dost thou want to live fergaliciously?

season 2 kristen applebees the icon that you are (were?) !!!

i don’t post my art very often but i love this scene, honestly might do one for each bad kid if i can choose iconic scenes for the rest of them :)

adaine's denim jacket is a mental illness/trauma recovery staple, actually. she wears that jacket every goddamn day and it has fluffy pockets and probably mysterious stains and tears that are a reminder of the life she's lived. a tear from catching on one of gorgug's tin flowers that she wore like a corsage on prom night. a yoghurt stain from gilear that really was powerfully resistant to cleaning, as much as she tried. a pulled seam from kristen shoving her whole buff arm into a pocket to get ecaf out. an extravagant embroidery of her name sewn onto the inside of the collar by cathilda in fabian's calligraphy. an abjurative ward burned into the denim by aelwyn who never learned to sew. an eternally damp spot on the shoulder where boggy cuddles up still wet from the aquatic portion of his backpack. a missing chunk of wool taken by riz for 'analysis' that was really stuffed into a baggie and pinned on a conspiracy board. a tiny unicorn created from fig's illusion in the nightmare forest that seemed to stay real even after leaving the forest prancing about the inner world of the jacket. a pocket in the ethereal realm just so that ghostly edgar the rat can curl up in it without phasing through it. an 'in memoriam' patch sewn in to commemorate the jacket-world person who sacrificed his life to give her a wand of ray of frost in freshman year. a little uplifting message written in ballpoint pen on the inside of her cuff during class. a smattering of wolf hairs that persist no matter how hard she tries to brush them off and keep ending up in her mouth somehow, although she keeps politely quiet about the occasional grey she finds on her shoulders.

you don't understand how insane i am about gorgug in the nightmare forest. he's claustrophobic. he's spent his whole life in a house too small for him. the tunnel is full of bugs. everything and everyone is small and fragile and breakable. he's felt like an idiot his whole life. the only way to beat the puzzle is to give up and admit he isn't smart enough. he loves his friends so much he could send them hope from miles away. sickening.

hey we put your boyfriend in the nightmare forest. yeah he's hallucinating about a rat with real meaty hind legs. yeah it's got like a real wet nose and perfectly round ears. also there's a pirate that's gonna shit in his mouth. yeah the pirate isn't a hallucination after all. sorry

Crab? King.

Van? Boat.

Night? Yorb.

underrated d20 live moment: lou rolling a nat 1 intelligence check in the middle of fabian’s breakdown and siobhan responding by taking his dice and fucking dunking them in lou’s own water cup and ally declaring them baptised

rewatched this ep again and a hot follow up for the fact that lou also gets ally to baptise their own dice and spends at least one or two rounds rolling IN the glass of water because both him and ally are stunned for a full nine rounds of combat or something insane. truly underrated moment.

there’s something so heartbreaking about the way that d20, especially fantasy high and the seven, talks about fatherhood. some of the lesser mentioned ones are just as heartbreaking as the characters who have it as their whole thing. like fig and fabian hit but

ostentatia and her dad and how he would give anything for her no matter how much it hurts him and her and how he refuses to let anyone do anything for him bc he’s the dad and the one who should be taking care of her.

katja and her dad and how he thought he was doing what was best for her by working all the time, thinking that was better than him being around when really all she wanted was to spend time with him.

riz and his dad and how he idolises him and works through that moment of doubting his father and gets that time with him and it’s so sweet despite how much it hurts them both because seeing him can only be temporary.

liam and his dad and being an afterthought to a father who has so much more to consider than a kid who wasn’t anything like what he thought he would be.

jet and ruby with amethar being a king who has even more to consider but never stopped loving and caring for them for a second and always wanted them to have the carefree and happy childhood he had as someone who never should have gotten the throne.

saccharina and amethar being a father who has so much regret piled on his shoulders but can’t do anything to heal the pain he brought to his daughter except by trying to show how much he loves her and is proud of her.

adaine and a father who didn’t care and jawbone, a father who does, who recognises the rage and pain and anxiety in adaine and never for a second shames her for any of it.

kristen and a father who loves what he wants her to be and can’t accept what she is.

kugrash trying to redeem himself for gabriella but more for his sons and the joy he feels when wally forgives him and the sorrow he feels when he reads davids letters and confronts even further the pain he caused.

kingston and the absolute dream of having langston after years of denying himself in the name of the rest of new york only to understand that happiness for him doesn’t mean no happiness for everyone else.

fathers and all the pain they can bring and all the care they can have and all that they experience too.

my guy i hope u know this was me holding back

Don’t. Don’t hold back. Make me cry

okay well, firstly, there's fig and fabian, who are massive characters for this, but i wanted to focus on other characters.

so, with fig we have the issue of gilear: at the start of the series, we only see the breakdown in the relationship between him and fig. we see fig’s understanding of fatherhood as something about origins and blood and biology, a desperate attempt to understand more about both herself and the world around her, neither of which make sense to her at this point. she buries herself in rebellion, reinventing herself and rejecting everything that she thought she had been beforehand, including gilear. but he never stops wanting to be her father. we see him try and talk to her, wanting her to live with him, trying to take care of her despite everything that has happened. we see him choose fatherhood over and over and over. he does everything for fig: takes demeaning jobs and puts himself in awful positions because he wants to spend time with her. yes, it's funny, but at the root of it all the comedy is still coming from the choices and features of a character, and gilear's in-character motives are always centred around fig.

in sophomore year, they’re at the point when gilear is an awful choice to come with them but fig insists on not sending him back. fig is literally showing that, with all the diamonds for revivify, she refuses to put a price on having a father with her. she’d give anything for it. season one and two also happen while she's forging a relationship with gorthalax and then also dealing with the pain of being forced to betray him. still, gilear is the perfect emotional tie for fig through a lot of the series, a link to someone she used to be, a link to something that she keeps trying to get rid of and embrace this new persona, but a link to something that matters for her character. as we see in the forest, fig has so much doubt about herself and the persona she puts forward. she tries so hard to be this badass awesome person that she truly is but that she doubts all the same. and then the person who saves her is gilear in the pride armour. he has pride in being her father and that’s it. he embraces his shame about most of his character so consistently that this is a comedic moment but honestly it makes a lot of sense for both of their characters too. gilear would do anything for his daughter but is so rarely able to. fig has so much doubt about her ability to be this great funny person and thinks the real her isn’t worth it. gilear saves her and for him it’s a moment of finally being enough to help her and for her it’s a moment of showing that she doesn’t have to worry about being enough for herself, because the way that the people she loves see her is true to them and true to the world and being her persona isn’t the same as being enough. gilear chooses over and over to be her dad and fig chooses over and over to be his daughter.

then there’s bill and fabian. the way fabian introduces himself all the time is funny, yes, but it’s also him consistently stressing his link to his father. he paints everything he does as an extension of his dad, of his papa and that’s what he wants! he wants to be like his dad, to measure up to the legacy. bill is a dad who never shuts up about loving his son but also, accidentally, creates so many conditions for fabian to not feel good enough. he tells him that he’s bribed a place on the blood rush team for fabian despite him being insanely athletic and honestly capable of getting on there himself. he makes fabian feels like he has to be a leader when, honestly, that would be disastrous for the bad kids because the whole point is that they work together perfectly because they all have different strengths. that’s the point of a party but not the point of a crew. bill is a pirate through and through and fabian isn’t. fabian is an adventurer, part of a team, and he plays that part perfectly but that isn’t enough to him. not once he kills his dad, taking on the continuing of his legacy for him. suddenly, it’s not just that everything he does is an extension of bill but it’s also that everything he does has to honour him as well, has to paint fabian as a worthy successor to his fame instead of a disappointment.

and then fabian tries to lead his dad’s warlocks, literally taking his father’s place, and he fails. and fabian doesn’t know what to do with failure. his dad never told him how to handle that, because to bill, fabian could never be a failure. but not to fabian. chungledown tells fabian he’s not a real pirate and a disappointment to his father and it’s exactly what would make fabian break. losing to james and failing his dad pushes him over the edge in this place full of his father’s legacy. and then fabian ends up in the water. a pirate, drowning, with no one to help him. no crew, no party, no father. and then fabian spends the whole fight with james stunned and how shameful. he has his friends there, his party, but he is so beaten down that he can’t stand up for it, can’t face james and the shame and the realisation that he isn’t his father. that being fabian isn’t being bill. that he can’t be an extension. and it isn’t just the pressure of it — fabian loves his father! so much! that’s why he’s never wanted to be anything more than the next bill. and then they go to fallinel and suddenly fabian doesn’t have to be his father. suddenly there’s another option, another tradition, another aspect of himself to explore, and, mechanically, not only does it help his character arc but it also literally helps him support his friends better ! he’s able to give bardic inspiration to literally mechanically help his party just by being there and being himself and understanding his new side to himself. this is an understanding that he doesn’t have to be a pirate, that he doesn’t have to be a leader. he can play either a support or leading role for whatever works best and it works because it’s him and his friends and they’ll be whatever they need to be for themselves and for each other. and, as we see when they go to hell, bill couldn’t be prouder! and fabian isn’t surprised by that because bill loves him but now he understands that he doesn’t need to repay that love by being him. bill loves his own darling boy who is also his own man and fabian is still his papa’s darling boy as well as his own man and it hits because it’s how so many people grow into their adulthood or their adolescence. an understanding that you are as much your own person as you are a product.

there's still more in d20, especially when you consider relationships like pete with his dad and the contrast of his relationship with Kingston, but this is getting long.