(no subject)

[nothalfplaid]

GENERAL

NAME: Fern Marie Mufferaw
NICKNAMES: Baby Plaid
AGE/DOB: 16 / May 5 / Taurus
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female, she/her
SEXUALITY: She doesn’t know yet.
HOMETOWN: Ottawa, Ontario

CONCEPT: Bratty baby plaid forges her own path with slash and burn tactics.

PHYSICAL

APPEARANCE: Fern is average height, with brown shoulder length (give or take) hair. Freshman year, she dyed it a few wild colors, but that isn’t even uncommon at GB like it was at Cootes, so she let it go back to brown. When she’s in uniform, she is always trying to subvert the dress code in some way - wearing a non-GB tie, wearing a t-shirt under an unbuttoned uniform shirt, swapping dorky uniform shoes for Converses.

HEIGHT: 5’4”

PB: Maisie Williams

PERSONALITY

LIKES: Hockey, animals, but particularly dogs, sneaking into R-rated movies, being outdoors, mocking the characters in horror and romance movies, s’mores and campfire roasted hot dogs

DISLIKES: Divinations, people seeing her struggle, people who cry over nothing, liars, highly theoretical subjects, being compared to her dad/older siblings, optimism that’s counter to reality, strong perfume or cologne

PERSONALITY:

The first impression Fern tends to give is terse, insensitive, sarcastic, and sometimes even mean. She is honest, but tends to apply that bluntly, and often without being asked. What other people see as harsh, she sees as not wasting time to beat around the bush. She can be abrasive like dear old dad, though she doesn’t appreciate the comparison.

It’s fairly obvious to people who know her that Fern has a chip on her shoulder. It’s clear she’s trying to prove something, though she would argue about who she’s trying to prove it to. She needs to succeed, and she doesn’t take failure well. You could say she’s a sore loser, except the only person she’s playing against is herself. She is willing to work hard, but doesn’t want to be seen as the type of person who has to struggle to achieve. If she feels like she may fail at something, she tends to stop putting forth much effort from the get go, if not outright quit, rather than get invested. She wants to be able to say, “I never cared about that anyway.”

Fern is focused and driven once she sets her mind on a goal. Patience isn’t often associated with Coppertale, but Fern tends to think in the long term. She is a good planner, thorough, and organized. Once she has a plan, she will stubbornly see it through to completion. Along the way, she can become inflexible, even manipulative, and the more important the goal, the more the ends justify the means.

Rebel without a cause? More like rebel without a point. Fern has a bad habit of being contrary just for the sake of it. She will break rules just to break them. She’ll push boundaries just to see where they are. She says she wants her dad to stay out of her business, but sometimes she is clearly trying to provoke a reaction. On the other hand, Fern has learned to put on an act for other authority figures. She can be the adorable lost lamb, the repentant rule breaker, the easily influenced youth led astray by the older kids.

The thought of putting vulnerabilities on display makes Fern shudder. She’s general distrustful, and expects even those with the best of intentions to somehow disappoint her, even if they don’t intend to. She doesn’t want to give anyone an in, or any leverage, to use against her in any way. However, she is constantly observing others, stirring shit just to see what people do. Because, in the event of a conflict, she wants to have a leg up.

Still, Fern’s a little girl who wants to be loved. She wants to say “love isn’t anything but brain chemicals” and feel it anyway. She wants to be terrible and unlovable and loved despite it. She wants people to rise to the challenge and prove her wrong.

SKILLS

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English, French (fluent, but not to the same degree as English)

PATRONUS: Red wolf.

SKILLS:
·Healing/First Aid: Plaid Dad has made sure Fern knows some basic first aid, both magical and non-magical.
·Good with Animals: Fern loves animals, and she tends to have good instincts with them.
·Organization: Fern may seem like a flaming trash fire, a force of chaos, but she is careful, thorough, and organized.
·Lying: Fern is a great liar, even if she’d rather not. Her poker face is a stone facade, and no amount of pressure can force her to crack once she sets her mind to it.

HISTORY

FAMILY MEMBERS:

→ Father: Joe Mufferaw, Gooseberry High Resident Healer
→ Mother: Linda Lamar (formerly Mufferaw, but not anymore), every time she writes Fern, she has a new job in a new city, and every time, “Things are going to be different.”
→ Siblings:

· Holly Mufferaw, Ilvermorny class of ‘05, Professional quodpot player
· Linden Mufferaw, GB Azurcrest, Class of ‘06, Cryptomagizoologist with the National Magical Parks Service
· Tansy Mufferaw, GB Ribbonfin, Class of ‘09, Pediatric Healer

→ Grandparents:

· Ronald and Michelle Mufferaw
· Gary and Nancy Lamar

HISTORY:

There was a time when Fern’s family was happy, whole, and almost picturesque. She knows this from second hand accounts and family photos. Her parents were both healers, both loved the outdoors. Her mom was amicable where her father was gruff, her mother was silly where her father was serious, her mother was sensitive where her father was stern. They were different, but they fit together like two puzzle pieces.

Things may not have been quite so idyllic in reality, but that’s the picture painted for Fern by her grandparents and her siblings. Fern was a surprise baby, born seven years after her youngest sibling. Even in Fern’s earliest memories, things were already falling apart. All she remembers is her parents fighting a lot. She doesn’t remember two puzzle pieces, she remembers yelling.

She didn’t discover the particulars until she was older. She knew her mother's hands often hurt, but she later found out it was from lingering injuries from a splinching accident. The vials filling their medicine cabinet had been pain potions, and when Linda’s healer insisted she taper off, she’d started stealing them from work, just a little at first, to compensate, but the problem grew like a choking vine around their family.

After the divorce, Joe took up the position as Gooseberry’s resident healer in 2005, and two of his children followed along. Linden completed his high school career as a senior Azurcrest, and Tansy started hers as a freshman Ribbonfin. Holly had finished up her high school career at Ilvermorny the year before and went on to join the reserves of a professional quodpot team.

Fern, the youngest of the four, stayed with Joe’s parents, Ronald and Michelle, starting Coote’s School for Magical Cultivation. When she was young, Joe was Fern’s hero, and she looked forward to the summers, when he would come home and the four of them could live together. Sometimes, her grandparents would take her to visit him at Gooseberry, and Fern loved it. Students and staff fawned over what a cute little girl she was, and the camp activities at the school made it seem like a dream.

By the time Fern had entered her pre-teen years, there had been a decided shift towards bitterness. She felt abandoned by both of her parents, but her dad received the worst of it. He had been her hero, but she started to resent that he hadn’t needed to take a job at a boarding school. She felt like he had run away and left her behind.

When it was decided that Fern should go to Gooseberry in her freshman year, she was aghast. Her grandparents were confused - wasn’t it her dream to go to Gooseberry? Not anymore! she insisted; she wanted to stay at Cootes! But Gooseberry was an excellent school, and it would give her a chance to spend time with her dad.

In her first year at Gooseberry, things were tense. Fern excelled academically (except in Divinations, which she gave up on as a “stupid class, anyway” once it became apparent she had no skill for it, but it was too late to drop), but she toed the line of how many rules she could break without getting into too much trouble. She silently planned and schemed, dreaming up underhanded ways she could get out of Gooseberry and back to Cootes.

By her sophomore year, Fern had mostly given up on her schemes of escape and resigned herself to her lot. It didn’t mean that she had to like it, though, and she still rebelled. She kept her grades up, but she was a permanent fixture at the grotto parties, and readily jumped on board every bad idea train that passed her by. Anti-prom in the grotto, risking being trapped in the woods? Sounds fun! Ouija seance in the woods? Sure! Getting kidnapped by powerful forest entities? Well, she didn’t chose that one, but it happened.

And maybe those studies she read about were true, that trauma causes bonding. Something about adrenaline and self preservation instincts. She isn’t sure. But when she went home for the summer, her old friends from Cootes… weren’t the same. Or she wasn’t the same. Either way, contrary to her better judgement and her cons list, she’s returning to Gooseberry for her junior year.

SCHOOL

YEAR: Junior (Grade 11)
HOUSE: Coppertale
SORTING: Fern entered the Sorting Cave in fighting spirits, arms crossed and surly. Every point the emblems made about why she belonged in their house, she countered. Coppertale and Ebonhide clearly had the strongest cases, so she bounced between each emblem, playing devil’s advocate. Her quarreling took too long, and finally Vector entered the cave. Having heard Fern’s continuing discussion with the emblems as she entered, Vector said, “I think the answer is pretty apparent.”
WAND: Honey locust, Hapyxelor (“Mussie”) barb, 11”, fairly stiff
FAMILIAR: Rat named Labrador, because she wishes she could have a dog. She calls him "Lab Rat"

CLASSES:
· Potions
· Transfiguration
· Herbology
· Charms
· Outdoor Education
· Artificing
· Magizoology
· Pre-Healer Studies
· DADA
ADVANCED STUDY: Pre-Healer Studies

Fern has always loved animals, and her affection for creatures is a sharp contrast to her harsh attitude with humans. She is seriously considering veterinary medicine as a future career, and though pre-healer studies focuses on humans, combined with magizoology, it seems like a good plan.

She just hopes her dad doesn’t take it as some kind of excuse to bond.
SENIOR PROJECT: TBD
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: Fern is a straight A student so far this year. She excels in hands on classes, though she can grasp more theoretical subjects, so long as someone can find a way to concretize the subject matter for her. Though it sometimes causes comparisons to her older brother, Fern's favorite subject is Magizoology. Freshman year, she took Divination, and it was by far her least favorite class. She had no skill for it, and no one could explain to her how to get better at it (except in vague touchy-feely terms), so she gave up on it entirely. She dropped it, though, and since then has done well in all her classes.

EXTRACURRICULARS:
· Equestrian
· Outdoor Exploration
· Boating
· Archery
· Gardening Club
· Dueling & Fencing
· LARP (sometimes)

OOC

NAME: Cheryl
EMAIL: achurlishgirl (at) gmail
CDJ: iliekrp
TIME ZONE: EST