Ally Beardsley Talks Fantasy High Junior Year And How Kristen Has Changed Between Seasons

The Bad Kids are back for Fantasy High Junior Year, and we got a chance to sit down with Ally Beardsley to talk about the journey that Dimension 20 and Fantasy High have taken, the journey that Kristen Applebees has undergone, and how their own experience at the table has changed through experience.

The interview below will reference the history of Fantasy High as well as the events of the first episode of Fantasy High Junior Year.

To start off I wanted to hear from Beardsley about what Kristen has been up to.

"We come back into Fantasy High, and it's been like no time has passed," they said. "That's the strange feeling coming into this season, we know years and years have gone past and we're completely different people but this is a few days later for these characters."

Something that was confusing for me watching this premiere is how viewers are dropped into what feels like the climax of a season in itself.

"This was a total Brennan idea, he was like 'OK, I think people will be expecting that the big bad guy is the Night Yorb and the whole season is gonna be a slow build to us facing down the Night Yorb, how funny would it be if we just start the very first episode mid-battle with the Night Yorb' and then we had a lot of fun picking out NPCs that we were going to pretend that we were so close to," Beardsley said.

I spent a not-insignificant amount of time trying to make sure missing any of the live one-shot hadn't robbed me of knowing who Squeem is or why the party had been swapping chili recipes.

Being the third time that Beardsley has played Kristen over five years, I wanted to know how their approach to characters development had shifted throughout the years. Beardsley began by explaining how when Dimension 20 began, they didn't know how to play D&D.

"Since [Kristen] was in high school and chaotic it was on that maybe I didn't know what I was doing or a lot of class features were overlooked. There's just a lot of balls being dropped," they explained. "It's been fun to return as a more seasoned player."

They continued by bringing up a running joke that we'll be seeing this season where they kept saying "I read the book!" after finally buying and reading one of the Dungeons & Dragons manuals. One of her fellow cast members - Brian Murphy (Murph) who plays as the Goblin Rogue Riz - had to keep alerting Beardsley to the fact that "there's more than one book."

"It said D&D on the book, OK Murphy? I'm coming back, I'm serious this time."

"I still have to play the super chaotic character, so there were a ton of times in this season I know what the correct min-maxing game move would be, but I have to decide 'that's not true to character' and I have to play her a little bit scattered," they said.

Knowing how much that thought of "What would my character do?" is one that a lot of players struggle with, I wanted to know if they felt that that was limiting now that they've 'read the book.'

"Not really from a pride stance, but I do think not knowing what I didn't know in the first season didn't make me as collaborative as a player," Beardsley replied. "I just had harebrained schemes that I just threw out at the group ... but this season, I'm driving some chaos, I'm also having these bigger zoom-out moments ... so that felt really good."

For fans of Kristen, you'll be happy to know that when it comes to building the character they "kept a lot of stuff the same. I still really liked all of the domain choices."

Beardsley did reveal that they were aware that they were using Bless wrong and they had to have a "come to Jesus moment." While appreciative of Lee Mulligan's willingness to fudge the rules a bit in the past, as seasoned players they needed to accept: "You can't just give it to everyone including yourself."

Nothing has been more indicative of Kristen's growth than her faith, be it in Helio, YES!, YES?, and Cassandra. During the first episode of this season, she seemed to be dismissing a lot of that to go 'Bloke mode' instead.

"I think that there's this burn-it-all-down mentality you can get in high school when you get a certain amount of agency and pressure to be an adult," Beardsley said. "There's a lot of rebellion. At first, she was searching and in a dogmatic religion and everyone was on her side saying, 'Good for you, forge your own path,' and she did."

"Now she's continuing to forge her own path, and everyone is saying, 'What are you talking about, Cassandra is a good God, don't leave that.' So it's been a fun theme to explore," Beardsley continued. "I said this in the recap but 'When is chaos not cute anymore?' It's not 'haha lol' but there are real consequences."

"You take the ukulele away and what you have is an abuser."

While they weren't able to say much in terms of what this season has in store, Beardsley did let us know that there were a few times where the cast was asked to leave the dome while a new scene was set up. Then they would roll on the cameras to get the player's reactions as they head back to film.

Just like with their fellow cast member, Zac Oyama, I wanted to know what about Fantasy High it is that they believed made it resonate with so many fans. "I do think there's nostalgia," they said. "When you're watching the first season, you're not watching pro-D&D players, you're watching Brennan's friends who he convinced to show up to this off building and film into the dead of night.

"I do think that that has a lot to do with Fantasy High feeling really sincere and true. It was just something we were going to do anyway, and it happened to get pretty popular."

For those who want to check out what else Ally Beardsley is up to, you can find them where they host a podcast about queer people's relationship to the gender binary called Gender Spiral that's 40-minute conversations that try to have a less 'dry' conversation about the topic.

You can check out the first episode of Fantasy High Junior Year streaming on Dropout right now. You can also catch up on the first two seasons in full on the official Dimension 20 YouTube channel or watch a 20-minute video to catch yourself up.