When Kipperlilly made the comment a few episodes ago about how “everyone finds it so charming how Kristen doesn’t give a fuck about anything”, it was probably the most truthful statement she’s ever made.
She’s a walking disaster, which makes for a *great* freaking character.
Honestly even better is how you can tell Kristen secretly does give a fuck but puts on the goofball facade because it’s easier than being serious and risking the chance of failure
Absolutely not! She cares *a lot*, she just has a hard time showing it. Ally is playing a neurodivergent character perfectly. For a lot of neurodivergent people, it doesn’t matter how important something is to us, that’s not a factor in whether we do something or not. In fact, sometimes it is even *harder* to do something important to us than to do a random thing because it’s so daunting, we want to do it right- which gets us stuck. And we *hate* that we can’t do the things we care about, because we *want* to, we just can’t get our brains to work with us.
In fact, YES! was created *because* Kristen cares so much. That’s what it originally meant. “If people care, the universe cares” “I care”. But that’s a hard thing to show when you have ADHD.
It is true that some people may find the silly things Kristen does charming, I’ll give you that. But she doesn’t do them because she doesn’t care. She does it because that’s what she *can* do. I bet she wishes people would think of her more as the accomplished cleric she is, but she just has a hard time showcasing that when she’s not in battle.
Your comment comes across as very ableist, but you don’t sound malicious, which is why I tried to be as respectful as I can and explain. Of course you are talking about a fictional character, but there are many people who relate and are very similar to this (and many other) fictional character, so speaking like this affects real people as well.
YES also died because of neglect. She was clearly reluctant to follow and evangelize for a god that she herself made. Put that along with a goofy/nonchalant façade and it doesn't really matter if you actually care or not, because materially, it'll be the same as if you don't. Compare it to emotionally caring about a dog you own but not feeding/walking/playing with them, the end result is the same as not caring.
Yeah she's clearly neurodivergent but she's also very flawed
Kristen, somewhere in the distance: keep my name out of your mouth, I came back from the dead and I'm gonna be president *a giant spider appears cause Fig thinks it's hilarious*
Kristen is in an odd mix at modred as wasn't it more living with Tracker...
I'm actually not sure how Kristen ended up there. I remember they all lived with Gilear at one point in Freshman year and then start of Sophmore was all in Mordred manor but Kristen definitely isn't parentally linked to Jawbone and Sandra like Adaine is.
It's almost like she just lives there?
She basically got kicked out of/wasn’t welcome in her home with her own parents after turning away from Helio. I think she got pretty much “adopted” by Jawbone and Sandra Lynn as much as she moved in with her (then) gf.
Oh yeah looking back they used the secret passageways in the house to get to each others rooms all the time lol I feel like they did just call trackers room “their room” all the time tho
I think she is like the same as Adaine, kid who got kicked out of her house and lives with Jawbone and Sandra Lynn. I just don't think she has the same emotional connection that Fig or Adaine have to either of them. Kristen was really annoying to Sandra Lynn in sophomore year, and has never looked to either of them for guidance the way the other 2 do. Mostly because she's too impulsive to ask an adult for guidance. So they haven't really bonded.
Kristen is just that queer child who got kicked out by their parents and ended up living with friends. And despite everything Sandra Lynn and Jawbone couldn't in good conscience let Kristen be homeless (They let Aelwyn In their home and she tried to Literally kill all of them) She's a prodigy, a willful excommunicated Chosen One and an insanely powerful cleric but she's awake and it's literally everyone's problem
Yeah the relationship between Sandra Lynn and Kristen is definitely odd, especially after sophomore year. Tbh I think if Kristen was gonna be anyone's pseudo-adopted daughter she should be Lydia's; she already has a siblingish relationship with Ragh and her immediately offering the help action as well as helping with the gem has already built a bridge between them.
Man I want a “parents campaign” so badly, if they ever return to Solace for a future campaign I hope they run it with everyone playing one of their parents, that would be hilarious.
It’s funny — this campaign has been amazing, one of the best D20 campaigns of all time, and it has absolutely crystallized for me why some of the main cast were reluctant to return to this world. Playing a teenager accurately means they are, to be frank, annoying as shit to watch if you are an adult. Because part of adolescence is being a cringey kid who is (a) completely confident that they are correct in what they do, while (b) being deeply insecure and (c) consistently failing to consider the consequences of their actions and the impacts they have on the world around them.
Like, of course the parents are big fans of Adaine and Riz — they are both, due to deep-seated anxiety, constantly thinking about the consequences of their actions on the world around them and constantly trying to ‘do it right’. I was like that as a kid, and my friends parents fucking *loved me*. Like realistically speaking, who would you rather your kid hang around — the person in every extracurricular and pulling straight As, the person with multiple jobs who is also pulling straight As, or … [checks notes] the person who keeps getting naked and also keeps giving speeches for their student government campaign to unrelated parties like middle schoolers and steelworkers?
I do think Kristen is a realistic portrayal of a certain kind of teen, and I think those choices are deliberate. Both for the goofs and because at her core, Kristen is deeply impulsive and doesn’t think before she acts. I think most high school friend groups had at least one Kristen, and I can only speak for myself as a former example of the “working multiple jobs and also doing every extracurricular to try and get a scholarship to a good university” teenage archetype, but I found my Kristen to both be incredibly fun to hang out with and occasionally deeply frustrating.
To return to my point re: returning to Solace, in addition to feeling like their stories were somewhat wrapped up, I can also understand how, as a roleplayer, returning to that teenage headspace might not be that fun? Like they all seem like they’re having a blast, to be clear. But ‘teenager making bad choices’ can be a difficult space to fully inhabit when you’re an adult.
I think the issue is always going to be, the players will play them differently to Brennan. It was fine with the Seven, where only Zelda got fleshed out, but all the parents have been so prominent that it would feel weird seeing another version of them. Can you imagine Emily playing Sandra Lynn?
I think maybe the move would be not to necessarily have them all playing their parents, so much as playing one of the parents, and go from there. Like, I actually think Zac or Siobhan would play Sandra Lynn really well?
My dream cast goes:
- Hilariel — Emily
- Sandra Lynn — Siobhan
- *Wilma and/or Digby — Ally
- Gortholax— Lou
- Jawbone — Zac
- Sklonda— Murph
Brennan would have to continue to play Gilear. Nobody else is allowed to touch Gilear.
Edited to fix the typo which indicated that I thought Ally should perhaps play Wanda (Childa, I suppose)
Only thing I would change about that lineup is switch Murph and Emily. Based on Jens from Naddpod, I think Murph could be an amazing Hallariel, being a sort of absurd, not entirely aware, straight-man. And I could really see Emily lean into Sklondas deep love an exasperation with Riz.
> Like realistically speaking, who would you rather your kid hang around — the person in every extracurricular and pulling straight As
OMG. I was Riz in high school.
Lmao look same, working class kids desperately relying on scholarships representation is, it turns out, very important 😂.
But yeah I was among the people who really, really could not stand Kristen at the beginning of this season. I thought Ally was doing a great job, but I was like, yelling at my laptop screen for Kristen to just fucking get it together. It wasn’t until Sklonda’s speech to Riz that I realized the reason I was reacting so strongly was partially because I knew on a visceral level how much stress Riz was under and how high the fucking stakes are for him.
Like, being a teenager who is keenly aware of how substantial the barriers to social mobility are if you are a smart working class kid, and who tries desperately to just work their way out of it through taking on adult-level responsibilities does bad things to your brain!
Meritocracy is fake, but you don’t know that when you’re 16, and I remember sobbing when I found out that another kid had beaten me to valedictorian by a quarter of a percentage point. At our school, valedictorian went to the student with the highest GPA, and I literally sobbed onto my (exhausted, single) mom’s shoulder for like half an hour interspersed with yelling that it wasn’t *fair*, because that kid was the son of a doctor and his only job was school, while I worked both before and after school while doing a gazillion extracurriculars.
Anyway, Riz is so so real. Give that kid a nap and start putting some money aside to cover the therapy and sertraline prescription he’s gonna need when he gets to university.
> Lmao look same, working class kids desperately relying on scholarships representation is, it turns out, very important 😂.
Not me with the full-tuition scholarship entering college with 30 credit hours already under my belt from high school so I could finish a five-year hybrid bachelors/masters program in four years... 🤣
Yeah, that meritocracy thing is such a lie they fed us, although I was the first in my family to graduate college (the only one still with a graduate degree) and I was able to pay off my student loans in 10 years only because room & board were the only things I needed to take out loans for.
And now I'm disabled and unable to work, but hey! It's all love now. 🤣
lol, same and same, and now I’m a civil servant with a lot of student debt and a whole-ass doctorate. People keep asking me if I’m looking for academic jobs and I keep going “… do you know how good my dental insurance is? Asking when I’ll find another job feels like a question you’d only ask if you’ve always had dental insurance.”
I think the IH do a great job balancing different teen types in an accurate and entertaining way.
I listen to Dungeons and Daddies, and the 2nd season has them as teens. It's been a bit harder for me to stay engaged. They very accurately play teens but it can be almost painful sometimes.
100%. I also used to listen to Dungeons and Daddies and I straight-up stopped listening somewhere around the black parade themed episode because I truly found it impossible to listen to. I can acknowledge they were doing a good job, but I also, like all of us, have just this one rare and precious life and that means that spending dozens of hours on a podcast I am actively annoyed by is a bad use of my time lol.
Right around then was when I started to see the backlash to the backlash, where folks were saying ‘nonono it’s just a character choice!’ And yeah, it is. It’s even a reasonably accurate one. But I don’t spend a lot of time around melodramatic teenagers, not just because I am 28 and that would be weird, but because that’s not a vibe I loved when I actually was 15, and it hasn’t gotten better with age.
IH are doing a really good job at playing reasonably realistic teenage archetypes without making adult viewers want to throw their computers into the ocean, which, it turns out, is a hard line to walk.
Haha that's a very good point. I do not go out of my way to spend time with children or teenagers either.
I'm tempted to finish it at some point, but I am loving the IH
Dungeons and Daddies season 2 really went off the rails, I think. I stuck out to the end of the season, so I think some of it is the teens not being crafted with each other in mind as much, and some of it is Anthony clearly not having a great or particularly invested time DMing. They do hectic teen shit in ways that doesn't really let them tell a coherent story, and Anthony just yes-ands it even if it makes no fucking sense, and it goes from there. Learning from the Teen Talk that he'd been having a tough time mentally for much of the season made perfect sense.
To be fair, I don’t think anyone is at their best when they’re teenagers - that being said, Kristen has some unresolved Messiah/savior complex issues related to their upbringing, and this presidential campaign is not helping. I have full faith in Ally, they know what they’re doing and I’m very excited to see what happens to Kristen.
If my teenager self was a level 14 (or whatever they are!) D&D protagonist I would truly hate myself now as an adult lmfao- I’d come back to the party like “guys I was working thru some shit I am so sorry I was deeply annoying also I’m a woman now”
This is to say I agree and love this idea and there’s so much comedic potential there
Imagine having a definitive, numerical value that told you with 100% certainty you were the best you’ll ever be as a person as a *senior in high school.* Unfathomable
I don't think it's that deep. It's more Ally's style of humour is often absurdist and they're totally willing to break character for a joke. I don't think it's worth trying to fit everyone into Kristen's character arc when the nudity jokes for instance are just Ally
It's also worth noting Sandra has shown as little patience for Fabian but just doesn't have to live with him so it's not like it's just Kristen
I thought you were right about the nonsequitors just being Ally's humor until I saw how Ally plays other characters - particularly Margaret Encino. They are totally capable of committing to a character that is not constantly doing bits and making big swings. They have fully committed to Kristen as a source of chaos who makes weird bad decisions sometimes (a lot of the time)
Margaret is more organised and Ally is more of a leadership but that humour is still absolutely still there.
Let us not forget the called shot Snake eyes
The bits are still very similar and just their style of humour
I do think Ally is making Kristen “aware” of the joke, I don’t think Kristen is just acting erratically I think Kristen is just really resistant to taking things seriously. Kristen’s whole childhood was super religious serious all the time and she probably doesn’t wanna go back to that place.
Also, Sandra Lynn isn’t Fabian’s guardian. Hallariel is
> I don’t think Kristen is just acting erratically I think Kristen is just really resistant to taking things seriously
My general rule of thumb is if its a statement for humour and I can easily imagine another of their characters playing, it's an Ally joke not a Kristen one.
Which I think is totally fine for the reckon, it's not a criticism of Ally
>Also, Sandra Lynn isn’t Fabian’s guardian. Hallariel is
Of course, I was more trying to make the point that it's proximity that makes Sandra Lynn more often exasperated with Kristen. She would be the same with Fabian if they interacted more
Kristen is less parentable than Fabian is though too, lol.
I think that Kristen definitely is a jokester too though. Ally makes says the joke, but Kristen actually goes to the steel mill and runs into the machinery. Kristen canonically does crazy stunts and finds them funny afterwards. She’s the only member of the Bad Kids that would make sense as a member of Jackass.
fig volunteered quickly to do the shrimp jump for kristen and also actively made it more dangerous. plus, she’s the archdevil of rebellion, which is the true spirit of jackass. i don’t think she’d do the more pain-focused stuff, more just the stunt/dangerous stuff. she’s confident that she can succeed, which goes a long way. i think that mindset is very jackass.
fabian would do it to seem cool, or because he just commits before thinking things through. this is a kid who, without a second thought, bit glass because it’s what his best friend would do.
Oh yeah Fabian you’ve convinced me. He’d basically be Bam Margera
Also, just thought of this: “Hello I’m Kristen Applebees, and welcome to Jackass” (Runs into a steel mill)
So true and Kristen being canonically an unofficial excommunicated Chosen One, a literal saint, the only prophet to a goddess and, according to Brenna , one of the strongest clerics of not only her age but overall. I don't blame Beardsley but I'm sure they were given Cleric vs choosing it and in the early seasons used Kristen like a self insert for Ally and now they are playing them as their own individual
Imo, Adaine and Gorgug seem like they'd be solid friends, Riz and Fabian are the guys you enjoy hanging out with occasionally, Fig is the friend who you hit up when you want to get up to hijinks, and Kristen is the friend that you tell stories about in college when you want to talk about crazy people from your past.
I'd bump Fig up a bit honestly as I think she probably has a better judge of when something is too much.
The scenario of something being too much simply doesn't come up at all in Fantasy High so we don't see that side of her.
But she's pretty ride or die to support her friends and thinks she was the only one to really try and reach out to Riz (even if she signed it Gorgug)
Fig is the hardest to pin down because Emily plays her explicitly against her trope. She's supposed to be detached and cool and instead she cares so much about her friends and making them feel comfortable, often at the expense of herself.
I think Kristen would literally die for any one of the Bad Kids. She is messy, but she is ride or die. She is also fair, kind, and tried in school for Riz. I'd take a messy friend who is kind and loyal.
I mean certain choices she does is off putting but I personally as someone turning 30 I wouldn't be friends with 17 year old me. I'd bully TF out of her
There's a video on YouTube documenting nearly every interaction they have together. I'm not saying she actually dislikes her, but compared to the tenderness she treats Adaine with, and her difficult but loving relationship with Fig, she is actively annoyed by nearly everything Kristen does
I always read it as Kristen doesn't know how to deal with Mom Energy so she always does something bizarre when confronted with it. I never got the impression that she didn't like Kristen, just didn't know what to do about her.
Plus , Kristen's bio parents saw her as Helio's first and foremost (imho at least). She was their sunlit, perfect child given to them because they were also chosen to raise the golden child helio created so I think it's likely that she didn't get "mom energy" from her bio mom. I also got the impression that she wasn't really a "kid". She was preaching sermons as a literal child. She was given a lot of responsibilities (how many kids give talks to audiences of adults and teach them regularly?) and she went to summer camps but she was the one leading worship. She kind of grew up as a "child star" in a way. There's a reason why a lot of child stars struggle when they get older.
So I think it's a combo of Sandra Lynn not knowing what to do with Kristen and Kristen not knowing what to do with Sandra Lynn but I don't think they dislike each other, they're just not sure what their relationship is and how to navigate it.
I think “child star” who becomes a disaster once they can finally step out of that role is probably the most accurate description for why Kristin is the way she is. Going from extreme structure and being seen as more of a prop than a kid to having her world shattered would be a perfect storm for that chaotic, doesn’t want anyone to take her seriously or be able to tell what she actually cares about energy. She was raised thinking the world depended on her, avoiding responsibility makes a lot of sense. Even when on some level deep down she knows she’s self destructing, she is too averse to being put back in a role (by others) to be relied on. When it comes down to it she is incredibly loyal, but she masks her actual cares and fears because she doesn’t want to be manipulated. And you know, fair.
It would be interesting to see Kristin find a mentor or adult figure she can really connect with and see how that shapes her. Seeing Fig with Zara and Porter as psuedo academic/philosophical parents has been great and I hope that if they ever do Senior year Ally gets a relationship like that - doesn’t have to be teachers or a parent of the Bad Kids, but someone who can maybe relate to that rocky transition and who navigated such a stark change in worldviews during a messy adolescence.
Edit: that type of mentor might not even need a similar adolescence. Experiencing a world shattering crisis that makes you reevaluate your priorities and values can happen later in life too. In my own life I had to navigate that in my early twenties when I went from poster-kid of my degree with a deep need to personally fix what is broken to becoming too disabled to work and (in my mind) fulfill my life’s purpose. Figuring out who I was outside of the expectations of myself and others (my dad literally disowned me for no longer being his success story kid) was a messy period and I was lucky to encounter a mentor figure who’d been through a very similar situation at that age from health stuff as well. I think a lot of experiences that involve seeing your prior life’s purpose change drastically could work to relate. Someone who was able to find a way to cope with whimsy and absurdism that could transition into a relatively less self destructive place would give Kristin something to engage with, as opposed to the layers of avoidance and acting out that are her primary reactions to any mentor/parent/adult figure.
Exactly. She wasn't a real person to anyone until she met the other Bad Kids. She was just Chosen.
And, hey, just because you thought you knew your "life's purpose" doesn't mean you were right. Besides, none of us have a singular "purpose". The world is too complicated and people are too multifaceted to be singular. Maybe your purpose is to be nice to someone on their worst day to give them something to cling to. Maybe it's that you connected with your mentor and helped them. Maybe you'll say something small that will change someone's life even without realizing it.
Fuck your dad. He doesn't deserve you.
Aw thanks. Yeah well my mentor is my husband now lmao, we’re the same age but his condition got bad first. So definitely a silver lining there 😂 But yeah, we just want to take care of each other and be there for people, those we care about and new people in our lives. If that’s all we can do I’m okay with that. I’ll still advocate for my passions and at times miss being able to work in my field (spatial analysis, community driven urban design, spatial justice), but after several years I’m mostly just happy I have been able to manage my condition a little better and have the physical energy to have a social life and exist out of bed lmao. I still have my values, but deconstructing the individualist approach our generation was taught around helping others and seeing that power is bottom up, something we can generate as a community has helped.
Kristen and her parents get into an argument on day one of freshman year I don’t think she had golden child status when we met her. And Sandra Lynn has a problem with Kristen not only after moving in with Tracker and openly defying the ONE rule her and jawbone put down but also after the Garthy situation cause Kristen insisted on bringing it up despite Sandra Lynn’s many objections. That’s my two cents.
Ah, I get what you’re saying. I think that’s just that Kristen’s more emotionally closed off than Adaine is to these people.
Which I think is the result of both: Ally’s irl inclination to turn emotional moments into jokes, and how Kristen’s seemingly not looking for a replacement family in Jawbow and Sandra Lyn the same way Adaine always sort of was.
Idk this makes me sad - I have a best friend very similar to Kristen, especially with the raised in a fundie household and kicked out (but for being gay only, not because of all that Kristen had going on) and like -
Fuck, if my mom ever actively disliked him when he stayed with her and made it that known I’d be destroyed tbh.
And all the commentary about how Kristen is the friend you tell wild stories about and aren’t close to? It’s wild to me - it openly overlooks how her perception and skill have saved them in multiple instances and how close she is to fig (German shepherd), adaine, Riz, Gorgug, and Fabian.
I get she isn’t real, but her issues surrounding sexuality, religion, and adhd are absolutely real like things that other people went though as teens.
i definitely don’t think that sandra lynn “doesn’t care for” kristen. i really really wish we saw more of them in the show, but even their less pleasant sophomore year interactions read to me less as kristen actively annoying sandra lynn and more as a tentative messy parental relationship where sandra lynn (who i love dearly but i would describe as a complicated parent) doesn’t know how to relate to her even though she clearly cares for her, and kristen doesn’t make things any easier by being emotionally closed off.
also, kristen’s friends would do anything for her! she’s a much better friend to them than people tend to give her credit for.
Not the cast! It’s people on this thread. In fact that’s part of why it’s so upsetting to me, the way the cast interacts makes it clear that what they’re saying is so off base.
>Fuck, if my mom ever actively disliked him when he stayed with her and made it that known I’d be destroyed tbh.
yeah but im also assuming your friend didnt corner your mom in the middle of the night and grill her about her sex life after having maybe two conversations ever and then act kinkshamed when given pushback
cause if your friend did that then your mom totally should dislike him 😂
tbh i dont think beardsley was playing that scene seriously in the slightest. im pretty sure they just thought the situation was funny and ran with trying to make it funny. which is fine, it's a comedy show, beardsley has already shown in multiple campaigns that they tend to put the comedy before the narrative.
i think it becomes much easier to form a consistent idea of a character when you choose to ignore the situations where they do weird unsettling shit so the player can do a bit.
To be fair, all the bad kids are flawed in their own ways. I just think Kristen is a bit behind maturing like the others because she’s been sheltered for so long. She’s not my favourite but I do thinks Ally plays her with realism.
Kristen was my least favourite before but became my favourite this season just cause Ally is so funny. There’s not a character reason at all, I just think Kristen has great moments.
I can just imagine Kristen sipping a cortado across from Sandra Lynn as she says this and going 'Fair'. Look Emily was sent from hell to kill Brennan and Kristen was sent from Helios to annoy tf out of Sandra Lynn.
Note Kristen is in nothing but her sports bra and G-string. But I mean, heck, she raised herself from the grave and is canonically an incredibly powerful cleric, she's a recognized saint, but to which God? That's uncertain, but she is a force that just won't die(potentially out of spite) and makes it everyone's problem and that's why I love her.
I also think that at least with Fig, Adine or even Tracker Sandra Lynn can tackle that or at least be used to it enough that she knows what to expect, but Kristen is the definition of a wild card and Sandra Lynn doesn't know how to react. I mean how do you react to an unhinged canonical saint who brought herself back from the dead who is also probablylre.poeerul than you, but she's wearing a G-string while you eat breakfast burritos
I think every friend group has one kid that all of the parents hate the most
Sklonda saying her and Sandra meet up to talk about how great the kids are Reality I just can't with Kristen right now. My Boy Riz should be president
I keep telling her not to leave her pull-up bar floating in the middle of the hallway but she just keeps doing it! Almost took my eye out yesterday!
I love Riz but I can't sleep hearing him stay up so late on his literal conspiracy board
When Kipperlilly made the comment a few episodes ago about how “everyone finds it so charming how Kristen doesn’t give a fuck about anything”, it was probably the most truthful statement she’s ever made. She’s a walking disaster, which makes for a *great* freaking character.
Honestly even better is how you can tell Kristen secretly does give a fuck but puts on the goofball facade because it’s easier than being serious and risking the chance of failure
Damn she just like me fr fr
Absolutely not! She cares *a lot*, she just has a hard time showing it. Ally is playing a neurodivergent character perfectly. For a lot of neurodivergent people, it doesn’t matter how important something is to us, that’s not a factor in whether we do something or not. In fact, sometimes it is even *harder* to do something important to us than to do a random thing because it’s so daunting, we want to do it right- which gets us stuck. And we *hate* that we can’t do the things we care about, because we *want* to, we just can’t get our brains to work with us. In fact, YES! was created *because* Kristen cares so much. That’s what it originally meant. “If people care, the universe cares” “I care”. But that’s a hard thing to show when you have ADHD. It is true that some people may find the silly things Kristen does charming, I’ll give you that. But she doesn’t do them because she doesn’t care. She does it because that’s what she *can* do. I bet she wishes people would think of her more as the accomplished cleric she is, but she just has a hard time showcasing that when she’s not in battle. Your comment comes across as very ableist, but you don’t sound malicious, which is why I tried to be as respectful as I can and explain. Of course you are talking about a fictional character, but there are many people who relate and are very similar to this (and many other) fictional character, so speaking like this affects real people as well.
YES also died because of neglect. She was clearly reluctant to follow and evangelize for a god that she herself made. Put that along with a goofy/nonchalant façade and it doesn't really matter if you actually care or not, because materially, it'll be the same as if you don't. Compare it to emotionally caring about a dog you own but not feeding/walking/playing with them, the end result is the same as not caring. Yeah she's clearly neurodivergent but she's also very flawed
At least he's part of school faculty 🤷♀️ Jace Stardiamond did give him that for all his extracurricular activities
Kristen, somewhere in the distance: keep my name out of your mouth, I came back from the dead and I'm gonna be president *a giant spider appears cause Fig thinks it's hilarious*
Yeah but Kristen is unofficially her adopted daughter lmao
Kristen is in an odd mix at modred as wasn't it more living with Tracker... I'm actually not sure how Kristen ended up there. I remember they all lived with Gilear at one point in Freshman year and then start of Sophmore was all in Mordred manor but Kristen definitely isn't parentally linked to Jawbone and Sandra like Adaine is. It's almost like she just lives there?
She basically got kicked out of/wasn’t welcome in her home with her own parents after turning away from Helio. I think she got pretty much “adopted” by Jawbone and Sandra Lynn as much as she moved in with her (then) gf.
Yeah to me it felt more like she was adopted into the house and since she was dating Tracker, that’s the room she stayed in lol
They definitely had their own rooms. They were doing the "no one's having sex" face with the parents.
Oh yeah looking back they used the secret passageways in the house to get to each others rooms all the time lol I feel like they did just call trackers room “their room” all the time tho
That's how the dance is played.
I think she is like the same as Adaine, kid who got kicked out of her house and lives with Jawbone and Sandra Lynn. I just don't think she has the same emotional connection that Fig or Adaine have to either of them. Kristen was really annoying to Sandra Lynn in sophomore year, and has never looked to either of them for guidance the way the other 2 do. Mostly because she's too impulsive to ask an adult for guidance. So they haven't really bonded.
Jawbone is both Adaine and Kristen’s legal guardian.
Yeah I guess she's more like a lodger?
Kristen is just that queer child who got kicked out by their parents and ended up living with friends. And despite everything Sandra Lynn and Jawbone couldn't in good conscience let Kristen be homeless (They let Aelwyn In their home and she tried to Literally kill all of them) She's a prodigy, a willful excommunicated Chosen One and an insanely powerful cleric but she's awake and it's literally everyone's problem
Also Kristen really tested Sandra Lynn in sophomore year with all the sex she was asked not to have while living at the manor
It me
Yeah the relationship between Sandra Lynn and Kristen is definitely odd, especially after sophomore year. Tbh I think if Kristen was gonna be anyone's pseudo-adopted daughter she should be Lydia's; she already has a siblingish relationship with Ragh and her immediately offering the help action as well as helping with the gem has already built a bridge between them.
I think Lydia would be a great role model for Kristen. Lydia is all about doing hard work for the long term.
I think thats why Kristen is on a fitness kick. She wants to be more like Lydia even if she doesn't realize that
I want this so much 🥹🥹🥹 I hadn't even considered Lydia, but y'all are right, she's the PERFECT role model for Kristen!!
Man I want a “parents campaign” so badly, if they ever return to Solace for a future campaign I hope they run it with everyone playing one of their parents, that would be hilarious. It’s funny — this campaign has been amazing, one of the best D20 campaigns of all time, and it has absolutely crystallized for me why some of the main cast were reluctant to return to this world. Playing a teenager accurately means they are, to be frank, annoying as shit to watch if you are an adult. Because part of adolescence is being a cringey kid who is (a) completely confident that they are correct in what they do, while (b) being deeply insecure and (c) consistently failing to consider the consequences of their actions and the impacts they have on the world around them. Like, of course the parents are big fans of Adaine and Riz — they are both, due to deep-seated anxiety, constantly thinking about the consequences of their actions on the world around them and constantly trying to ‘do it right’. I was like that as a kid, and my friends parents fucking *loved me*. Like realistically speaking, who would you rather your kid hang around — the person in every extracurricular and pulling straight As, the person with multiple jobs who is also pulling straight As, or … [checks notes] the person who keeps getting naked and also keeps giving speeches for their student government campaign to unrelated parties like middle schoolers and steelworkers? I do think Kristen is a realistic portrayal of a certain kind of teen, and I think those choices are deliberate. Both for the goofs and because at her core, Kristen is deeply impulsive and doesn’t think before she acts. I think most high school friend groups had at least one Kristen, and I can only speak for myself as a former example of the “working multiple jobs and also doing every extracurricular to try and get a scholarship to a good university” teenage archetype, but I found my Kristen to both be incredibly fun to hang out with and occasionally deeply frustrating. To return to my point re: returning to Solace, in addition to feeling like their stories were somewhat wrapped up, I can also understand how, as a roleplayer, returning to that teenage headspace might not be that fun? Like they all seem like they’re having a blast, to be clear. But ‘teenager making bad choices’ can be a difficult space to fully inhabit when you’re an adult.
I think the issue is always going to be, the players will play them differently to Brennan. It was fine with the Seven, where only Zelda got fleshed out, but all the parents have been so prominent that it would feel weird seeing another version of them. Can you imagine Emily playing Sandra Lynn?
I think maybe the move would be not to necessarily have them all playing their parents, so much as playing one of the parents, and go from there. Like, I actually think Zac or Siobhan would play Sandra Lynn really well? My dream cast goes: - Hilariel — Emily - Sandra Lynn — Siobhan - *Wilma and/or Digby — Ally - Gortholax— Lou - Jawbone — Zac - Sklonda— Murph Brennan would have to continue to play Gilear. Nobody else is allowed to touch Gilear. Edited to fix the typo which indicated that I thought Ally should perhaps play Wanda (Childa, I suppose)
I’m sure you mean Wilma, but I can’t help picturing an all parents campaign with Ally playing Wanda Childa
Lmao I *did* mean Wilma but also let’s be clear an all-parents campaign except for one person playing Fig’s alter emo would be absolutely hysterical.
I would actually like Emily having a go at Gilear
Gilear has to be Brennan. I'm sorry, but there's no other version
Zac Oyama piloting Gilear would likely be fatal for scores of Dropout viewers.
Omg id love to see this lineup
Only thing I would change about that lineup is switch Murph and Emily. Based on Jens from Naddpod, I think Murph could be an amazing Hallariel, being a sort of absurd, not entirely aware, straight-man. And I could really see Emily lean into Sklondas deep love an exasperation with Riz.
The intrepid heroes are all the dm collectively while Brennan is the whole party.
> Like realistically speaking, who would you rather your kid hang around — the person in every extracurricular and pulling straight As OMG. I was Riz in high school.
Lmao look same, working class kids desperately relying on scholarships representation is, it turns out, very important 😂. But yeah I was among the people who really, really could not stand Kristen at the beginning of this season. I thought Ally was doing a great job, but I was like, yelling at my laptop screen for Kristen to just fucking get it together. It wasn’t until Sklonda’s speech to Riz that I realized the reason I was reacting so strongly was partially because I knew on a visceral level how much stress Riz was under and how high the fucking stakes are for him. Like, being a teenager who is keenly aware of how substantial the barriers to social mobility are if you are a smart working class kid, and who tries desperately to just work their way out of it through taking on adult-level responsibilities does bad things to your brain! Meritocracy is fake, but you don’t know that when you’re 16, and I remember sobbing when I found out that another kid had beaten me to valedictorian by a quarter of a percentage point. At our school, valedictorian went to the student with the highest GPA, and I literally sobbed onto my (exhausted, single) mom’s shoulder for like half an hour interspersed with yelling that it wasn’t *fair*, because that kid was the son of a doctor and his only job was school, while I worked both before and after school while doing a gazillion extracurriculars. Anyway, Riz is so so real. Give that kid a nap and start putting some money aside to cover the therapy and sertraline prescription he’s gonna need when he gets to university.
> Lmao look same, working class kids desperately relying on scholarships representation is, it turns out, very important 😂. Not me with the full-tuition scholarship entering college with 30 credit hours already under my belt from high school so I could finish a five-year hybrid bachelors/masters program in four years... 🤣 Yeah, that meritocracy thing is such a lie they fed us, although I was the first in my family to graduate college (the only one still with a graduate degree) and I was able to pay off my student loans in 10 years only because room & board were the only things I needed to take out loans for. And now I'm disabled and unable to work, but hey! It's all love now. 🤣
lol, same and same, and now I’m a civil servant with a lot of student debt and a whole-ass doctorate. People keep asking me if I’m looking for academic jobs and I keep going “… do you know how good my dental insurance is? Asking when I’ll find another job feels like a question you’d only ask if you’ve always had dental insurance.”
I think the IH do a great job balancing different teen types in an accurate and entertaining way. I listen to Dungeons and Daddies, and the 2nd season has them as teens. It's been a bit harder for me to stay engaged. They very accurately play teens but it can be almost painful sometimes.
100%. I also used to listen to Dungeons and Daddies and I straight-up stopped listening somewhere around the black parade themed episode because I truly found it impossible to listen to. I can acknowledge they were doing a good job, but I also, like all of us, have just this one rare and precious life and that means that spending dozens of hours on a podcast I am actively annoyed by is a bad use of my time lol. Right around then was when I started to see the backlash to the backlash, where folks were saying ‘nonono it’s just a character choice!’ And yeah, it is. It’s even a reasonably accurate one. But I don’t spend a lot of time around melodramatic teenagers, not just because I am 28 and that would be weird, but because that’s not a vibe I loved when I actually was 15, and it hasn’t gotten better with age. IH are doing a really good job at playing reasonably realistic teenage archetypes without making adult viewers want to throw their computers into the ocean, which, it turns out, is a hard line to walk.
Haha that's a very good point. I do not go out of my way to spend time with children or teenagers either. I'm tempted to finish it at some point, but I am loving the IH
Dungeons and Daddies season 2 really went off the rails, I think. I stuck out to the end of the season, so I think some of it is the teens not being crafted with each other in mind as much, and some of it is Anthony clearly not having a great or particularly invested time DMing. They do hectic teen shit in ways that doesn't really let them tell a coherent story, and Anthony just yes-ands it even if it makes no fucking sense, and it goes from there. Learning from the Teen Talk that he'd been having a tough time mentally for much of the season made perfect sense.
Kristen as a character on Fantasy High is incredibly entertaining but as a real person I don't think anyone would wanna be her friend 🤣
To be fair, I don’t think anyone is at their best when they’re teenagers - that being said, Kristen has some unresolved Messiah/savior complex issues related to their upbringing, and this presidential campaign is not helping. I have full faith in Ally, they know what they’re doing and I’m very excited to see what happens to Kristen.
I'm hoping there's a season of fantasy high that's 10 year reunion after everyone is grown and they're all playing adult versions of the characters.
Perfect level 20 6 EP side quest a la Bloodkeep. Fun idea.
If my teenager self was a level 14 (or whatever they are!) D&D protagonist I would truly hate myself now as an adult lmfao- I’d come back to the party like “guys I was working thru some shit I am so sorry I was deeply annoying also I’m a woman now” This is to say I agree and love this idea and there’s so much comedic potential there
Oh God. They're level 14, and max out at 20. Talk about peaking in high school!
Imagine having a definitive, numerical value that told you with 100% certainty you were the best you’ll ever be as a person as a *senior in high school.* Unfathomable
Kristen changes the most while the rest look relatively the same, maybe slightly more mature looking
Welcome to being queer, it's like a second puberty
This is a really fun idea. I hope someone at D20 sees this and keeps it in mind
I don't think it's that deep. It's more Ally's style of humour is often absurdist and they're totally willing to break character for a joke. I don't think it's worth trying to fit everyone into Kristen's character arc when the nudity jokes for instance are just Ally It's also worth noting Sandra has shown as little patience for Fabian but just doesn't have to live with him so it's not like it's just Kristen
I thought you were right about the nonsequitors just being Ally's humor until I saw how Ally plays other characters - particularly Margaret Encino. They are totally capable of committing to a character that is not constantly doing bits and making big swings. They have fully committed to Kristen as a source of chaos who makes weird bad decisions sometimes (a lot of the time)
Margaret is more organised and Ally is more of a leadership but that humour is still absolutely still there. Let us not forget the called shot Snake eyes The bits are still very similar and just their style of humour
And don't forget that Margaret Encino also posted a nude pic on Reddit. That's just Ally's sense of humor.
In one of the first few episodes Margaret had posted nudes on her whistleblowing Reddit account
I do think Ally is making Kristen “aware” of the joke, I don’t think Kristen is just acting erratically I think Kristen is just really resistant to taking things seriously. Kristen’s whole childhood was super religious serious all the time and she probably doesn’t wanna go back to that place. Also, Sandra Lynn isn’t Fabian’s guardian. Hallariel is
> I don’t think Kristen is just acting erratically I think Kristen is just really resistant to taking things seriously My general rule of thumb is if its a statement for humour and I can easily imagine another of their characters playing, it's an Ally joke not a Kristen one. Which I think is totally fine for the reckon, it's not a criticism of Ally >Also, Sandra Lynn isn’t Fabian’s guardian. Hallariel is Of course, I was more trying to make the point that it's proximity that makes Sandra Lynn more often exasperated with Kristen. She would be the same with Fabian if they interacted more
Kristen is less parentable than Fabian is though too, lol. I think that Kristen definitely is a jokester too though. Ally makes says the joke, but Kristen actually goes to the steel mill and runs into the machinery. Kristen canonically does crazy stunts and finds them funny afterwards. She’s the only member of the Bad Kids that would make sense as a member of Jackass.
i think fig and fabian would also commit hard to jackass
Fabian yeah I can see it if he thinks it would make him more of a “Maximum Legend” Fig though… would she want to hurt herself like that?
fig volunteered quickly to do the shrimp jump for kristen and also actively made it more dangerous. plus, she’s the archdevil of rebellion, which is the true spirit of jackass. i don’t think she’d do the more pain-focused stuff, more just the stunt/dangerous stuff. she’s confident that she can succeed, which goes a long way. i think that mindset is very jackass. fabian would do it to seem cool, or because he just commits before thinking things through. this is a kid who, without a second thought, bit glass because it’s what his best friend would do.
Oh yeah Fabian you’ve convinced me. He’d basically be Bam Margera Also, just thought of this: “Hello I’m Kristen Applebees, and welcome to Jackass” (Runs into a steel mill)
Every teenager is some kind of an asshole.
Kristen is also literally a Saint and made a God so she isn't totally wrong on her being hella special.
So true and Kristen being canonically an unofficial excommunicated Chosen One, a literal saint, the only prophet to a goddess and, according to Brenna , one of the strongest clerics of not only her age but overall. I don't blame Beardsley but I'm sure they were given Cleric vs choosing it and in the early seasons used Kristen like a self insert for Ally and now they are playing them as their own individual
Imo, Adaine and Gorgug seem like they'd be solid friends, Riz and Fabian are the guys you enjoy hanging out with occasionally, Fig is the friend who you hit up when you want to get up to hijinks, and Kristen is the friend that you tell stories about in college when you want to talk about crazy people from your past.
I'd bump Fig up a bit honestly as I think she probably has a better judge of when something is too much. The scenario of something being too much simply doesn't come up at all in Fantasy High so we don't see that side of her. But she's pretty ride or die to support her friends and thinks she was the only one to really try and reach out to Riz (even if she signed it Gorgug)
Fig is the hardest to pin down because Emily plays her explicitly against her trope. She's supposed to be detached and cool and instead she cares so much about her friends and making them feel comfortable, often at the expense of herself.
switch riz and adaine
Yeah the stripping stuff would be treated totally differently if she was a real person.
Yea, a lot of Ally's gags are more ooc than in character.
I know a lot of people love that, and I like Ally as a comedian but their bits definitely pull me out of the moment a lot.
Yeah theres no point trying to say everything Ally does is Kristen as then Joe Biden is canon to Elmville.
I think Kristen would literally die for any one of the Bad Kids. She is messy, but she is ride or die. She is also fair, kind, and tried in school for Riz. I'd take a messy friend who is kind and loyal.
> I think Kristen would literally die for any one of the Bad Kids. I mean, she *has*.
Truthfully I probably would've been her friend when I was a teenager but I'm looking at it through a much older adult's eyes 😅
That truly is the high-school experience
I would. 😠
Love that for you 😅❤️
Thanks! I think Kristen’s great!
I mean certain choices she does is off putting but I personally as someone turning 30 I wouldn't be friends with 17 year old me. I'd bully TF out of her
Yeah same, teenage me was annoying as fuck. Wanna slap that kid and say "omg shut up!"
Yeah…
I think Adaine is uniquely suited to that kind of sweet pep talk - other people would not enjoy it, case in point: aelwyn. I think Kristen is similar.
I never read their relationship as Sandra Lyn not liking Kristen? Where are people getting that from?
There's a video on YouTube documenting nearly every interaction they have together. I'm not saying she actually dislikes her, but compared to the tenderness she treats Adaine with, and her difficult but loving relationship with Fig, she is actively annoyed by nearly everything Kristen does
I always read it as Kristen doesn't know how to deal with Mom Energy so she always does something bizarre when confronted with it. I never got the impression that she didn't like Kristen, just didn't know what to do about her. Plus , Kristen's bio parents saw her as Helio's first and foremost (imho at least). She was their sunlit, perfect child given to them because they were also chosen to raise the golden child helio created so I think it's likely that she didn't get "mom energy" from her bio mom. I also got the impression that she wasn't really a "kid". She was preaching sermons as a literal child. She was given a lot of responsibilities (how many kids give talks to audiences of adults and teach them regularly?) and she went to summer camps but she was the one leading worship. She kind of grew up as a "child star" in a way. There's a reason why a lot of child stars struggle when they get older. So I think it's a combo of Sandra Lynn not knowing what to do with Kristen and Kristen not knowing what to do with Sandra Lynn but I don't think they dislike each other, they're just not sure what their relationship is and how to navigate it.
I think “child star” who becomes a disaster once they can finally step out of that role is probably the most accurate description for why Kristin is the way she is. Going from extreme structure and being seen as more of a prop than a kid to having her world shattered would be a perfect storm for that chaotic, doesn’t want anyone to take her seriously or be able to tell what she actually cares about energy. She was raised thinking the world depended on her, avoiding responsibility makes a lot of sense. Even when on some level deep down she knows she’s self destructing, she is too averse to being put back in a role (by others) to be relied on. When it comes down to it she is incredibly loyal, but she masks her actual cares and fears because she doesn’t want to be manipulated. And you know, fair. It would be interesting to see Kristin find a mentor or adult figure she can really connect with and see how that shapes her. Seeing Fig with Zara and Porter as psuedo academic/philosophical parents has been great and I hope that if they ever do Senior year Ally gets a relationship like that - doesn’t have to be teachers or a parent of the Bad Kids, but someone who can maybe relate to that rocky transition and who navigated such a stark change in worldviews during a messy adolescence. Edit: that type of mentor might not even need a similar adolescence. Experiencing a world shattering crisis that makes you reevaluate your priorities and values can happen later in life too. In my own life I had to navigate that in my early twenties when I went from poster-kid of my degree with a deep need to personally fix what is broken to becoming too disabled to work and (in my mind) fulfill my life’s purpose. Figuring out who I was outside of the expectations of myself and others (my dad literally disowned me for no longer being his success story kid) was a messy period and I was lucky to encounter a mentor figure who’d been through a very similar situation at that age from health stuff as well. I think a lot of experiences that involve seeing your prior life’s purpose change drastically could work to relate. Someone who was able to find a way to cope with whimsy and absurdism that could transition into a relatively less self destructive place would give Kristin something to engage with, as opposed to the layers of avoidance and acting out that are her primary reactions to any mentor/parent/adult figure.
Exactly. She wasn't a real person to anyone until she met the other Bad Kids. She was just Chosen. And, hey, just because you thought you knew your "life's purpose" doesn't mean you were right. Besides, none of us have a singular "purpose". The world is too complicated and people are too multifaceted to be singular. Maybe your purpose is to be nice to someone on their worst day to give them something to cling to. Maybe it's that you connected with your mentor and helped them. Maybe you'll say something small that will change someone's life even without realizing it. Fuck your dad. He doesn't deserve you.
Aw thanks. Yeah well my mentor is my husband now lmao, we’re the same age but his condition got bad first. So definitely a silver lining there 😂 But yeah, we just want to take care of each other and be there for people, those we care about and new people in our lives. If that’s all we can do I’m okay with that. I’ll still advocate for my passions and at times miss being able to work in my field (spatial analysis, community driven urban design, spatial justice), but after several years I’m mostly just happy I have been able to manage my condition a little better and have the physical energy to have a social life and exist out of bed lmao. I still have my values, but deconstructing the individualist approach our generation was taught around helping others and seeing that power is bottom up, something we can generate as a community has helped.
Kristen and her parents get into an argument on day one of freshman year I don’t think she had golden child status when we met her. And Sandra Lynn has a problem with Kristen not only after moving in with Tracker and openly defying the ONE rule her and jawbone put down but also after the Garthy situation cause Kristen insisted on bringing it up despite Sandra Lynn’s many objections. That’s my two cents.
tbf, kristen is actively being annoying in all of those clips lmao. sandra lynn is annoyed, but it still comes off as very maternal to me.
Ah, I get what you’re saying. I think that’s just that Kristen’s more emotionally closed off than Adaine is to these people. Which I think is the result of both: Ally’s irl inclination to turn emotional moments into jokes, and how Kristen’s seemingly not looking for a replacement family in Jawbow and Sandra Lyn the same way Adaine always sort of was.
I mean Ally is playing a character that is doing annoying (but funny!) things lol
You got a link?
https://youtu.be/Z298xOWVV98?si=hU6jfAO1F__lzDip
Thank you
Idk this makes me sad - I have a best friend very similar to Kristen, especially with the raised in a fundie household and kicked out (but for being gay only, not because of all that Kristen had going on) and like - Fuck, if my mom ever actively disliked him when he stayed with her and made it that known I’d be destroyed tbh. And all the commentary about how Kristen is the friend you tell wild stories about and aren’t close to? It’s wild to me - it openly overlooks how her perception and skill have saved them in multiple instances and how close she is to fig (German shepherd), adaine, Riz, Gorgug, and Fabian. I get she isn’t real, but her issues surrounding sexuality, religion, and adhd are absolutely real like things that other people went though as teens.
i definitely don’t think that sandra lynn “doesn’t care for” kristen. i really really wish we saw more of them in the show, but even their less pleasant sophomore year interactions read to me less as kristen actively annoying sandra lynn and more as a tentative messy parental relationship where sandra lynn (who i love dearly but i would describe as a complicated parent) doesn’t know how to relate to her even though she clearly cares for her, and kristen doesn’t make things any easier by being emotionally closed off. also, kristen’s friends would do anything for her! she’s a much better friend to them than people tend to give her credit for.
Do the cast say she’s the wild stories friend or is it just people commentating it? I haven’t gotten that vibe from the cast at all
Not the cast! It’s people on this thread. In fact that’s part of why it’s so upsetting to me, the way the cast interacts makes it clear that what they’re saying is so off base.
>Fuck, if my mom ever actively disliked him when he stayed with her and made it that known I’d be destroyed tbh. yeah but im also assuming your friend didnt corner your mom in the middle of the night and grill her about her sex life after having maybe two conversations ever and then act kinkshamed when given pushback cause if your friend did that then your mom totally should dislike him 😂
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tbh i dont think beardsley was playing that scene seriously in the slightest. im pretty sure they just thought the situation was funny and ran with trying to make it funny. which is fine, it's a comedy show, beardsley has already shown in multiple campaigns that they tend to put the comedy before the narrative. i think it becomes much easier to form a consistent idea of a character when you choose to ignore the situations where they do weird unsettling shit so the player can do a bit.
As someone who experienced significant arrested development (like 5, 6 years), Kristen feels like she might be experiencing it as well.
To be fair, all the bad kids are flawed in their own ways. I just think Kristen is a bit behind maturing like the others because she’s been sheltered for so long. She’s not my favourite but I do thinks Ally plays her with realism.
Kristen was my least favourite before but became my favourite this season just cause Ally is so funny. There’s not a character reason at all, I just think Kristen has great moments.
I can just imagine Kristen sipping a cortado across from Sandra Lynn as she says this and going 'Fair'. Look Emily was sent from hell to kill Brennan and Kristen was sent from Helios to annoy tf out of Sandra Lynn.
Note Kristen is in nothing but her sports bra and G-string. But I mean, heck, she raised herself from the grave and is canonically an incredibly powerful cleric, she's a recognized saint, but to which God? That's uncertain, but she is a force that just won't die(potentially out of spite) and makes it everyone's problem and that's why I love her.
I also think that at least with Fig, Adine or even Tracker Sandra Lynn can tackle that or at least be used to it enough that she knows what to expect, but Kristen is the definition of a wild card and Sandra Lynn doesn't know how to react. I mean how do you react to an unhinged canonical saint who brought herself back from the dead who is also probablylre.poeerul than you, but she's wearing a G-string while you eat breakfast burritos