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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ur post semi-recently about like how good the horror in sophomore year is has inspired me and now I’m rewatching it while I wait for new neverafters (also bc i need to be injecting intrepid heroes content into my bloodstream constantly to keep me alive rn and neverafter only comes out once a week but ya know. mostly cause you inspired me.)

i am perpetually in a rewatch of fhsy, and all the neverafter references to it have not helped. The Trials of Baba Yaga was a little bit a Walmart Perfect Symmetry but I loved her anyway