#wcr.

[greatfallsrp]

NAME: Jameson Hawthorne GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis Man / He/Him AGE & DATE OF BIRTH: 32 years old / January 13th HOMETOWN: Great Falls, MT TIME IN GREAT FALLS: 32 years RESIDENCE: Willow Creek Ranch OCCUPATION: Ranch Hand and Future Owner of Willow Creek Ranch

BACKSTORY —

There was a certain level of pressure that came along with being the first born in any family. They’ve done studies on what birth order meant for kids as they developed their concept of self and figured out their roles in the world. If you asked Jameson Hawthorne his opinion on the matter he’d be the first to tell you the average first born child had no idea what pressure felt like. From the moment he could walk he was on the ranch learning how things were supposed to work. He started grooming the horses before he was speaking in full sentences. Jameson loved his life growing up on the ranch. He had parents who loved him, siblings to play with, and wide open spaces to run around in until he couldn’t feel his legs. 

Something shifted as he got older. More responsibility was put on his shoulders little by little. His grandfather started to pull him aside now and then to have serious talks about how he’d be running the ranch someday. His father relied on him to do tasks that the ranch hands should have handled on their own in order to 'build character.’ Before he could legally drive he was treated like an adult and expected to carry responsibility as one. He didn’t have as much time to play with his growing siblings but he found a way to be with them in the evenings, mostly. When he was sure he wouldn’t be caught, he’d even sneak away from his chores to play games of tag or hide and seek during the day. 

He didn’t resent the work he was expected to do. Quite the contrary, he thought it was a noble path his father and grandfather put him on. He never questioned any direction he was given, never complained if he wasn’t allowed to spend the night at a friend’s house because he had to be up working early in the morning. He was the picture of a dutiful heir. 

Then his mother left them. 

Everything changed for him when she was gone. She left in the middle of the night, not a word, not a goodbye. He was sixteen years old and couldn’t fathom why she wouldn’t want to be with her family anymore. Time passed and the only word they’d been given was that she’d sent their father divorce papers in the mail. Jameson was at a crucial point in life. He was starting to date and go to school dances and the sudden absence of his mother rocked him to his core. He withdrew from his friends, threw himself into work at the ranch, and was angry all the time. He started to resent Willow Creek and the life he’d been forced to live. He resented the fact that he didn’t get the kind of childhood some of his friends who lived in town were afforded. Why was everything on his shoulders? Why was it all on him to make things continue running?

School had never been much of a priority for him. He scraped by with his high school diploma and enrolled in a local community college. He didn’t have much motivation to actually do well in school but he quickly learned to appreciate the time away from the ranch that school was affording him. There was something about doing it on his own terms and being able to choose his classes and schedule that ended up engaging him in school for the first time. Two years later he had his associates degree in accounting but he wasn’t ready to return home just yet. 

He had spent his entire life living for his family and Willow Creek. He had never once been asked what he valued or enjoyed. He convinced his dad to let him go to a state school and live off campus as he worked toward a bachelor’s degree. The terms of the agreement were that he major in something that would relate to the family business. It was a small price to pay for a little freedom so he enrolled in the agricultural science program and took on a finance minor. This gave him three beautiful years away from the responsibility that awaited him back home and he took full advantage of his time away. Sure, he always went home for holidays and he visited now and then, mostly to see his younger siblings. But he spent as much time in the city living life for himself as he could. 

He made friends who had nothing to do with ranch life and the possibilities of life expanded before his eyes. He tried to do small jobs here and there. He took elective classes in the arts, hospitality, library science, and so many others. He filled in an extra year with classes he didn’t need for his major but that interested him in some way or another.  He’d been hoping to find something else that would give him the drive and happiness that he used to feel when he was working on the ranch as a kid but nothing quite hit the mark. 

At twenty-five he returned home to Willow Creek. He told himself it was temporary and entirely based on what felt good to him. He could walk away at anytime if he wanted to. What surprised him was that the feeling he’d been searching for had returned. Maybe what they said about distance making the heart grow fonder was true for places and career callings, too. Jameson was suddenly excited to wake up in the morning and get to work. He did everything from wrangling and training new colts to cleaning stalls and placing feed orders. He would do whatever needed to be done and it all felt equally important to him. He’d found his place back at home. 

His view on relationships has been jaded ever since his mom left their family. Short flings and one night stands after a night out were his normal. He made an exception for one woman and he was sure she was the love of his life, the one to change his mind and make him believe in love again. They were together for over three years and he planned to marry her. When he proposed, however, she said no and left him. He has since doubled down on his no-relationships rule and cannot foresee breaking it again. 

Jameson is currently in training to become foreman when he has enough experience. His main responsibility now is managing the books with some minor oversight from his father. His grandfather still likes to remind him that he will run the place one day like Simba’s dad did in the beginning of the movie but it didn’t feel like a death sentence any more. It felt like a promise of good things to come.

Portrayed by MICHAEL B JORDAN, written by ERIN.

[greatfallsrp]

NAME: Jordan Hawthorne GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis Woman / She/Her AGE & DATE OF BIRTH: 34 years old / December 8th HOMETOWN: Great Falls, MT TIME IN GREAT FALLS: 34 years RESIDENCE: Willow Creek Ranch OCCUPATION: Owner of The Busy Bee

BACKSTORY —

Despite being the eldest of the Hawthorne children, no one would ever argue that Jordan was the most responsible of the bunch. In fact, growing up most people would have guessed the opposite. Her little brother had been born a little bit more than one month after her first birthday and despite being close in age, their childhoods were nearly night and day images of one another. Though no one has ever said it outloud, Jordan is well aware that it comes down to the fact that she was a girl and her brother was a boy, so it only made sense that he would be the one destined to inherit their grandfather's ranch one day. In her younger years, she used to stomp a rhinestone covered cowboy boot in the dust and declare how unfair that was but that hadn’t lasted long. She’d barely been eleven years old when she realized just how much was going to fall on Jamie’s shoulders the older they got and she couldn’t help but be grateful that she wasn’t ever going to be in that position. Instead, she was happy to pull her weight around the ranch in smaller ways and bat her eyelashes at her father and grandfather to get whatever she wanted, taking full advantage of how they doted on her (and eventually, her little sister June). 

Jordan’s childhood went by in a blur of horseback riding lessons, helping around on the ranch and babysitting her younger siblings. But as she got older, she often found herself bored and a bored Jordan was never a good thing. She was simply too reckless for her own good sometimes, often stumbling her way into some kind of chaos or trouble and needing her father or grandfather to bail her out, much to her mother’s annoyance. She was sixteen when her father put his foot down, telling her to figure her shit out. That was how she stumbled into barrel racing, having headed over to the rodeo grounds to drop off a couple of horses her family was selling to another local farm and finding herself watching someone else’s practice runs. It was right up her alley and before she knew it, Jordan was jumping up on a horse and giving it a shot. She wasn’t great at first, but competitive and stubborn, she stuck with it and caught on fairly quickly. It wasn’t her parents first choice for their daughter (her father had been hoping she would get a job when he’d put his foot down, but beggars can’t be choosers) but it kept their teenage daughter occupied. After graduation, Jordan had no desire to attend college and she was beginning to find the ranch a little suffocating so barrel racing was the obvious solution. She was able to pick and choose which rodeos she worked, letting her travel around the country and coming back whenever she pleased. It was the perfect amount of freedom that she needed. 

When she was eighteen she was working a rodeo circuit in Wyoming when one of her siblings called her to break the news about their mother who had, apparently, decided that after eighteen years and four children, motherhood just wasn’t for her. Her heart broke for her father and her siblings and without a second thought, Jordan packed up her shit and hauled ass back home. She stayed for three months, trying to pick up the slack and fill the void that her mother had left but ultimately, Jordan always felt like she was failing them and falling short. She had grown too used to being selfish and putting herself first and now that she found herself actually having to be a big sister, she felt like she was drowning. Her father and grandfather would tell her she was doing just fine, offering the support that her siblings needed but she always had a feeling they only said it to make her feel better. She stayed at the ranch for four months before it all started to feel like too much again, the walls closing in on her and that feeling of being trapped making itself a home in her chest. While still keeping close with her siblings, Jordan packed a bag and picked up where she left off. She spent the next seven years that way, in and out of town working odd jobs or doing shows at the rodeo ground before the itch for a little freedom would make its presence known and she would hit the road for a little, traveling with the circuit. 

Her barrel racing career came to a dull ending when she was twenty six. There was no dramatic call to keep her home, no injury that kept her from riding anymore or anything like that — instead she just figured it was, finally, time to actually grow up and have some sort of responsibility. She settled back in Great Falls, permanently this time rather than for a few months, and convinced her father to build her a little house on their land for her to settle down in. Her venture into becoming a business owner happened by chance. She had been walking the main street in Great Falls when she noticed the for sale sign in the window of the florist shop — at the time simply called Great Falls Floral. She stopped in and chatted up the owner before deciding, impulsively, that this was something she could do. Two months later she was signing on the dotted line and closing the business down for renovations. She gutted the place completely and reopened with a fresh coat of paint and a new name — The Busy Bee. 

Admittedly, she had been in a little over her head. She had no experience in business and relied heavily on her grandfather’s experience running the ranch until she got the hang of it. Learning to grow flowers and arrange them came easier and Jordan was shocked to discover that she had such a green thumb and found so much peace in the hobby. The first year had been rocky, leaving her wanting to throw in the towel but stubborn as ever she persisted and eventually things started going up rather than down. Eight years later, the flower shop is Jordan’s baby. She lives and breathes for her little shop, finding genuine joy in the fact that it has taken off and is doing so well.

Portrayed by LAURA HARRIER, written by MANDY.

[greatfallsrp]

NAME: Casey Sankar GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis Man / He/Him AGE & DATE OF BIRTH: 28 years old / July 5th HOMETOWN: Great Falls, MT TIME IN GREAT FALLS: 28 years RESIDENCE: Willow Creek Ranch OCCUPATION: Ranch Hand at Willow Creek Ranch

BACKSTORY —

trigger warnings: car accident, death, drugs, jail, arrest.

Great Falls was exactly where Casey’s parents wanted to raise him, considering his mother was raised there as well. Casey’s dad had moved to Great Falls to teach at the high school. His dad met his mom in the teacher’s lounge, and the rest was history.

Casey’s values were instilled by his grandfather, who was always pretty hard on him. Casey wasn’t the brightest in class, wasn’t the sportiest, he didn’t excel at anything, he was just there. And that was hard for his grandfather to grasp but his parents didn’t mind, as long as he was a happy kid, doing whatever it was that made him feel happy.

Everything changed when his parents were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They shouldn’t have been on that road but they had promised they’d pick Casey up from one of his first high school party’s, knowing that there’d probably be drinking to begin with. They never picked him up that night. One fatality, that’s what happened, and his father was never the same after that, having survivor’s guilt, turning to things that made him numb. Casey’s grandpa took over as the primary caregiver, causing Casey to have a lot of resentment towards his grandfather. Nothing he ever did was good enough. And he tried, he really tried.

It didn’t help that felt alone in the grieving process, turning to the very same things that his father did as well. It was hard for his grandpa to have to deal with a son and a grandson going through the stages of addiction, though Casey swore he wasn’t addicted to begin with. The first few years of his twenties, it was hard for him to hold down a job, bouncing from anything his grandfather could get him.

It was his own grandpa who had called the cops on him, catching him with 500 milligrams of coke on him. He was sentenced to a year in jail, having been released earlier this year. Twenty eight years old and Casey feels like he’s done nothing with his life. His grandfather has called in one last favor on his behalf to Terry Hawthorne. He told Casey that he won’t talk to him again if he chooses to go down the path he was going again. It’s now make or break for him, fall back into his old habits or stay sober.

Portrayed by RAYMOND ABLACK, written by JAM.

[greatfallsrp]

NAME: Suede Windt GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis Woman / She/Her AGE & DATE OF BIRTH: 33 years old / August 18th HOMETOWN: Great Falls, MT TIME IN GREAT FALLS: 33 years on and off RESIDENCE: Downtown OCCUPATION: Musician, Horse Trainer on Willow Creek Ranch

BACKSTORY —

trigger warnings: parental neglect, mentions of substance abuse, gun violence.

dewy is the fragrant september morning you’re born in, rain hammering the windows the windows of hospital room. you’re born a miracle. a miracle. her miracle. you are but a precious petal, your mother’s whole world and then some. she doesn’t know what she would do without you ━ after all, she is but a lonely woman with no one to turn to, except for you. a mere babe, you are the only one she loves, the one she will pour her heart, her effort, her youth, the next however many years of her life into. she is your mother, and you are forever in her debt.

your name is suede. suede, sue. velvety and graceful. it fits you well, but it’s almost as cruel as the weight you carry on your shoulders. don’t run, you’ll trip and hurt yourself! don’t go out in the rain, you’ll catch a cold! oh, how you despise the cold. if only your lungs were a little stronger, a little less asthmatic. wouldn’t it be nice? but darling, you were trapped from the day you were born. if not by the overprotective hands of your mother, then by your own lungs, the pair of organs granting you life, the ones responsible for that first breath of air that caused you to cry out loud the moment you were brought into this world. home may be a prison, but your body is a cage. isn’t it terrible? doesn’t it make you mad?

you grow older and you’ll volunteer your time elsewhere so long as it means you no longer have to watch the rest of your life unfurl at your feet. so, you’re in the palm of your godmother for the summer. those days are all sawdust and early mornings. curious eyes peering over the stable doors. knees scraped from ill-fated attempts at climbing over the fence to the round pen in the summertime. life is good, if not a little solitary. and if you’re being honest, it matters precious little that you’re surrounded by nothing but treelines. not when everything you could possibly wish for is right there, within the confines of the ranch. the endless green grass, the bookshelves teeming with undiscovered adventures. a family never hardly had. but more than anything, it’s where the horses are.

it’s a big world, you discover, and there’s much to do if you want to be seen. if you cannot give yourself to horse training throughout the year, you find other ways to cope. you play silence like a game, withdrawn, loneliness spreading like an unruly vine. there’s a sense of desperation to your boredom, like you are waiting for something to happen. like you’ve always been waiting. bag packed, shoes tied. 

salvation comes when you least expect it. it’s a girl, one you’ve seen around the halls at school. she hears your rapid breaths, your unspoken cries for help, and for once you feel heard. she offers you an understanding smile, a hand to hold, and the two of you sit there by the wall of the bathroom, dirty as it may be. you stay there, and she waits. waits until you’ve calmed down, until you can speak again. until you’re no longer bound by the chains of your anxieties.

sue is more becoming, she tells you. the nickname fits like a glove, and while some might hate the mere idea of it, repulsed by the shortening of a five-lettered surname, you are more than happy to welcome it. you’ll take the simplicity over pain any day. you have a friend  ━  not one, more. four. you have people who talk to you, who may laugh at you but more often than not are laughing with you. not because of the dozens of different types of medication you carry in your bag (all selected by mother herself), but because you might have a sense of humor, and a spark you hadn’t noticed until now. you have people who will help you when you need it, so long as you manage to ask, but that’s a story for another day. in return, you will be there for them, because you can’t bear the thought of not returning the favor. these are your people now. suede never had that. sue belongs. you have people who care about you in ways your mother can’t. won’t. your home is a trap and your body is a cage, but when your friends are around, you can almost taste sweet freedom.

with you serving as the lead vocalist and sometimes bassist, you and your tight-wound collective of high school friends soon form a band. it is here that you find your family. infameous!. the name wasn’t your idea, but you don’t mind. you can picture yourself growing old with them, despite how unrealistic and silly it sounds, but wouldn’t it be nice? five old, grey heads watching the sunset a little over half a century from now, making music and laughing together? your newfound family in the band is your strength, your will. the group is more than you could ever ask for, and they’re what keeps you going. it’s perfect. the band made their claim to fame with their hit song ‘you’re just like me.’ and their popularity only grew upward from there. 

if only you had known it wouldn’t be forever. 

at the peak of your celebrity, the band had been touring up and down the east coast, and were on the cusp of releasing their first official album when tragedy struck. you were merely grazed, but two of your bandmates had been unfortunately slain at the hand of a self-professed fan. The last thing you can remember is the wailing of sirens.

summer breaks were always hard for you. you always missed your bandmates during those months;  missed val’s ever capturing gaze and her cloud-like aura, delicate in ways vastly different from your sharp glass taken as fragility. missed river’s remarks and jokes that often annoyed you in the best of ways, so lively yet perhaps empty, much like yourself … but you’ll see them again, you’ll see them all again. perhaps that is why the news hit you harder than a splash of cold water to the face in the morning, and you find yourself in a state of shock. you don’t speak, you don’t move, but the pen you’d been holding drops from your hand, followed by the phone you once held to your ear. eyes stay focused on a barely noticeable, yellow-ish spot on the hospital walls you would surround yourself with through the summer. as if there was to be a summer at all. 

it hurts. it claws up your throat and maims your flesh. it makes you want to scream, to grab the glass of water beside you and smash it into pieces, to break the first thing you can put your hands onto, but you don’t. it’s too much, and it’s hard to breathe, but it doesn’t matter. soon enough, you’re lying on the ground with your eyes closed, and the rest of the hospital staff rush to help their reliable intern, confused and distraught.

you come home for the first time in years and it’s nearly as if nothing changed. you don’t bother going home, but mom knows you’re back and you’ll do anything to bide your time in avoidance. so, you make the official move downtown and you’re back to work on the ranch. you’re always at work on the farm, where riding boots thick with mud ━ stand too worn to wear. they’d collect mulch as you treads through the field, your body relearns the lean of year of labor. and you drink too much nowadays, smoke too. anything to dull the pain, anything to forget the real reason why you’re here. there’s nothing to do other than that. it’s summer, and there's that sticky heat that haunts. that evening sweat that clings a white camisole dress to your frame. there’s something there. like there always has been. like there always will be.

Portrayed by ZOE KRAVITZ, written by KAY.

[greatfallsrp]

NAME: Juniper Hawthorne GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis Woman / She/Her AGE & DATE OF BIRTH: 24 years old / July 9th HOMETOWN: Great Falls, MY TIME IN GREAT FALLS: 24 years RESIDENCE: Willow Creek Ranch OCCUPATION: Wrangler & Aspiring Artist

BACKSTORY —

From the moment Juniper was born, she had been surrounded with family and a lot of love. Willow Creek Ranch was not always her home, but with how much time she spent there growing up it was hard to tell the difference between her short stint living in the city versus on the ranch. Her father worked on the ranch for most of his life, but the ranch life was not something her mother would ever be okay with. A sign that they both should have taken as foreshadowing, but never did. Maybe her mother just was not cut out to live in the midwest, or be the mother to the big family her father dreamed of having. Whatever the reason was, she left one hot summer night right after June turned eight years old. Next time anyone heard from her it was when daddy got served the divorce papers from the sheriff’s office a couple years later. At least that’s what they told June. 

Things were mostly uneventful for June until she entered adolescence. That was when her father remarried and the unknown void her mother had left behind started to swell inside of her. She tried to play nice, for her father’s sake, but the instant dislike of the woman trying to step in as a parent plus the spike in teenage hormones would make it hard for them to see eye to eye. Time after time Juniper would be sent out of the house to go help on the ranch to quiet the screaming matches between her and her stepmother. That was when she started spending more and more time either in the stables with the horses or in the city getting into random mischief with friends. The latter put more of a rift between her and her stepmother, which only caused more stress and frustration to be put on her father. Luckily her grandpa was quick to offer a smile and comfort. He was quick to remind her father that he’d been just as bad if not worse at June’s age and to cut her some slack. That would usually quell her father’s frustration, but it did nothing for her stepmother. With all the tension in the house, her grades began to slip and the counselor suggested she find an outlet to help disperse some of the constant pent up emotion. Art had been something that June always had an affinity for throughout her life. She would draw the ranch, the animals, her family, or just whatever popped in her head. 

Quickly art became an outlet for her to channel emotion into and gave her a newfound passion. She started to study more modes and styles beyond just drawing she could try. Sculpting, pottery, painting, charcoal, pastels - she loved it all, but her favorite stayed with drawing and painting. It did not keep her completely free from sneaking off to parties in the city or out on a country road in the middle of nowhere. The arguments were further between, however, and while she still butted heads with her new mother, June found herself enjoying having a woman around the house. Especially for things her father was not experienced in dealing with and often uncomfortable talking about with her. It was hard to get an old rancher to go dress shopping for school dances or learn how to put on makeup properly. That bond eventually wavered again, but not until June got close to graduation. Mostly because she announced that she had no plan to go off to college, and instead wanted to pursue art further. Something her parents and other family members expressed great concern over. An art career was not sustainable, especially not one in Great Falls. They had hoped she would go off to study equestrian, agriculture, accounting, or even ranch management. The only one June was remotely interested in was equestrian, stemming from all her time spent in the stables and riding. She would have much rather studied art and art history, though. Something all the managers of her college fund were strongly against. 

The urge to rebel against her family’s wishes was strong. But, she was also afraid of pursuing a passion that had so much risk involved. Especially since she would be one of her own. June had never been without her family, or the comfort of Great Falls. Out there alone, what would happen if she couldn’t find a job to pay for school? Or if something happened to someone in the family and she wasn’t there? There was a long list of fears and what ifs and it grew big enough that she ended up planting her feet instead of taking the chance. For a year or two, she channeled her rebellion into reckless behavior, partying, getting a couple tattoos, piercing her tongue, and even starting a couple bar fights. Eventually it all got old, her family stopped trying to reason with her behavior and the hangovers were killing her creativity. That’s when she decided to have a talk with Grandpa Terry and find a way to compromise. June offered to work on the ranch, try out apprenticing as a wrangler since the horses had always been her favorite part of living there. In exchange, she asked that they try to understand her love for art and dream of being an artist. The other half of her time, she wanted to be able to pursue that passion whether it was through studying books/online or putting effort into creating something. He agreed and as the head of the family, his decision practically forced her parents to agree as well. 

June ended up getting an associates degree in Equestrian Studies and spent the past few years learning what it means to be a wrangler along with all the skills she would need to master before taking on the title. The other half of her time she spent following her muse to create different pieces of art and studying what she could through videos, internet searches, and books. On her twenty-third birthday, both her father and grandfather showed their support for her passion by fixing up one of the old sheds and converting it into her own studio space. Even though they still called it just a ‘hobby’, it gave her some validation and hope for the future. She is still very unsure what she wants to do with her life, or what path she should choose. But, for now, she is content with splitting her time and continuing to search for those answers. 

Portrayed by MADISON BAILEY, written by KIT.