Origins
It didn't happen all at once but over a period of years. Samantha Manson at age four had no particular love for the color black, the lifestyle of ultra-recyclo-vegetarianism, or the hobby of goth haiku, yet the same could not be said of Sam Manson at the age of fourteen.
For as long as Sam could remember, her parents—her mother in particular—had been much more controlling than the other kids' parents. No matter what, Sam had to dress the right way, act the right way, be around the right people, and do the right things. One of her earliest memories of her mother was an image of her face contorted in disgust as she saw Sam trying to play with an earthworm in her front yard, along with the echo of some of the berating that followed. Sam hadn't tried to show her mother any of the creatures she saw ever again.
When Sam was eight, she'd wanted to start picking out her own outfits. This was banned by her mother when, one day, she bought herself a band t-shirt—she couldn't even remember which band now—and attempted to wear it with a pair of simple jeans on a school day. She could still remember how her mother had started that lecture: "This is absolutely not proper dress for a young girl of your status!" Sam was forced to allow her mother to choose every weekday outfit from then until she was twelve and finally rebelled. Even after that, her mother would passive-aggressively lay out the outfits she wanted her daughter to wear every day, and sometimes she would even barge into her bedroom in the morning and try to force Sam to put on her choice of outfit.
Age twelve was certainly when everything started for Sam. It wasn't just demanding to choose her own outfits; soon, she was rebelling against everything she could find to rebel against. She'd found that choosing her own clothes to actually reflect part of her personality finally drew friends to her, something that hadn't happened while she'd been dressing and acting like "a proper young lady." She found she couldn't just stop at the clothes; she wanted to show everyone what she was really like, not what her mother wanted her to be like.
The Manson family began having more than its fair share of loud arguments. While Sam's father hadn't very much disapproved of the outfits she'd been choosing at first, even he couldn't just ignore it when she began dressing in a mixture of crop tops, tight jeans, short skirts, leggings, and other pieces, all in the darkest blacks she could find. From there, it was her hair. Once long and well-maintained—even when they were arguing, her mother insisted on brushing it to perfection and providing only the best hair products for her daughter—it was now a much simpler shoulder-length cut that may have been forgiven if not for the ridiculous small ponytail their daughter insisted on always having, right at the top of her head. As a child, Sam had always loved the somewhat gentle genres her mother suggested: jazz, some country music, and the pop songs that her mother preapproved. Suddenly, Sam loved punk, metal, and electronica music, knowing her parents couldn't stand any of the three. Sam's parents had never believed in grounding, considering it something that only lesser parents did to their children, and so nothing stopped Sam from blasting metal at all hours of the day using the stereo in her bedroom. Later, it was her diet that changed. Sam had never been especially picky about her food with relatively rare exceptions, and suddenly, she insisted she "wouldn't eat anything with a face." Mrs. Manson had no idea how to react to this declaration, and her daughter refused to eat most of each meal for almost a week before her mother decided to talk to their chef about personalizing her daughter's meals.
Sam couldn't handle all the arguing and began to spend more time away from her family. She began spending so much time with her two somewhat new best friends that by the time they were fourteen, they all felt like they'd known each other their whole lives instead of just those past two years. When she wasn't with her friends, she was often reading anything she could get her hands on at Amity Park's local library or listening to goth haiku at her favorite teen club. Sam was pleased to find that spending time away from her family did reduce the number and intensity of their arguments, but she still wanted to maintain her individuality, and so they still fought somewhat often. At this point, they commonly fought about her clothing, her diet, her hobbies, and her friends.
Sam couldn't tell anyone exactly when she outwardly became who she is, but she knew it had happened somehow, in spite of the pressures of her mother and the disappointment from her father. Sam knew her parents both loved her very much despite the family arguments, but she wasn't going to give up who she was just to keep the peace. Sam could choose how to live her own life.