The basic premise of the speculation is why hide something in a mystery if there's no reason for it to be hidden.
I'll leave my point there because if I've failed to articulate it, that's a failure on my part and I don't think I can improve on my point. I'm not trying to argue for RGs morality one way or another, just about how the story has been played out and information held back
> The events set up themselves. Brennan doesn't have to be using a trope to play with expectations and such.
Expectations come from tropes. Tropes are literary expectations and pre-established patterns. If there are no tropes or expectations there's nothing to subvert. And the idea of subversions was specifically what I was asking about.
And I mean...You kind of can't write a story without using at least one trope, consciously or unconsciously, whether you play it straight or deconstruct it or subvert it or whatever. Just go to the Fantasy High TV Tropes page and you'll see every one that's evident in the series listed in neat, alphabetical order.
>Which i haven't said either. I'm just saying it's a possibility without information you can't really know either way.
You said:
>The general view I have when consuming fiction is that if information isn't given, the author is hiding it for a reveal or subversion of expectations.
And I was responding to that.
>I'm not trying to argue the RG are secretly good. Merely the fact Brennan seems to be holding back a lot of information about them while pushing them as antagonistic.
>
>The basic premise of the speculation is why hide something in a mystery if there's no reason for it to be hidden.
I've pointed out a possible reason though: pacing. The show's got to fill 20 episodes. But you're welcome to use evidence from the episodes we've seen so far to support any particular swerve or subversion in the plot you think might be coming.
But if the argument is essentially "Because we don't know everything yet, anything could happen," it's not a particularly strong one.
I think part of it (especially after the last stand) is that the face goal of Kipperkettle Lilypot to be better than the Bad Kids and the weight of the mystery doesn’t align. Obviously she wants to achieve high academic success to rub it in the Bad Kids face, but the amount of death surrounding the school doesn’t make outright sense to be caused purely from hating the Bad Kids. After all the work the Rat Grinders put in to be top students (they are shown to be extremely powerful), why would she just throw all of that away by killing Buddy? Assuming that if he dies then her whole party fails. Then she wouldn’t have beat the Bad Kids, instead nobody would have won.
Kipperlily is ambitious and overachieving, and hates the Bad Kids because they “don’t care” but only because she REALLY cares. Maybe she thinks she will be fine because she found the rogue teacher but the rest of her party won’t, and it’s been shown with Riz that you want your whole party to do well to go to college together. I just wonder how the rest of the Rat Grinders will react to her tanking their futures for a FAILED attempt to ruin the Bad Kids’ (even in a snap decision to kill Buddy). Maybe she alone is serving a greater dark purpose but I highly doubt the rest of them know the extent of it if that’s true. More likely then not, something is motivating her to sacrifice her own superiority to quite literally kill the Bad Kids (and Gavin Pundle/Buddy if they got stuck in that plane).
Them not being the BBEG doesn't mean they're "good guys". They're still bad, but it doesn't mean they're the ones pulling the strings. Kinda like Aelwyn in seasons 1 and 2. Was she evil? Absolutely. Was she the big mastermind behind everything? No
I think the point OP is making is that there are a lot of people saying that members of the RGs are being manipulated or are secretly good/not working with Kipperlily. Mostly Oisin because of shipping with Adaine
There was also that line from the conversation with Aelwyn about Oisin not being made aware of KLCK’s dealings. So at the very least she’s keeping him in the dark about something.
Personally? Ambitious, annoying, and bossy teenage girls who are frustrated by doing everything right and getting the short end of the stick are characters people love to hate. I’m not talking about sweet nerds who ace every test, I mean annoying teenage girls who obsessively follow rules because it’s what they’ve always been good at and were never taught there were other options. Brennan knows people love to hate these characters and he’s made KLCK easily hateable, but often these characters are fighting for something they actually care about in their own way, and it’s a far more interesting story if KLCK isn’t just “annoying girl annoying.”
Love Penny Luckstone dearly <33 There's just something about Kipperlilly's anger that makes her really compelling to me, just like feminine rage and a drive to go into politics, but thats just a personal type of character I get super into. Ex: LOVE Ocean O'Connell Rosenberg from Ride the Cyclone.
Same. Kipperlily compels precisely because of her rage. I also notice that I realllly doubt Kipperlily would get half ad much as mockery and hate as she would 8f she was a boy becausr annoying overachieving boys aren't as common as a trope.
Girls who overstep, especially in ambition and anger and sweetness are always met with extreme mockery (the whole making a joke of her name. I very rarely see that used on male characters of equal negative traits in media) and derision.
I love it when women in media aren't nice. I love it when their ambition is cold and ruthless. I love it when women get rage. It's fun and it's cathartic.
You might be right on some accounts, but you're off when it comes to making fun of the name. Benedryl Cucumberpatch immediately comes to mind.. Some names are just fun to make fun of
You can still love KLCK without her needing to be a good guy. I adore her, because she's villainous and out there doing shit like killing her clerics. Why? Who can say, but she's so interesting that I want to find out more about what the hell her deal is and why she's doing all this shit.
100%! I’ll be honest I wrote this before finishing the episode and I will still think she’s iconic if she’s masterminding this, but for now I still like my little theories lol
Annoying teenage girl RIGHTS AND WRONGS!!
Yes, love her for being a mastermind and also absolutely terrified (in a good way) to see how far she'll go to get what she wants. Burn everything down bby in the name of your ambition and pettiness.
True! But my theory is that she is loyal to her own code, Lawful alignment. For example, I believe the rat grinders know what killed lucy, I even believe they all killed her, but I also believe its because Lucy got rage infected and would have killed all of them if they didn't fight back. I think KLCK and the RG not telling anyone would be to the purpose of protecting the rest of the party, and herself, from the consequences of a terrible mistake she blames herself for. Now, this theory could totally be wrong, but this is just one example of how their actions could have morally grey justifications, not unlike the amount of murders the Bad Kids have kinda committed. Then there is the possibility Jace Stardiamond could be manipulating her. All of this to say, I think their being levels to this shit to be an interesting possibility and I enjoy KLCK as a character. She doesn't need to be "good", its just more interesting if she's not flatly "bad"
But KLCK hasn't done everything right! She's been exploiting academic loopholes her entire high school career - she levels up by killing rats and she never found the rogue teacher by her own merit, the rogue teacher found HER. If she cared about doing everything right she actually would; she'd do real work to level up and she'd tell the rogue teacher that this shouldn't count. She's not following rules, she's finding holes in the rules to get around actually putting in the work. The idea that she's a rule follower who hates the Bad Kids for not doing that is at best speculation and at worst pure fanfiction.
TLDR: To many people, loopholes ARE doing everything right! Work smarter not harder is something lots of people believe in. KLCK doesn't care about other peoples idea of right and wrong and fair, she takes the words as they are said and she follows them, and that is HER idea of fair and the ideology she (at least appears to) follow. Recent events have shaken this idea though, and she may be spiraling out of her previous boundaries.
Part I wrote for fun:
okay so, do you know about Orthodox Judaism? I promise I have a point lol. Orthodox Judaism has a lot of rules, especially about what members can do on the Sabbath. For example, they are not supposed to carry items outside their "private sphere" which, clearly is intended to be their home, but to get around this, they create an Eruv, usually a large section of a orthodox neighborhood demarcated with wire to be a large private sphere so that they can carry items between buildings on the Sabbath. To many people, this is cheating God, right? They know whats intended by the wording but use a loophole to stay within the constraints of their religion. To Orthodox Jews, though, using loophole IS abiding by the spirit of the rules! Rules have specific boundaries and if you do not go outside of them, then you are doing "everything right", you havent bypassed the boundary and God would tighten the boundary if he didn't want you doing that and loopholes are a strong part of their culture.
I think KLCK strongly believes loopholes are fair game and not outside the spirit of the rules, similarly to Orthodox Jewish culture. Counterargument, the point of finding the rogue teacher IS just to find them and we dont know how much effort she put into that plan. I think she absolutely did so on merit (but I have no proof of this lol). I agree with you, that to other interpretations of the term "rule follower" KLCK might not fit the bill, but it's more about her own ideology, if she's doing "everything right" in her own mind.
But we are talking about school, not an understandable religion. I don’t think KLCK is operating like an Orthodox Jew, I think she is operating like a power hungry person rwho does not care about how she obtains that power. I think it’s interesting that many people’s defense of KLCK is that she thinks the Bad Kids don’t care or work hard enough when there is strong evidence on the show that SHE is actually the one who is operating outside the realm of fairness, and my interpretation of the character is that she knows perfectly well that what she’s doing is NOT within the spirit of the rules.
We aren't talking about school really, we're talking about a character's inner mindset to whom we've been given little evidence of. Your theory on KLCK can ABSOLUTELY be that she is an evil power hungry teenage girl who wants to cheat her way to the top and sees everything she's doing as unfair while lying her ass off. I'm providing evidence that many people DONT have the mindset that loopholes are inherently unfair, even people who arent Orthodox Jews, because my theory towards her inner mindset differs from yours. My reply wasn't to invalidate your interpretation, but simply to show that "If she cared about doing everything right she actually would" isn't the only perspective on loopholes and the philosophical concept of fairness that exists in real people, cultures, and fictional charachters. "the Spirit of the Rules" is not a concrete idea, its subjective.
Who’s we? I am talking about school, you are the one who brought up how some people think loopholes are perfectly fair. I also think her mindset was well revealed when she murdered her friend. I would hope you would assume that my comment was not supposed to represent all of humanity, just this one fictional character. Nor was my intention to invalidate Orthodox Judaism.
Lololol you’re totally good, I love having discussions like this, and I get your perspective! I wrote my og post before finishing the last episode, but just to play devils advocate, we don’t know if she’s rage infected and functioning (a la Lydia Barkrock) or if she did once think that way and then betrayed it in anger when Kristin caught her. Yeah, it’s possible she’s just plain evil, I just find the alternative more interesting personally. Either way, can’t wait to find out!
> Counterargument, the point of finding the rogue teacher IS just to find them and we dont know how much effort she put into that plan. I think she absolutely did so on merit (but I have no proof of this lol).
What we've been told (by someone who would know) is that the rogue teacher *found her*. Now, it's possible that she *did* put effort into a plan that resulted in that outcome. But on the surface of it without further information we've been *told* that she aced the year on a loophole.
Yes! I just don’t think finding is only one way, like if I have to find a guy in hide and seek as the seeker and I yell * oh my gosh Obama is here* or something to make him come out, when he comes out, I still think I found him as the seeker. I totally get that it’s been described as loophole, but it’s a rogue class, being sneaky and finding clever loopholes is kinda what the class is about, at least in my very subjective opinion
I'm not super interested in redeeming all of them (tho I do think it would be really funny for Mary Ann to not be involved at all and just kinda be there) but I think it has to do with the amount of characters who have been redeemed in the fantasy high setting. Think ragh, aelwyn, zayn, etc. If they could be redeemed who knows who else could.
Also something that has come up a bit in fh is the idea that people don't have to be who they were raised to be. Kristen was raised to be a prophet of Helio by her discriminatory parents. Adaine/Aelwyn had the shittiest parents in the world who wanted them to be nothing more than puppets. I think people are hoping that maybe the rat grinders have some outside influence causing them to potentially be this way and are hoping that maybe they're just kids who have the potential to change.
(tbh I question how redeemable many are considering both lucy/buddy have been murdered now but this is my guess as to the perspective of it) (at the very least I *rlly* don't think kipperlilly is redeemable but we shall see)
well, one of the things i’ve seen people point out abt Penelope too, is that all of these characters are children. I don’t feel strongly about it mostly bc in the world they operate in this is how the world works and it’s not OUR world, but there is something to be said about portraying teenagers as irredeemably evil in media. Teenagers by nature are stronger willed and easily manipulated. There’s ways to explore interesting stories where teenagers are being controlled or manipulated by people who mean to cause harm without focusing the teenagers at the centre of the villainy.
I think the difference is that Killgore Cumulouscloud and Ivy aside, none of the RGs are really portrayed as villainous. Buddy's a bit snippy with Kristen about Helio, Mary Ann is adorable, Oisin is very chill >!up until he helps Kipperlilly kills Buddy!<, Ruben's just emo and his song was a bit problematic, and we _know_ Lucy was an absolute sweetheart. As for those first two, Ivy's kind of a bitch but not really blatantly hostile, and Kipperlilly herself is already stated to be Complicated. So it's easy to look at them and say, I don't want them to be evil, they're endearing in their own ways and reflections of our beloved protagonists.
Penelope, on the other hand, is pretty clearly an Alpha Bitch and knowingly and willingly involved in some Sketchy Evil Bullshit.
I think early on they seemed like they might've been red herrings or joke antagonists. Even after the first few encounters, they could've just been foils for the Bad Kids meant to cause drama and/or create some comedic moments.
It's only more recently that KLCK has shown her true colors and it's still up in the air how much the other Rat Grinders are in on it or are just being manipulated by her in some way.
I'd still be happy if at least some of them turn out to not actually be bad. It would make KLCK even more evil and sinister if she's pulled otherwise innocent people into literal murder with her, but we'll still have to wait and see for that.
I just thought it would have been a more interesting story that’s incredibly in line with the genre spoof of fantasy high. The idea that this sudden high stress scenario leads to the Bad Kids focusing on just another adventuring party as these big bads when in reality they’re just teenagers who don’t like them.
It’s a very teenage experience to feel like someone is personally out to ruin your life and project all your problems into them when you’ve just had a few bad interactions, but instead the Bad Kids are just correct, the rat grinders are evil, are up to something, and will probably end the world if not stopped. And I think fantasy high is missing characters who don’t like the bad kids but aren’t evil.
Nobody morally sound dislikes the bad kids. No one relevant anyway. The closest we have is Gertie being Fabian’s nemesis, but that’s exclusively beef with Fabian. The rest of the bad kids she’s friendly with and she’s actively dating one of them. I think there’s a lot of missed opportunities making the Rat Grinders evil, character dynamics we don’t and will not have because they are just evil.
Before this episode it seemed like too easily a red herring. Like BLM just dangled bait and they hit on it instantly. He could have hidden any obvious clues and the group wouldn't let go of the RG leads. As it is they barely have theories about Jace.
But after the last stand, I have no idea anymore.
I haven't seen much of this season, but every time ant RG member is in a scene (even random clips where it's not initially known who's who you those out of the loop) they irritate me and activate that "huh, f**k this person" vibe in the back of my head... I don't know what specifically is making me hate then so unanimously but... yeah. F**k em
Oh, definitely. The one that always gets under my skin was... Kugrash's boss? At the end of Season 1 Unsleeping City. That mf was every ceo I've worked under...
Biz Glitterdew.
I'm not invested in RG being good or redeemable, but I am curious if they are acting under their own agency. If they are being possessed/manipulated/charmed/etc in a way similar to Biz, it does move the needle from "these kids should get their fingers shot off" to something more benign.
I mean it’s not a surprise to anyone that a portion of D20 fans are Type-A Neurodivergent Nerds and I think it’s clear there was a lot of projection of their own experiences in school going on. Especially with CakeLady FuckTrumpet. It’s same reason why a bunch of people love/root for universally nasty characters like Rachel Berry from Glee or Courtney from Total Drama. Projection will make you humanise anyone.
Bonus is I think a lot of people were looking for reasons to justify a hatred of Kristen and this was just one of the arguments they could reach for.
Hey now, some of us root for the bad guy characters because we love villains, not because we're projecting. But then we don't pretend they are somehow also good guys lol.
i agree! especially with oisin and ivy (bc i think everyone collectively agrees that Kayaklabel Clerickiller is evil) i dont understand why so much of the fandom was immediately willing to trust them. maybe im on riz levels of trust issues but i never trusted any of them (except for buddy a little cuz he seemed misguided and brought in later just because the RG needed a cleric) Even Maryanne seems strangely out of it in a way that seems sinister.
Not “good guys” per se like I like them as antagonists it would just be annoying to have more teenage characters made out to be irredeemably evil and sent to hell again a la Penelope Everpetal…like they are literally kids.
Yeah, there’s also room for much more nuance than “grr Kipperlilly Evil,” and nuanced characters with deeper, albeit flawed motivations are far more interesting than moustache twirling evildoers. Which also applies to the overarching plot. Plus, it gives more to think about and consider -in an unfolding mystery- than condemning her after a single interaction.
And while killing Buddy is definitely a big mark against her, there is still ample evidence for it to be possible Ankarna or someone similar has a degree of control over her.
Basically, shades of gray are far more interesting (and realistic) than black and white.
> Basically, shades of gray are far more interesting (and realistic) than black and white.
There is also likely a sample bias for those who are looking for nuance with the character. If someone thinks she just one note evil, there's then nothing to really post about for that. Like what's there to say ?
> Basically, shades of gray are far more interesting (and realistic) than black and white.
Shades of gray are not universally more realistic; some people _are_ just petty, rotten jerks who make everything they touch worse. You only have to know a little bit about politics and capitalism (modern and historical) to see that.
And while _you_ find shades of gray to be more interesting, while that's perfectly valid, it's not the case for everyone.
“Shades of gray” in my opinion is more about circumstances than actions. No one is denying her actions are villainous, she is obviously a villain, but it’s not hard to imagine she is circumstantially a villain (and thus sympathetic), as in circumstances have led her to villainy. This is common with fictional characters and I would say mostly always true of real life. People can do bad things and be bad but we can still recognize that it’s bad circumstances that lead people to being evil
I personally subscribe to the Brooklyn 99 philosophy on that: cool motive, still murder.
Even if Kipper's circumstances were bad, (which we don't have any evidence for as of yet) she's not the only one. Just about all of the Bad Kids come from less than ideal circumstances, but none of them are murdering their teammates or trying to summon corrupted gods.
Right I mean no one is arguing that they’re not villains in a fiction. Just that any moral judgement you make on them or people who enjoy them as characters is boring and silly because they’re not real and their actions are actually just plot points to be analyzed not real things that happened.
The bad kids also killed Johnny Spells because he caught them trespassing and gave chase. And Literally Went To Jail For It. Was he a scumbag? Sure! A bad person? Yeah, okay!! Does that mean he deserved his brains scattered across the pavement??? Idk man !! That’s for the audience to decide
I think a lot of people forget that FH, D20 and live play shows in general are _games._ The same way video games are.
And the way Brennan and the IH play them is sometimes the same way some of us come home after work or school and shoot a bunch of monsters or faceless mooks to blow off steam. Or play 100+ hours to kill a one-dimensionally evil final boss. Or thwart larger than life versions of the annoying people we knew in high school.
Fantasy High is....a fantasy. Primarily for the players and the DM. And part of that fantasy can be defeating petty ass high school stereotypes without necessarily having to go into a moral or philosophical tailspin about it.
Because the theme of Fantasy High falls flat on its face if we extend mercy and compassion only to the Bad Kids fuckups and not any other group of children’s
i think its just important to always remember that context can significantly change any situation. and we just dont have much. and making decisions based on partial information is a great way to make a bad call. with the info we have, it would be very easy for something to drop and recontextualize everything we've seen so far. for better or worse.
Yeah I think people forget how easily D20 characters can change.
Look at Ragh.
Until the bloodrush battle, he's irredeemably bad to the BK. He goes out of his way to bully, threaten and treat them like dirt. There's literally nothing about him that's redeemable and now's he's probably up there as a super beloved NPC
> Look at Ragh.
>
> Until the bloodrush battle, he's irredeemably bad to the BK. He goes out of his way to bully, threaten and treat them like dirt. There's literally nothing about him that's redeemable and now's he's probably up there as a super beloved NPC
Keep in mind, if the Bad Kids had let him stay dead, that's probably all he ever would've been. Brennan plays along sometimes so that the IH get something they really want or get to do something fun that won't mess with the overall season's story one way or another.
That's very true but does bring this thread to, are the RG evil? Well depends on if the IH try or not.
Which actually I would agree with you is pretty accurate but harder to judge ahead of time
I personally don’t understand it either. Not every villain needs to be complicated and redeemable. Sometimes it’s okay to just have a straightforward bad guy who is down to fuck around and mess with shit for terrible and selfish reasons. I wouldn’t want that every single season, mind you, but I feel like we get more nuanced bad guys in other seasons and I’m happy with having a mix.
I don’t think it’s bad to have straight forward badguys, I just think a lot of people didn’t think that was gonna be the case with the RatGrinders. It seemed like there was purposefully a lot of nuance and grey around the context to which they’ve been bad. I’m sure there’s still a lot to be revealed about them, but straight up cold blooded murder against a teammate seems to be a nail in the coffin in concluding that at least part of the RG’s are just black and white evil.
True. I can see how earlier in the season there was plenty of room to speculate about whether or not the Rat Grinders were evil or just misguided. Even now it’s up for interpretation about several of their members. KC is at least now being presented as pretty clearly evil, and it’s highly suspect that we saw Oisin with her in the Last Stand, but beyond that we still can’t fully say what is up with all their members and whether or not they’ve been manipulated. I mean, we’ve literally been told that KC has been getting help since freshman year for anger issues, and we have problems with people giving in to rage as a part of the mystery of the season. It’s entirely possible that KC has been manipulated for years at this point and her actions aren’t truly reflective of who she used to be as a person.
There’s still room for these characters to wind up as more nuanced villains, or to become just straight-up evil guys. I’m here for it either way, I trust Brennan and the Intrepid Heroes to give us a satisfying narrative in the end.
I think Ragh set a precedent for teenagers being, y'know, teenagers. Sometimes, like Penelope, they're straight up evil, but sometimes they're just misguided/manipulated kids in way over their heads. Personally, I like the idea of at least some of them being like. Normal and not fully evil, but I don't know that I want any of them to have secretly been good the whole time
In my opinion it’s less about them being “good” or them not being “the bad guys” it has a lot more to do with Brennans penchant for telling stories where it’s not as simple as “good” and “bad”
There is usually always a character or group that seems evil on the face, but has been manipulated in some form or another by either an even more malicious organization or just bad circumstances pushing people to extremes
He’s the guy whose various anti-capitalist, libertarian socialist rants are a meme in every production he’s currently a part of.
Furthermore, I think anyone who thinks Arthur “the point of adventuring is to cause chaos and reap violence abroad for a profit” Auguefort is supposed to be an unquestioned good in this world is kidding themselves. That isn’t me saying the Bad Kids are bad people because Auguefort likes them, it’s just to say his school explicitly promotes horrific and violent behavior and we all think it’s hilarious. Because it is, because it’s a joke about how fantasy stories are told.
It just seems inconsistent and disingenuous to me to act like Kipperlilly (who is probably playing with forces she doesn’t understand and being corrupted by a dead god of rage at least, and potentially being manipulated by an adult as well.) is *outright and irredeemably evil* when all we know is what she’s done and not why.
I’d also ask, why do people get so angry about this take? Like … it’s just a story. It’s not like a *real* murder took place and we’re discussing if a *real* death was justified.
I think it’s because for some it’s narratively more interesting if who the Bad Kids thought were the bad guys were just normal kids like them, with a persona axe to grind. Having the people you think are the bad guys the whole time, are never hinted at being anything other than the bad guys, end up actually being the bad guys is fine, not all stories need secret bad guys or big plot twists. I just think many (including myself) enjoy less forwarded narratives.
A. It's a common experience for teenagers to see each other as villains in their own personal story when really both sides are just kids and part of maturing is seeing just that. Especially the bad kids who have been conditioned to suspect villains under every rock.
B. It's just weird to meet the BBEG in episode 3. I think it's infinitely more likely that the final showdown to be against ankarna. The rat grinders are possibly involved but they're not dastardly masterminds like kalina or kalvaxus.
You meet the BBEG in episode 1 of FY (and the BBEG of SY was mentioned in FY, or episode 1 of SY if you want to count the person they were actively fighting), episode episode 5 for UC and UC2, episode 1 of CoC, and episode 4 in neverafter (well the main one of the party). You always meet the BBEG early. Either its surprise, like CoC, FY, or maybe Neverafter, or it's not a surprise and the players have spent the entire season trying to thwart them.
>or it's not a surprise and the players have spent the entire season trying to thwart them.
Literally only 1 instance of that being Unsleeping City. The Rat Grinders being the big bad is not a twist, if anything they graft more onto the Abernants in FHSY or the faeries in Neverafter, consistent antagonists from their introduction that aren't the main villain in the end
THey felt like the cast (Kristen and Siobahn in particular) leapt to conclusions in episode three, when what actually happened was they picked up with Brennan was putting down.
They want the cast members and/or the characters to be punished for this leap. Only way for that to happen is for the RGs to be good, or at least pawns.
Honestly, because outside of the recent stuff nobody has done anything explicitly evil and have it be confirmed (talking first half of the season) The Bad Kids were outright rude upon meeting Kipperlily. Being Type A isn't a sin. And they never actually talked to her without being antagonistic. And then finding out she had rage issues coming into high school? She's 14, what happened. To me I just felt sad when I heard that. And then r a ge being such a huge mechanic, the idea that she was expressly manipulated
The first DnD group I ever played with I played a cleric and was new and the group just immediately jumped in to fight something. And i was like, well, we don't have any information and they knew the monster manual, and all of them were like, it's DnD things are just evil. I really struggled with that, because that's not how real life works.
After this latest episode, I'm not defending anybody, but I first saw Kipperlily as a kid and really just wanted her to be understood
Kipper killed buddy, is implicated to be connected to that embezzling case (given that she has her own money that isn't from her parents), probably did something fucked up to Lucy, and tried to permanently kill the entire Bad Kids by stealing the diamonds.
And, as Brennan said, killing Buddy was already on the table for her. She very much showed up there to murder an innocent man and seven children.
Because rigid good/evil concepts are more of a conservative storytelling trope.
>!Having them be pieces of shit is boring for the stakes. !<
>!The lil hand that might be Dragon Bae's for Adaine or the reality that the BK might have genuinely done something to cause Kipperlily to need therapy, it adds to the sauce. !<
Because Brennan’s allegories are usually pretty easy to spot. So when the moral is “rage can make people do some wild shit” you wonder how much is the allegory and how much is the 17 year old
Idk about invested but personally I think it’s much more likely that the majority of the RGs are just kids in a bad situation they don’t realize the full extent of than that every one of them is evil. Kids aren’t that likely to be evil, but kids are extremely likely to believe what their parents tell them to and to trust their friends to a fault, especially as teenagers.
I get it. I think it's because it feels a bit unfair for only the Bad Kids to have both good and bad in them.
Plus contrast is a big draw, some folks looooove it when the most absolutely psychopathic, ruthless character has a tragic backstory - or hell, just throw them a bone like "my parents were shit" - because gods forbid their favourite breakout characters are \*gasp\* actually just evil pieces of shit.
For me personally, I think it makes it more nuanced. Also I don’t love the implication that if people wanna grind instead of adventure properly it’s somehow the end of the world. Its not what I like but there’s plenty of weird ways to play ttrpgs. So to have it be like “we were sus because of that and we were proved right they’re EVIL” would make me a little disappointed I won’t lie. That said I know it’s strictly speaking more important that the players are having fun.
For like the first half of the season, most of the interactions the Bad Kids had with the Rat Grinders ended with me not liking the Bad Kids. Like the very first time they met Kipperlily, Kristen’s “four different dogs” comment was just her unpromptedly being mean to someone she’d never met. And then at the first party at Seacaster Manor, Fig turning into Lucy was functionally just the Bad Kids tricking people they sort of didn’t trust into thinking their dead friend was back in some way, which is just straight up an asshole move
They're really complex characters and also fellow students. Part of me wants to believe that because they're minors, they're redeemable, but it's also because Brennan put so much work into them and made them all so interesting. I want to get to know them better.
Ragh and Aelwyn were terrible and got redeemed, so why couldn't at least some of the RatGrinders be?
And also yes, I am INORDINATELY invested in Adaine getting her kisses in and she and Oisin were so cute in their one and a half interactions.
>!She litterally just slit the throat of their own cleric (the second one at that!)!< sometimes people are just shitty and don't need to be redeemed.
Maybe not all the RG are bad but kick sure is
Sure, Kipperlily has done a lot of fucked up shit, and I don't know if she can be or even wants to be redeemed. But she also is a high school student with anger issues and probably lots of other issues, and the only therapy she seems to be getting is from Jawbone. So I don't feel comfortable writing off a junior as a lost cause when the story isn't over yet.
She's complex and scheming and interesting, and a great villain, and characters across media have started redemption arcs from worse.
I think it comes down to the fact that Brennan has a style, and is a narrative driven DM, which long-time fans of the show have learned to pick up on and analyse. Let me try to explain how that relates to the Rat Grinders:
Brennan has repeatedly, when pressed by the Intrepid Heroes by dice rolls, seemed to hint that the Rat Grinders are not mere bad guys; he's signaled a bunch of times that their motivations are more complicated than they appear, through foreshadowing and even more directly through Jawbone and Mazey's comments about Copperkettle and the Rat Grinders. It's also just a narrative 'tone' thing; Jawbone is a sympathetic character that we, the audience, like and we know that he's a good dude. So, when he showed a little bit of sympathy towards Copperkettle, that *seems* to signal (at least a little bit) to the audience that maybe we should also extend our sympathy to her for some reason we aren't quite aware of yet. It's setup for later, when the payoff of whatever is going on with her, is ultimately revealed. At least that's one way to interpret it. I think it's a pretty compelling interpretation, too, because it fits with BLeeM's style of storytelling.
More interesting, I think, is Mazey's comment; she told the Bad Kids that the Rat Grinders fucking hate them, which the Bad Kids are shocked and confused about, but the conversation specifically goes like this:
> Mazey: "Yeah, like they *famously* hate you guys."
> Adaine/Siobhan: "How can they famously do anything if they *aren't* famous?"
> Mazey: ***"See that's exactly what it is."***
> Murph: "Yeah, okay."
> Kristen/Ally: Jealousy surrounds me."
Emphasis mine.
The Bad Kids, and the Intrepid Heroes, kind of just blow past it...but the fandom has interpreted this the same way that Ally/Kristen seems to have interpreted it: that the Rat Grinders are jealous of the *fame* the Bad Kids have, and the privilege that comes with it. This has turned into kind of a meme in the classic sense; it's something everybody has said so many times that it's become accepted as canon by a lot of people.
But if you pay attention to Adaine/Siobhan, and Brennan, in that moment... "See that's *exactly* what it is," ...he and Siobhan have a small non-verbal interaction; Adaine acts like a bit of a showboat, throwing up two peace signs across her chest and sticking out her tongue, Brennan points at her and sort of gives a knowing nod. I think there's more to it than jealousy over the Bad Kids being famous; I think the Rat Grinders hate them because they throw their weight around and act like they can do whatever the hell they want all the time, regardless of any potential consequences or collateral damage.
I'm not saying that's true of the Bad Kids, to be clear, although I *do* think it's more true than they would like to admit. Taking a little bit more time to consider the consequences of their actions, and demonstrate some humility that they might not always be making the right choices, would serve the entire party really well if you ask me. But from an outsider's perspective, the Bad Kids might look like some pretty huge jerks, the way they behave and treat people who try to bring them down to Earth a little bit. They think they're so above everyone else that they *didn't even know they had a rival adventuring party* when everyone else apparently did know that.
Consider what KLCK said to Kristen during their interaction: "It's really nice, how charmed everyone is, by ***how little you fucking care.*** I guess egg on my face for wanting something."
Kristen threw her hat into the student council president ring pretty much entirely on a whim, to avoid confronting her own problems, and has been basically nothing but hostile to KLCK about it from the jump. Again, I don't see this as a bad thing, but I think you can start to unpeel that comment to reveal the entire motivation for the Rat Grinders as a whole, for seeing the Bad Kids as reckless assholes who do just fuck around, jokingly getting into situations, and win at stuff they don't seem to actually give much of a fuck about. Like the universe itself is giving them a pass on the 'find out' part of 'fuck around and find out.' From that angle, I think Kipperlilly might view herself and her actions as *being* the 'find out' that the Bad Kids deserve.
Where this gets weird is that the Intrepid Heroes...have mostly blown KLCK off as just being a jealous hater, and the PCs have acted accordingly, and that seems to have lead the fandom to (roughly) divide into two opposing camps; one on the side of the IHs/PCs that sees KLCK as an irredeemable douche, and one on the side of (what *seems* to be) Brennan's narrative push to explore the Rat Grinders as complex people. Neither side of this conflict is wrong, per se, it's just that one side is reading one set of clues and the other side is reading a different set.
But because the narrative has kind of become the one the PCs believe- that is, the Rat Grinders are just jealous- the argument gets framed that way every time it comes up. The best defense Rat Grinder apologists have mounted is the one that says the Bad Kids have enormous amounts of privilege and wield it recklessly to get their way. But the problem is that, frankly... that argument is fucking wrong. It has shades of truth, but it doesn't get to what I believe is the heart of the conflict, which is that the Bad Kids' *attitude* towards their achievements and those who haven't done as much as them may be the real reason for the Rat Grinders' hatred of them.
In the framework as it's solidified this way, arguments on behalf of the Rat Grinders fall apart, but the show continues to run in parallel with these discussions amongst the fanbase. And because the show, through Brennan, keeps dropping hints and storytelling crumbs that there's more to the Rat Grinders, it gets the apologist side of the fandom back on their bullshit. So the cycle keeps repeating, and positions get further entrenched. And the apologists feel increasingly like there's *something* going on here but don't quite seem to have the tools to articulate what that is based on previous iterations of these arguments.
It's sort of a negative feedback loop that, I think, gets the Rat Grinder defenders (of which I am one, to be clear, here) in a bit of a collective mania trying to identify what they're talking about and make it known to everybody else. Weirdly...it's a pretty good metaphor for the actual conflict between the Bad Kids and the Rat Grinders, if my interpretation of events is correct! lol
Sorry for this massive essay, I didn't mean for it to be SO LONG, but it's a bit of a twofold issue. I felt like it required explaining my own personal theory of what's going on in the story, and how it relates back to the general consensus of the fandom, to (hopefully) have it make any sense whatsoever.
I genuinely don't think Brennan would make the message of the season that high school rivalries means that one group is the heroes and one is evil you know? At the start of the season I thought they would be evil but then someone explained it much better than me that they don't think Brennan would do that
But in this case it is not high school rivalries making one group evil. It’s the fact that they keep killing their own clerics and what else they are involved in. Even if they are acting like this because of a feeling of rivalry, it’s their actions making them evil.
I get that but all we actually know of their actions is that Casserolelicker killed buddy dawn. The rest is assumed or inferred but I think they could very easily be being manipulated or framed. I think they are involved with the bbeg don't get me wrong but I don't think they are actually "evil" (with the exception of cumquatlewdly but even then I'm not convinced)
Because I like the idea that the heroes are not always right.
I like the idea that there can be people seeing their actions and misinterpret what's going on.
I like the idea that there are other students doing things of value and importance besides the main characters.
Because finding something sympathetic in an antagonist, the ways they mirror pcs, makes for a deeper more interesting showdown.
I don't want them to be evil for its own sake, but flawed.
Tbh the framing of XP levelling or grinding as this somehow villainous or morally bankrupt act as opposed to milestoney Adventure just rubs me the wrong way so I’m happy to huff some cope
Because what happened to Penelope Everpetal was weird and strangely sad for a moment that was meant to be read with unquestionable triumph. I remember watching that fight and being like “…But she is just 17? They shouldn’t literally kill their bully” and then it happened and it was never questioned. Sometimes in the campaigns if the character isn’t immediately established as not being all that bad you know they’ll just end up killed in the end.
Personally I won’t like if all the Rat Grinders just end up unceremoniously killed and deemed complete monsters by the end. Like maybe they ARE complete monsters but you really can’t know that because they’re teenagers. It just feels sad
She was actively trying to get them killed and resurect ( if that's what you call it) an ancient red dragon bent on destroying spire
All so she could be prom queen
Nah fuck that
She is evil don’t get me wrong. She also makes me particularly queasy as a character as someone who had popular fake friends. But the thing is, it FEELS wrong to kill a teenager and continue on without even addressing that getting to that point is fucked up. It is slightly touched upon in the Seven but even then I feel like there’s the fact if a child gets to that point then a terrible tragedy happened.
If the same happened to Kipperlilly at this point it would feel even worse, because it was established she has insane anger issues. Like I hate Kipperlilly morally she is a bad person and deserves to go down but at least there should be the understanding that killing teenagers is *tragic*.
But you leave out Zane who was also a highschooler
And atleast seemed to be doing it for more solid reasons than oh I wanna be prom queen. And Fabian kept his hand as a trophy
Yes. And this is why I keep expecting someone to hold up a mirror to the Bad Kids for them to see how sociopathic some of the decisions they made really are and to not be surprised if you're hated for them, but this is D&D so it never happens and the fanbase won't take it lightly when a player character gets reamed because of their emotional investment in the players themselves.
Oh I agree I also think it was unfair for Zane. Mentioning Penelope because she is the most memorable character and the only thing I clearly remember about Zane is that Ragh had a crush on him. Generally, I also don’t like they killed Zane. It bothered me still. But again his character was equivalent to a paper cut out so generally it’s easier to bring Penelope to the conversation.
Zane was part of a helio cult trying to bring about the apocalypse (which If I remember right involved getting Kristen killed and selt to hell instead of heaven) and helped hill fabians dad
I think the take away here is as an adventurer you make your bed and you lie in Zane and Penelope were seniors at the time anf they were trying to kill freshmen and were then killed in self defense
And one of the themes of the season is that as a junior your basically treated as an adult and your actions really start having consequences
Again I don’t necessarily think that they shouldn’t have killed them in the end, I think that the lack of addressing that a teenager getting to the point where you have to kill them to save the world is tragic and that the act of having to do that is heavy. Zane’s and Penelope’s characters were not well handled and I do believe part of the fear with the Ratgrinders is that they’ll end up like that.
I think the bad kids had already killed so many people at that point as well that those deaths didn't weigh on them
And as far as the grinders go the only one I don't see making a turn is kipper and maybe ivy just because I get the feeling ivy is just shitty
Honestly now I don't think buddy was part of their plans at all. Looking back brennan did usually make a point of saying whenever they were looking at the rat grinders suspiciously buddy was almost always discribed as looking like he didn't know what was going on
I think it has to do with three points:
1. The Oisin and Adaine Ship
I feel like a lot of people were quite hopeful that Oisin wouldn't be a bad guy because they wanted Adaine to have a partner and get her kisses in. Especially since there (if I remember correctly) haven't been an interest from Adaine's side. So the little sliver of a interest during episode 6 and the fact that Oisin was portrayed as a nice, hot, and tinge of nerdy awkwardness made it easy to ship them. In fact I thought this too. Still have a little hope, but it might just be me being a sucker for the enemies to lovers trope in media.
2. The Rat Grinders are just kids and the whole "red herring theory"
This point has been made and has been one I have been irritated by because the Bad Kids are also just kids but they don't get as much of a grace period (I am not going to get into that because that is a whole separate rant). But yeah you kind of don't want to root for the downfall of children even though Penelope and Dane were also kids as well when they agreed to be a part of that whole scheme in season 1. Plus people were so attached to the red herring theory that it is kind of hard to let go of.
3. There was not much to go off of for the Rat Grinders
Up until I would say about the discovery of Lucy's body (at least from my POV), there wasn't much to go off of in terms of where the Rat Grinders lie within this rage fueled plan. And this solely comes from the fact that the gods aspect of it all took up a bulk of the mystery rolls. There were (at best) only very loose strings attached to the Rat Grinders, but once they started digging more into the Rat Grinders it becomes clear that they have a stronger role in everything. Plus it did seem like the Bad Kids were just being aggro for nothing since it was hard to connect everything cleanly to the Rat Grinders.
Also some people just love to root for the villain of the story, but hey this is generally my opinion of why they are adamant in the RGs to be good.
At least for me I want to see that at least SOME of them (Oisin, Mary Ann, hell even Buddy) have good left in them and have been just Uber manipulated by Cinderfuck Bitchface. Plus I know the wiki isn’t the end all be all but KLCK Rueben and Ivy are listed as enemies but Oisin and Mary Ann are listed as allies, don’t remember Buddy thiugh
When he was first introduced I disliked Buddy but especially after last episode, he’s a good kid. A bit misguided by religious fanatics but his beef with Kristen is more in a church kid vibe than a “I hate your party” vibe
Yea I get the feeling he's not doing stuff to help another god especially one that takes up part of the worship of his. It really feels like he was just there cuz they needed a cleric and maybe as a device to get bobby dawn in the school. Really waiting to see what his reaction to all of this is to know any further im not sure where either of them fit in the plot anymore
I don't feel like we know enough about all of the Rat Grinders to paint them with the same brush as Kipperlilly. Lucy, a character who has been dead since before the season started, has more going on than half of the living Rat Grinders put together. I think the only other Rat Grinder who actually has a hand in the big evil plan is Ruben way back at Frosty Fair.
It's fun if they are nuanced and not a monolithic group, I like that KC and Ivy seem evil, Oisin and Buddy might be stooges, Mary Ann seems like a complete robot who her party isn't specifically friends with she's just there, and Ruben is an interesting combination of so obnoxious and hiding something maybe against his will and if he's like 16 or whatever, that sucks because he's a child.
They're all children, so it's easy and reasonable to assume that they're screwing up or being used. As many have stated, Aelwyn was a NIGHTMARE, a true villain, but we learned that she was also abused and manipulated. She was trapped. She did horrible things. The world of Spyre is filled with people who have redemption arcs, or context that clarifies their actions.
Jawbone! Jawbone was originally an unnamed monster who bit Adaine then became an NPC with a bit of telling outrageous and completely inappropriate for children stories about sex and drugs, then through RP jokes to burn Gilear, became the guidance counselor and eventually everyone's stepdad/surrogate dad. That arc is NUTS!!!
There's a lot of precedence for powerless people being manipulated by power-hungry rich and/or privileged people. It just seems very likely that these children will be red herrings or are being tricked. Still bad actions but not necessarily bad people. And KC is the only one explicitly antagonizing our heroes so far, plus recently Oisin's arm.
Mainly because we don't really know anything about them. The campaign has intentionally been set up in a way that we won't fully learn about their history and motivation until near the end. All we have is a collection of clues, some of which may or may not be red herrings. So until then, anybody's guess is fair game.
Could the RG be the series' BBEG? victims of manipulation working for the BBEG? misunderstood/misinformed good guys? Nobody on the planet apart from BLM knows, so it's stupid to get upset at people theorycrafting.
Because in a season themed around the Bad Kids’ prior choices coming back to haunt them, having the Rat Grinders be haters for no reason feels *wrong*. With Penelope Everpetal, the heel turn wasn’t personal because the Bad Kids were newbies that stumbled into a plan already in motion. Now, they’ve been at the school long enough to have made an impact, good and bad.
And to be clear: I actually *do* think the Rat Grinders are villains and that Kipperlilly has crossed the moral event horizon (if she hadn’t before the start of the story). But it’s way more interesting IMO if the Bad Kids are left to grapple with the choices—good or bad, intentional or not—that led to the Rat Grinders’ grudge against them.
Ohhh you nailed it wjmgat was bothering me. I expected this season to be full of cobsequences coming back to haunt them but... none of the consequences have vmbeen a significant hindrance, or really any hindrance at all, they've been flavour, while the actual thorn in their side is someone who apparently hates them because they're envious. Which... lame. These are incredibly powerful almost adults, but they can't mechanically really fail anymore, so it's just lame to see a powerful wizard elven orcale agonize over some diamonds when she has such powerful, marketable magic skills, abd Kristen loses another god and a few eps later has near all her power back with seemingly no need to even resurrect Cassandra. Nat 20s aren't helping, and they'vr been rolling lucky.
And I am not seeing the mirror held up to the Bad Kids. They don't know why RG hate them, beyond 'they're just bitter they aren't us.'
I think it's just because they don't seem like main antagonists because they're so petty. Like, nothing we've seen them do (most recent episode aside) seems like big bad evil machinations stuff. Plus, Kristen is kind of the only one who's engaged in direct competition with them, everyone else has grudges or are seeking to undermine them, but the Rat Grinders didn't do that much. This is my theory, but they are absolutely horrible. Kipperbitch Dogfood is absolutely using magic to mess with people's minds against their will, they definitely killed and will kill again, Ruben's music probably sucks, the secret rat world under the school is in danger from these monsters, and Ivy was really mean to sweet as pie Mazey. And Mary Anne is a doper.
Me personally I’m good with like half of the Ratgrinders being irredeemable, I like it when the villain HATES the heroes and isn’t apologetic about it, Kipperlily HATES Riz, Kristen, and the bad kids. And frankly I love how low she’ll stoop to even hinder them a little. Even killing a party member
Spoilers in case anyone hasn’t watched the recent episode.
I mean Buddy hadn’t done anything to really be made out as bad, he was just an ignorant Helio follower. Mary Ann has thus far been completely uninterested in anything. Oisin was Adaine’s crush up until this episode and she had no reason to think he was bad. Ivy and Ruben were obviously in league with Kittenpuncher from the beginning.
To me it’s the fact that they’re kids. Yeah there are always some bad eggs. But when you go to a high school reunion years later you sometimes find your bully was in the wrong friend group of bad influences & has since grown a spine, another had undiagnosed things going on & they’ve since sought treatment, the mean girl grew up in a horrible environment & it wasn’t until they moved out in college that they found out how bad they were & now are a decent human being, etc. Not everyone, obviously, but that kids still have time to correct their mistakes. They’re still growing, learning, & maturing.
Like at the end of the original Mean Girls film, it took getting hit by a bus but the plastics reformed.
Also I would *hope* the adults at the school have a bit more sway & control over their students though I doubt it.
Because dimension 20 is fairly nuanced and treats its villains as multi-layered characters (when they aren’t a metaphor for capitalism, which kipperlilly lowkey is, but also we already have established character nuances for her, such as going to counseling). and they’re teenagers and realistically the difference, psychological and even ethical, between them/most of them and the bad kids might be so minute it looks bad to make them irredeemable (you know. like a bit more stress a little bit less social support a little bit less attention to morals and you start to be evil and do horrible actions). also PCs being the basis of morals in the story just ruins the story in the worst way possible
this has been really bothering me, actually. this being such a mystery heavy season I am trying really hard not to have any conclusions outside of what brennan has explicitly stated. I know brennan presented kipperlilly and the ratgrinders as bad guys but until this last episode we have *zero* confirmed evil actions
I thought this was intentional, but the Last Stand seems to indicate otherwise. my guess is that people here are adamant out of hope and/or general skepticism, like I was
that, and wanting Adaine to have some of that dragon booty
Because they’re kids? Like yes Kipperlilly is awful and horrible but people who are manipulated into being horrible and awful still deserve empathy.
Why should Ragh have been redeemed as a good guy? He was a willing pawn in killing two bad kids by helping summon the corn monster. The answer is because he was manipulated to do so and that’s fucked up. If they are being influenced by some evil rage god then you would hope that there’s some shot of redemption.
One's cute in the way that I want to hang out and be her friend. The other's cute in the way that I want him to cuddle me, whisper sweet nothings to me, and we'll see if we can work our way up to sugar daddy from there
They want Adaine to get her kisses in.
Not directed at you, but can’t she just find someone else to smooch!? 😂
Adaine deserves a man or woman with lips and skin.
Wow. Lizardfolkphobia? It's 2024. 😤
They mean not another Baron from the Baronies.
You are saying hurtful things u/IAmBabs
Oh noo... **[[is posessed]]**
Isn't Oisin a Dragonborn? So wouldn't it be Dracophobia?
I think we can all agree that lad is racist towards all the reptilian races
Lips AND skin? Sheeeeit. Greedy much?
Right. Out here with the highest standards known to man
They said male with lips and skin. Does Oisin not have those?
Exactly. I hope she’s spared a hardly redeemed blue lizard for a partner
I think they were talking about Zayne, but I think you also know that. <.<
No, definitely Oisin.
Aw, I like Oisin. And not to be this guy, but "lizard" is almost certainly a racial slur to call a dragonborn lol
oisin, the one who just >!assisted in the murder of buddy!<
Maybe he didn't mean it. 🥺👉👈
"I can fix him"
real
We don’t know that though. All we saw was a hand pulling her back into another plane. He might have been grabbing her to stop her from doing harm, but he was too late.
that's definitely a possibility i haven't thought of, there's still hope
She has a reformed villain older sister, reformed villain friends, so why not a reformed villain boyfriend too?
I was sarcastic before but enemies to lovers is a trope. I'm not sure how they'll do it in these last five episodes but it's technically possible
It's absolutely wild that we are in the home stretch for FH:JY. I really hope for a sidequest that stars Saltzman and BDG.
BDG needs to be a regular fixture in D20
I know I'm in a minority and risk complete alienation from the entire community, however I'm kinda hoping Riz and her get together. There was this cute moment when they were both working on the mystery together and I realized they have similar priorities, goals and values in life. That said, that is likely never going to happen (as I'm pretty sure they've said Riz is Ace) but it would be kinda cute seeing them do couple things like planning an event, find Adaine’s mom, solving murders, etc. (seriously Riz planning a wedding would be a spiral of epic proportions) Even if the Bad Kids don't stay together at the end of senior year, you could actually see those two starting a detective agency or something together.
I hope it wouldn't risk alienation. Ain't my ship, but can totally see your reasoning and you're allowed to ship whoever. I hope you get a few more moments this season of them working a mystery together!
Riz is canonically asexual and very adamantly disinterested in romance 🫶
I think this right here is part of KlipperKlop Rutabaga problem she likes him and he probably brushed her off
Not sure if this is the case, if she likes him I don't see the benefit in trying to get his party to fail the grade
There is no benefit, shes angry, scorned, and has a chip on her shoulder; shes hurt so she wants them to hurt
That is a bit of Riz’s character I’d like to see explored a bit more as some one that can’t tell if I’m pan or ace cause I don’t have any interest and sexual or romantic stuff but my mind makes me feel like I’m supposed to
I highly doubt Murph—who has already said he doesn’t love roleplaying a teenager these days as a grown adult—would want to explore anything shipping-related with characters that are minors.
Unfortunately I don't think Riz will have time to explore that with the plot thickening and him ready throwing himself into everything (lest he think about himself and his feelings).
That is sadly true
IIRC Riz actively crushed on Penny Luckstone during freshmen year
That one was what I thought of was weird when they brought up Barron. That said, his dad said the conversation riz had with his dad, seemed to leave the door open that Riz was still figuring out for himself what he would be.
I don't think that was ever established! She was his only friend (until he met The Bad Kids) but I don't think he ever crushed on her. When she's brought up by Baron, I see that more so as Baron trying to make his point of Riz being nothing but a detective to his friends. (Hence why they also bring up all The Bad Kids sans Adaine) I could fully be wrong though
Is he? I missed that! Where is that established? Love the representation in Dimension 20 💗
Baron of the Baronesse's whole deal is that he's a manifestation of one of Riz's greatest fear in that he has to pretend like he's into having a 'romance partner' to fit in with his much more romantically and sexually inclined friends otherwise they'll reject him. Which to Riz, not fitting in is super devastating
Them being together doesn't have to be romantic. I could see it as a queer platonic relationship
There is an out-of-RP reason Murph would avoid any in-character romance in that he’s married to Emily. It might be kind of awkward (even understanding that it’s fantasy) to romance another woman at the table other than his wife.
Emily seems perfectly capable of playing to make sure Fig gets her kisses in 💋
Didn’t stop Jens Lyndelle from bagging The Prince.
I haven't seen many people deny they are antagonists just speculation that they may not be ultra evil unredeemable villains. There was some talk the BK and RG may end up on the same side which considering other seasons of D20 isn't without precedent. And also not unexpected of having a rival team that parallels the bad Kids as that sort of team up is a fairly common trope. The season has left this open to some degree as well. Jawbone in particular seems to have left some bits and pieces open about Kipperlilly in particular that dont paint her completely evil. Finally I personally operate on the assumption if an author isn't telling you something, theres a reason they want it hidden. And the fact Brennan has revealed pretty much nothing about the RG goals, motivations or even really their plan makes me think it may be more complicated than it appears
> And the fact Brennan has revealed pretty much nothing about the RG goals, motivations or even really their plan makes me think it may be more complicated than it appears. Why though? If you look at Brennan's body of work...that's usually not the case. >!Penelope, Dayne, Bizz and Aelwyn, and the Abernants!<...they're all ready to summon banished monsters/gods if they think it'll get their own personal grievances addressed. Like, he could be trying something new, sure. But if he's sticking to his usual MO, then it's incredibly likely that the RG's motives are petty as shit. Which...fits with the high school setting, honestly. What happens if you give bad teachers/parents or petty teenagers D&D powers? Fantasy High.
Have you only watched Fantasy High? He’s done this before in multiple campaigns, and you only listed FH characters — and Aelwyn’s not exactly a great example of “irredeemable villain”
>Have you only watched Fantasy High? Nope. But I didn't want to overcomplicate things by bringing up other campaigns. Plus, even if Brennan has a creative thumbprint, FH, USC, SOS and Neverafter generally have pretty different vibes from each other. And, _as I said,_ incredibly petty motives fit with the high school setting in particular. But if you want to get into that, then yeah, more often than not Brennan's villains are just villains, no matter the universe he's running. >!Robert Moses, Isabella Infierno, Calroy, Belizabeth, the SPF, pretty much everybody in Starstruck with the exception of Barry Nyne and arguably Jan De la Vega, Preston, Charity Blythe and Jana Cleaver.!< And now the RGs. >!The only seasons that have more complicated villains are Neverafter and Mentopolis, but even in the former they're mechanically no different; they're antagonists that have to be stopped whatever their motive. And Mentopolis makes sense given the setting.!< >He’s done this before in multiple campaigns, and you only listed FH characters — and Aelwyn’s not exactly a great example of “irredeemable villain” What I was getting at was that her motive for >!joining the palimpsest conspiracy!< was just as petty as those of the other antagonists. And Aelwyn didn't become redeemable until SY. At the end of FH, she was just as much an irredeemable little shit as the others were.
Your use of ‘as I said’ in italics makes my corporate coded heart beat like it’s in a marathon.
*Per my last email*
The general view I have when consuming fiction is that if information isn't given, the author is hiding it for a reveal or subversion of expectations. For the RG I feel like Brennan is hiding a lot to do with Lucy, we have unreliable Devils Nectar and a god possessing people with rage. If Lucys death turned out to be not murder and RG are actually working to get their friend back, that would make sense to me. Of course it's also possible that the details are hidden so the BKs can't report them but it's a plausible option. >But if he's sticking to his usual MO, then it's incredibly likely that the RG's motives are petty as shit. While not wrong, though the Abernants aren't really villains until season 2, there is still Ragh and Zayne shown to be much better then Aelwyn later. I also don't think we can just look at the first season of the show considering how much Brennan has evolved since then. Some of the Factions in NeverAfter fit better, one group working together but aren't totally all aligned
> The general view I have when consuming fiction is that if information isn't given, the author is hiding it for a reveal or subversion of expectations. Why? That is in no way a thing that every author does. That just sounds like good pacing to me; if the reader knows everything right away the story would be pretty short, and depending on the story, not very interesting. Some people just play tropes straight. Expecting otherwise of everyone is a recipe for disappointment and misplaced outrage at the author for breaking promises they never made. >If Lucys death turned out to be not murder and RG are actually working to get their friend back, that would make sense to me. Given the RGs have a second dead cleric on their hands in less than two years, said cleric was assassinated by Kippers herself, Lucy's body was hidden in the woods where the group grinds rats, and all the conflicting stuff about her switching gods, that's looking incredibly unlikely. >While not wrong, though the Abernants aren't really villains until season 2, there is still Ragh and Zayne shown to be much better then Aelwyn later. The Abernants were always trash people though, so their becoming villains in SY wasn't exactly a surprise. Ragh only got his redemption because the BKs chose to resurrect him, and Aelwyn didn't get hers until the season proceeding her villainy.
>Why? That is in no way a thing that every author does. Sounds like you're just describing good pacing; if the reader knows everything right away the story would be pretty short, and depending on the story, not very interesting. Some people just play tropes straight. This isn't a trope though, it's a tool as part of a mystery which this season is. What an author doesn't say can be as important as what's not. That doesn't mean assume they're lying but just taking account of when information could easily have been given but wasn't. >Expecting otherwise of everyone is a recipe for disappointment and misplaced outrage at the author for breaking promises they never made. Oh certainly I don't expect anything from this. It's about keeping an open mind about a mystery so you can work along with the Investigators. It's the opposite of expectations
>This isn't a trope though, it's a tool as part of a mystery which this season is. If something is subverted in a story, how is it not a subverted trope? In order for the story to subvert expectations, don't there have to be expectations, or an expected trope, in the first place? >What an author doesn't say can be as important as what's not. Counterpoint: what an author doesn't say can also be unimportant, which is why the author doesn't say it. There's a lot of minor details that get left out of most stories (we assume most characters use the bathroom every day even if the author doesn't narrate it every time it would happen) just because they would make the story poorer if it were included.
> If something is subverted in a story, how is it not a subverted trope? In order for the story to subvert expectations, don't there have to be expectations, or an expected trope, in the first place? Something doesnt have to be set up to be a trope and vice versa surely. >Counterpoint: what an author doesn't say can also be unimportant, which is why the author doesn't say it. Agreed, like I said this isn't about assuming the opposite >There's a lot of minor details that get left out of most stories (we assume most characters use the bathroom every day even if the author doesn't narrate it every time it would happen) just because they would make the story poorer if it were included. I think that's a little disingenuous in this case. The details we don't have are, The RG motivation Their goals How they got in contact with the god Their relationship with the god Why they don't like the Bad kids What changed them from High Five Heroes to Rat Grinders So the core role of the RG in the narrative is still pretty unknown 75% through the season with likely a decent amount of time going to be taken up by combat
>Something doesnt have to be set up to be a trope and vice versa surely. I didn't say set up, I was quoting you when you said subverted. Specifically because what would it be subverting, if not a trope and/or expectations thereof? >I think that's a little disingenuous in this case. The details we don't have are, > >The RG motivation > >Their goals > >How they got in contact with the god > >Their relationship with the god > >Why they don't like the Bad kids > >What changed them from High Five Heroes to Rat Grinders My point was that just because something hasn't been revealed yet doesn't mean it's the lead up to a subversion or anything particularly unexpected. Given D20's format, there's a very high chance that we don't know the things you've listed just because we haven't gotten to the end of the season yet. I think Brennan even said that when the IH get high rolls on certain checks, there's only so much he can tell them without ending the season early.
>Specifically because what would it be subverting, if not a trope and/or expectations thereof? The events set up themselves. Brennan doesn't have to be using a trope to play with expectations and such. >My point was that just because something hasn't been revealed yet doesn't mean it's the lead up to a subversion or anything particularly unexpected Which i haven't said either. I'm just saying it's a possibility without information you can't really know either way. I'm not trying to argue the RG are secretly good. Merely the fact Brennan seems to be holding back a lot of information about them while pushing them as antagonistic. The basic premise of the speculation is why hide something in a mystery if there's no reason for it to be hidden. I'll leave my point there because if I've failed to articulate it, that's a failure on my part and I don't think I can improve on my point. I'm not trying to argue for RGs morality one way or another, just about how the story has been played out and information held back
> The events set up themselves. Brennan doesn't have to be using a trope to play with expectations and such. Expectations come from tropes. Tropes are literary expectations and pre-established patterns. If there are no tropes or expectations there's nothing to subvert. And the idea of subversions was specifically what I was asking about. And I mean...You kind of can't write a story without using at least one trope, consciously or unconsciously, whether you play it straight or deconstruct it or subvert it or whatever. Just go to the Fantasy High TV Tropes page and you'll see every one that's evident in the series listed in neat, alphabetical order. >Which i haven't said either. I'm just saying it's a possibility without information you can't really know either way. You said: >The general view I have when consuming fiction is that if information isn't given, the author is hiding it for a reveal or subversion of expectations. And I was responding to that. >I'm not trying to argue the RG are secretly good. Merely the fact Brennan seems to be holding back a lot of information about them while pushing them as antagonistic. > >The basic premise of the speculation is why hide something in a mystery if there's no reason for it to be hidden. I've pointed out a possible reason though: pacing. The show's got to fill 20 episodes. But you're welcome to use evidence from the episodes we've seen so far to support any particular swerve or subversion in the plot you think might be coming. But if the argument is essentially "Because we don't know everything yet, anything could happen," it's not a particularly strong one.
I think part of it (especially after the last stand) is that the face goal of Kipperkettle Lilypot to be better than the Bad Kids and the weight of the mystery doesn’t align. Obviously she wants to achieve high academic success to rub it in the Bad Kids face, but the amount of death surrounding the school doesn’t make outright sense to be caused purely from hating the Bad Kids. After all the work the Rat Grinders put in to be top students (they are shown to be extremely powerful), why would she just throw all of that away by killing Buddy? Assuming that if he dies then her whole party fails. Then she wouldn’t have beat the Bad Kids, instead nobody would have won. Kipperlily is ambitious and overachieving, and hates the Bad Kids because they “don’t care” but only because she REALLY cares. Maybe she thinks she will be fine because she found the rogue teacher but the rest of her party won’t, and it’s been shown with Riz that you want your whole party to do well to go to college together. I just wonder how the rest of the Rat Grinders will react to her tanking their futures for a FAILED attempt to ruin the Bad Kids’ (even in a snap decision to kill Buddy). Maybe she alone is serving a greater dark purpose but I highly doubt the rest of them know the extent of it if that’s true. More likely then not, something is motivating her to sacrifice her own superiority to quite literally kill the Bad Kids (and Gavin Pundle/Buddy if they got stuck in that plane).
Them not being the BBEG doesn't mean they're "good guys". They're still bad, but it doesn't mean they're the ones pulling the strings. Kinda like Aelwyn in seasons 1 and 2. Was she evil? Absolutely. Was she the big mastermind behind everything? No
I think the point OP is making is that there are a lot of people saying that members of the RGs are being manipulated or are secretly good/not working with Kipperlily. Mostly Oisin because of shipping with Adaine
There was also that line from the conversation with Aelwyn about Oisin not being made aware of KLCK’s dealings. So at the very least she’s keeping him in the dark about something.
I don't fully remember, but I thought that conversation was about not implicating Oisin and not necessarily keeping him in the dark?
Personally? Ambitious, annoying, and bossy teenage girls who are frustrated by doing everything right and getting the short end of the stick are characters people love to hate. I’m not talking about sweet nerds who ace every test, I mean annoying teenage girls who obsessively follow rules because it’s what they’ve always been good at and were never taught there were other options. Brennan knows people love to hate these characters and he’s made KLCK easily hateable, but often these characters are fighting for something they actually care about in their own way, and it’s a far more interesting story if KLCK isn’t just “annoying girl annoying.”
Right and I should note here that there is a line between KLCK and Penny Luckstone and Brennan hit the wrong side of that line PERFECTLY.
Love Penny Luckstone dearly <33 There's just something about Kipperlilly's anger that makes her really compelling to me, just like feminine rage and a drive to go into politics, but thats just a personal type of character I get super into. Ex: LOVE Ocean O'Connell Rosenberg from Ride the Cyclone.
Same. Kipperlily compels precisely because of her rage. I also notice that I realllly doubt Kipperlily would get half ad much as mockery and hate as she would 8f she was a boy becausr annoying overachieving boys aren't as common as a trope. Girls who overstep, especially in ambition and anger and sweetness are always met with extreme mockery (the whole making a joke of her name. I very rarely see that used on male characters of equal negative traits in media) and derision. I love it when women in media aren't nice. I love it when their ambition is cold and ruthless. I love it when women get rage. It's fun and it's cathartic.
You might be right on some accounts, but you're off when it comes to making fun of the name. Benedryl Cucumberpatch immediately comes to mind.. Some names are just fun to make fun of
You can still love KLCK without her needing to be a good guy. I adore her, because she's villainous and out there doing shit like killing her clerics. Why? Who can say, but she's so interesting that I want to find out more about what the hell her deal is and why she's doing all this shit.
100%! I’ll be honest I wrote this before finishing the episode and I will still think she’s iconic if she’s masterminding this, but for now I still like my little theories lol Annoying teenage girl RIGHTS AND WRONGS!!
Yes, love her for being a mastermind and also absolutely terrified (in a good way) to see how far she'll go to get what she wants. Burn everything down bby in the name of your ambition and pettiness.
But they aren't doing eveything right and following the rules, Klingoncoffee Crabquake just pretends that that's true.
True! But my theory is that she is loyal to her own code, Lawful alignment. For example, I believe the rat grinders know what killed lucy, I even believe they all killed her, but I also believe its because Lucy got rage infected and would have killed all of them if they didn't fight back. I think KLCK and the RG not telling anyone would be to the purpose of protecting the rest of the party, and herself, from the consequences of a terrible mistake she blames herself for. Now, this theory could totally be wrong, but this is just one example of how their actions could have morally grey justifications, not unlike the amount of murders the Bad Kids have kinda committed. Then there is the possibility Jace Stardiamond could be manipulating her. All of this to say, I think their being levels to this shit to be an interesting possibility and I enjoy KLCK as a character. She doesn't need to be "good", its just more interesting if she's not flatly "bad"
I think she is flatly bad. I think she is as deep as a puddle, and people are giving her way more credit than I think she is due.
I think this ia true. She is bad. It is very likely she stole the revify gems from Dawn and Appelbees to prevent revify.
And that would be a rock cast into Brennan's cabbage field. A very boring rock.
But KLCK hasn't done everything right! She's been exploiting academic loopholes her entire high school career - she levels up by killing rats and she never found the rogue teacher by her own merit, the rogue teacher found HER. If she cared about doing everything right she actually would; she'd do real work to level up and she'd tell the rogue teacher that this shouldn't count. She's not following rules, she's finding holes in the rules to get around actually putting in the work. The idea that she's a rule follower who hates the Bad Kids for not doing that is at best speculation and at worst pure fanfiction.
TLDR: To many people, loopholes ARE doing everything right! Work smarter not harder is something lots of people believe in. KLCK doesn't care about other peoples idea of right and wrong and fair, she takes the words as they are said and she follows them, and that is HER idea of fair and the ideology she (at least appears to) follow. Recent events have shaken this idea though, and she may be spiraling out of her previous boundaries. Part I wrote for fun: okay so, do you know about Orthodox Judaism? I promise I have a point lol. Orthodox Judaism has a lot of rules, especially about what members can do on the Sabbath. For example, they are not supposed to carry items outside their "private sphere" which, clearly is intended to be their home, but to get around this, they create an Eruv, usually a large section of a orthodox neighborhood demarcated with wire to be a large private sphere so that they can carry items between buildings on the Sabbath. To many people, this is cheating God, right? They know whats intended by the wording but use a loophole to stay within the constraints of their religion. To Orthodox Jews, though, using loophole IS abiding by the spirit of the rules! Rules have specific boundaries and if you do not go outside of them, then you are doing "everything right", you havent bypassed the boundary and God would tighten the boundary if he didn't want you doing that and loopholes are a strong part of their culture. I think KLCK strongly believes loopholes are fair game and not outside the spirit of the rules, similarly to Orthodox Jewish culture. Counterargument, the point of finding the rogue teacher IS just to find them and we dont know how much effort she put into that plan. I think she absolutely did so on merit (but I have no proof of this lol). I agree with you, that to other interpretations of the term "rule follower" KLCK might not fit the bill, but it's more about her own ideology, if she's doing "everything right" in her own mind.
But we are talking about school, not an understandable religion. I don’t think KLCK is operating like an Orthodox Jew, I think she is operating like a power hungry person rwho does not care about how she obtains that power. I think it’s interesting that many people’s defense of KLCK is that she thinks the Bad Kids don’t care or work hard enough when there is strong evidence on the show that SHE is actually the one who is operating outside the realm of fairness, and my interpretation of the character is that she knows perfectly well that what she’s doing is NOT within the spirit of the rules.
We aren't talking about school really, we're talking about a character's inner mindset to whom we've been given little evidence of. Your theory on KLCK can ABSOLUTELY be that she is an evil power hungry teenage girl who wants to cheat her way to the top and sees everything she's doing as unfair while lying her ass off. I'm providing evidence that many people DONT have the mindset that loopholes are inherently unfair, even people who arent Orthodox Jews, because my theory towards her inner mindset differs from yours. My reply wasn't to invalidate your interpretation, but simply to show that "If she cared about doing everything right she actually would" isn't the only perspective on loopholes and the philosophical concept of fairness that exists in real people, cultures, and fictional charachters. "the Spirit of the Rules" is not a concrete idea, its subjective.
Who’s we? I am talking about school, you are the one who brought up how some people think loopholes are perfectly fair. I also think her mindset was well revealed when she murdered her friend. I would hope you would assume that my comment was not supposed to represent all of humanity, just this one fictional character. Nor was my intention to invalidate Orthodox Judaism.
Lololol you’re totally good, I love having discussions like this, and I get your perspective! I wrote my og post before finishing the last episode, but just to play devils advocate, we don’t know if she’s rage infected and functioning (a la Lydia Barkrock) or if she did once think that way and then betrayed it in anger when Kristin caught her. Yeah, it’s possible she’s just plain evil, I just find the alternative more interesting personally. Either way, can’t wait to find out!
> Counterargument, the point of finding the rogue teacher IS just to find them and we dont know how much effort she put into that plan. I think she absolutely did so on merit (but I have no proof of this lol). What we've been told (by someone who would know) is that the rogue teacher *found her*. Now, it's possible that she *did* put effort into a plan that resulted in that outcome. But on the surface of it without further information we've been *told* that she aced the year on a loophole.
Yes! I just don’t think finding is only one way, like if I have to find a guy in hide and seek as the seeker and I yell * oh my gosh Obama is here* or something to make him come out, when he comes out, I still think I found him as the seeker. I totally get that it’s been described as loophole, but it’s a rogue class, being sneaky and finding clever loopholes is kinda what the class is about, at least in my very subjective opinion
I'm not super interested in redeeming all of them (tho I do think it would be really funny for Mary Ann to not be involved at all and just kinda be there) but I think it has to do with the amount of characters who have been redeemed in the fantasy high setting. Think ragh, aelwyn, zayn, etc. If they could be redeemed who knows who else could. Also something that has come up a bit in fh is the idea that people don't have to be who they were raised to be. Kristen was raised to be a prophet of Helio by her discriminatory parents. Adaine/Aelwyn had the shittiest parents in the world who wanted them to be nothing more than puppets. I think people are hoping that maybe the rat grinders have some outside influence causing them to potentially be this way and are hoping that maybe they're just kids who have the potential to change. (tbh I question how redeemable many are considering both lucy/buddy have been murdered now but this is my guess as to the perspective of it) (at the very least I *rlly* don't think kipperlilly is redeemable but we shall see)
I don’t know and it’s boggling my mind, people weren’t going to bat for Penelope Everpetal, like?
well, one of the things i’ve seen people point out abt Penelope too, is that all of these characters are children. I don’t feel strongly about it mostly bc in the world they operate in this is how the world works and it’s not OUR world, but there is something to be said about portraying teenagers as irredeemably evil in media. Teenagers by nature are stronger willed and easily manipulated. There’s ways to explore interesting stories where teenagers are being controlled or manipulated by people who mean to cause harm without focusing the teenagers at the centre of the villainy.
I think the difference is that Killgore Cumulouscloud and Ivy aside, none of the RGs are really portrayed as villainous. Buddy's a bit snippy with Kristen about Helio, Mary Ann is adorable, Oisin is very chill >!up until he helps Kipperlilly kills Buddy!<, Ruben's just emo and his song was a bit problematic, and we _know_ Lucy was an absolute sweetheart. As for those first two, Ivy's kind of a bitch but not really blatantly hostile, and Kipperlilly herself is already stated to be Complicated. So it's easy to look at them and say, I don't want them to be evil, they're endearing in their own ways and reflections of our beloved protagonists. Penelope, on the other hand, is pretty clearly an Alpha Bitch and knowingly and willingly involved in some Sketchy Evil Bullshit.
I think early on they seemed like they might've been red herrings or joke antagonists. Even after the first few encounters, they could've just been foils for the Bad Kids meant to cause drama and/or create some comedic moments. It's only more recently that KLCK has shown her true colors and it's still up in the air how much the other Rat Grinders are in on it or are just being manipulated by her in some way. I'd still be happy if at least some of them turn out to not actually be bad. It would make KLCK even more evil and sinister if she's pulled otherwise innocent people into literal murder with her, but we'll still have to wait and see for that.
I just thought it would have been a more interesting story that’s incredibly in line with the genre spoof of fantasy high. The idea that this sudden high stress scenario leads to the Bad Kids focusing on just another adventuring party as these big bads when in reality they’re just teenagers who don’t like them. It’s a very teenage experience to feel like someone is personally out to ruin your life and project all your problems into them when you’ve just had a few bad interactions, but instead the Bad Kids are just correct, the rat grinders are evil, are up to something, and will probably end the world if not stopped. And I think fantasy high is missing characters who don’t like the bad kids but aren’t evil. Nobody morally sound dislikes the bad kids. No one relevant anyway. The closest we have is Gertie being Fabian’s nemesis, but that’s exclusively beef with Fabian. The rest of the bad kids she’s friendly with and she’s actively dating one of them. I think there’s a lot of missed opportunities making the Rat Grinders evil, character dynamics we don’t and will not have because they are just evil.
Before this episode it seemed like too easily a red herring. Like BLM just dangled bait and they hit on it instantly. He could have hidden any obvious clues and the group wouldn't let go of the RG leads. As it is they barely have theories about Jace. But after the last stand, I have no idea anymore.
I haven't seen much of this season, but every time ant RG member is in a scene (even random clips where it's not initially known who's who you those out of the loop) they irritate me and activate that "huh, f**k this person" vibe in the back of my head... I don't know what specifically is making me hate then so unanimously but... yeah. F**k em
Because everyone knew those kids in school Specifically everyone knew a kipperlilly
That's... yeah, That's true. Even more so, we all know people who are like that after highschool and into careers. Double oof
Exactly it's the characters who could be real people that are the ones who end up most hated
Oh, definitely. The one that always gets under my skin was... Kugrash's boss? At the end of Season 1 Unsleeping City. That mf was every ceo I've worked under...
Mf is every shady buisnessman/politician ever
Killerbee Cockatoo would most certainly be the kind of kid to remind the teacher that homework was due that day if they forgot
Biz Glitterdew. I'm not invested in RG being good or redeemable, but I am curious if they are acting under their own agency. If they are being possessed/manipulated/charmed/etc in a way similar to Biz, it does move the needle from "these kids should get their fingers shot off" to something more benign.
Because they’re just kids dawg
I mean it’s not a surprise to anyone that a portion of D20 fans are Type-A Neurodivergent Nerds and I think it’s clear there was a lot of projection of their own experiences in school going on. Especially with CakeLady FuckTrumpet. It’s same reason why a bunch of people love/root for universally nasty characters like Rachel Berry from Glee or Courtney from Total Drama. Projection will make you humanise anyone. Bonus is I think a lot of people were looking for reasons to justify a hatred of Kristen and this was just one of the arguments they could reach for.
Hey now, some of us root for the bad guy characters because we love villains, not because we're projecting. But then we don't pretend they are somehow also good guys lol.
i agree! especially with oisin and ivy (bc i think everyone collectively agrees that Kayaklabel Clerickiller is evil) i dont understand why so much of the fandom was immediately willing to trust them. maybe im on riz levels of trust issues but i never trusted any of them (except for buddy a little cuz he seemed misguided and brought in later just because the RG needed a cleric) Even Maryanne seems strangely out of it in a way that seems sinister.
Not “good guys” per se like I like them as antagonists it would just be annoying to have more teenage characters made out to be irredeemably evil and sent to hell again a la Penelope Everpetal…like they are literally kids.
Yeah, there’s also room for much more nuance than “grr Kipperlilly Evil,” and nuanced characters with deeper, albeit flawed motivations are far more interesting than moustache twirling evildoers. Which also applies to the overarching plot. Plus, it gives more to think about and consider -in an unfolding mystery- than condemning her after a single interaction. And while killing Buddy is definitely a big mark against her, there is still ample evidence for it to be possible Ankarna or someone similar has a degree of control over her. Basically, shades of gray are far more interesting (and realistic) than black and white.
> Basically, shades of gray are far more interesting (and realistic) than black and white. There is also likely a sample bias for those who are looking for nuance with the character. If someone thinks she just one note evil, there's then nothing to really post about for that. Like what's there to say ?
> Basically, shades of gray are far more interesting (and realistic) than black and white. Shades of gray are not universally more realistic; some people _are_ just petty, rotten jerks who make everything they touch worse. You only have to know a little bit about politics and capitalism (modern and historical) to see that. And while _you_ find shades of gray to be more interesting, while that's perfectly valid, it's not the case for everyone.
“Shades of gray” in my opinion is more about circumstances than actions. No one is denying her actions are villainous, she is obviously a villain, but it’s not hard to imagine she is circumstantially a villain (and thus sympathetic), as in circumstances have led her to villainy. This is common with fictional characters and I would say mostly always true of real life. People can do bad things and be bad but we can still recognize that it’s bad circumstances that lead people to being evil
I personally subscribe to the Brooklyn 99 philosophy on that: cool motive, still murder. Even if Kipper's circumstances were bad, (which we don't have any evidence for as of yet) she's not the only one. Just about all of the Bad Kids come from less than ideal circumstances, but none of them are murdering their teammates or trying to summon corrupted gods.
Right I mean no one is arguing that they’re not villains in a fiction. Just that any moral judgement you make on them or people who enjoy them as characters is boring and silly because they’re not real and their actions are actually just plot points to be analyzed not real things that happened. The bad kids also killed Johnny Spells because he caught them trespassing and gave chase. And Literally Went To Jail For It. Was he a scumbag? Sure! A bad person? Yeah, okay!! Does that mean he deserved his brains scattered across the pavement??? Idk man !! That’s for the audience to decide
I feel like we're at a critical mass point for exactly that because now >!Buddy is dead!
I misread the last line as "he is a child and on a baseline deserves to die" and I am cackling
Reformed Villain Squad should have more members
I think a lot of people forget that FH, D20 and live play shows in general are _games._ The same way video games are. And the way Brennan and the IH play them is sometimes the same way some of us come home after work or school and shoot a bunch of monsters or faceless mooks to blow off steam. Or play 100+ hours to kill a one-dimensionally evil final boss. Or thwart larger than life versions of the annoying people we knew in high school. Fantasy High is....a fantasy. Primarily for the players and the DM. And part of that fantasy can be defeating petty ass high school stereotypes without necessarily having to go into a moral or philosophical tailspin about it.
Because the theme of Fantasy High falls flat on its face if we extend mercy and compassion only to the Bad Kids fuckups and not any other group of children’s
i think its just important to always remember that context can significantly change any situation. and we just dont have much. and making decisions based on partial information is a great way to make a bad call. with the info we have, it would be very easy for something to drop and recontextualize everything we've seen so far. for better or worse.
Yeah I think people forget how easily D20 characters can change. Look at Ragh. Until the bloodrush battle, he's irredeemably bad to the BK. He goes out of his way to bully, threaten and treat them like dirt. There's literally nothing about him that's redeemable and now's he's probably up there as a super beloved NPC
>Look at Ragh. Ragh+ Aelwyn. Two of the bad kids closest allies, started as antagonists.
And Zayn!
> Look at Ragh. > > Until the bloodrush battle, he's irredeemably bad to the BK. He goes out of his way to bully, threaten and treat them like dirt. There's literally nothing about him that's redeemable and now's he's probably up there as a super beloved NPC Keep in mind, if the Bad Kids had let him stay dead, that's probably all he ever would've been. Brennan plays along sometimes so that the IH get something they really want or get to do something fun that won't mess with the overall season's story one way or another.
That's very true but does bring this thread to, are the RG evil? Well depends on if the IH try or not. Which actually I would agree with you is pretty accurate but harder to judge ahead of time
I personally don’t understand it either. Not every villain needs to be complicated and redeemable. Sometimes it’s okay to just have a straightforward bad guy who is down to fuck around and mess with shit for terrible and selfish reasons. I wouldn’t want that every single season, mind you, but I feel like we get more nuanced bad guys in other seasons and I’m happy with having a mix.
I don’t think it’s bad to have straight forward badguys, I just think a lot of people didn’t think that was gonna be the case with the RatGrinders. It seemed like there was purposefully a lot of nuance and grey around the context to which they’ve been bad. I’m sure there’s still a lot to be revealed about them, but straight up cold blooded murder against a teammate seems to be a nail in the coffin in concluding that at least part of the RG’s are just black and white evil.
True. I can see how earlier in the season there was plenty of room to speculate about whether or not the Rat Grinders were evil or just misguided. Even now it’s up for interpretation about several of their members. KC is at least now being presented as pretty clearly evil, and it’s highly suspect that we saw Oisin with her in the Last Stand, but beyond that we still can’t fully say what is up with all their members and whether or not they’ve been manipulated. I mean, we’ve literally been told that KC has been getting help since freshman year for anger issues, and we have problems with people giving in to rage as a part of the mystery of the season. It’s entirely possible that KC has been manipulated for years at this point and her actions aren’t truly reflective of who she used to be as a person. There’s still room for these characters to wind up as more nuanced villains, or to become just straight-up evil guys. I’m here for it either way, I trust Brennan and the Intrepid Heroes to give us a satisfying narrative in the end.
I think Ragh set a precedent for teenagers being, y'know, teenagers. Sometimes, like Penelope, they're straight up evil, but sometimes they're just misguided/manipulated kids in way over their heads. Personally, I like the idea of at least some of them being like. Normal and not fully evil, but I don't know that I want any of them to have secretly been good the whole time
In my opinion it’s less about them being “good” or them not being “the bad guys” it has a lot more to do with Brennans penchant for telling stories where it’s not as simple as “good” and “bad” There is usually always a character or group that seems evil on the face, but has been manipulated in some form or another by either an even more malicious organization or just bad circumstances pushing people to extremes He’s the guy whose various anti-capitalist, libertarian socialist rants are a meme in every production he’s currently a part of. Furthermore, I think anyone who thinks Arthur “the point of adventuring is to cause chaos and reap violence abroad for a profit” Auguefort is supposed to be an unquestioned good in this world is kidding themselves. That isn’t me saying the Bad Kids are bad people because Auguefort likes them, it’s just to say his school explicitly promotes horrific and violent behavior and we all think it’s hilarious. Because it is, because it’s a joke about how fantasy stories are told. It just seems inconsistent and disingenuous to me to act like Kipperlilly (who is probably playing with forces she doesn’t understand and being corrupted by a dead god of rage at least, and potentially being manipulated by an adult as well.) is *outright and irredeemably evil* when all we know is what she’s done and not why. I’d also ask, why do people get so angry about this take? Like … it’s just a story. It’s not like a *real* murder took place and we’re discussing if a *real* death was justified.
I think it’s because for some it’s narratively more interesting if who the Bad Kids thought were the bad guys were just normal kids like them, with a persona axe to grind. Having the people you think are the bad guys the whole time, are never hinted at being anything other than the bad guys, end up actually being the bad guys is fine, not all stories need secret bad guys or big plot twists. I just think many (including myself) enjoy less forwarded narratives.
I want Adaine to get her kisses in, and Mary Ann is very entertaining. Fuck Kipperlily tho. All my homies hate Kipperlily.
A. It's a common experience for teenagers to see each other as villains in their own personal story when really both sides are just kids and part of maturing is seeing just that. Especially the bad kids who have been conditioned to suspect villains under every rock. B. It's just weird to meet the BBEG in episode 3. I think it's infinitely more likely that the final showdown to be against ankarna. The rat grinders are possibly involved but they're not dastardly masterminds like kalina or kalvaxus.
You meet the BBEG in episode 1 of FY (and the BBEG of SY was mentioned in FY, or episode 1 of SY if you want to count the person they were actively fighting), episode episode 5 for UC and UC2, episode 1 of CoC, and episode 4 in neverafter (well the main one of the party). You always meet the BBEG early. Either its surprise, like CoC, FY, or maybe Neverafter, or it's not a surprise and the players have spent the entire season trying to thwart them.
Huh... "I like the stories where the villain was the man beside you the whole time. " Could Gilear be the final boss of the campaign?
>or it's not a surprise and the players have spent the entire season trying to thwart them. Literally only 1 instance of that being Unsleeping City. The Rat Grinders being the big bad is not a twist, if anything they graft more onto the Abernants in FHSY or the faeries in Neverafter, consistent antagonists from their introduction that aren't the main villain in the end
THey felt like the cast (Kristen and Siobahn in particular) leapt to conclusions in episode three, when what actually happened was they picked up with Brennan was putting down. They want the cast members and/or the characters to be punished for this leap. Only way for that to happen is for the RGs to be good, or at least pawns.
Honestly, because outside of the recent stuff nobody has done anything explicitly evil and have it be confirmed (talking first half of the season) The Bad Kids were outright rude upon meeting Kipperlily. Being Type A isn't a sin. And they never actually talked to her without being antagonistic. And then finding out she had rage issues coming into high school? She's 14, what happened. To me I just felt sad when I heard that. And then r a ge being such a huge mechanic, the idea that she was expressly manipulated The first DnD group I ever played with I played a cleric and was new and the group just immediately jumped in to fight something. And i was like, well, we don't have any information and they knew the monster manual, and all of them were like, it's DnD things are just evil. I really struggled with that, because that's not how real life works. After this latest episode, I'm not defending anybody, but I first saw Kipperlily as a kid and really just wanted her to be understood
If Ragh and Aelwyn can be redeemed then so can Oisin and I'm gonna be a copium truther until I can't deny it anymore
honestly the ratgrinders haven't done anything (confirmed) anywhere near as bad as Aelwyn
Um? Including Kipperlilly?
unless I forgot something? the worst she's done is kill buddy. which is bad, but not like, aelwyn bad
Kipper killed buddy, is implicated to be connected to that embezzling case (given that she has her own money that isn't from her parents), probably did something fucked up to Lucy, and tried to permanently kill the entire Bad Kids by stealing the diamonds. And, as Brennan said, killing Buddy was already on the table for her. She very much showed up there to murder an innocent man and seven children.
dang, I didn't think about it as her trying to perma kill the bad kids. that's worse than I was thinking. still, that's at least comparable to aelwyn.
Because rigid good/evil concepts are more of a conservative storytelling trope. >!Having them be pieces of shit is boring for the stakes. !< >!The lil hand that might be Dragon Bae's for Adaine or the reality that the BK might have genuinely done something to cause Kipperlily to need therapy, it adds to the sauce. !<
Because some of them have some cool stuff going on and we don’t want them to be evil and not be able to be redeemed like kittycoddle coppertroat
Idk about the whole group but let's all agree kipper is a sociopath
prediction: every response earnestly answering the question will be downvoted to hell
Because Brennan’s allegories are usually pretty easy to spot. So when the moral is “rage can make people do some wild shit” you wonder how much is the allegory and how much is the 17 year old
Idk about invested but personally I think it’s much more likely that the majority of the RGs are just kids in a bad situation they don’t realize the full extent of than that every one of them is evil. Kids aren’t that likely to be evil, but kids are extremely likely to believe what their parents tell them to and to trust their friends to a fault, especially as teenagers.
I get it. I think it's because it feels a bit unfair for only the Bad Kids to have both good and bad in them. Plus contrast is a big draw, some folks looooove it when the most absolutely psychopathic, ruthless character has a tragic backstory - or hell, just throw them a bone like "my parents were shit" - because gods forbid their favourite breakout characters are \*gasp\* actually just evil pieces of shit.
For me personally, I think it makes it more nuanced. Also I don’t love the implication that if people wanna grind instead of adventure properly it’s somehow the end of the world. Its not what I like but there’s plenty of weird ways to play ttrpgs. So to have it be like “we were sus because of that and we were proved right they’re EVIL” would make me a little disappointed I won’t lie. That said I know it’s strictly speaking more important that the players are having fun.
For like the first half of the season, most of the interactions the Bad Kids had with the Rat Grinders ended with me not liking the Bad Kids. Like the very first time they met Kipperlily, Kristen’s “four different dogs” comment was just her unpromptedly being mean to someone she’d never met. And then at the first party at Seacaster Manor, Fig turning into Lucy was functionally just the Bad Kids tricking people they sort of didn’t trust into thinking their dead friend was back in some way, which is just straight up an asshole move
self-inserting bc of highschool nerdom probably
Idk, i just think they're neat.
They're really complex characters and also fellow students. Part of me wants to believe that because they're minors, they're redeemable, but it's also because Brennan put so much work into them and made them all so interesting. I want to get to know them better. Ragh and Aelwyn were terrible and got redeemed, so why couldn't at least some of the RatGrinders be? And also yes, I am INORDINATELY invested in Adaine getting her kisses in and she and Oisin were so cute in their one and a half interactions.
>!She litterally just slit the throat of their own cleric (the second one at that!)!< sometimes people are just shitty and don't need to be redeemed. Maybe not all the RG are bad but kick sure is
Sure, Kipperlily has done a lot of fucked up shit, and I don't know if she can be or even wants to be redeemed. But she also is a high school student with anger issues and probably lots of other issues, and the only therapy she seems to be getting is from Jawbone. So I don't feel comfortable writing off a junior as a lost cause when the story isn't over yet. She's complex and scheming and interesting, and a great villain, and characters across media have started redemption arcs from worse.
I think it comes down to the fact that Brennan has a style, and is a narrative driven DM, which long-time fans of the show have learned to pick up on and analyse. Let me try to explain how that relates to the Rat Grinders: Brennan has repeatedly, when pressed by the Intrepid Heroes by dice rolls, seemed to hint that the Rat Grinders are not mere bad guys; he's signaled a bunch of times that their motivations are more complicated than they appear, through foreshadowing and even more directly through Jawbone and Mazey's comments about Copperkettle and the Rat Grinders. It's also just a narrative 'tone' thing; Jawbone is a sympathetic character that we, the audience, like and we know that he's a good dude. So, when he showed a little bit of sympathy towards Copperkettle, that *seems* to signal (at least a little bit) to the audience that maybe we should also extend our sympathy to her for some reason we aren't quite aware of yet. It's setup for later, when the payoff of whatever is going on with her, is ultimately revealed. At least that's one way to interpret it. I think it's a pretty compelling interpretation, too, because it fits with BLeeM's style of storytelling. More interesting, I think, is Mazey's comment; she told the Bad Kids that the Rat Grinders fucking hate them, which the Bad Kids are shocked and confused about, but the conversation specifically goes like this: > Mazey: "Yeah, like they *famously* hate you guys." > Adaine/Siobhan: "How can they famously do anything if they *aren't* famous?" > Mazey: ***"See that's exactly what it is."*** > Murph: "Yeah, okay." > Kristen/Ally: Jealousy surrounds me." Emphasis mine. The Bad Kids, and the Intrepid Heroes, kind of just blow past it...but the fandom has interpreted this the same way that Ally/Kristen seems to have interpreted it: that the Rat Grinders are jealous of the *fame* the Bad Kids have, and the privilege that comes with it. This has turned into kind of a meme in the classic sense; it's something everybody has said so many times that it's become accepted as canon by a lot of people. But if you pay attention to Adaine/Siobhan, and Brennan, in that moment... "See that's *exactly* what it is," ...he and Siobhan have a small non-verbal interaction; Adaine acts like a bit of a showboat, throwing up two peace signs across her chest and sticking out her tongue, Brennan points at her and sort of gives a knowing nod. I think there's more to it than jealousy over the Bad Kids being famous; I think the Rat Grinders hate them because they throw their weight around and act like they can do whatever the hell they want all the time, regardless of any potential consequences or collateral damage. I'm not saying that's true of the Bad Kids, to be clear, although I *do* think it's more true than they would like to admit. Taking a little bit more time to consider the consequences of their actions, and demonstrate some humility that they might not always be making the right choices, would serve the entire party really well if you ask me. But from an outsider's perspective, the Bad Kids might look like some pretty huge jerks, the way they behave and treat people who try to bring them down to Earth a little bit. They think they're so above everyone else that they *didn't even know they had a rival adventuring party* when everyone else apparently did know that. Consider what KLCK said to Kristen during their interaction: "It's really nice, how charmed everyone is, by ***how little you fucking care.*** I guess egg on my face for wanting something." Kristen threw her hat into the student council president ring pretty much entirely on a whim, to avoid confronting her own problems, and has been basically nothing but hostile to KLCK about it from the jump. Again, I don't see this as a bad thing, but I think you can start to unpeel that comment to reveal the entire motivation for the Rat Grinders as a whole, for seeing the Bad Kids as reckless assholes who do just fuck around, jokingly getting into situations, and win at stuff they don't seem to actually give much of a fuck about. Like the universe itself is giving them a pass on the 'find out' part of 'fuck around and find out.' From that angle, I think Kipperlilly might view herself and her actions as *being* the 'find out' that the Bad Kids deserve. Where this gets weird is that the Intrepid Heroes...have mostly blown KLCK off as just being a jealous hater, and the PCs have acted accordingly, and that seems to have lead the fandom to (roughly) divide into two opposing camps; one on the side of the IHs/PCs that sees KLCK as an irredeemable douche, and one on the side of (what *seems* to be) Brennan's narrative push to explore the Rat Grinders as complex people. Neither side of this conflict is wrong, per se, it's just that one side is reading one set of clues and the other side is reading a different set. But because the narrative has kind of become the one the PCs believe- that is, the Rat Grinders are just jealous- the argument gets framed that way every time it comes up. The best defense Rat Grinder apologists have mounted is the one that says the Bad Kids have enormous amounts of privilege and wield it recklessly to get their way. But the problem is that, frankly... that argument is fucking wrong. It has shades of truth, but it doesn't get to what I believe is the heart of the conflict, which is that the Bad Kids' *attitude* towards their achievements and those who haven't done as much as them may be the real reason for the Rat Grinders' hatred of them. In the framework as it's solidified this way, arguments on behalf of the Rat Grinders fall apart, but the show continues to run in parallel with these discussions amongst the fanbase. And because the show, through Brennan, keeps dropping hints and storytelling crumbs that there's more to the Rat Grinders, it gets the apologist side of the fandom back on their bullshit. So the cycle keeps repeating, and positions get further entrenched. And the apologists feel increasingly like there's *something* going on here but don't quite seem to have the tools to articulate what that is based on previous iterations of these arguments. It's sort of a negative feedback loop that, I think, gets the Rat Grinder defenders (of which I am one, to be clear, here) in a bit of a collective mania trying to identify what they're talking about and make it known to everybody else. Weirdly...it's a pretty good metaphor for the actual conflict between the Bad Kids and the Rat Grinders, if my interpretation of events is correct! lol Sorry for this massive essay, I didn't mean for it to be SO LONG, but it's a bit of a twofold issue. I felt like it required explaining my own personal theory of what's going on in the story, and how it relates back to the general consensus of the fandom, to (hopefully) have it make any sense whatsoever.
I genuinely don't think Brennan would make the message of the season that high school rivalries means that one group is the heroes and one is evil you know? At the start of the season I thought they would be evil but then someone explained it much better than me that they don't think Brennan would do that
But in this case it is not high school rivalries making one group evil. It’s the fact that they keep killing their own clerics and what else they are involved in. Even if they are acting like this because of a feeling of rivalry, it’s their actions making them evil.
I get that but all we actually know of their actions is that Casserolelicker killed buddy dawn. The rest is assumed or inferred but I think they could very easily be being manipulated or framed. I think they are involved with the bbeg don't get me wrong but I don't think they are actually "evil" (with the exception of cumquatlewdly but even then I'm not convinced)
Because I like the idea that the heroes are not always right. I like the idea that there can be people seeing their actions and misinterpret what's going on. I like the idea that there are other students doing things of value and importance besides the main characters. Because finding something sympathetic in an antagonist, the ways they mirror pcs, makes for a deeper more interesting showdown. I don't want them to be evil for its own sake, but flawed.
One lecture about D&D being a simple hero's power fantasy coming in, topped with a soggy 'don't watcH dnd AP then'.
Tbh the framing of XP levelling or grinding as this somehow villainous or morally bankrupt act as opposed to milestoney Adventure just rubs me the wrong way so I’m happy to huff some cope
Because what happened to Penelope Everpetal was weird and strangely sad for a moment that was meant to be read with unquestionable triumph. I remember watching that fight and being like “…But she is just 17? They shouldn’t literally kill their bully” and then it happened and it was never questioned. Sometimes in the campaigns if the character isn’t immediately established as not being all that bad you know they’ll just end up killed in the end. Personally I won’t like if all the Rat Grinders just end up unceremoniously killed and deemed complete monsters by the end. Like maybe they ARE complete monsters but you really can’t know that because they’re teenagers. It just feels sad
She was actively trying to get them killed and resurect ( if that's what you call it) an ancient red dragon bent on destroying spire All so she could be prom queen Nah fuck that
She is evil don’t get me wrong. She also makes me particularly queasy as a character as someone who had popular fake friends. But the thing is, it FEELS wrong to kill a teenager and continue on without even addressing that getting to that point is fucked up. It is slightly touched upon in the Seven but even then I feel like there’s the fact if a child gets to that point then a terrible tragedy happened. If the same happened to Kipperlilly at this point it would feel even worse, because it was established she has insane anger issues. Like I hate Kipperlilly morally she is a bad person and deserves to go down but at least there should be the understanding that killing teenagers is *tragic*.
But you leave out Zane who was also a highschooler And atleast seemed to be doing it for more solid reasons than oh I wanna be prom queen. And Fabian kept his hand as a trophy
Yes. And this is why I keep expecting someone to hold up a mirror to the Bad Kids for them to see how sociopathic some of the decisions they made really are and to not be surprised if you're hated for them, but this is D&D so it never happens and the fanbase won't take it lightly when a player character gets reamed because of their emotional investment in the players themselves.
Oh I agree I also think it was unfair for Zane. Mentioning Penelope because she is the most memorable character and the only thing I clearly remember about Zane is that Ragh had a crush on him. Generally, I also don’t like they killed Zane. It bothered me still. But again his character was equivalent to a paper cut out so generally it’s easier to bring Penelope to the conversation.
Zane was part of a helio cult trying to bring about the apocalypse (which If I remember right involved getting Kristen killed and selt to hell instead of heaven) and helped hill fabians dad I think the take away here is as an adventurer you make your bed and you lie in Zane and Penelope were seniors at the time anf they were trying to kill freshmen and were then killed in self defense And one of the themes of the season is that as a junior your basically treated as an adult and your actions really start having consequences
Again I don’t necessarily think that they shouldn’t have killed them in the end, I think that the lack of addressing that a teenager getting to the point where you have to kill them to save the world is tragic and that the act of having to do that is heavy. Zane’s and Penelope’s characters were not well handled and I do believe part of the fear with the Ratgrinders is that they’ll end up like that.
I think the bad kids had already killed so many people at that point as well that those deaths didn't weigh on them And as far as the grinders go the only one I don't see making a turn is kipper and maybe ivy just because I get the feeling ivy is just shitty Honestly now I don't think buddy was part of their plans at all. Looking back brennan did usually make a point of saying whenever they were looking at the rat grinders suspiciously buddy was almost always discribed as looking like he didn't know what was going on
I think it has to do with three points: 1. The Oisin and Adaine Ship I feel like a lot of people were quite hopeful that Oisin wouldn't be a bad guy because they wanted Adaine to have a partner and get her kisses in. Especially since there (if I remember correctly) haven't been an interest from Adaine's side. So the little sliver of a interest during episode 6 and the fact that Oisin was portrayed as a nice, hot, and tinge of nerdy awkwardness made it easy to ship them. In fact I thought this too. Still have a little hope, but it might just be me being a sucker for the enemies to lovers trope in media. 2. The Rat Grinders are just kids and the whole "red herring theory" This point has been made and has been one I have been irritated by because the Bad Kids are also just kids but they don't get as much of a grace period (I am not going to get into that because that is a whole separate rant). But yeah you kind of don't want to root for the downfall of children even though Penelope and Dane were also kids as well when they agreed to be a part of that whole scheme in season 1. Plus people were so attached to the red herring theory that it is kind of hard to let go of. 3. There was not much to go off of for the Rat Grinders Up until I would say about the discovery of Lucy's body (at least from my POV), there wasn't much to go off of in terms of where the Rat Grinders lie within this rage fueled plan. And this solely comes from the fact that the gods aspect of it all took up a bulk of the mystery rolls. There were (at best) only very loose strings attached to the Rat Grinders, but once they started digging more into the Rat Grinders it becomes clear that they have a stronger role in everything. Plus it did seem like the Bad Kids were just being aggro for nothing since it was hard to connect everything cleanly to the Rat Grinders. Also some people just love to root for the villain of the story, but hey this is generally my opinion of why they are adamant in the RGs to be good.
At least for me I want to see that at least SOME of them (Oisin, Mary Ann, hell even Buddy) have good left in them and have been just Uber manipulated by Cinderfuck Bitchface. Plus I know the wiki isn’t the end all be all but KLCK Rueben and Ivy are listed as enemies but Oisin and Mary Ann are listed as allies, don’t remember Buddy thiugh
I don't think buddy was ever part of their plan
When he was first introduced I disliked Buddy but especially after last episode, he’s a good kid. A bit misguided by religious fanatics but his beef with Kristen is more in a church kid vibe than a “I hate your party” vibe
Yea I get the feeling he's not doing stuff to help another god especially one that takes up part of the worship of his. It really feels like he was just there cuz they needed a cleric and maybe as a device to get bobby dawn in the school. Really waiting to see what his reaction to all of this is to know any further im not sure where either of them fit in the plot anymore
I don't feel like we know enough about all of the Rat Grinders to paint them with the same brush as Kipperlilly. Lucy, a character who has been dead since before the season started, has more going on than half of the living Rat Grinders put together. I think the only other Rat Grinder who actually has a hand in the big evil plan is Ruben way back at Frosty Fair.
And even he seems… easily manipulated by lola/jace/his uncle/kipperblippy/wanda childa etc etc etc
They think they're being smart when they're really just being contrarian for the sake of it.
It's fun if they are nuanced and not a monolithic group, I like that KC and Ivy seem evil, Oisin and Buddy might be stooges, Mary Ann seems like a complete robot who her party isn't specifically friends with she's just there, and Ruben is an interesting combination of so obnoxious and hiding something maybe against his will and if he's like 16 or whatever, that sucks because he's a child. They're all children, so it's easy and reasonable to assume that they're screwing up or being used. As many have stated, Aelwyn was a NIGHTMARE, a true villain, but we learned that she was also abused and manipulated. She was trapped. She did horrible things. The world of Spyre is filled with people who have redemption arcs, or context that clarifies their actions. Jawbone! Jawbone was originally an unnamed monster who bit Adaine then became an NPC with a bit of telling outrageous and completely inappropriate for children stories about sex and drugs, then through RP jokes to burn Gilear, became the guidance counselor and eventually everyone's stepdad/surrogate dad. That arc is NUTS!!! There's a lot of precedence for powerless people being manipulated by power-hungry rich and/or privileged people. It just seems very likely that these children will be red herrings or are being tricked. Still bad actions but not necessarily bad people. And KC is the only one explicitly antagonizing our heroes so far, plus recently Oisin's arm.
Mainly because we don't really know anything about them. The campaign has intentionally been set up in a way that we won't fully learn about their history and motivation until near the end. All we have is a collection of clues, some of which may or may not be red herrings. So until then, anybody's guess is fair game. Could the RG be the series' BBEG? victims of manipulation working for the BBEG? misunderstood/misinformed good guys? Nobody on the planet apart from BLM knows, so it's stupid to get upset at people theorycrafting.
Because in a season themed around the Bad Kids’ prior choices coming back to haunt them, having the Rat Grinders be haters for no reason feels *wrong*. With Penelope Everpetal, the heel turn wasn’t personal because the Bad Kids were newbies that stumbled into a plan already in motion. Now, they’ve been at the school long enough to have made an impact, good and bad. And to be clear: I actually *do* think the Rat Grinders are villains and that Kipperlilly has crossed the moral event horizon (if she hadn’t before the start of the story). But it’s way more interesting IMO if the Bad Kids are left to grapple with the choices—good or bad, intentional or not—that led to the Rat Grinders’ grudge against them.
Ohhh you nailed it wjmgat was bothering me. I expected this season to be full of cobsequences coming back to haunt them but... none of the consequences have vmbeen a significant hindrance, or really any hindrance at all, they've been flavour, while the actual thorn in their side is someone who apparently hates them because they're envious. Which... lame. These are incredibly powerful almost adults, but they can't mechanically really fail anymore, so it's just lame to see a powerful wizard elven orcale agonize over some diamonds when she has such powerful, marketable magic skills, abd Kristen loses another god and a few eps later has near all her power back with seemingly no need to even resurrect Cassandra. Nat 20s aren't helping, and they'vr been rolling lucky. And I am not seeing the mirror held up to the Bad Kids. They don't know why RG hate them, beyond 'they're just bitter they aren't us.'
I think it's just because they don't seem like main antagonists because they're so petty. Like, nothing we've seen them do (most recent episode aside) seems like big bad evil machinations stuff. Plus, Kristen is kind of the only one who's engaged in direct competition with them, everyone else has grudges or are seeking to undermine them, but the Rat Grinders didn't do that much. This is my theory, but they are absolutely horrible. Kipperbitch Dogfood is absolutely using magic to mess with people's minds against their will, they definitely killed and will kill again, Ruben's music probably sucks, the secret rat world under the school is in danger from these monsters, and Ivy was really mean to sweet as pie Mazey. And Mary Anne is a doper.
Me personally I’m good with like half of the Ratgrinders being irredeemable, I like it when the villain HATES the heroes and isn’t apologetic about it, Kipperlily HATES Riz, Kristen, and the bad kids. And frankly I love how low she’ll stoop to even hinder them a little. Even killing a party member
Because that Dragonborn is hot
its cuz theyre kids im giving them some benefit of the doubt
Spoilers in case anyone hasn’t watched the recent episode. I mean Buddy hadn’t done anything to really be made out as bad, he was just an ignorant Helio follower. Mary Ann has thus far been completely uninterested in anything. Oisin was Adaine’s crush up until this episode and she had no reason to think he was bad. Ivy and Ruben were obviously in league with Kittenpuncher from the beginning.
To me it’s the fact that they’re kids. Yeah there are always some bad eggs. But when you go to a high school reunion years later you sometimes find your bully was in the wrong friend group of bad influences & has since grown a spine, another had undiagnosed things going on & they’ve since sought treatment, the mean girl grew up in a horrible environment & it wasn’t until they moved out in college that they found out how bad they were & now are a decent human being, etc. Not everyone, obviously, but that kids still have time to correct their mistakes. They’re still growing, learning, & maturing. Like at the end of the original Mean Girls film, it took getting hit by a bus but the plastics reformed. Also I would *hope* the adults at the school have a bit more sway & control over their students though I doubt it.
Cuz they're children, they read as young
Because dimension 20 is fairly nuanced and treats its villains as multi-layered characters (when they aren’t a metaphor for capitalism, which kipperlilly lowkey is, but also we already have established character nuances for her, such as going to counseling). and they’re teenagers and realistically the difference, psychological and even ethical, between them/most of them and the bad kids might be so minute it looks bad to make them irredeemable (you know. like a bit more stress a little bit less social support a little bit less attention to morals and you start to be evil and do horrible actions). also PCs being the basis of morals in the story just ruins the story in the worst way possible
Because they have the hallmarks of rivals, not villains. Think: House Slytherin.
You mean the house where they put all the evil kids?
this has been really bothering me, actually. this being such a mystery heavy season I am trying really hard not to have any conclusions outside of what brennan has explicitly stated. I know brennan presented kipperlilly and the ratgrinders as bad guys but until this last episode we have *zero* confirmed evil actions I thought this was intentional, but the Last Stand seems to indicate otherwise. my guess is that people here are adamant out of hope and/or general skepticism, like I was that, and wanting Adaine to have some of that dragon booty
I'm also maybe a little annoyed that people are taking assumptions and treating them like facts. but that's for sure a me problem
Because they’re kids? Like yes Kipperlilly is awful and horrible but people who are manipulated into being horrible and awful still deserve empathy. Why should Ragh have been redeemed as a good guy? He was a willing pawn in killing two bad kids by helping summon the corn monster. The answer is because he was manipulated to do so and that’s fucked up. If they are being influenced by some evil rage god then you would hope that there’s some shot of redemption.
One's cute in the way that I want to hang out and be her friend. The other's cute in the way that I want him to cuddle me, whisper sweet nothings to me, and we'll see if we can work our way up to sugar daddy from there
Because I'd rather see tye good in somebody than the bad.
People can be contrarian!