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forestwater87 · 2 years

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A Wall of Text About My OCs

Hi, guys! Uhhhh . . . long time, no see, huh?

Yeah, I got no excuse. I mean, I’ve got tons of excuses -- new job, new partner, moving out of my parents’ basement finally -- but still. Sorry for being gone.

*blows dust off the mic* Anyone still out here?

OKAY, so why am I doing this of all things? Because I was reunited with a handful of the Camp Camp people still around and they got to sharing their gorgeous OC art and I . . . do not draw. But I do write! And it turns out, writing about your fanfiction is a whole lot easier than actually writing that fanfiction.

So I can pretend I’m being productive and writing up a reference for future fic writing, while actually just rambling about my OCs like a total dork. Unedited, because this is a bajillion words and took me forever.

Anyway, have ya missed me?

Max’s family

Gotcha with that opener, huh? Yeah, I know how to manipulate the fandom after all these years. ;)

Anyway, I think I’ve been fairly vocal about how little patience I have for the whole “Max’s family is abusive and neglectful and totes evil you guys, David should adopt him” thing, which means I went in a different direction. I don’t have a ton on his parents -- I know their names are Reyansh and Anika Sahni, and in terms of personality his dad is more bombastic and his mom is a bit quieter and gentler, but that’s about it -- but I’ve determined that they immigrated from India (where in India? Fuck, idk, I’m an idiot someone suggest a place) and have been working to the bone to get Max a foothold. Their English is decent but spotty because learning languages is really hard as an adult, better spoken than written, which is why they allowed Max to choose his own camp activity (which he didn’t do, because he didn’t want to go in the first place and yes this contradicts things I’ve written in the past shhh we’d only had 1 season at that point), and that combined with their 12-hour-a-day work schedules leaves him thinking they don’t care about him. They do, obviously, but it’s hard to express that when exhausted and struggling.

So Max is kind of a latchkey kid, sent to camp in the summer because it’s better than being left alone in an apartment and Camp Campbell is the best they could afford. Max resents them a lot, partly because he doesn’t really understand everything they’re sacrificing for him and partly because he doesn’t think they’re focusing on the right things; does it matter if he can go to a shitty summer camp if he never eats dinner with both his parents at the same time? Sometimes he lies and says they’re super wealthy and that’s why they’re such workaholics, but it’s mostly to get past the embarrassment of feeling neglected and not having anything special to show for it. But they love him and are doing their best, even if it’s far from perfect, and when Max gets older he’ll understand and appreciate them a bit more.

[Spoilers for my own fic, I guess?] His parents die in a car accident when he’s a teenager -- I haven’t decided when or where, but have in previous one-shots written it as on their way to get him from camp -- and he moves in with his sister. And oh boy, let me introduce you to . . .

Kayla Sahni: A beautiful firebrand with a lot of ideas and virtually no follow-through. She’s around 10 years older than Max, and when he was little they were absolutely best friends. She has a rebellious and revolutionary streak, and would take him to various protests or to graffiti police stations or whatever -- wildly irresponsible, yes, but that’s something she never grows out of. In some ways she’s similar to David, with a streak of optimism a mile wide and a bright, peppy personality of someone that never lets anything get her down, but she’s also incredibly flaky, promising Max all sorts of things as a kid and never following through on them. Her parents often need to rescue her from her bad decisions, with the little money and time they have, leaving Max to feel even more ignored in comparison to his sister. Still, he idolizes Kayla and never blames her for anything that disappoints him, choosing David and his parents as repositories for the resentment and disappointment he gets from her. After their parents die and she has to take him in, Kayla doesn’t change her lifestyle much, still disappearing on random adventures without any warning and leaving Max to fend for himself, and it grates on him just as much as he wishes he could be like and go along with her. She loves her brother -- but really, she loves the idea of him, or the little-kid version of him that lives in her head, who never asked her for anything and hung on every word. Once she has to grapple with spending actual time with the real Max, the conflict between who they are and who they want their sibling to be makes things . . . incredibly messy.

Gwen's family

For the Santos clan, I went with a very Long-Island-elites vibe, extremely wealthy and self-conscious about appearances, which means that Gwen is kind of a mega disappointment (and David even more so, when they meet him). New-money, with the dad definitely a first- or second-gen immigrant, and despite the fact that they made it real big they're still extremely aware of being out of place and in a precarious position. Everyone in this family is terrible at hugging and/or doesn’t understand the point of doing it. All in either law or business . . . and then there's Gwen. Oops.

She spent her childhood being perfectly molded into a little debutante doll (I haven't mentioned it in any fics, but she's a virtuoso pianist from years of being forced to take lessons, and might be good at ballet too?), and as soon as she went to college she fell hard into the boho-hippie-artiste lifestyle as a way of rebelling -- dated a lot of starving artists covered in tattoos, picked majors her parents would never have allowed (which is why she had to pay for her own education and is the only one of the family mired in student debt), the whole shtick.

Cliché, maybe, but I think it's fun and developed all of this back when Season 1 had just finished and all we had to go on was her DESPERATELY not wanting to move back in with her parents.

So, from oldest to youngest:

Harrison: the patriarch. Written well before the episode where she had a canon dad so do not judge me too hard. My description of him makes me laugh so have it word-for-word: ``Harrison Santos was a broad-shouldered Hispanic man almost as large as Mr. Campbell, with tiny glasses perched daintily on his nose and a head as smooth and shiny as an apple. He peered down at David through his glasses, which made his dark purple (almost black) eyes seem much larger and more intimidating.`` Big guy, little glasses; it's always funny. He's a man of few words and lots of judgement. Silent but deadly, you know? I went kinda HAM with the "big scary dad" stereotype, but I needed David to feel entirely inadequate and that helped. He and Gwen don't really have a relationship, partly because he spends so much time working and mostly because they don't understand each other even a little bit and have nothing to talk about. Doesn't much like David, but not for any real reason; maybe because he's not masculine enough, maybe because he's white, definitely because he might be the reason Gwen's still working at that shithole of a camp. (At least David isn't covered in tats and piercings, though. Small mercy.)

Valerie: Extremely beautiful dark-skinned black woman with maroon hair and silver eyes. Some sort of business executive, never thought too hard about what kind. Agonizingly proper, gives off vibes of being the decision-maker in the family, and while she loves Gwen and wants what's best for her, they strongly disagree on what that actually is. Valerie would love nothing more than for her youngest daughter to get a job in a respectable law or accounting firm, marry someone from a good background, and secure the family's legacy, and she's terrified of Gwen ruining her life and/or their reputation. She thinks Gwen is overemotional and irrational and it permeates every conversation they try to have; she's pretty concerned David is a gold-digger, as well, and even if he isn't, playing in the dirt for pennies is a pretty humiliating occupation.

Samson (Sam/Sammy): Gwen's oldest brother. Ngl I have very little about him except that he's a nice guy, which is kinda rare in Gwen's family so that's kinda noteworthy. Dark-skinned like their mother, curly green-black hair that he keeps out of his face with a barette, very deep voice. I know Gwen was really close with him and his wife/kids before they moved across the country, and she's had trouble losing one of her only allies in the family.

Leon (Lee): Sam's fraternal twin. Kinda a shithead -- actually, no, definitely a shithead. Disaster bisexual; his major interactions with Gwen so far have been stealing one of her boyfriends, humiliating David at a family gathering, and flying out to Camp Campbell to try and get them back together after they broke up because he thought it was his fault and felt bad about it. A really successful accountant, but in his personal life he's a total playboy and never seems to take anything all that seriously. He loves Gwen, in his own way, but he's honestly too selfish to really be a good brother to her at all. Thinks every life decision she's ever made is absolutely hilarious, and has no problem telling her and the rest of the family that; every misfortune she has is another episode in the Gwennie's Fuckups Show, which is his favorite. Has a perpetual smirk. Dark green curly hair, lavender eyes, and more of a family resemblance to Gwen than probably any of her other siblings in terms of facial structure and mannerisms. In some AUs, where Gwen’s family lives in Sleepy Peak instead of NYC, Lee is Dirty Kevin’s high school boyfriend; their breakup wasn’t pretty.

Audree (Dree): An angel. My wife. I would die for her. Okay, no, let’s try to be serious here . . . Audree’s the only other daughter in the family, and Gwen’s big sister. She’s a successful lawyer with a killer fashion sense and generally stays out of trouble, which means she attracts a lot less negative attention than Gwen ever could and is considered something of the golden daughter. She’s a lesbian and definitely a bit of a flirt, but also the type who ends up perpetually bouncing back between “extremely serious relationship” and “single forever.” Extremely charismatic, but she’s also kind of harsh and terrible at being gentle or warm, and a bit of a snob -- not in a cruel way, but in a blind-to-her-own-privilege way that gets her in trouble sometimes with the eventual woman she falls in love with (more on her in a moment). Teal eyes, relatively dark, and I just realized I never assigned her a hair color. Since the rest of the family’s are either reddish or green (Christmas colors!), I’ll go with a fun, fiery red, kind of like Gwen’s lighter shade of hair.

Christopher: Literally a non-entity. Sometimes I forget he’s there, oops. His only contribution to the story is that he went off to California to run a surf shop and Sam eventually went along with him. Maybe I’ll give him a personality someday, but right now he mostly exists as “the other fuckup beside Gwen” in their family’s eyes.

Eric: Another virtual nonentity, but one I’ve put a weird amount of thought in. He’s basically a carbon copy of his mother -- very put-together, prim, fastidiously perfect -- despite looking more like his dad (in terms of skin tone and eye color, anyway; he’s very willowy, not buff). He’s very feminine, bordering on foppish, but definitely not gay; I haven’t decided if he’s bi (like every other character I get my hands on) or just a fairly girly straight guy, but either way he’s really self-conscious about it. Probably would resent David for reminding him of that, because let’s be real, David isn’t exactly the most masc person in the world either. His only sense of humor is a cruel one, and he’s always been and probably always will be a hell of a bully -- not the beating-people-up Nurf kind, but in a subtler, mean-girl way. If you cross him, he’ll probably get you fired, is what I’m saying. He’d have made an excellent Woodscout if his family hadn’t signed him up for something more prestigious. Staunch Republican, snooty, and while he worships and idolizes his parents, I’m not sure he actually loves anyone. Of all of Gwen’s siblings, Eric is probably the one with the fewest redeeming qualities, but sometimes it’s fun to have a villain waiting in the wings in case I need him.

And then there’s poor little Gwennie. Doing her best.

David’s family

I’ve talked about the Pine/Greenwoods in the past, but I can’t find the post so let’s do it again!

David’s family is a lot smaller than Gwen’s -- at the moment it’s just him and his mom, though his dad has intermittently been in and out of the picture. His parents got divorced when he was 14 (right after Jasper died, which was pretty rough on poor Davey), and since then he’s maybe seen his father once or twice? His mom basically raised him, and they’re absurdly close.

Harvey Greenwood: Another villain! He has aggressive Cameron Campbell vibes, but happens to be an even bigger monster. He got Cynthia pregnant when he was 30 and she was 17 -- ew, gross, very bad -- and married her as soon as she graduated high school. They managed to keep things together until David was a teenager, at which point all illusions of a stable relationship shattered and he took off. David knows he’s married and has a family, and periodically receives birthday cards (never on his birthday, never the correct age, and always addressed to Cynthia’s house because he can’t be bothered to remember where David lives), but otherwise his dad is AWOL. He’s the American to David’s half-American nationality, and while David inherited his bright red hair and green eyes, that’s about all they have in common. I just like big, masculine dads, I guess, because he’s also built like a Campbell -- I think it’s fun to mess with David’s sense of inferiority on that regard, because I’m cruel -- and has a big ol’ mustache. I did realize too late that this does sound like a jacked-up version of Harvey from Stardew Valley, and I feel terrible about it. SDV Harvey deserves better.

Cynthia Pine: A sweet Canadian cinnamon roll who’s never done anything wrong in her life, and never will. She’s a librarian in a middle school, so she’s very used to handling difficult people and is generally tough as nails, but with a sunshiny bubbliness that she passed on to David; she taught him how to smile in the face of everything going wrong, and is his biggest inspiration and hero. Like I mentioned, she was just a kid when she got married and had David, and her marriage was far from a happy one -- with all the affairs, neglect, and gaslighting Harvey did, it was probably in some ways a relief when he finally left, even if it meant she had to go from a stay-at-home mom to a breadwinner. She worked a lot after the divorce, meaning that David had to take on a lot of the household responsibilities and she didn’t get to spend as much time with him as either of them would’ve liked, but they’re still extremely close despite it, in an “us against the world” kind of way. She’s fiercely protective of her son, and while she likes Gwen and would never say a word against her, she’s definitely not comfortable trusting anyone the way David is. Which she considers a success, because she wants nothing more than for David to go through life having the joy and innocence she didn’t get to. Anyway, she’s real little, very young, with childlike features, lots of freckles, and thin blonde hair like duck fluff. She’ll kill you, don’t get me wrong, but she’d never get convicted because she’s so sweet and gentle-looking.

In addition to the actual family, we have David’s “family”:

Father Ray: Listen, I was going through an existential crisis during 2018 or so, and I needed to work out my religious angst with a non-homophobic religious figure. Therefore, we have a priest of one of those rainbow-flag churches, who took David in when he was young (his mom is very religious) and basically kept him from self-destructing without a father figure. I don’t have much to say about him, except that he was kinda there when I needed a non-shitty Christian in my own life. He probably won’t be in the story again, but I have a soft spot towards him anyway.

Julia Winters: Ohhhh boy, it’s our best girl. Julia’s technically not an OC in the classic sense -- there was a picture in Season 1 that showed David and Jasper as little campers:

And there’s a purple-haired girl that @hopefullypessimistic84 adopted and made her own -- but it doesn’t matter because I want to talk about her, she’s perfect. (I feel like I’ve mentioned her in the past, but I seriously can’t find any of my old posts because Tumblr is the worst, so here we are.)

Julia, Jasper, and David all met during their first year of camp; I think Julia and Jasper were closer in the beginning because Jasper was Camper Extraordinaire and Julia was actually kind of excited about camp at first . . . Eventually she realized that camping sucked and befriended David, and at some point David and Jasper were thrown together and they became their own little problem trio. They’re all only children, so they considered each other siblings, and though Jasper and Davey’s relationship would obviously change (whether he dies or not), they’d always consider Julia their little sister. Her primary nicknames for David are Sunshine and Red.

She’s an ace lesbian and very uncomfortable around pretty girls. As she gets older she picks up somewhat more of a punk aesthetic, with a motorcycle and a bomber jacket, and gets a career in corporate photography that takes her all over the world. Despite this extremely cool veneer, she cannot stay even remotely chill if a woman flirts with her, and it’s quite cute. She’s somewhere between fat and buff, and could probably easily pick David up and put him over her shoulder. Eventually she’ll meet and fall in love with Gwen’s sister, Audree (probably at gwenvid’s wedding), and it’ll be . . . a little bit awkward, partly because she has no patience for the Santos family and partly because she grew up poor, and she and Dree have some friction over general culture clash. But at the end of the day they’re still an incredibly powerful couple that belong on the cover of the world’s gayest magazine and love each other very much and make me cry.

Anyway, I hope I didn’t forget any major OCs . . . though obviously if I did they can’t have been that important.

I know there are a couple exes of Gwen’s who are especially fun -- like Greg the creepy stalker and Damien, the ex who slept with Lee and then gave her a mannequin head as an apology -- and her roommate Claire gets like two sentences but is an adorable stoner with the personality of a teddy bear, but I think these are the important ones.

Sure wish I could draw literally any of them, though. Sigh.

#campcamp #cc max #cc gwen #cc david #this doesn't deserve to go in the main tags #i don't care though it took a lot of work #and it's the closest thing to content I've made in a long time #*drops like a dead bird*#here #forestwriting?#i mean kinda #if you read all of this you're a hero #and also i'm sorry

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