by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

Fantasy High: Junior Year
Episode 6 “Party Politics”
With Brennan Lee Mulligan, Emily Axford, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, and Brian Murphy
Streaming now on Dropout.tv

“The fundamental substance of the universe, like, is creation.” - Mazey (Brennan Lee Mulligan)

The party continues to rage at Seacaster Manor, after the epic shrimp jump. Kristen still has shards from her dead (we can only assume) god and Adaine (Siobhan Thompson) gets fired from Oodles of Strudels, owing the company about 2 gold for her uniform. She decides to give into the Fabian (Lou Wilson) of it all, though, instead of totally spiraling sober. Fuck it—we ball! The party goes to both talk to Ragh and to also see if the Rat Grinders are at the party.

Buddy Dawn is the human cleric of Helio—the new Kristen from freshman year—and also her foil in the Rat Grinders. He’s drinking water out of a beer can (“Oldest trick in the book!”) and Kristen, still invisible from the shrimp jump, pretends to be Helio to him. She tells him to drink the drink that Fabian is offering, it’s “Bad Baby Milk,” aka milk spiked with alcohol. He doesn’t actually drink it, but a hilarious conversation between Buddy and Fabian about Bill Seacaster occurs, about his life as a pirate and his place in hell.

Fig (Emily Axford), still disguised as Kristen, commits to doing another shrimp jump—but she’s just saying that because of the situation they find themselves in. She tells the Hangman to set the ramp on fire, which he does in his Hellhound form, a form that freaks Buddy out because… you know: hell!

Kristen does an Insight check on Buddy’s positivity. It’s exactly what Kristen recognizes from her former self: good ol’ teenage religious zealotry. They ask Buddy about him joining the Rat Grinders and he relays he was specifically requested, since he joined over the summer. Odd!

At the party, Riz (Brian Murphy) is getting hit up by the presidents of all the random clubs he’s trying to join for his extracurriculars. Most of them don’t get invited to parties very often, so those warm feelings are being extended to saying they’ll vote for Kristen for student body president, a great success!

Adaine meets another wizard, a dragonborn named Oisin. They get a bit flirty, as does Fabian and the ranger elf Ivy. Well, she gets flirty with him—Fabian runs away. Gorgug (Zac Oyama) finally gets to talk to Ragh, who is playing king of the mountain with crabs, and lightly fights with him. Gorgug lets Ragh throw him off and they finally get to speak. He tells Ragh about the mall fight and that Kalina said his name. He freaks out, thinking his mom is in danger again, but Gorgug and Riz talk him down.

In Fabian’s room, Fig and Kristen reconfigure themselves. Fig still looks like Kristen, but Kristen wanted to look more like the everywoman—which obviously means a low ponytail, Wrangler jeans, and a cowboy hat (I love Ally so much, don’t get me started). They’re planning on splitting up and doing some campaigning. Before that, though, they find the yearbook page for the Rat Grinders. It includes the three main students we’ve already met. Buddy isn’t in the photo as a new addition, but it does include Lucy Frostblade (their original cleric) and the two new crushes of Adaine and Fabian: Oisin and Ivy. They also used to be called the High 5 Heroes.

As they go back to the party, Kristin begins her campaigning at Seacaster Manor, while Fig decides to make a move and tries to disguise herself as Lucy Frostblade to see how Oisin and Ivy react. Ivy sees her and follows her into the hedge maze outside, which Fig tries to escape from as herself without being seen. It’s only mildly successful.

Adaine, drunk as hell, conjures a handful of ice mephits to help chill the drinks at the party. Everybody loves it and she gets a cheer of “party wizard” from them. Then, Adaine has a vision of Kristen giving a victory speech at a party that is both a campaign party, but also a birthday party. Good or bad visions, sometimes being the Elven Oracle harshes the vibe.

The Bad Kids are finally able to have a meeting where they can go over all the random bits they learned during the course of the party. Fig tells them about the original Rat Grinders adventuring party. They go up to Fabian’s room in order to keep looking through the yearbook and not just the page that Fig tore out. Riz investigates Fabian’s room to see if anybody else (like a rogue halfling, perhaps), and knows that it’s possible. They do find that Lucy was added to in memoriam of the sophomore yearbook after the books already went to print.

Ivy comes up to Fabian’s room while they’re all in there. When Mazey comes in, as well, it becomes truly a high school party. Mazey wants to bust out some party games, like Twister, and Ivy is rude about it before Fig stands up for Mazey. Fabian is caught between the fact that he has a thing for both Mazey and Ivy and he sticks with Ivy, aiming to do pirate snuff in his bedroom. Everybody else follows Mazey and Fig downstairs to lay that vinyl mat down and party.

Oisin and Ivy are still Rat Grinders, which does mean that they’re not quite foils of the Bad Kids, since Ivy is a ranger. As the party winds down, something is broken in the basement and Riz realizes that it seems more like it was broken on purpose rather than by accident. On the security camera, they see that ice mephits come in and get the teens in the basement absolutely rowdy and blasted. Adaine is not able to tell if they’re actually hers, though.

The Bad Kids have a theory about the weird vibes in the basement! Essentially, they think that the Rat Grinders were trying to get them in trouble, and potentially get Kristin kicked out of the presidential race, by taking photos of them doing drugs. Except nobody went downstairs.

Gertie, the single member of the apiary club somehow convinces almost all of the Bad Kids to join her bee society. However, as she’s leaving and gives Kristen a gift of some of the honey she’s made, Fabian talks some shit about how it’s not that good. Enter combat because she gets absolutely pissed. Except it’s just Fabian and Gertie and all the Bad Kids are actually trying to help her, instead of him. They don’t actually hurt each other, and Gertie leaves the party.

Tracker calls Kristen (from an unknown number), to ask about going public with her new girlfriend. Kristen tells her that Cassandra is dead, as far as she knows, and gives her a pretty monotone explanation of what happened during and after the mall fight. Kristen tries to talk to Tracker about how her religion is going and Tracker absolutely goes off on Kristen about how she is as a cleric. That maybe nothing is working for her because she hasn't actually dealt with the things that worked for her about Helio and, instead, has been running around trying to find something new but doesn’t actually want to put in the work.

“Tough, but fair. Have a great life.” - Kristen Applebees

Tracker immediately posts the relationship on social. Adaine, still drunk, mentions that she knows this girl (because she’s a high elf from her homeland) and wonders if there was some kind of overlap in the relationships. Which is great and doesn’t send Kristen spiraling at all!

The Bad Kids try to figure out exactly what might have happened with the Rat Grinders. Did they kill or otherwise make Lucy disappear before junior year so they could bring in a ringer of a cleric with Buddy? Before they can actually come up with an answer, just theories, they go to Mordred Manor to have lunch with Ragh’s mother and to talk to her about the gem in her chest. It contains a fiend, Bakur, and her rage keeps him at bay. It’s perhaps not quite the same as the Cassandra shard situation.

As the weekend winds down, Brennan has reconfigured the downtime with lots of rolls for them to keep up their grades, social engagement, and after school classes and jobs. It seems to be the whole of the next episode and it’s gonna be a wild and interesting time. I can’t wait!