#sydneydalton

CHARACTER INFORMATION

face claim: Elizabeth Olsen

full name: Sydney Jean Dalton

nickname(s): Syd, Syds, Syddie, Squid (close friends only), Daltino, Mini Mick

pronouns & gender: Cis woman, she/her pronouns

sexuality: Bisexual

birth date: June 14, 1989

birth place: Seattle, Washington

time in town: Four years

housing: Historical Downtown

occupation: Owner / Baker at Sweet Talk (in Hideaway Markets)

family: Divorced, no children

personality: Sydney is an amalgamation, the best and worst of the women who raised her — she's effervescent and charismatic, stubborn and guarded, committed and capricious, impulsive and quixotic, independent and yearning. She is the friend you call when you need late night company and a sugar fix or someone to accompany you on a night out, but is not the friend you go to when you need a pushover or a voice echoing your own rationale and opinions. She's the type who craves authentic connection but is still having to practice patience, hitting the brakes before she dives into a superficial, neck-break relationship that sputters out shortly after its takeoff. Her fingers are often covered in batter or buttercream where she'll bake your love language into some new concoction, but she's fairly skilled with a knife, the sharp nature of her tongue keeping others away from the steely cage around the fleshy parts of her grief and insecurities and regrets. Sydney approaches the world as it comes to her, taking it one day at a time with a healthy appreciation for the gift that another day brings.

BACKGROUND / BIO

THIS BIOGRAPHY CONTAINS TRIGGERING CONTENT. Mentions of: teenage pregnancy, disownment, single parenting, cancer, divorce, death. Please do what is best for you in regards to reading and move forward with caution if you do!

The Evans sisters couldn’t have been more different if they’d tried — Alison and her polished reticence, Michaela and her brazen mischief. Despite the four year age difference between them, they were inseparable. Dirty blonde hair threaded into braids down their backs, ribbons unfurling, pinkies wound tightly together in the moments where their fists weren’t drawn. They saw beyond each other’s crowning reputations; Alison and her desires to be swept away in a love so epic it wouldn’t have been able to be confined by page, Michaela and her fears of never finding stability. Everyone in Lake City’s whispers involved Michaela being the Evans child to go fuck up their lives somehow, too trained in on her confidence and inability to conceal herself in the shadows to have seen Alison’s sophomore year romance with the senior boy looming overhead with the promise of fallout. Sneaking out of windows and spending summers in a cabin in the woods while lying to Elisabeth about being with friends turned into pregnant at sixteen, a boy promising forever leaving at the mention of something as permanent as a child. Elisabeth voiced her disapprovals, avowing disownment. Michaela was her sister’s shield and sword, allowing her to move into her apartment in Capitol Hill and holding Alison’s hand every step of the way. Sydney Jean Dalton was born on a humid June evening with the sun swollen low in the sky and birds skimming over the trees.

Sydney’s childhood was modest and humble, growing up in her aunt’s small apartment. Alison found a balance in raising Sydney and obtaining her associates degree to become a radiologist. Michaela spent the first few years of Sydney’s life helping raise her, but it wasn’t long before the world called and she couldn’t resist picking up. She found herself swept away in a one night stand with a man from a tiny fishing town in Maine who offered her the keys to a small beach house he needed off his plate in his pursuit of exploring the world via his houseboat. Michaela gave Alison the apartment, and Alison began carving out her and Sydney’s way into the world. For Sydney, that meant losing a small piece of the joy her childhood had been unbridled with — her mother worked herself hollow, unintentionally leaving very little left for Sydney. It meant she took part in her own raising, independence fostered in her incredibly young by necessity. Sydney was curious about the world yet cautious towards the unknown, creative and kind but also particularly shy when it came to kids her age. She fell right into an average box of an average life and didn’t demand anything more or less than what she had.

Summers were different, as summers were synonymous with visits to Aunt Michaela that wound up being the highlight of every year comprising her childhood and adolescence. Around the age of seven, somehow the money would be scraped up to visit Merrock for two weeks. Her aunt worked in one of the local bars and while Alison wasn’t entirely fond of her young daughter spending time there, there was a certain charm to the town and the locals that enthralled Sydney. Her aunt’s charisma was what brought the locals back time after time, a dynamic personality that Sydney couldn’t help be magnetized by. There was a sophistication to her aunt that Sydney craved to replicate, eager to find a similar well-roundedness in experience and travel and connection with others that her aunt seemed to have in spades. As she climbed out of her shell, Sydney found herself monikered ‘Mini Mick’, the shadow in her aunt’s footsteps that always looked to her for how to act, respond, how to be, even if that looked like a tiny eight year old girl dancing to Patsy Cline songs on the jukebox that filled the space of the bar at Anchors Away. Sydney ate up every moment of her time in Merrock, spending the rest of her days counting down the minutes until her next visit; by the time she was fourteen, she was catching flights on her own and spending entire summers with her aunt. She’d make the most of her time there, working small jobs to make a little extra spending money. Sydney was her mother’s daughter and her aunt’s best friend, the best of them and the worst. She was independent and vibrant, guarded and impulsive, quixotic and practical, learning who she was and who she didn’t want to be.

The childhood, rose-blushed dreams of moving to Merrock after graduation faded into the background as newer dreams rose in the distance and created a glimmering architecture for Sydney’s future. She wanted the delicate dichotomy her aunt had somehow found, but on her own terms: she wanted a stable freedom, something more than the blueprint. Her mother had nearly carved out her own organs in raising a college fund for her only child, so Sydney followed through with attending the University of Washington and earned a degree in Business Administration. There was no real attachment to her program, just fulfilling a quota while she bided her time in her dorm room, meeting people and working odd jobs around campus to help pay tuition. The feelings of obligation to her mother who had done everything for her, right up to losing her family kept her in the thick of it until her graduation, but by then, Sydney’s wings were itching to spread. Coincidentally, six months after graduation, she found the wind she needed to carry her somewhere else. She met someone tall, dark, and handsome, who operated on the same serious and superficial level she did in all her relationships. Within six months of knowing each other, they were engaged, and within another year, they were married and living on the East Coast in Georgia together.

Sydney thought her world had opened ten-fold, being married in a new place and bound to absolutely nothing but her heart’s desires. She enjoyed reaping the benefits of being a trophy wife, picking up odd jobs just to keep her busy throughout the days in a new town. Everything in her world was fleeting, exactly how she liked it: she sampled things, exercised new parts of herself as a bartender or running an Instagram account for her baking escapades that lasted for only two pictures or trying for her real estate license or doing a stint for an online column through a digital content company that gained a faithful readership during her time there. Even her marriage seemed to shift like the tides, passionate then distant, intimate then ugly, all of it keeping her on her toes and ultimately satisfied due to knowing no different. Hindsight would be twenty-twenty, but Sydney was blind, utterly shellshocked when her spouse seemingly did a one eighty overnight and decided their marriage was over without any fanfare or firearm. She was frozen by the shock and suddenness in which she’d been awoken, the knot of her pride and self-loathing lodged tightly in her throat keeping her quiet and the weight of feeling more like her mother’s daughter than she ever had despite all her contrarian efforts to avoid such a fate leaving her stuck in limbo.

And then Michaela called.

Most calls admittedly had found their way to the voicemail box or limited to brief conversations in the moments where Sydney wasn’t gallivanting around like a lovesick fool or wallowing in her own self-pity, but there was an undeniable soft spot held for Aunt Michaela that Sydney couldn’t have splintered if she tried. Michaela was inquiring about a visit, looking to steal away time from Sydney’s life to see her — holidays had passed with very few hellos, those special summers melted away into chunks of months lost to a blur in a stranger’s life that Sydney no longer recognized as her own when trying to recall. Something in her aunt’s voice compelled her to take a small lump of vacation time she’d built up to stroll back down the golden memory lane of her childhood. In many ways, Merrock had remained the same, but it had also changed, things not quite as they’d been when she memorialized the place in her mind. Aunt Michaela had changed too, her cheekbones more defined and the warmth she’d exuded in Sydney’s childhood not as grand and all-encompassing. She was not the epicenter of entertainment that Sydney had grown up idolizing, yearning to capture the same essence of. At a quiet dinner one night, Michaela softly admitted she had cancer. The diagnosis had been recent, only a few days prior to her calling Sydney, and her latest trip to the hospital had revealed the metastatic and incurable nature of the cancer. Michaela wasn’t sure how much longer she’d had — and to add to Sydney’s complete and utter shock, her mom was already in Merrock, helping take care of Michaela. There was a sense of betrayal in the secrecy of her aunt’s wellbeing, knowing how close the two were, but Alison stuck to her reasoning and her decisions. They hadn’t wanted to add fracture lines to an already delicate fault, but Sydney didn’t take well with other people drawing up her decisions for her.

Life for Sydney upended rather quickly. She quit her job with very little hesitation (or disappointment) in order to be in Merrock and help her aunt out wherever she could. She took over shifts at Anchors Away when she wasn’t accompanying Michaela to doctor’s appointments or helping fulfill last wishes, trying to help fill the large shoes her aunt’s absence had left. It seemed like only days had passed, but three weeks into Sydney’s stay, Michaela passed peacefully in her sleep. The news rocked Sydney despite seeing it coming from a mile away. After the funeral, beyond the arrangements and divvying up Michaela’s belongings, Alison tried to invite Sydney to return home with her and start a new chapter there, where Alison had a new boyfriend, comfortable home, stable job and everything that she’d wanted since sixteen and daydreaming of happy endings. Sydney refused, instead choosing to stay in Merrock to stay close to where her aunt’s presence was strongest and see if she could hear Mick giving her advice through the crash of waves. There were glimmers of disappointment in her mother’s eyes at her choice, but they both knew there was no stopping Sydney after her mind had been made. Alison went back to Seattle and Sydney managed to sublet the rest of her lease in Georgia, the remainder of her belongings shipped to Merrock. She lived in Michaela’s beach house following her death, taking the opportunity to save money while working shifts at Anchors Away and doing small freelance jobs around town — including baking cakes for birthdays or other events around town that called for something sweet. After her first year in Merrock, she made the decision to find a place downtown to call her own and use the money from the beach house sale to purchase a small business space in the Hideaway Markets, turning her stress baking into something productive and much larger-scale than her occasional favors for others.

Merrock would like to welcome SYDNEY DALTON! Sydney (she/her, cis female) was born on June 14, 1989 in Seattle, WA and has been in town for four years. Currently, they live in Historical Downtown and are working as the owner of Sweet Talk Bakery. They look a little bit like Elizabeth Olsen, no? – written by: em, she/her, est, 24.