"Shut up!" Fenris glared at his brother. "What he means is that our older brother Phineas, who followed us to Orden whether we liked it or not, has a particular grudge against Mordred, and found a chance to fight him about it a few days ago." ~ The Village, Chapter 1, 1st draft

Fenris glared at Mordred. "If you weren't trying to use that leg you wouldn't be saying 'ow'. Now get over -- lean on THIS side of me --" ~ The War, Chapter 26, 1st draft

***

"Nothing is this easy."
"Maybe for some people it is," said Fenris, a slight plea in his soft voice. ~ The Village, Chapter 2, current draft.

Fenris nodded once, and bent to Mordred again. "Mordred," he whispered. "Can you walk?"
Mordred, in a mute, miserable movement, shook his head.
"Can you walk if I help you on this side?" Fenris asked in the same quiet, worried way, as though nothing had happened out of the ordinary, raising Mordred up with light, sensitive hands. ~ The War, Chapter 37, current draft

***

How did we get from that... to THAT?

*cue some jaunty intro music from the brass section*

The Evolution of Fenris:

Early Form

It used to give my young soul a pleasurable thrill to read about misfortune and sensitive, bullied characters. The more perpetual and severe the misfortune, the better. The more sensitive and downtrodden the character, the better. The ocean of stories that I dredged up about young submissive mistreated girls, most of which stayed in the realm of FisherPrice Little People and never actually touched paper, were nothing short of horrific. Each and every one of them could have made a Russian serf's life look like Paradise.

After reading The Lord of the Rings... *stares at Frodo* There was enough misfortune right there to satiate anyone's bloodthirsty brain, right? Nope, who are we kidding. I played dozens of games of LOTR paper dolls, creating new traumatic adventures for the Fellowship. But a new dimension had definitely been added to my personal creations of abused characters. Male suffering was a heretofore-unrecognized option.

Then I got my hands on the later 5 books of Anne of Green Gables (We'd owned the first 3 since I was a wee thing). Turns out, L.M. Montgomery was just as much a sucker for hurting helpless little beans as I was. Anne's second-oldest child, Walter, was a "sensitive", "dreamy" boy who despite his idyllic childhood managed to suffer from as many physical hurts and mental afflictions as Montgomery could heap upon him. I read them with avidity.

And so, programmed to be the Frodo-block that would go into the Frodo-slot of the Kenhelm family, and dolloped heavily with inspiration of Walter Blythe, Fenris Kenhelm was born. A puny, undersized underdog from the start.

Rehirne (earlier called Enare, and prior to that, of course, simply The Shire) always had orphanages. Orphanages were the essentiality of Rehirne, its one defining function, because we had already determined that the Kenhelms would be our first family where the parents were both dead.

Let the Anne of Green Gables vibes begin already, amirite?

Fenris was disappointingly pale and non-centric during a good half of the journey from Rehirne to Orden -- but what could I expect? He was "quiet". His Frodo role got him enough time in the limelight to make me happy.

After they got to Orden/Mordor, Fenris started showing weird sparks of... life? He had an argument with Mordred over which one of them was going to pay for their illegal passage through the pass of Cirith Ungol.

Somehow this was supposed to demonstrate the depth of their brotherly love.

Unfortunately, I'm not feeling it.

And even more unfortunately, it proved to be a trend.

BREAKING NEWS: THE ONLY WAY TO DEMONSTRATE LOVE IS BY ARGUMENTS

I could really use some good gifs about now. *reminds self to figure out how to use this feature on Wattpad*

Anyway, Fenris kept on getting better. His morbidity developed, as did his snark levels, though they certainly weren't on par with Mordred's. His bickering ability, however, was phenomenal. He possessed a great gift of starting a quarrel without seeming to be the one to start it, and then being able to play the hurt-and-dejected party afterwards.

His temper, on the rare occasions it actually snapped, was Ugly. Like, you have never seen such ugliness. But we'll get to that later.

Scar Incoming, Watch Out

I drew the Kenhelms shortly after we finished their journey. I was having considerable issues with Fenris. The "nice" people were usually harder to capture -- Mordred had a couple false attempts sitting beside his freshly colored portrait. But for Fenris, I had covered half a page with heads, some with faces, some with partially drawn bodies, and I still couldn't render what was in my head.

My brother came walking into the room as I bent over my best attempt yet with sucked-in breath and nervous fingers. My desk was right beside the door. He jostled my elbow by accident.

I moaned in dismay. "Look what you did!" A straight, thin line ran up from the corner of Fenris' perfect eye, up his perfectly shaped forehead, to the top of his perfect skull. I was nothing less than distraught. My last, glorious, consummate attempt was ruined.

My brother apologized profusely and repentantly. "Maybe he can have a scar," he offered as an 8-year-old boy's attempt at consolation.

Me: *vaguely* "Yeah, sure... Wait. You -- you may have something there."

The vista opened wide before me. More pain! More trauma!

So Fenris had a scar, thanks to a timely jolt. * cue Galadriel voice* And some things happened... that otherwise would not have come to pass.

First of all, Fenris really did now have a major (not to mention perpetual) source of trauma in his life. Because I made it become one. While I really did love my shy, quiet little bean, I loved to hurt him too. And psychological hurt was increasingly my realm of fascination. It seemed logical to me that this physical disfigurement would ruin Fenris' life and chance at happiness at every turn, and I acted accordingly.

The Facts Don't Line Up, Verity

Fenris was supposed to be shy and quiet. Sure, on the way to Orden, he was. He was a mute little chicken, and that's not meant in any complimentary way. But after arrival at Orden, as we have observed, he... livened up a bit. Then he got the scar, and the quietness came back.

BUT --

--ONLY in the context of the scar. With his family and any other intimates, he could be -- and usually was -- snappish, disagreeable, and in constant friction with his brother. Yet put him with anyone who might look at his scar in the wrong tone of voice, and he turned into a miserable, huddling creature, clamping one hand over the humiliating wound. Somehow, I deluded myself into thinking that this made him a naturally bashful character.

Besides all this, one aspect of Fenris that we increasingly liked to stress was his and Mordred's deep bond (despite its lack of real evidence in the books/talkplay). He was intrinsically a very selfless person, we agreed, and it showed through in his sacrificial love for Mordred.

Excuse me.

Do you mind explaining to me why this "intrinsically selfless" person spends a year of his life mooning and whining and fretting because his face is disfigured and he's so embarrassed over it? If Fenris was the self-effacing, outward-focused person we thought he was, he would not realistically have been so crushed by the accident. Especially since the abusive childhood wasn't much of a thing back then.

Some initial shock, upset, and shame would be normal. But surrounded by the love and support he had (we've got to remember, Mordred was actually the less dysfunctional brother at this point), with hospital care and a quick physical recovery, the post-event trauma should have been pretty minimal.

From Bad... to Worse

But no. Fenris had the worst insecurity complex in the history of insecurity complexes. And it didn't get better, it got worse. He got insecure about everything from scar to physical wimpiness (he was really pretty sickly) to perceived cowardice. Imagine every mopey affirmation-prober you've ever known or heard of, and that was Fenris, 24/7. He sulked despondently about the house in his bad moods, waiting for someone to notice he was upset so he could drop a sly hint as to how they could make him feel better -- i.e. compliments. He'd relish the compliments when they came, but deny their truth, to make his distraught relatives try even harder to encourage him and lift his mood up. "No, I'm not handsome, Mordred." Read: "Tell me I'm handsome again, Mordred."

He spent sixteen months from the time of his accident struggling to come to terms with this insecurity, culminating in a scandalous quarrel with his girlfriend and a mutual breakup (their third breakup), which made Fenris conclude that he made everyone's lives miserable (yep) and that it would be better for everyone if he left Ceristen (despite Mordred's anguished pleas to the contrary).

Really, Mordred was the unnoticed sacrificial person in all this. Fenris, a blood-sucking, affirmation-craving, sickly terror, truly did nothing but stress his sibling's lives and make them miserable. Yet Mordred faithfully loved him, and put up with him, and believed that anything Fenris said went. He told his brother what an amazing person he was, insisted how much better Fenris was than himself, protected him without question, and somehow thought that Fenris really was the best brother, even the best person in the world.

Well, how did we figure out to keep Fenris in Ceristen?

It was discovered that all Fenris needed to make him happy was...

... wait for it...

... for Mordred to step out of his protective role and let Fenris "be a man".

I can't.

I just can't.

This, THIS is what's causing a tsunami of psychological drama that's affecting half of Ceristen? Oh no, it's not Fenris' fault! It's Mordred's fault! For not letting his brother "be himself"! This is why Fenris had a screaming breakup with his poor girlfriend? This is why Mordred is tearing himself to pieces over Fenris' threats to leave? Heads up, everyone, Fenris has NO RESPONSIBILITY in this! It's all MORDRED'S FAULT!

*forces self to take deep breaths* After this... revelation, everything settled down. Fenris became a normal, mild-mannered man who got happily married and lived a happy life. Illogical, but at least everyone is happy. I still wish his girlfriend had shut the door in his face when he came courting her for the fourth time, but it was probably for the best, because that meant no more Fenris-drama in the talkplay, and that left room for the Fenris-drama to sort itself out in the story drafts.

Picking up the Pieces

Well, it slowly sorted itself. I started to figure out that noisy, opinionated dialogue does not a character make. Fenris' split personality resolved itself into a consistently shy, backward person. Hooray! Still, second caveat: a shy character does not a likeable character make. Little by little, almost unconsciously, I began eliminating Fenris' mopiness and unhealthy gambits for attention. Then, as The Village developed, and Mordred's two-dimensional character filled out in startling, explosive ways, I started to figure that Fenris didn't even need all the spotlight he was getting. That maaaybe Fenris needed to be a mainstay for Mordred more than Mordred, unstable and shattering, needed to be one for Fenris.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out how to work the whole insecurity complex mess into the Ceristen series. I never considered not putting it in -- it seemed an integral part of Fenris' story and character. At first I ruled for putting it at the beginning of Sorrow and Song, where it would have chronologically occurred according to the talkplay. I wrote out that version and put it in the "Years Between" chapter.

Then I started to feel like the drama was overkill. The further along in the Ceristen series I got, and the more problems I began to find to address with Mordred, the more I felt the intrusion of the Fenris-drama being there at all. Maybe Mordred's overprotective instincts could be addressed in some simpler, abbreviated way during The War. Fenris would still be freed up to "be himself".

Then, after The Village and The Claw, in the middle of The War, it hit me. I didn't need the insecurity complex at all, abbreviated or otherwise. Fenris was already being himself. He was already showing he was strong enough. He was already becoming a man. He was strong enough to grow up without having to tell Mordred to "get off my back!".

And at that moment, I loved my shy little bean more than ever.

The funny thing is, Fenris really is stronger than Mordred gives him credit for. But he'll never complain to be recognized for it. Because he really is the selfless person that he was meant to be all along, now. Mordred, and love for Mordred, is his world, and he will always be there for Mordred. He won't care for being noticed, for attention, for praise. He'll just be there.

Conclusion

So that's why instead of a whiny, disagreeable, depressed boy, you see Fenris in the Ceristen series as a gentle, loyal little wolf who "has steel in him after all"; who stays beside his loved ones and never thinks to ask for anything in return; who learns to climb out of a brutalized, terrified childhood to stand firm a man.

And I love him to bits.