#thats my own fault Whatever if i snap a tendon or straight up die Well we ball we always ball What choice other than 2 ball

[eebie]

[infinitydoublevenus]

like fern is just finn if he was bumped out of his own life and corrupted by a demon. it shows us different aspects of finn’s soul and personality, and how he would deal with all that - basically showing us his dark side, without fucking up main finn.

i had a whole long ass shpiel about why i disagree written out and then my computer decided not to listen to my mouse and it basically got destroyed

but in summary, 

- MAJOR SPOILER WARNING IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE FINALE YET-

i dont think everything that made fern the way he is was the demons fault. like… imagine if you will, waking up one day in a body you’re unfamiliar with, but not realizing it until someone looking just like you claims they are you, your brother defends them and claims you’re not who you really are, calls you a demon, your “son” (BMO) is terrified of you for what you can only assume is no reason, you realize you cant do the things you loved anymore because this body isn’t capable of it, and since you’re unfamiliar with it, you keep fucking up to the point where you feel like you can’t do anything right. then you finally, FINALLY get a chance to prove yourself and you’re incapable of doing what you were supposed to. which makes you feel less than your doppelganger because they seem so much more successful and better at what you did then you were. imagine that you realize “hey, these memories i have of my entire life aren’t mine anymore” that would surely cause someone to question whether they really were that person or not. and as we see in Do No Harm, Fern clearly is on the side of “i’m someone else now. i have these memories that you share with me, but our personalities and circumstances are different. therefore i am not you. maybe i used to be, but i’m not anymore.” by his own admission, and i quote: “Whatever I am, I’m… not you.” and then you get another chance to at least prove you’re not worthless at least to one person, and you fuck it up. at this point you’re so frustrated you snap. some might even resort to self harm (see: Fern tearing his “ears” off. Clearly they’re a part of his body or they wouldn’t have regenerated like they did.) the person who says they’re you tries to comfort you all the time but it’s not enough, they never get to the root of the issue. you want to tell them. you want them to understand. but they’ve never been through something like this, so they don’t. imagine that no one else IN THE WORLD that you know of has the same problem that you do. imagine how lonely that must have felt for him. he literally felt like he was completely alone. the only person going through this hell that he was trapped in. and imagine that, in your head, this voice (the demon) is whispering to you, and urging you to do harmful things to others. you dont want to, but you want it to shut up. thus he suggests “sever his tendons?” when talking about how to deal with Sweet P. on top of all of this, the worst part is you feel like you’ve been replaced. like you were nothing. like you didn’t matter enough for people to care that you were replaced. you try to form your own identity around who you are now and not what you used to be, but you don’t know what or who you are or are supposed to be. you don’t know what you want, since the role you most wanted to fill, this person has taken now. it gets so frustrating you’re convinced the only solution is if they died. you’ve sunk so far into this depressing narrative that you’ve convinced yourself of that you don’t see any other way out. but you don’t WANT them to die. so you hide them away and give them food and an item for comfort (meatloaf being finn’s favorite food & Fern giving him a pan of dirt because he didn’t know how to make meatloaf even though he already gave him garbage he could sift through so he at least wouldn’t starve). your plan is that everything would go back to normal so you wouldnt have to deal with this shit anymore. but suddenly the person escapes and attacks you. they start interrogating your motivations like they don’t already know about the shit you’ve gone through. so you start fighting with each other, and then because of the violence thats broken out, the demons power grows stronger than it should be and increases your willingness to fight and kill. you have your sword at your enemy’s throat and they start pleading that “it doesn’t have to be like this. we can just go home and talk things out! nobody has to die!” but before you can get a word in - and also, there’s no way Fern could have known it was an accident - their razorblade weapon slashes through your stomach. everyone thinks you’re dead. someone you don’t know and have never seen before, but looks similar to someone you know, finds you and revives you. they live with a nice old lady and their nephew. your real parents abandoned you, your father figure only wanted to use you (the grassy wizard “This is great for me, personally! You have to do my bidding!”) and your mother was forced to quarantine herself because of an epidemic and can only interact with you through a screen, and now here you are, being offered family! family you genuinely believe wont abandon you! friends! people who might be willing to try and understand you! including a father figure, a thing that was missing from your life since you were a little kid! not only that, but they’ve given you the ability to be more capable in fighting, and killing, the thing you were trying to do to your doppelganger. they gave you armor and weapons and a place to stay! their only condition is to fight in war against someone you barely even remember. its not like they need YOU to be their knight anymore anyway, the doppelganger does that now. HE’S the one loyal to them. so you go along with it,. you finally have a chance to get rid of said doppelganger when the father figure tells you “not yet”. since you appreciate what they’ve done for you, you obey. the next time you see the person who’s replaced you he wants to negotiate with “your boss” as he calls them. they’re not just a boss to you, they’re a father. not only that but he came here with your brother. who might i add, attacks you. imagine being called a demon by your brother, still having hope he might not hate you, and then a few months later being attacked by him like you’re his enemy, when you two were best friends throughout your childhood. ithe old lady comes out of the building and tells you both to stop fighting. your “twin” compares her to your mother. “She’s kinda like mom, yeah?” this person, this person who replaced you, is referring to the mother that would have, should have raised you as their own mother. so you feel compelled to justify that you’re her son too. “She was my mom too!” and then the doppelganger says you’re like family, so why are you fighting like this? you know he’s right, but you don’t want to admit it, because it HURTS to admit it. so you pull your helmet over your head and leave. 

the next time you see them, they’re trying to negotiate to stop the war from happening. you don’t know what to think. they use a potion to put all of you in a shared dream, where your father figure orders you to kill the opposing side because maybe they’ll die in real life. you WOULD have, but then he straight up abandons you, just like your real father did. you’ve developed abandonment issues before because of that and they come to the surface now. you’re so upset you can’t move. the doppelganger tries to snap you out of it but he;’s the last person you want to see right now. so you try to get away from him, but he follows you. you get into another fistfight but before you can finish your brother reminds you that you have all the same traumas. but that your situations are still DIFFERENT, even though you share the same pain. your doppelganger and you have to face the music and he kills the demon, you’re finally free of it. “I’m me again.” this line can be interpreted in two different ways: literally, or figuratively. if we take it literally, he’s turned into finn again BUT like jake says, “it’s just a dream”. sure, it still causes you to die later on, but not everything in that dream became reality. and you only died because the demon was the only thing keeping your unfamiliar body from falling apart. if its interpretated differently however he could be seen as saying “finally, i’m back in my old body again, in a familiar body that i know how to operate in, and i am free of the demon’s curse and the impulses that were driving me to fight so violently.” they didnt say all that of course because it would be tedious, this isnt Hamlet where they can go on and on about how much they hate the planet for several hours. when you wake up from the shared dream, a strange entity is attacking everyone. you’re willing to defend your homeland “down to your last blade” as he puts it, but your body is starting to fall apart and isn’t suited for battle right now. you do your best, even fending off a giant monster, but you become so weak and frail you fall over (see: Huntress Wizard helping him during Time Adventure). you can barely move, but then the solution to defeating the entity comes to light. (singing) it’s something you can do without as much effort as battle would take, so you take part in it as well. but you’re almost completely broken apart by now. you can barely stand up. your doppelganger has escaped the entity that was trying to eat him. you’ve finally realized that he cared more about you than you wanted to admit. you know you’ll feel guilty if you die leaving him without a conclusion. so you get his attention. he’s distraught by the sight of you: weak, falling apart, literally dying in front of him. you try to lighten the mood, he offers to take you to your home so you can die in peace, but you see the expression on your brother’s face that says “that place was destroyed by the monsters”. you know he’d be distraught even more if you told him that now, so you comfort him with your last words. “It’s okay, just promise to plant me there.” 

in conclusion, this post was longer than i intended for it to be, but not all of Fern’s bitterness and aloof, somewhat-empathy-lacking personality stems from the Emissary’s corruption. it was also from feelings of being replaced, estrangement from his brother, and abandonment issues. as well as a feeling of worthlessness which could be interpreted as clinical depression once it got to a certain point. 

i don’t think Fern is just “Finn 2.0, we added misery in the latest update!” I think he’s a lot more complex than that. he realized they had the same traumatic memories, but they still had different situations: his doppelganger wasn’t being held captive by the Emissary like he was. they’ve gone through similar - even the same - shit, but he also has his own unique trauma finn’s never gone through. not the one we see after the episode where they revive Prismo, anyway.

he also sided with Gumbaldia not only because they offered him family and a home, “There’s nothing I have that you don’t!” but also because being equipped better for revenge gave him a purpose, something that his struggles with his identity partially stemmed from a lack of. 

so yeah i don’t mean to be rude or anything, i am 100% NOT here for discourse, i just wanted to elaborate on my opinion and why i made that post about Finn and Fern earlier. 

sorry if that was too long of a post to read haha… i just have a lot of nuanced opinions on a lot of different things. 

tl;dr: fern’s issues, i believe, were caused by more than just a demon screaming in his ear at his every turn. i dont wanna be an asshole i just felt like elaborating