kalani

Briar does show when she likes someone, but she also has a tendency to show when she doesn't, or if she's bothered. The way she treats Hopper at the beginning and the way she makes jabs at others when she's upset, specifically over discussion of her destiny. Something I do find quite interesting is the take of her being a true mirror of her namesake, a briar rose. They have a very strong, sweet, smell, and extremely thick and sharp thorns in brambles that keep anything unwanted out. I view this as the walls Briar puts up when it comes to letting people in, especially when things progress within the rest of the group. She becomes closed off and tries to hold those around, who she can, away at arm's length, which makes Faybelle being all over her during Epic Winter quite odd. Especially whenever Briar isn't supposed to like Faybelle at all. For her to allow Faybelle to get that close raises questions. I also think there's some discussion to be had here when you remember that even though Duchess has done similar things to Ashlynn, Briar isn't scared to tell people off, unlike Ashlynn, so why didn't Briar say anything? 

In the dream sequence, Faybelle is the one who stops her. There is a lot to unpack here. One of the biggest things for me about this whole scene pack is that all of the dreams are what each person wants in the future. Deep down, what they want. So for starters, for Briar and Faybelle to be in the same dream at all is complicated because of the circumstance, not because they're just in the same place. That means they want the same thing. We already know where Briar stands, but Faybelle doesn't get that same arc, so the water's murky up until this. If Briar wanted to move past her destiny completely and just be with friends, that would've been the dream. But that wasn't. Faybelle is treated as this character that really wants to fulfill her destiny, yet she prevents Briar from doing so which in turn also prevents her from doing so as well. 

This also makes Faybelle the first person to directly act as a blockade for Briar towards her destiny. Everything done up to this point has been Briar's own actions. Anyone could have stopped Briar in the dream, it could've easily been Ashlynn, or even Hopper (as annoying as that is), but it was Faybelle, and that means that Faybelle wished for that too. 

Just to point something else out about Epic Winter, Faybelle hovering over the spindle they find and teasing Briar and then looking horrified whenever she actually steps towards it. Yeah. That haunts me. 

I'm getting on the bandwagon that if Faybelle doesn't uphold her destiny, she will die (I also support them ending up together perfectly okay, this is just for the sake of angst). I think this is interesting to play with. I imagine that Bribelle doesn't just happen sweetly over time. I think the relationship, feelings finally shared, comes from an argument. Both very confused after Epic Winter. Briar making an off-hand joke to Faybelle and Faybelle gets defensive because she can't deny she likes Briar. She could never. But Briar doesn't understand why Faybelle is so set on not going through with her destiny because she's always acted like she didn't like her. A lot of things get thrown around and then Faybelle says she would rather rot into pixie dust than let Briar prick her finger. Dead silence. Neither knows what to say after. The conversation after is all tears. 

I think Bribelle works because they both need someone who will match their energy. Briar needs someone who will respect her, and she won't get that from any of the men. She acts like she wants to be a trophy wife early on, but she just wants respect and the freedom to make her own decisions. She wants to be happy with who she ends up with. And she wants to choose them, not have them chosen for her. She can find this in Faybelle.

Briar is the first person that Faybelle sees. Not just as a love interest, but as a person. She understands the pressure of people trying to make you do something you don't want to. And in the sense that no one understands the why of it, why you don't want to do it, there's an underlining part to that. Of maybe Faybelle and Briar always having a soft spot for each other. Deep down, neither wanted to go through with their story. Briar because of what she would lose, Faybelle because of who she would lose. And in that, Briar's eyes are opened to how much Faybelle cares and how much she does understand, even from the other side of the page. Different sides of the same coin. 

Faybelle craves to have what Briar has. Friendships and things akin. She might not be able to get it for herself, but if she can let Briar keep it, she will. She cares for Briar on a level that she can't bring herself to admit out of fear for so many things. I think she does eventually, just not right then. She becomes pliant over time, pliant for Briar, and that's when she can admit it, because she knows Briar understands and feels the same way.

Faybelle genuinely changes to be with Briar. I can see her being friends with Duchess. It's her first real friendship, Duchess’ too, and they learn a lot from each other. Faybelle is better for Briar, because of Briar. She lets people in if she feels like she can, and has someone to confide in that isn't Briar. 

Briar and Faybelle are foils of each other. There's this sense of understanding that we don't get anywhere else. Faybelle has these opportunities to be selfish, to take what she has wanted for years, and she doesn't. They are so completely different, yet they are so similar. They complete each other, even in a platonic way. 

Briar

I think character development for ANY character is extremely important, just on an individual standpoint, but things become much more complex whenever the development is directly related to the actions of someone else, and that someone else remains relevant.

Briar and Faybelle both go through many things throughout the course of the show, and one of the most important things to be aware of is that in their world, stories are held above all else. The relationships of people within each story are detrimental to their legacy, and this just becomes more concrete if two people are codependently involved in the same story and pitted against each other.

Just looking at Bribelle as a platonic relationship and nothing more, there's still a heavy sense of codependency that you don't see elsewhere, and that acts as a heavy base in their interactions.

In terms of development throughout the show, there's a lot. Briar is immediately presented as someone who is extremely close to Apple and Ashlynn, and given how forward Apple is about her destiny, we believe that Briar is the same way because we aren't made to think differently. She jokes about her destiny up until things start getting dicey with the Storybook of Legends, and then she starts questioning if things could be different. This is an immediate shift in her character because she, alongside Raven, is breaking the mold.

It can be heavily assumed that some students have their thoughts on the fact that Briar is always throwing/attending parties. This is a real world scenario. Many people don't understand why Briar is so upset about her destiny whenever to them, it's ‘just falling asleep’, nothing more. She even directly addresses this multiple times, and there's still this constant disconnect that I don't think we get in hardly any other stories, minus the obvious ones. I think Briar's biggest takeaway from partying is the memories. The time she won't get back. The people she will never see again if she falls asleep.

Something else I don't see talked about enough, if even talked about at all, is the lack of a mother figure for Briar. Because of how prominent parents are in the world they live in, they do a pretty good job of discussing anyone's parents who aren't present and why. Obviously, we know why Briar's mother is not present. But I'm looking much deeper than that, and more at how this affects her as a person. Parents, or parental figures, are influential for anyone, no matter what happens. They affect who you are and who you become. The parents have a tendency to give input on their children's stories and they push them in the direction they want them to go. So, for Briar to not have someone in her ear about her destiny, it changes things to say the least. She's only influenced by those around her everyday. This lack of constant pushing in the direction that has been carved for her, not by her own hand, is what leads to her inevitably throwing the Storybook of Legends down the Well of Wonder.

In my opinion, though I love Briar to bits and pieces, I do think there's a nod to hypocrisy, as we see with other characters. Briar is a direct, even if not meant to be hurtful in her eyes, representation of the divide between those who wish to follow their story and those who don't. Briar was raised with the knowledge that she would have to fulfill her part of the story with the help of Faybelle, and it wasn't until she realized that she could choose otherwise that she made the decision to take that path.

There are others amongst the students who don't get that privilege, for many different reasons, but Briar does get it, and it's a call back to the divide. The idea that many don't care about how a destiny affects someone unless it directly affects them alone, as shown through Briar remaining unbothered until she registered what her destiny would actually mean. With this being said, Briar does come around to seeing how other people are affected, so I don't tend to hold her to this construct as I do with other people. Still, regardless of which character you look at, I think that there's levels to any of them, and it's hard to judge them for the decisions they make when they're trying to navigate a world that expects them to conform to what the generation before them wants. Honestly, even Apple, who tends to be the most problematic for obvious reasons, has a complexity.

Briar becomes more aware of the people around her, and I think Faybelle falls ‘victim’ to this, but on an entirely smaller scale.

Faybelle

This is where I have to start skipping around, so bare with me. Faybelle's development to me does at a point become dependent on Briar outside of a romantic relationship.

Faybelle is shown to be someone who doesn't have friends. She has enemies, acquaintances at best. That's all. She's a brash person and she's actually quite independent in the way that she tends to keep to herself instead of openly talking about things.

Now, based off what we've seen, nothing happens to those who go against their destiny. The Evil Queen serves as evidence for this, at least to some extent. She did try to take over other stories, something which wasn't written into her own, but she also went though with her own story first, so this could be debatable. It's never stated if people can choose their own path. I've seen some theories about what people specifically think happens to fairies if they don't uphold their destiny. My personal favorite is fairies turning into pixie dust. As in their skin starts shimmering and the pixie dust can be wiped away. Once it's all gone, they die within days and they turn into a pile of pixie dust.

A very out there death isn't it? The main alternative is poof, so, take it as you will.

These kids are raised, indoctrinated, to believe that by not fulfilling their destiny, they're doomed to not exist at all. Faybelle and Briar stand on opposite ends of their story. We see how Duchess treats Ashlynn (though I've seen debates over their relationship and those are always super interesting), so things become complex when you see how Faybelle treats Briar. Faybelle is meant to hate her, loathe her. And yet, Faybelle does less than Duchess does.