[cisfemale, she/her] Welcome to Aurora Bay, [GILLIAN "GILLY" LIANG]! I couldn’t help but notice you look an awful lot like [CHASE SUI WONDERS]. You must be the [TWENTY-SIX] year old [ATTENDANT AT THE SWEET SPOT ICE CREAM SHOP]. Word is you’re [BUBBLY] but can also be a bit [ERRATIC] and your favorite song is [RIHANNON BY FLEETWOOD MAC]. I also heard you’ll be staying in [SEABROOK QUARTERS]. I’m sure you’ll love it!
Gillian was raised by a single father, and on the road, and it shows in most aspects of her life. She sucks at cooking, never really bothered with makeup, and her music taste is firmly set in the 70's and 80's. But she can change a tire in ten minutes flat, is fiercely loyal, and has an amazing eye for photography. Her mother, Joy Liang, and her father, Darren Owens, were high school sweethearts and head over heels for each other. They were engaged when Joy became pregnant, but not wanting to get married while pregnant, they waited to get married- a regret that Gillian's father still has to this day. Joy died in childbirth due to a complication and Darren, wanting to honor his beloved's memory, decided to legally give their daughter Joy's last name.
For the first three and a half years of her life, Gilly was raised in part by her grandparents in a small house in Buffalo, Darren too wrapped up in his grief to properly care for his daughter. Until finally one day a switch was flipped inside him. Gillian was all he had of his almost-wife, and he wasn't going to miss any more of her life. He sold his house and quit his job and with the money he bought an RV- a dream he'd always had with Joy, wanting to see the country. And he was going to do it now- with his daughter.
Gillian never really went to school, instead her father bought her all the homeschooling books and taught her street smarts. One day would be math and english and science and the next would be how to do an oil change, how to play pool, and how to hotwire a car. She learned how to play sports in empty fields and empty parking lots, how to find constellations in the sky. She was given her first driving lesson at nine in some backroads of Kansas, had her first sip of a beer at eleven.
Following his dream, now their dream, Gillian and her father criss-crossed the country over the years, stopping in towns for months at a time while he got odd jobs here and there as a mechanic or a waiter or a handyman. In her teens, Gilly realized her life wasn't exactly conventional; she never went to school, she never really had friends except for kids she met in passing in parks or in libraries or the occasional Chuck E. Cheese trip. But she didn't mind. She loved her father and loved her life and honestly wouldn't trade any part of it. Why would she want cattiness of high school girls and cliques and all that drama when she had open roads and clear skies? It was an easy choice for her.
She was twenty though when they stopped in Arizona for longer than just a month. Her father met someone one day, a woman who needed her sink fixed, and what started as one date quickly became more. And for the first time in her life (and far as she could remember), Gillian found herself living in a house. And it was nice, sure, but she didn't want to stick around in it for long. Not because she was really unhappy, and definitely not because she didn't like the woman who had become her step-mother, but because Gilly wanted her own happily ever after.
With her father's blessing (and with a parting gift of a pick-up truck and a brand new camera) Gillian set off on her own at twenty-two, again driving backroads and spending nights in her truck or in motels, picking up little jobs here and there when money got tight and she didn't want to bother her parents. For about two years she made her way around, sticking to the west coast so she could head back 'home' to Arizona if needed, and while she loved the dessert roads and the starry skies, Gilly found herself quite liking the California coast. It was definitely a change, going from cacti to palm trees. LA was a bit too much though, she liked quieter, smaller, so when she overheard a cute little couple talking about their summer house in some little beach town, she found herself packing up her truck and heading south.
Gillian has been in Aurora Bay for about three months now, and while she's again getting used to a life of being settled, she's been enjoying it. She still gets to see plenty of stars here, and sands of a different kind, and when she's not taking pictures she's working at the ice cream shop in town, finding it a fun way to pass the time.
extras:
birthday - march 22
full name - gillian joy liang-(owens)
height: 5'4
nicknames - gil, gilly, gillybean
she was 100% named after gillian anderson
the RV she grew up in named Herbie
loves the x files because of above (#the truth is out there). she also loves and twilight zone and classic horror films
her music taste is 100000% 70's/80's like fleetwood mac, joni mitchell, the eagles, heart, pink floyd, the beatles
@aurorabayaesthetic
