Allison Branigan
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| Allison Branigan | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Allison Branigan |
| Affiliation | Eastern Tsuga College; Hemlock Veil FM |
| Status | Active |
| Occupation | ETC student; radio host |
| First appearance | Making the Grades: Allie's Descent |
| Canon status | Confirmed |
About
Allison Branigan, known as Allie, is a sophomore at Eastern Tsuga College and the protagonist of Making the Grades: Allie's Descent. She is an English major, the host of the "Cornflake Girl" show on Hemlock Veil FM from 8 to 10 p.m., and the dorm roommate and best friend of Meghan Kang. She is Professor William Taylor's second documented PSYCH 250 subject, entering his orbit in Spring 2023, the semester immediately following Kelly Spaihts's arc.
Allie arrived at ETC carrying the unresolved weight of a high school betrayal and a summer confrontation with her mother that fused her desires with shame. She found a partial solution in DareGrid, an anonymous online kink forum where she could explore what she wanted without a face to look at afterward. Taylor is the first person since the betrayal who sees her clearly and stays in the room.
Description
Allie has shoulder-length brunette hair with pastel purple streaks, usually worn messy and loose. Her style is grunge-meets-hipster, nostalgic alt-girl: oversized flannel shirts, black band tees, high-waisted denim shorts, red Converse All-Stars decorated with pins and patches, colorful tights or over-the-knee soccer socks.
Background
Patrick
Patrick was Allie's high school boyfriend and the source of her deepest wound. She trusted him with the real version of herself, hints at her desires, and revealing photos, and he shared them publicly with a mutual friend. His final words at the breakup: "She isn't a pervert like you." Allie lost her virginity to him in the late summer before her freshman year. He ended the relationship a week before she left for college.
Peggy
Margaret "Peggy" Branigan is Allie's mother. Emotionally distant, she blames Allie for her father's departure. In August 2022, she walked into Allie's room without knocking during an online session and said: "No wonder Patrick dumped you." In the weeks that followed, she continued weaponizing both Patrick and Allie's absent father. Her cruelest contribution was fusing Allie's desires with the idea that they cause abandonment.
Allie discovered DareGrid in early November 2022, at the start of her sophomore fall semester. She enrolled in DareSlut University over winter break 2022-23. By the time the novel opens in Spring 2023 she is an advanced user with a track record of completed challenges. DareGrid solved the Patrick problem structurally: anonymous strangers see only what she chooses to show, in an environment she controls, with no face to look at afterward.
Allie met Meghan during Hemlock Veil FM first-semester training in Fall 2021, their freshman year. They became close friends through freshman year and moved in together as dorm roommates at the start of sophomore year, Fall 2022. Meghan is Allie's best friend and the person whose proximity to her world gradually shifts across the novel's arc.
Personality and traits
Allie is restless, impulsive, and secretly anxious. She is witty and clever, but tends to self-sabotage. She flips between cocky and insecure. She craves sexual exploration but fears intimacy. She is an ambivert who appears extroverted but is fundamentally introverted, hiding emotions with humor or sarcasm and isolating when overwhelmed. Her passions are music, her radio show, quirky films, and DareGrid.
The Patrick betrayal established a pattern: desire leads to exposure, which leads to humiliation, which leads to abandonment. Taylor will be the test of whether that pattern holds or breaks.
Taylor's methodology applied to Allie
Taylor's approach with Allie differs from his approach with Kelly in several key ways. He explicitly thinks "lightning doesn't strike twice" when setting the trap. He uses Meghan's office visit as an unwitting lever rather than engineering it himself. He introduces an NDA, a lesson learned from Kelly's Chelsea Zhou encounter. He keeps Allie at arm's length from his condo longer than Kelly. He is more calculated and expects the process to be harder.
Allie's sexuality assessment reveals peaks in orgasm denial and control, objectification, anal-only restriction, and slutification, with a complete flat rejection of traditional BDSM, including impact play and restraint. She consistently chose "Neutral" on the Likert questions for things that excite her because she knew Taylor would see them. He identified this suppression immediately and used it as the framework for everything that followed.
Key relationships
Meghan Kang
Meghan Kang is Allie's best friend and dorm roommate. The person whose arc runs closest to Allie's without intersecting it, until the end.
Professor William Taylor
Professor William Taylor is Allie's PSYCH 250 instructor and the architect of her independent study arrangement. He is the first person since Patrick who sees her clearly. Whether she can trust that without waiting for the betrayal is the novel's central question.
Marty Cavendish
Marty Cavendish is an Order of Aetherion member who has been pursuing Allie since freshman year after misreading a concert invitation as a date. Allie suspects he may actually have feelings for Meghan and uses her to get closer.
Canon notes
- Born June 3, 2004
- The second two-thirds of her novel remain unwritten