Fern, Outsiders s30 rp ramble
Usually I do these little drabbles in a server I joined a little over two years ago now, while it's not active as much anymore I always hold it close because holy shit so many awesome things came from it. One being one of my favourite oc's Fern. This ramble is about my favourite character arc for her because I could talk about it forever!!
TW: Mentions of violence, blood, near death. Quite a bit I go over so just bare that in mind!
Fern's revenge arc genuinely was my favourite arc for her, I've always loved every story beat she's gotten and each opportunity to toy around with her character was fun as hell but if I were to be asked what my favourite element would be (while the short 'runner' era comes close) I could answer easily by telling you that Fern's revenge arc was my favourite.
There's a few specific reasons for this:
I think it captures a good chunk of how the maze corrupts people. How the place known for death and near death isn't good for the mental state of people who sign up, it's guaranteed to push you to your limits if you do want to survive. You will walk out of that maze a different person if you're pushed to your limit, which in this case Fern was. She tried to play it the nice route and she did make friends but that kindness didn't keep her safe from other people's revenge. Because it's a massive cycle, never ending. There's always going to be a ripple effect behind these actions. You can be the kindest to people but if someone else wants you dead, after so many of those experiences you'll lose part of yourself.
It was the accumulation of months of character building, planning and plotting. As mentioned Fern was a character, who initially was overlooked. I won't pretend like that was deliberate, I wrote a simple character because I didn't want to play my only other Outsiders oc at the time... And I'm glad I didn't. Because you see her go from that unaffected, happy but simple girl. To someone who is losing a LOT. Someone who is hit head on with these responsibilities and these dangers. She isn't the youngest by any means but she is also not that old of an adult either. Fern grapples with guilt, injury, near death and loss over and over and usually she comes out of the other side of that. A little chip of her taken away in the process but still enough to make her who she is there and then. I mentioned it during one ramble but it's those little chips that slowly build and break her. Having Saki slip from her grasp into what she assumed would be her death, Amaryllis dying, Celestia faking her death, Rui being taken from the maze (something she knows is for the best but she can still miss them), her sister dying, her losing a leg. It builds and it builds and she holds onto that positivity because it's who she is and she's scared to let the maze change her as it has others. And so when all of this reaches a breaking point, it literally takes one last thing for her to snap. And that is her getting her throat slit for an action she played no direct part in. She doesn't agree with the jokes, nor does she hate Jaiden for making them. It was a stupid mistake. However, that look in Sundew's eyes reminds her how people care for her sure, but this place never would. Being nice isn't going to get her out of the maze, but being a survivor, staying strong and accepting she has to FIGHT will. If she dies then that's the end of it right, she wouldn't want that but she accepts it because she doesn't expect to come out of the other side alive. Her throat was slit. And then she wakes up. It's just yet another thing the maze is ready to let her live through, another story beat. Sundew held the knife and so she fully is ready to blame him. Which is reasonable and he has it coming. And I love it because he didn't kill her, but he did at the same time. Fern holds a dagger to his throat. She spent weeks planning through it, training and rationalising it. She is cold and angry and full of pure hate. Her nights are filled with nightmares of his face, of the taste of blood she can't wash out with any water she drinks. And he robbed her of the one way she would usually actually cope. He takes her voice. He robs her of any chance to talk it through. And while words are better than violence, when one of the two choices are taken from you, you make do. Fern in that moment can't talk through all of it, she doesn't get to voice her agony and how much she feels like she's being crushed from the inside out. But what she can do is make him feel the same pain he put her through, she writes as much herself. She wants him to feel what it is like to choke on his own blood, to breathe it in. To shake death's hand and then have it let go again, to live through it despite being so close. Is it her way of robbing him of getting the peace of seeing his own loved ones again, but facing the pain he put her through. Of making him see the same image she had to be faced with. Maybe he won't feel that same fear but pain is the universal language she choses. The only person she asks help from is the one she knows will understand. Davies, who has almost killed Celestia and at that point did blatantly rip someone's head off. He knows revenge, he knows her. She doesn't drag anyone besides Finn into it. Because even if she's stooping to the lowest of lows, that is a bar she doesn't want to step over. A friend's blood on her hands is too much to bare. (Cut to her having to try and break Jaiden out from the ice anyway, back to the cycle of loss and pain but facing the fact that the maze won't let you go until it wants to.)
And all of this has been happening slowly. Steadily bubbling up, building over. It's been a development which always happens. She never hurt anyone but think about how after nearly drowning in the ice lake, O!Graecie returned with much more gusto when it came to looking out for people, full on shouting at O!Krow. The you sicken me line. When we first met her that wasn't the case. The maze makes you stronger, turns you into a survivor but at the cost of parts of yourself. And while I never voiced it to anyone I KNEW going into this that Fern was not going to get the closure she desired from trying to kill Sundew. From getting the blood on her hands. Because he won. He broke her to a point she considered murder, a line had been crossed but it wouldn't fix it. It didn't fill the painful hole sitting in her chest. Now she feels sick to her stomach, she has let it change her. To a point where she knows now that she's holding back, because she is capable of it. It's not what she wanted though, Sundew doesn't suddenly feel remorse. She still looks in her reflection and sees those scars, except now she carries the weight that she also did that. They're one and the same in that sense, letting their anger and desire for revenge tunnel vision them until they do something horrible. Only difference being that Fern can't forget that this hasn't helped. And he tries to kill her again not long after too. And she has a scar above her heart, poetic as hell. Because her voice and her kind heart, two things which she used her her way to make it through as herself were both nearly cut through. Obviously her leg too but that was a creature, not a person. And all of this is what she has to live with. Because revenge corrupts, and it might seem like an answer in that moment but it doesn't help her. Her understanding that is one of the main things which helps her to grow, survive and get stronger.
In conclusion: Fern's arc was my favourite because it allowed me to give her so much more depth, it allowed me to toy around with where she would go if that line were to be crossed. Could it be something she comes back from? Not fully, but maybe that's okay? Because while it's a horrendous 'cost' Fern knows now she has to keep fighting, surviving on as she promised. And unlike before where there wasn't that certainty, the fear of being too weak she knows what she's given to make it. The arc is her as a whole and it sums up who she IS. And I love it.
Ramble over, see you next time I think of something else to yap about!!!