#Blue has a rowdy and sunny disposition

[hanakou-often]

SO TRUE!! AUDGGHIHHH HANAKOU MENTIONED

Rereading tbhk and I forgot how adorable yashiro was AAAAAAAAA <33333

[ask-a-girl-and-a-bowgart]

Welcome to the Monster World, little one! Ask any of the cast questions!

Main Cast: (under cut cuz there's a lot)

-Lily [Human/Plant Island]; 9yo orphan human that managed to make her way to the Monster World. Little is known about her past, but is said to be a sweet girl. She lives with Blue, currently. Birthday is May 23rd

-Blue [Bowgart/Plant Island] 24 yo. Unsurprisingly named for the unusually dark color of his fur. Blue resides on Plant island with Tweedledee and Lily. He likes to do home cooking and baking, and is quite knowledgeable on many subjects. Some of his close friends say he's quite the scholar. Cemila is his older sister, and Twig, Jadau, and Cozmo are his friends. Birthday is September 7th.

-Tweedledee [Maw/Plant Island]. 11 yo. His egg was found in the forest by Blue's childhood home and taken in by Blue. He still lives with Blue even now. Tweedledee, also called Dee at times, is a bit rowdy, being that he is a child. Birthday is August 29th

-Twig [Shrubb/Plant Island] 23yo. Twig is notorious around Plant island for being a troublemaker. Despite this, he's quite a nice guy. However, he does get into physical altercations often, whoch is unhealthy to say the least. Blue and Twig have been nearly lifelong friends, surprisingly; Cozmo and Jadau are also his friends. Birthday is April 6th

-Cozmo [Ghazt/Plant Island] 22yo. Originally hatched and raised on Ethereal Island, Cozmo loves being around the greenery of Plant Island. She matches Twigs personality somewhat, also being a bit of a troublemaker. She's also smart, like Blue, but not nearly in as many topics. And despite her disposition, she cares deeply about her friends. Blue, Twig, and Jadau are her close friends. Birthday is December 14th

-Jadau [Entbrat/Plant Island] 24yo. Jadau is described as sweet and loving, being quite likable among youngsters. Basically, the big teddy bear of his friend group, making sure nobody gets hurt. His friends are Blue, Twig, and Cozmo. Birthday is March 19th.

-Raesa [Rare T-Rox/Plant Island]. 30yo. Sassy and witty, has an interest in books. She's snarky and not afraid to show it. She speaks her mind, often speaking of controversial topics. She has a general dislike for most monsters, prefers to be left alone. Her birthday is July 3rd.

-Bumbleweed [Potbelly/Plant Island]. 31yo. A sly and quick-witted plant, Bumbleweed is. He runs a produce stand in the Market Square in town, selling all sorts of raw goods. In the winter, he runs a pawn shop. He's said to have the finest vegetables and grain around, thus his prices are higher, though they can be negotiated. Birthday is October 2nd.

-Ylantang [Rare Oaktopus/Plant Island] ??yo. Not much is known about Ylantang. All anyone knows is that he is a short tempered healer who owns a apothecary that looks nearly in shambles. Sylia is his apprentice. Birthday is unknown.

-Sylia [Clamble/Plant Islant] 12yo. A bubbly, clumsy little thing. She is Ylantangs apprentice. Birthday is July 3rd.

-Cemila [Bowgart/Cold Island]. 31yo. Blue is her younger brother. She was hatched and raised on Plant island, then moved to Cold island for job opportunities. Indigo is her significant other, and Wistle is her friend. Birthday is June 18th

-Indigo [Pango/Cold Island] 28yo. They're shy but sweet. Crafty too. Lived on Cold island since hatching. Trans U U. Cemila is their girlfriend, and Wistle is more of an acquaintance to them. Birthday is December 30th

-Ember [Kayna/Fire Haven] appears to look 30ish yo, but exact age is unknown. Ember was found weak and ill on the long abandoned Tribal island, appearing to be covered in amber. She has then moved to Fire Haven with Sunny and Agave, who found her on one of their travels. She has definitely been around since the fabled Dawn of Fire, and loves recalling good times from back then, from friends to holidays. Her friends are Agave and Sunny. Her birthday is unknown, tho it seems to be sometime in September or November.

-Sunny [Flowah/Fire Haven] 33yo. Quiet and reserved, usually communicating in grunts or looks. Agave usually speaks on his behalf. Tough and intimidating, he is actually sweet and will give the best hugs. If you're lucky, you might catch him smile. His birthday is October 20th.

-Agave [Barrb/Fire Haven] 31yo. Shes sweet and motherly, taking care of all whom she cares deeply about. Usually seen with Sunny and talks on his behalf. She loves to garden and read on botanical studies and other planty things. Birthday is February 22nd.

Other Cast:

-Wistle [Tweedle/Cold Island] 27yo. Very talkative, and definitely earned the right to be called Cold Islands News Report. She learns all the latest gossip and spreads it around to those who want to hear. Though she can get a bit annoying, she means well, and is rather sweet. Birthday is November 15th.

-The Seasonals [more specifically, Punkleton, Yool, Hoola, Ffidyll, Booq'wurm] [Seasonal Shanty]. Not really seen outside their seasonal events. They act like more of a family rather than friends, though they aren't necessarily family (if that makes any sense?)

Ask Rules: -NOTHING INAPPROPRIATE OR HATEFUL. (The usual DNI stuff.) -Please specify who you are directing your ask to (pretty straightforward) -No roleplay asks please! :) -please be patient! i am a busy person with a life outside tumblr, so if you send an ask, it may not get answered right away!

[The beginning of it all]

if you have any questions to ask me, the blog handler, please dm me or shoot an ask thru my main!: @bear-cubs-art-things

[trixie-pixie]

⭐⭐

OKAY COOL SO- since I get to talk about whatever I want here, I’m going to talk about my favourite part of every perfect summer, the slightly pretentious colours Thing in chapter three, because it’s probably my fav thing I’ve EVER written

Before I go bit-by-bit, I want to say that this piece of writing was very much inspired by my absolute favourite fic of all time, It’s Just Medicine by Abbdabb (I don’t know if they have a tumblr but they’re my absolute fav writer of all time)- there was a similar moment in chapter 25 that inspired this part :-) now lets tear my writing apart bit-by-bit !!!

Jan had always been made of heat- she’s a bubbling pool of fiery oranges, deep crimsons, all wrapped up in a shiny, sunny yellow disposition. She’s a firecracker- and not in the good way. Inside of her is a pressure pot, building and building with heat until she eventually explodes, like she did just minutes ago. Jan lives her life bathed in scarlet and carnelian, drowning in shades of currant and carmine. She feels emotions as pits and mountains- spiking, uncontrollable joy, followed by deep, unescapable sadness. Jan is a rollercoaster- forever too much.

note: Okay, this was definitely a moment of projection- I kind of wrote this as exactly the way I feel. I’m a bit of an emotional disaster, frequently been told that I am “a lot to deal with”- which is absolutely true in some ways. But it’s okay to be that way, as long as it’s expressed in a healthy way. I wanted to use this part of the work to kind of... reflect? I don’t know. It’s something I don’t really like about myself, but when a character I love has the exact same traits, I find it easy to love. Yeah.

Jackie is calming shades of blue- deep pools of navy and sapphire, cerulean and midnight swirling before Jan’s eyes. Jackie is homely, she is calm. Jackie is steady where Jan is unstable, she’s soft and predictable where Jan is all hard edges and spur of the moment decisions. Jackie is just right where Jan is far too much.

Jackie is not.

note: Is it projection again? Of course it is! I think the comparison to other people, especially people that we love, is like... a universal thing. I wanted to show that Jackie is the opposite of Jan... at least in her eyes. Really, they’re two cheeks of the same ass two sides of the same coin. Jackie is just as emotional as Jan, just as loving as her, but just in a different way. But Jan loves Jackie, who has all the qualities she’s been taunted for not having. That anger and jealousy is something that I experience a lot, for the same reasons. Woo! Projection!

Jan isn’t good without Jackie. Without Jackie, made up of Jan’s complimentary colours, Jan is too much to deal with. She’s too angry, too excitable. She’s too rowdy, too loud, too expressive, too bold, too much.

note: I’m not gonna lie, this part broke my heart a little bit to write. Because it’s exactly how I used to think- it hurt me a little to realize how wrong that way of thinking is while I wrote this. But at the same time, I felt a little better. Because the point of this is that those things aren’t true- and if they aren’t true for my characters, maybe they aren’t true about me either.

Jan is nothing without Jackie, whereas Jackie is free without Jan weighing her down. Without Jan ruining everything, spilling her emotions everywhere without even beginning to think of the consequences. And now Jackie knows that Jan is gay- she’ll hate her. Jan will be lucky if she ever sees her again.

note: Okay I really don’t think that there are any parts of this fic that AREN’T me projecting in an attempt to like myself a little more. But this last bit kind of broke me a little?? Coming out is shitty. It sucks. I’ve had some really great coming outs, and a lot of really bad ones. The previous scene where Jan comes out to Jackie as gay, in a way kind of was what it was like to come out to my parents as trans. I just want to give her a hug and tell her that things are gonna be alright :-(

this was so fun to do !!! I love picking apart my own writing, I kind of forget about how I feel when I write certain things until I look back on them. Please send me more of this type of ask !!! I love them so much- feel free to ask for certain parts too (scenes/quotes/etc.)

[southboundhq]

MEET ALISON,

FULL NAME › Alison Griogair ‘Sonny’ MacClean AGE › twenty four GENDER › Cis male (He/Him/His) FROM › Boot Hill, Arizona RESIDENCY › Blackwater Street (Midtown) OCCUPATION › Bartender at the Bucking Horse Saloon NOW PLAYING › Mama Tried by Merle Haggard

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger/content warnings: disappearance of a family member, presumed death, alcoholism

Two phrases from Grandfather MacClean’s lips have embedded themselves in Alison’s mind since adolescence: your name is all you have and the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons. He learned quickly that both were true, at least in the town of Boot Hill. From the moment of his conception, Alison has been a MacClean first and a person second. In a place like Boot Hill, in a family like the MacCleans, there’s no escaping your family and all that comes with it. For some, family is a source of pride, their family name a name to be proud to wear. For Alison, his family name has chained him.

In the eyes of Boot Hill, the name MacClean must be some sort of cosmic joke—there’s nothing clean nor good about those dirty MacCleans. In the eyes of Alison, the name MacClean is a searing iron brand given at birth. With the name MacClean, you’re branded for life, and that brand is poor white trash. The ultimate sin Ewan passed onto his children is the sin of doing without. (And multiple affairs, but that was never something to blame unto his children, MacCleans or other—though that didn’t always stop the rumor mill.) Each child born of their family immediately thought to be another waste of space.

Alison has never really understood what made his family so dirty. They weren’t bad, they didn’t hurt anybody, they didn’t sell drugs (his parents didn’t, at least, he could make no promise of his brothers), they gave smiles and waves and small talk to any that crossed their path. Their only apparent crime that too many children filled a four bedroom house. Once a brand sears, it never goes away, just scars, and their brand was given to them generations before Alison nor any of his siblings or his parents were brought into the world. The history of his family weighs heavier than gravity, always pressing down, always there.

The Connelly clan and the MacCleans merged in 1976, with the marriage of young Bedelia, merely fourteen, and Ewan, nearly seventeen. Each had their own sordid history, the mixing of their combined family tragedies doomed Ewan and Bedelia’s children twice over. While bad things always happened to either family or any family with its roots in Boot Hill, it seemed they, these eight boys and two girls, got the worst luck of the lot. This new generation, Ewan’s boys, were cursed, and each side blamed the other for the tragedy that befell the children of Ewan MacClean and Bedelia Connelly. Not much can be said for the children sired by other mother’s, but they must be a bit cursed too, with that MacClean blood in their veins.

Alison Griogair MacClean was born eighth in line. Alison, originally a male name, he’ll likely tell you if you snicker, but he’s always gone by the name Sonny, ever since he was a child. Only his family gets to call him Al, and no one has dared tried to call him Allie. Some used to say it was ironic that he’s called Sonny, since Alison has never been carefree, never had a sunny disposition. Alison was born serious, born anxious and wary of those around him, even his siblings. The type to hang back at the mouth of the cave while his friends, adventurous and dangerous little boys, headed deeper into the darkness. Always the sentinel guarding the door, always on the lookout for parents or cops, always wringing his hands while others had fun.

Number eight, or number seven if you’re just counting the boys, Alison felt he had to be the serious one. His older brothers were rowdy, rambunctious things. The brothers before him had made names for themselves, and yet they were all referred to as ‘one of the MacClean boys’ before their first name is ever uttered. Alison learned quickly that his siblings were never individual people, just part of a set; he, too, just another addition, indistinguishable from any of the others. The lineage of the MacClean family is a sea of men with dirty blond hair and deep cornflower blue eyes, save for the red-headed and freckled Alison. It is an incredibly easy family to drown in, to lose your identity in until being a MacClean is the only identity you have.

The MacClean girl, Eileen. His older sister used to be referred to as ‘the one good thing out of the MacClean family’ before everyone just referred to her as missing, and then finally, dead. Alison was just a small child when Eileen had disappeared, but he remembers her like a burn mark. Most of all, he remembers her storming off on that fateful night after a fight with Fearghas and never returning. Sometimes he wonders if his mother has ever forgiven Fearghas for that, or if Fearghas has ever forgiven himself. As the months grew longer, the hole in the family grew larger, and Alison felt terrible that his little siblings never got to know the type of people their parents were before Eileen disappeared, and felt lucky he was able to experience just a little of it.

Ewan had never been a warm man, but he began to smell more like drink until Alison became convinced his father was bathing in it. His mother, cheerful and happy to greet every day with a smile, closed off tighter than Eileen’s bedroom door. The brothers no longer fought inside the house, instead avoiding it all together as if it was infected with the plague, and more talk came from them about moving out as soon as they graduated–or likely dropped out of–high school. The river of the MacClean family soon dried up after Sonny, Cian only a baby by the time Eileen disappeared, and the next was what most in town (sometimes even Alison) thought of as the replacement. Their claims became even more emboldened when their new baby was a little girl, the second girl to ever be born from Bedelia and now the only girl, and became concrete when Grandmother Connelly proclaimed Isla to be Eileen’s reincarnated soul.

Only missing for four years, Eileen was officially declared dead in absentia, and so added even more gravity to the MacClean name. Now, additional to the gossip and ire that was usually spewed about his family, the tragedy of Eileen MacClean was a tale that bored soccer moms loved to scare their children with when they refused to come in from playing or barmaids and hair stylists used to inform newcomers when giving the lowdown about every family in Boot Hill like it was just some ghost story instead of the absence of a sister and daughter from eleven people’s lives. By the crest of his adolescence, his parents were shadows of their former selves, growing a divide in his mind: Before Eileen and After Eileen. Neither life seemed any more better or worse than the other, or rather her disappearance didn’t change him in the way it did his parents or his older brothers. There grew a second divide; the siblings that remembered Eileen and the ones who didn’t—namely Alison, Cian, and Isla.

As the years kept on, the story of poor Eileen became just another facet in the family history of the MacCleans, and some other town scandal came to distract everyone from a loving mother’s cold-growing heart. Always so serious, even back then, Alison didn’t react much to anything, not even as schoolyard bully’s sympathies dwindled and their teasing roared back up again like there was never any lull. After awhile, even Alison got used to his grieving mother and absent father, like there was never any other version of them he used to know when he was a child.

As the MacClean house grew colder with every brother that moved out to his own home, to start his own job or family, Alison began to feel the town’s eyes focus on him. At thirteen, he became keenly aware of expectations, what came with wearing his last name. There seemed to be only one road for them to travel, a single straight line to follow: be worth nothing, bring no value to society. A rather broad and harsh brush to paint all of the children with, but Alison knew what others saw when they looked at him, what will this one do to screw up his life?

Alison grew up thinking he was just another nameless boy in the MacClean line, so he did nothing to try to stand out. Sometimes, he dreamt of leaving Boot Hill and making a name for himself, like all little kids in Boot Hill did, but rarely did they ever make it out. He dreamt of it, but only fleetingly, and he wasn’t very imaginative with it. Nothing interested him, except for baseball, the one thing he seemed to actually be good at, but he neither had the grades nor the inclination to use that to leave Boot Hill. Sometimes he dreamt of heading down to Tucson or even going as far as Texas, but these flights of fancy left as quickly as they came. His mother used to encourage him to be smart, study as hard as he could, but her grief swallowed her whole and Alison could never count on his father to give any advice on anything other than cheating on your wife and which bars they never card at, not even when his father was a boy.

Any hopes of leaving Boot Hill were dashed the day the guidance counselor called him in and told him he barely had the grades to graduate in two years; he ditched more than he attended and even when he did, the words on the page floated and twisted themselves like ivy until he could barely even think of what he just read. If he worked extra hard, spent every moment of his life getting his grades up, Alison could be the first MacClean to leave Boot Hill. As sweetly as the counselor said them, all Alison heard was that he was stupid like his father, and he stopped attending Boot Hill High as soon as baseball season had ended. Sonny MacClean became another waste of space in a long line of wasted spaces. If he was going to be a MacClean, then he was going to commit to it, and that meant never dreaming anything better for yourself than what you already have.

So Alison resigned himself to his fate. Barely old enough to be even inside a bar legally, Alison picked up a job at the Bucking Horse Saloon (his own father preferred the Coyote’s Howl or his own backyard to drink in, lessening his chances of running into his dad) as a barback. Plenty of people told him he was throwing his life away, fixturing himself to a bar like his father and a few brothers before him—Alison jokes that he’s behind the bar, it’s different. It wouldn’t have mattered anyways, nothing mattered. Alison was a failure and he knew it, ashamed of it but defensive of it. He surrendered to the image that town gossip provided for him, for his family. An intentional self saboteur.

Soon, Alison left the family home and moved into a house with a few high school buddies over in Midtown, close to work; not because he was kicked out or not welcomed, only that he couldn’t stand Eileen’s ghostly shadow hanging in every corner, the reminder that their family was broken and would never be repaired. He easily filled the spot of bartender when his mentor retired and haunts the Bucking Horse Saloon better than any of its barflies. When he’s not there, he’s home. When he’s not there, he’s at the bowling alley or playing a pick-up game of baseball out in the desert with a few guys. If there’s anything to be said about the eighth MacClean boy, Sonny is a great bowler and an even better bartender.

Alison briefly thought he’d get out of Boot Hill. He briefly thought he wouldn’t end up like his father or his brothers. And yet here he is, serving beers to men with livers shriveled like raisins and hanging out the bowling alley every night, just like everyone told him he was going to be. He’s surprisingly okay with that.

❝ i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Harris Dickinson AUTHOR › Admin Rachel

[southboundhqarchive]

MEET ALISON,

FULL NAME › Alison Griogair ‘Sonny’ MacClean AGE › twenty four GENDER › Cis male (He/Him/His) FROM › Boot Hill, Arizona RESIDENCY › Blackwater Street (Midtown) OCCUPATION › Bartender at the Bucking Horse Saloon NOW PLAYING › Mama Tried by Merle Haggard

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warnings: disappearance of a family member, presumed death, alcoholism

Two phrases from Grandfather MacClean’s lips have embedded themselves in Alison’s mind since adolescence: your name is all you have and the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons. He learned quickly that both were true, at least in the town of Boot Hill. From the moment of his conception, Alison has been a MacClean first and a person second. In a place like Boot Hill, in a family like the MacCleans, there’s no escaping your family and all that comes with it. For some, family is a source of pride, their family name a name to be proud to wear. For Alison, his family name has chained him.

In the eyes of Boot Hill, the name MacClean must be some sort of cosmic joke—there’s nothing clean nor good about those dirty MacCleans. In the eyes of Alison, the name MacClean is a searing iron brand given at birth. With the name MacClean, you’re branded for life, and that brand is poor white trash. The ultimate sin Ewan passed onto his children is the sin of doing without. (And multiple affairs, but that was never something to blame unto his children, MacCleans or other—though that didn’t always stop the rumor mill.) Each child born of their family immediately thought to be another waste of space.

Alison has never really understood what made his family so dirty. They weren’t bad, they didn’t hurt anybody, they didn’t sell drugs (his parents didn’t, at least, he could make no promise of his brothers), they gave smiles and waves and small talk to any that crossed their path. Their only apparent crime that too many children filled a four bedroom house. Once a brand sears, it never goes away, just scars, and their brand was given to them generations before Alison nor any of his siblings or his parents were brought into the world. The history of his family weighs heavier than gravity, always pressing down, always there.

The Connelly clan and the MacCleans merged in 1976, with the marriage of young Bedelia, merely fourteen, and Ewan, nearly seventeen. Each had their own sordid history, the mixing of their combined family tragedies doomed Ewan and Bedelia’s children twice over. While bad things always happened to either family or any family with its roots in Boot Hill, it seemed they, these eight boys and two girls, got the worst luck of the lot. This new generation, Ewan’s boys, were cursed, and each side blamed the other for the tragedy that befell the children of Ewan MacClean and Bedelia Connelly. Not much can be said for the children sired by other mother’s, but they must be a bit cursed too, with that MacClean blood in their veins.

Alison Griogair MacClean was born eighth in line. Alison, originally a male name, he’ll likely tell you if you snicker, but he’s always gone by the name Sonny, ever since he was a child. Only his family gets to call him Al, and no one has dared tried to call him Allie. Some used to say it was ironic that he’s called Sonny, since Alison has never been carefree, never had a sunny disposition. Alison was born serious, born anxious and wary of those around him, even his siblings. The type to hang back at the mouth of the cave while his friends, adventurous and dangerous little boys, headed deeper into the darkness. Always the sentinel guarding the door, always on the lookout for parents or cops, always wringing his hands while others had fun.

Number eight, or number seven if you’re just counting the boys, Alison felt he had to be the serious one. His older brothers were rowdy, rambunctious things. The brothers before him had made names for themselves, and yet they were all referred to as ‘one of the MacClean boys’ before their first name is ever uttered. Alison learned quickly that his siblings were never individual people, just part of a set; he, too, just another addition, indistinguishable from any of the others. The lineage of the MacClean family is a sea of men with dirty blond hair and deep cornflower blue eyes, save for the red-headed and freckled Alison. It is an incredibly easy family to drown in, to lose your identity in until being a MacClean is the only identity you have.

The MacClean girl, Eileen. His older sister used to be referred to as ‘the one good thing out of the MacClean family’ before everyone just referred to her as missing, and then finally, dead. Alison was just a small child when Eileen had disappeared, but he remembers her like a burn mark. Most of all, he remembers her storming off on that fateful night after a fight with Fearghas and never returning. Sometimes he wonders if his mother has ever forgiven Fearghas for that, or if Fearghas has ever forgiven himself. As the months grew longer, the hole in the family grew larger, and Alison felt terrible that his little siblings never got to know the type of people their parents were before Eileen disappeared, and felt lucky he was able to experience just a little of it.

Ewan had never been a warm man, but he began to smell more like drink until Alison became convinced his father was bathing in it. His mother, cheerful and happy to greet every day with a smile, closed off tighter than Eileen’s bedroom door. The brothers no longer fought inside the house, instead avoiding it all together as if it was infected with the plague, and more talk came from them about moving out as soon as they graduated–or likely dropped out of–high school. The river of the MacClean family soon dried up after two more came, mother already pregnant with Cian by the time Eileen disappeared, and the next was what most in town (sometimes even Alison) though of as the replacement. Their claims became even more emboldened when their new baby was a little girl, the second girl to ever be born from Bedelia and now the only girl, and became concrete when Grandmother Connelly proclaimed Isla to be Eileen’s reincarnated soul.

Only missing for four years, Eileen was officially declared dead in absentia, and so added even more gravity to the MacClean name. Now, additional to the gossip and ire that was usually spewed about his family, the tragedy of Eileen MacClean was a tale that bored soccer moms loved to scare their children with when they refused to come in from playing or barmaids and hair stylists used to inform newcomers when giving the lowdown about every family in Boot Hill like it was just some ghost story instead of the absence of a sister and daughter from eleven people’s lives. By the crest of his adolescence, his parents were shadows of their former selves, growing a divide in his mind: Before Eileen and After Eileen. Neither life seemed any more better or worse than the other, or rather her disappearance didn’t change him in the way it did his parents or his older brothers. There grew a second divide; the siblings that remembered Eileen and the ones who didn’t—namely Alison, Cian, and Isla.

As the years kept on, the story of poor Eileen became just another facet in the family history of the MacCleans, and some other town scandal came to distract everyone from a loving mother’s cold-growing heart. Always so serious, even back then, Alison didn’t react much to anything, not even as schoolyard bully’s sympathies dwindled and their teasing roared back up again like there was never any lull. After awhile, even Alison got used to his grieving mother and absent father, like there was never any other version of them he used to know when he was a child.

As the MacClean house grew colder with every brother that moved out to his own home, to start his own job or family, Alison began to feel the town’s eyes focus on him. At thirteen, he became keenly aware of expectations, what came with wearing his last name. There seemed to be only one road for them to travel, a single straight line to follow: be worth nothing, bring no value to society. A rather broad and harsh brush to paint all of the children with, but Alison knew what others saw when they looked at him, what will this one do to screw up his life?

Alison grew up thinking he was just another nameless boy in the MacClean line, so he did nothing to try to stand out. Sometimes, he dreamt of leaving Boot Hill and making a name for himself, like all little kids in Boot Hill did, but rarely did they ever make it out. He dreamt of it, but only fleetingly, and he wasn’t very imaginative with it. Nothing interested him, except for baseball, the one thing he seemed to actually be good at, but he neither had the grades nor the inclination to use that to leave Boot Hill. Sometimes he dreamt of heading down to Tucson or even going as far as Texas, but these flights of fancy left as quickly as they came. His mother used to encourage him to be smart, study as hard as he could, but her grief swallowed her whole and Alison could never count on his father to give any advice on anything other than cheating on your wife and which bars they never card at, not even when his father was a boy.

Any hopes of leaving Boot Hill were dashed the day the guidance counselor called him in and told him he barely had the grades to graduate in two years; he ditched more than he attended and even when he did, the words on the page floated and twisted themselves like ivy until he could barely even think of what he just read. If he worked extra hard, spent every moment of his life getting his grades up, Alison could be the first MacClean to leave Boot Hill. As sweetly as the counselor said them, all Alison heard was that he was stupid like his father, and he stopped attending Boot Hill High as soon as baseball season had ended. Sonny MacClean became another waste of space in a long line of wasted spaces. If he was going to be a MacClean, then he was going to commit to it, and that meant never dreaming anything better for yourself than what you already have.

So Alison resigned himself to his fate. Barely old enough to be even inside a bar legally, Alison picked up a job at the Bucking Horse Saloon (his own father preferred the Coyote’s Howl or his own backyard to drink in, lessening his chances of running into his dad) as a barback. Plenty of people told him he was throwing his life away, fixturing himself to a bar like his father and a few brothers before him—Alison jokes that he’s behind the bar, it’s different. It wouldn’t have mattered anyways, nothing mattered. Alison was a failure and he knew it, ashamed of it but defensive of it. He surrendered to the image that town gossip provided for him, for his family. An intentional self saboteur.

Soon, Alison left the family home and moved into a house with a few high school buddies over in Midtown, close to work; not because he was kicked out or not welcomed, only that he couldn’t stand Eileen’s ghostly shadow hanging in every corner, the reminder that their family was broken and would never be repaired. He easily filled the spot of bartender when his mentor retired and haunts the Bucking Horse Saloon better than any of its barflies. When he’s not there, he’s home. When he’s not there, he’s at the bowling alley or playing a pick-up game of baseball out in the desert with a few guys. If there’s anything to be said about the eighth MacClean boy, Sonny is a great bowler and an even better bartender.

Alison briefly thought he’d get out of Boot Hill. He briefly thought he wouldn’t end up like his father or his brothers. And yet here he is, serving beers to men with livers shriveled like raisins and hanging out the bowling alley every night, just like everyone told him he was going to be. He’s surprisingly okay with that.

❝ i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Harris Dickinson AUTHOR › Admin Rachel

[campmurderparty]

MEET ALISON,

FULL NAME › Alison Griogair ‘Sonny’ MacClean AGE › twenty four GENDER › Cis male (He/Him/His) FROM › Boot Hill, Arizona RESIDENCY › Blackwater Street (Midtown) OCCUPATION › Bartender at the Bucking Horse Saloon NOW PLAYING › Mama Tried by Merle Haggard

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warnings: disappearance of a family member, presumed death, alcoholism

Two phrases from Grandfather MacClean’s lips have embedded themselves in Alison’s mind since adolescence: your name is all you have and the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons. He learned quickly that both were true, at least in the town of Boot Hill. From the moment of his conception, Alison has been a MacClean first and a person second. In a place like Boot Hill, in a family like the MacCleans, there’s no escaping your family and all that comes with it. For some, family is a source of pride, their family name a name to be proud to wear. For Alison, his family name has chained him.

In the eyes of Boot Hill, the name MacClean must be some sort of cosmic joke—there’s nothing clean nor good about those dirty MacCleans. In the eyes of Alison, the name MacClean is a searing iron brand given at birth. With the name MacClean, you’re branded for life, and that brand is poor white trash. The ultimate sin Ewan passed onto his children is the sin of doing without. (And multiple affairs, but that was never something to blame unto his children, MacCleans or other—though that didn’t always stop the rumor mill.) Each child born of their family immediately thought to be another waste of space.

Alison has never really understood what made his family so dirty. They weren’t bad, they didn’t hurt anybody, they didn’t sell drugs (his parents didn’t, at least, he could make no promise of his brothers), they gave smiles and waves and small talk to any that crossed their path. Their only apparent crime that too many children filled a four bedroom house. Once a brand sears, it never goes away, just scars, and their brand was given to them generations before Alison nor any of his siblings or his parents were brought into the world. The history of his family weighs heavier than gravity, always pressing down, always there.

The Connelly clan and the MacCleans merged in 1976, with the marriage of young Bedelia, merely fourteen, and Ewan, nearly seventeen. Each had their own sordid history, the mixing of their combined family tragedies doomed Ewan and Bedelia’s children twice over. While bad things always happened to either family or any family with its roots in Boot Hill, it seemed they, these eight boys and two girls, got the worst luck of the lot. This new generation, Ewan’s boys, were cursed, and each side blamed the other for the tragedy that befell the children of Ewan MacClean and Bedelia Connelly. Not much can be said for the children sired by other mother’s, but they must be a bit cursed too, with that MacClean blood in their veins.

Alison Griogair MacClean was born eighth in line. Alison, originally a male name, he’ll likely tell you if you snicker, but he’s always gone by the name Sonny, ever since he was a child. Only his family gets to call him Al, and no one has dared tried to call him Allie. Some used to say it was ironic that he’s called Sonny, since Alison has never been carefree, never had a sunny disposition. Alison was born serious, born anxious and wary of those around him, even his siblings. The type to hang back at the mouth of the cave while his friends, adventurous and dangerous little boys, headed deeper into the darkness. Always the sentinel guarding the door, always on the lookout for parents or cops, always wringing his hands while others had fun.

Number eight, or number seven if you’re just counting the boys, Alison felt he had to be the serious one. His older brothers were rowdy, rambunctious things. The brothers before him had made names for themselves, and yet they were all referred to as ‘one of the MacClean boys’ before their first name is ever uttered. Alison learned quickly that his siblings were never individual people, just part of a set; he, too, just another addition, indistinguishable from any of the others. The lineage of the MacClean family is a sea of men with dirty blond hair and deep cornflower blue eyes, save for the red-headed and freckled Alison. It is an incredibly easy family to drown in, to lose your identity in until being a MacClean is the only identity you have.

The MacClean girl, Eileen. His older sister used to be referred to as ‘the one good thing out of the MacClean family’ before everyone just referred to her as missing, and then finally, dead. Alison was just a small child when Eileen had disappeared, but he remembers her like a burn mark. Most of all, he remembers her storming off on that fateful night after a fight with Fearghas and never returning. Sometimes he wonders if his mother has ever forgiven Fearghas for that, or if Fearghas has ever forgiven himself. As the months grew longer, the hole in the family grew larger, and Alison felt terrible that his little siblings never got to know the type of people their parents were before Eileen disappeared, and felt lucky he was able to experience just a little of it.

Ewan had never been a warm man, but he began to smell more like drink until Alison became convinced his father was bathing in it. His mother, cheerful and happy to greet every day with a smile, closed off tighter than Eileen’s bedroom door. The brothers no longer fought inside the house, instead avoiding it all together as if it was infected with the plague, and more talk came from them about moving out as soon as they graduated–or likely dropped out of–high school. The river of the MacClean family soon dried up after two more came, mother already pregnant with Cian by the time Eileen disappeared, and the next was what most in town (sometimes even Alison) though of as the replacement. Their claims became even more emboldened when their new baby was a little girl, the second girl to ever be born from Bedelia and now the only girl, and became concrete when Grandmother Connelly proclaimed Isla to be Eileen’s reincarnated soul.

Only missing for four years, Eileen was officially declared dead in absentia, and so added even more gravity to the MacClean name. Now, additional to the gossip and ire that was usually spewed about his family, the tragedy of Eileen MacClean was a tale that bored soccer moms loved to scare their children with when they refused to come in from playing or barmaids and hair stylists used to inform newcomers when giving the lowdown about every family in Boot Hill like it was just some ghost story instead of the absence of a sister and daughter from eleven people’s lives. By the crest of his adolescence, his parents were shadows of their former selves, growing a divide in his mind: Before Eileen and After Eileen. Neither life seemed any more better or worse than the other, or rather her disappearance didn’t change him in the way it did his parents or his older brothers. There grew a second divide; the siblings that remembered Eileen and the ones who didn’t—namely Alison, Cian, and Isla.

As the years kept on, the story of poor Eileen became just another facet in the family history of the MacCleans, and some other town scandal came to distract everyone from a loving mother’s cold-growing heart. Always so serious, even back then, Alison didn’t react much to anything, not even as schoolyard bully’s sympathies dwindled and their teasing roared back up again like there was never any lull. After awhile, even Alison got used to his grieving mother and absent father, like there was never any other version of them he used to know when he was a child.

As the MacClean house grew colder with every brother that moved out to his own home, to start his own job or family, Alison began to feel the town’s eyes focus on him. At thirteen, he became keenly aware of expectations, what came with wearing his last name. There seemed to be only one road for them to travel, a single straight line to follow: be worth nothing, bring no value to society. A rather broad and harsh brush to paint all of the children with, but Alison knew what others saw when they looked at him, what will this one do to screw up his life?

Alison grew up thinking he was just another nameless boy in the MacClean line, so he did nothing to try to stand out. Sometimes, he dreamt of leaving Boot Hill and making a name for himself, like all little kids in Boot Hill did, but rarely did they ever make it out. He dreamt of it, but only fleetingly, and he wasn’t very imaginative with it. Nothing interested him, except for baseball, the one thing he seemed to actually be good at, but he neither had the grades nor the inclination to use that to leave Boot Hill. Sometimes he dreamt of heading down to Tucson or even going as far as Texas, but these flights of fancy left as quickly as they came. His mother used to encourage him to be smart, study as hard as he could, but her grief swallowed her whole and Alison could never count on his father to give any advice on anything other than cheating on your wife and which bars they never card at, not even when his father was a boy.

Any hopes of leaving Boot Hill were dashed the day the guidance counselor called him in and told him he barely had the grades to graduate in two years; he ditched more than he attended and even when he did, the words on the page floated and twisted themselves like ivy until he could barely even think of what he just read. If he worked extra hard, spent every moment of his life getting his grades up, Alison could be the first MacClean to leave Boot Hill. As sweetly as the counselor said them, all Alison heard was that he was stupid like his father, and he stopped attending Boot Hill High as soon as baseball season had ended. Sonny MacClean became another waste of space in a long line of wasted spaces. If he was going to be a MacClean, then he was going to commit to it, and that meant never dreaming anything better for yourself than what you already have.

So Alison resigned himself to his fate. Barely old enough to be even inside a bar legally, Alison picked up a job at the Bucking Horse Saloon (his own father preferred the Coyote’s Howl or his own backyard to drink in, lessening his chances of running into his dad) as a barback. Plenty of people told him he was throwing his life away, fixturing himself to a bar like his father and a few brothers before him—Alison jokes that he’s behind the bar, it’s different. It wouldn’t have mattered anyways, nothing mattered. Alison was a failure and he knew it, ashamed of it but defensive of it. He surrendered to the image that town gossip provided for him, for his family. An intentional self saboteur.

Soon, Alison left the family home and moved into a house with a few high school buddies over in Midtown, close to work; not because he was kicked out or not welcomed, only that he couldn’t stand Eileen’s ghostly shadow hanging in every corner, the reminder that their family was broken and would never be repaired. He easily filled the spot of bartender when his mentor retired and haunts the Bucking Horse Saloon better than any of its barflies. When he’s not there, he’s home. When he’s not there, he’s at the bowling alley or playing a pick-up game of baseball out in the desert with a few guys. If there’s anything to be said about the eighth MacClean boy, Sonny is a great bowler and an even better bartender.

Alison briefly thought he’d get out of Boot Hill. He briefly thought he wouldn’t end up like his father or his brothers. And yet here he is, serving beers to men with livers shriveled like raisins and hanging out the bowling alley every night, just like everyone told him he was going to be. He’s surprisingly okay with that.

❝ i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Harris Dickinson AUTHOR › Admin Rachel

[southboundhq]

MEET ALISON,

FULL NAME › Alison Griogair ‘Sonny’ MacClean AGE › twenty four GENDER › Cis male (He/Him/His) FROM › Boot Hill, Arizona RESIDENCY › Blackwater Street (Midtown) OCCUPATION › Bartender at the Bucking Horse Saloon NOW PLAYING › Mama Tried by Merle Haggard

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger/content warnings: disappearance of a family member, presumed death, alcoholism

Two phrases from Grandfather MacClean’s lips have embedded themselves in Alison’s mind since adolescence: your name is all you have and the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons. He learned quickly that both were true, at least in the town of Boot Hill. From the moment of his conception, Alison has been a MacClean first and a person second. In a place like Boot Hill, in a family like the MacCleans, there’s no escaping your family and all that comes with it. For some, family is a source of pride, their family name a name to be proud to wear. For Alison, his family name has chained him.

In the eyes of Boot Hill, the name MacClean must be some sort of cosmic joke—there’s nothing clean nor good about those dirty MacCleans. In the eyes of Alison, the name MacClean is a searing iron brand given at birth. With the name MacClean, you’re branded for life, and that brand is poor white trash. The ultimate sin Ewan passed onto his children is the sin of doing without. (And multiple affairs, but that was never something to blame unto his children, MacCleans or other—though that didn’t always stop the rumor mill.) Each child born of their family immediately thought to be another waste of space.

Alison has never really understood what made his family so dirty. They weren’t bad, they didn’t hurt anybody, they didn’t sell drugs (his parents didn’t, at least, he could make no promise of his brothers), they gave smiles and waves and small talk to any that crossed their path. Their only apparent crime that too many children filled a four bedroom house. Once a brand sears, it never goes away, just scars, and their brand was given to them generations before Alison nor any of his siblings or his parents were brought into the world. The history of his family weighs heavier than gravity, always pressing down, always there.

The Connelly clan and the MacCleans merged in 1976, with the marriage of young Bedelia, merely fourteen, and Ewan, nearly seventeen. Each had their own sordid history, the mixing of their combined family tragedies doomed Ewan and Bedelia’s children twice over. While bad things always happened to either family or any family with its roots in Boot Hill, it seemed they, these eight boys and two girls, got the worst luck of the lot. This new generation, Ewan’s boys, were cursed, and each side blamed the other for the tragedy that befell the children of Ewan MacClean and Bedelia Connelly. Not much can be said for the children sired by other mother’s, but they must be a bit cursed too, with that MacClean blood in their veins.

Alison Griogair MacClean was born eighth in line. Alison, originally a male name, he’ll likely tell you if you snicker, but he’s always gone by the name Sonny, ever since he was a child. Only his family gets to call him Al, and no one has dared tried to call him Allie. Some used to say it was ironic that he’s called Sonny, since Alison has never been carefree, never had a sunny disposition. Alison was born serious, born anxious and wary of those around him, even his siblings. The type to hang back at the mouth of the cave while his friends, adventurous and dangerous little boys, headed deeper into the darkness. Always the sentinel guarding the door, always on the lookout for parents or cops, always wringing his hands while others had fun.

Number eight, or number seven if you’re just counting the boys, Alison felt he had to be the serious one. His older brothers were rowdy, rambunctious things. The brothers before him had made names for themselves, and yet they were all referred to as ‘one of the MacClean boys’ before their first name is ever uttered. Alison learned quickly that his siblings were never individual people, just part of a set; he, too, just another addition, indistinguishable from any of the others. The lineage of the MacClean family is a sea of men with dirty blond hair and deep cornflower blue eyes, save for the red-headed and freckled Alison. It is an incredibly easy family to drown in, to lose your identity in until being a MacClean is the only identity you have.

The MacClean girl, Eileen. His older sister used to be referred to as ‘the one good thing out of the MacClean family’ before everyone just referred to her as missing, and then finally, dead. Alison was just a small child when Eileen had disappeared, but he remembers her like a burn mark. Most of all, he remembers her storming off on that fateful night after a fight with Fearghas and never returning. Sometimes he wonders if his mother has ever forgiven Fearghas for that, or if Fearghas has ever forgiven himself. As the months grew longer, the hole in the family grew larger, and Alison felt terrible that his little siblings never got to know the type of people their parents were before Eileen disappeared, and felt lucky he was able to experience just a little of it.

Ewan had never been a warm man, but he began to smell more like drink until Alison became convinced his father was bathing in it. His mother, cheerful and happy to greet every day with a smile, closed off tighter than Eileen’s bedroom door. The brothers no longer fought inside the house, instead avoiding it all together as if it was infected with the plague, and more talk came from them about moving out as soon as they graduated–or likely dropped out of–high school. The river of the MacClean family soon dried up after two more came, mother already pregnant with Cian by the time Eileen disappeared, and the next was what most in town (sometimes even Alison) thought of as the replacement. Their claims became even more emboldened when their new baby was a little girl, the second girl to ever be born from Bedelia and now the only girl, and became concrete when Grandmother Connelly proclaimed Isla to be Eileen’s reincarnated soul.

Only missing for four years, Eileen was officially declared dead in absentia, and so added even more gravity to the MacClean name. Now, additional to the gossip and ire that was usually spewed about his family, the tragedy of Eileen MacClean was a tale that bored soccer moms loved to scare their children with when they refused to come in from playing or barmaids and hair stylists used to inform newcomers when giving the lowdown about every family in Boot Hill like it was just some ghost story instead of the absence of a sister and daughter from eleven people’s lives. By the crest of his adolescence, his parents were shadows of their former selves, growing a divide in his mind: Before Eileen and After Eileen. Neither life seemed any more better or worse than the other, or rather her disappearance didn’t change him in the way it did his parents or his older brothers. There grew a second divide; the siblings that remembered Eileen and the ones who didn’t—namely Alison, Cian, and Isla.

As the years kept on, the story of poor Eileen became just another facet in the family history of the MacCleans, and some other town scandal came to distract everyone from a loving mother’s cold-growing heart. Always so serious, even back then, Alison didn’t react much to anything, not even as schoolyard bully’s sympathies dwindled and their teasing roared back up again like there was never any lull. After awhile, even Alison got used to his grieving mother and absent father, like there was never any other version of them he used to know when he was a child.

As the MacClean house grew colder with every brother that moved out to his own home, to start his own job or family, Alison began to feel the town’s eyes focus on him. At thirteen, he became keenly aware of expectations, what came with wearing his last name. There seemed to be only one road for them to travel, a single straight line to follow: be worth nothing, bring no value to society. A rather broad and harsh brush to paint all of the children with, but Alison knew what others saw when they looked at him, what will this one do to screw up his life?

Alison grew up thinking he was just another nameless boy in the MacClean line, so he did nothing to try to stand out. Sometimes, he dreamt of leaving Boot Hill and making a name for himself, like all little kids in Boot Hill did, but rarely did they ever make it out. He dreamt of it, but only fleetingly, and he wasn’t very imaginative with it. Nothing interested him, except for baseball, the one thing he seemed to actually be good at, but he neither had the grades nor the inclination to use that to leave Boot Hill. Sometimes he dreamt of heading down to Tucson or even going as far as Texas, but these flights of fancy left as quickly as they came. His mother used to encourage him to be smart, study as hard as he could, but her grief swallowed her whole and Alison could never count on his father to give any advice on anything other than cheating on your wife and which bars they never card at, not even when his father was a boy.

Any hopes of leaving Boot Hill were dashed the day the guidance counselor called him in and told him he barely had the grades to graduate in two years; he ditched more than he attended and even when he did, the words on the page floated and twisted themselves like ivy until he could barely even think of what he just read. If he worked extra hard, spent every moment of his life getting his grades up, Alison could be the first MacClean to leave Boot Hill. As sweetly as the counselor said them, all Alison heard was that he was stupid like his father, and he stopped attending Boot Hill High as soon as baseball season had ended. Sonny MacClean became another waste of space in a long line of wasted spaces. If he was going to be a MacClean, then he was going to commit to it, and that meant never dreaming anything better for yourself than what you already have.

So Alison resigned himself to his fate. Barely old enough to be even inside a bar legally, Alison picked up a job at the Bucking Horse Saloon (his own father preferred the Coyote’s Howl or his own backyard to drink in, lessening his chances of running into his dad) as a barback. Plenty of people told him he was throwing his life away, fixturing himself to a bar like his father and a few brothers before him—Alison jokes that he’s behind the bar, it’s different. It wouldn’t have mattered anyways, nothing mattered. Alison was a failure and he knew it, ashamed of it but defensive of it. He surrendered to the image that town gossip provided for him, for his family. An intentional self saboteur.

Soon, Alison left the family home and moved into a house with a few high school buddies over in Midtown, close to work; not because he was kicked out or not welcomed, only that he couldn’t stand Eileen’s ghostly shadow hanging in every corner, the reminder that their family was broken and would never be repaired. He easily filled the spot of bartender when his mentor retired and haunts the Bucking Horse Saloon better than any of its barflies. When he’s not there, he’s home. When he’s not there, he’s at the bowling alley or playing a pick-up game of baseball out in the desert with a few guys. If there’s anything to be said about the eighth MacClean boy, Sonny is a great bowler and an even better bartender.

Alison briefly thought he’d get out of Boot Hill. He briefly thought he wouldn’t end up like his father or his brothers. And yet here he is, serving beers to men with livers shriveled like raisins and hanging out the bowling alley every night, just like everyone told him he was going to be. He’s surprisingly okay with that.

❝ i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Harris Dickinson AUTHOR › Admin Rachel