god, love's fuckin' embarrassing!

the elephant in the room:

you may have noticed this already, but mckenna rosen is based largely on marley rose who we all know and hopefully love, from glee. if you don't love marley rose, i don't know what to say to you, honestly.

however, she is not exactly her to a T, that would be lazy. i developed mckenna back in 2017 for an old rp as an oc and i've changed certain bits of her to be more like marley because what's a glee themed rp without characters who are sort of like glee characters, i feel?

let's get to the meat and potatoes:

but first, trigger warning for bullying, eating disorders, abandonment, and dementia.

mckenna was raised by her grandmother in a small town in pennsylvania. her dad sort of popped in and out of her life here and there throughout her childhood. he was a drummer in an unsuccessful band, though he swore it was successful. he was always nice to her when he showed up, but he would always go away again, leaving her feeling like she wasn't worth staying for. she never knew her mother, who she is told ran off with the captain of a cruise ship when she was only six months old.

in school, mckenna loved being in choir and drama club, singing came very naturally to her and she loved to pretend to be other people. she felt like it was the grown-up version of playing pretend, which was pretty cool. she knew it was something she would always want to do.

it was always easy for mckenna to make friends but it was just as easy for her to make bullies. some people thought that her kind nature and the way she seemed "too happy" was fake and annoying, so they went after her for it. she tried to keep her chin up through it, but it wasn't easy. not only that, they'd attack her appearance, calling her fat and bug-eyed, neither of which were true, kids can just be assholes. for the most part, her friends kept her going and so did her hobbies ; reading, choir, drama club, learning to crochet, but it wasn't enough to keep their voices from charging into her brain.

mckenna was young, not even in high school yet when she began to subconciously decide that if people didn't like her personality, she couldn't really change it. however, she could change how she looked on the outside. she'd pinch the baby fat on her hips and suck her tummy in while looking in the mirror, and she set herself onto a crash diet. she counted calories, over-exercised, and followed a bunch of thinspo blogs on tumblr. you wouldn't believe it, but now the kids decided she looked like skeletor, needed to eat a burger, etc. they didn't realize that this time, they were just fueling her. she ended up being hospitalized for a time after it got so bad that she passed out in the cafeteria during her sophomore year of high school.

while she was in rehabilitation for her eating disorder, mckenna fell in love with music. of course, she'd always loved music, who doesn't? but the music therapy she was attending in addition to her regular therapy really helped her recovery. she started learning guitar, then piano, and she was naturally gifted at both, practicing until her fingers bled or went numb. as her skills grew, she began toying with writing her own lyrics, and then her own music to go with them. this came naturally as well, by the time she was a senior in high school, she knew she wanted to be a performer for life. she credits music with getting her out of that dark place and putting her into the light again.

another thing she knew is that she needed to get out of pennsylvania. she applied to saint rivera to study music composition and upon acceptance, immediately left home. halfway through her freshman year, her grandmother was diagnosed with lewy body dementia, and her dad - to mckenna's complete surprise, decided to step up, move in with her and care for her. she feels relief that her grandma is being cared for, guilt that it isn't her taking care of her, and resentment that her dad has now found it in him to be a caregiver to someone, but couldn't find it in him when she was a child and needed him.