Claudia :)

Do you think she felt a pitching, gut-wrenching horror when she realized that he was alone?

Do you think she thought back to that day that she forced him to go, soothing herself with the reminder that he at least wouldn't be alone, and realized that, no, she not only sent him to his death but she sent him utterly alone with two corpses?

Do you think that she remembered the fact that Grace had always been forcibly alone: ostracized from his communities, humiliated into silence, and realized she was only compounding on that?

Do you think that, upon hearing about Rocky for the first time, she felt a wash of relief rather than wonder or awe or surprise?

cameron: tenor 1

knox: tenor 2

charlie: tenor 1

neil: bass 2

todd: tenor 2

meeks: bass 1

cameron: soprano 1 absolutely. bro is the most annoying and snotty person in choir I fear😔 (soprano 1 specifically bc there is a difference trust)

knox: tenor 1. performative male maxxing. bro can't hit half those notes comfortably.

charlie: hmm probably a tenor but one of those annoying ones that just talks during rehearsal but is actually really good

neil: bass, he's chill like that

todd: he gives such alto vibes

meeks: alto as well, one of those people that marks down every single thing in their music to the point where you can't decipher it

he has a few records at home, classical ones that he listens to while he studies. they get repetitive and tiring. however, his favorite section at the store is the jazz one, the ones full of miles davis and bud powell and nat king cole. he loves sitting in the vinyl listening booths, the headphones too big for his ears, and sampling jazz songs from every vinyl he can get his hands on.

one day, he decides he's going to save up for a jazz record of his own. for a month straight, he delivers newspapers and collects the little birthday money he gets and even tries babysitting his neighbor's kids for about a day. when he finally counts his money up and realizes he has enough, he walks into the record store with a jar under his arm, practically glowing.

he spends about an hour deciding until he finally decides on duke ellington plays the blues. a classic. he dumps his jar out on the counter, coins spilling everywhere, and eventually walks out of the store with a record and an empty jar and a full heart. he feels the happiest he's ever felt in his full 8 years walking home that day.

the moment he gets home, he runs up to his room and takes the classical record off the player and swaps it out for duke ellington. much better. he sits on the floor tapping his foot along to the beat and trying to hum along to each of the different instruments. the only problem is, he doesn't hear when the front door swings open and his father's keys are hooked up by the front door. he doesn't hear the footsteps coming up the stairs. in fact, he barely even hears his father until the record stops.

before he knows it, his prized record, the one he'd spent his hard earned money collected over a month on, is being ripped out of the record player and thrown straight in the trash. he fights back tears. he can't cry. he really can't. the moment his father leaves the room after going on an entire rant about how jazz music is "poisoning the new generation" and "too modern and radical" and a lot of other things cameron doesn't understand, he hurries to the trash can and pulls out the record. it's got a scratch on the side of it from being pulled out of the record player, and it's not salvageable even if he tried. he cries himself to sleep that night, his small body shaking with sobs, and when he wakes up in the morning, his records and record player are gone from his room.

richard cameron who is freshly fourteen, going into his first year at welton. he's never been more scared for anything in his life. he has a precisely packed suitcase trailing behind him as he steps through the doors of welton, feeling tiny and insignificant in the large building around him. he makes his way to his dormitory, the map clenched in his hands, and almost cries when he realizes his parents are going to leave him alone. not that he'd rather spend the year with his parents. just that he'd rather be anywhere else than here.

he says goodbye to his parents and starts to unpack his stuff, trying his best not to roll his eyes at the mess his roommate has already left behind. he gathers his stuff to go down to dinner, only he hears a strange noise as he's walking through the hallways. something he hasn't heard in years. a saxophone. and piano. even an impromptu tapping on the table that resembles drums. he stops and looks in the window, and there's a small group of boys, playing jazz. and for some strange reason he suddenly feels right at home. especially when he realizes the saxophonist is none other than his (albeit annoying) roommate.

richard cameron whose heart breaks when his first real friend dies. he sees his play, and, all of a sudden, he's never coming back. none of his friends tell him, and instead he has to find out at the school-wide assembly. all he feels is anger and hurt and isolation as he gets his roommate expelled and his teacher fired and destroys the lives of everyone around him in the process. he feels nothing but empty as he packs up his stuff and doesn't dare look back at the school and forces polite smiles to his parents as they ask him questions on the drive back home.

summer begins, and he thinks he's starting to go stir-crazy in that house. he stays up way too late and only gets a few hours of sleep before his dad wakes him up and moves his food around on his plate at breakfast and burns up his heart from the inside. his mom is out one day at her book club that's mostly gossip, and his dad is working late, and he remembers something. for just a moment. his record player is in the attic. he'd stumbled across it once in the middle of the night when he couldn't fall asleep and it felt too stuffy to breathe in his room.

he's not really sure what he's doing, but he gets out of his bed and gets dressed and puts his shoes on and takes his little bit of spending money leftover from the school year. he traces the path he's taken a million times before, down the sidewalk to the record store, which hasn't changed much in the years he'd spent away. it's less busy, meaning cameron can make a beeline for the jazz section at the back, flipping through the familiar stacks of records. he doesn't remember much, and he doesn't know any of the newer ones, so he chooses one at random and uses most of his money to buy it at the front counter. he walks back to his house with change in his pocket and a record tucked closely under his arm and a heart that's been burned to ashes long ago.

when he gets back home, he takes the record straight up to the attic, leaving the stairs down behind him. his father will kill him. see if he cares. he blows the dust off the old record player and pulls the new one out of its plastic sleeve and sets the needle down. it takes a second, but it works, and music starts to flow from the record player, filling the attic with sound cameron hasn't heard in years. he lays down on the attic floor and rests his head next to the record player, feeling every drum beat and note from the saxophone and piano chord throughout his entire body.

and for the first time since his first real friend, the one who'd made sure he felt included, died, he cries. he lets the tears run down his face and leave tracks in the dust on the wooden floor and his body shakes with sobs and his head aches and his eyes sting and his nose is too stuffed up to breathe, but for once he doesn't care. he doesn't think he cares about anything anymore. except the music playing next to him and the steady rhythm that he can practically feel in the floorboards and the forgotten memories weighing on him.

he's always loved too much the things he's not supposed to.

what was your lgbtqiap+ awakening?

mine was that one episode of my babysitter’s a vampire where ethan dressed up as one of the cheerleaders.

for my transgender awakening, my sisters were watching a one direction music video and i YEARNED to look like Harry Styles for some reason. I then realized that I only wanted to look like Harry Styles cuz Harry Styles was a boy.

yeah

my genderqueer awakening was hedwig and the angry inch and im so serious. after watching the movie for the first time i knew that there had to be so much more to me than just being a girl:)

i guess i have to thank musicals for my being gay bru

gay awakening? that came with the trans awakening because first off i thought i was nb and a lesbian but then i realised maybe i did like guys just not in a straight way. i was adjusting to not being a girl okay .

woah idk when my trans awakening was fgat was so long ago .... just know that my childhood beat friend was peak masculinity to me and i wanted to be him so bad so ✌️ tgats gotta count for something

umm gay awakening had to be roger taylor he was the first one i genuinely remembwr crushing on because oh my godddd 😛

Honestly the mechs were probably my pan(?) awakening. I used to identify as lesbian and I think that was because of sandra oh

And the genderfluid awakening was probably... Hm I went through a bunch of identities before and then I kept going between transmasc, enby and cis and then I discovered more labels

(I'm never forgetting my enby side-part phase)

Double Trouble and Sea Hawk from She Ra (2018) probably were also probably something,,

my trans awakening was when I realized that when I would lie to my friends back in middle school saying that people mistook me for a guy was not something cis people do… and also movie Klaus Baudelaire

I guess my aroace awakening would be that I've never really cared about that stuff, like it's never been a big part in my life lol, esp in middle school/covid era I probably cared a lot more about making fun videos with my siblings or emailing with my friends (cause we didn't have text lol.) I remember later in middle school once we were actually back in school, my best friend thought she had a crush on one of our other friends, and I supported my best friend for it but it gave me kinda weird vibes and I never thought about that for myself. Also, when my middle school friend group did talk about crushes (which was rare), I always just said no one because like. It was true😭. In like 8th grade I thought I liked my best friend for a bit but it never felt like Romance^TM so I think around then I kinda started figuring out I was aroace and that me liking my best friend was probably just queerplatonic/smth of that sort? I got a phone around that time so I probably looked it up lol, though I went from bi->biromantic asexual->aroace before I figured it out. OH and there was one time my friend was talking about how some random dude from like an ipad game or smth was hot and I flat out disagreed with her lol

And for my genderqueer one, again not anything specific, but I guess I've always felt more comfortable/myself in pants rather than a dress which I attributed to "dress=fancy wear" lol. I used to love wearing dresses at like a really young age but in like elementary/upper elementary I was kinda like meh. And then in 6th and 7th grade (haha 67) i like lowk tried to cosplay being a girl or smth😭 like I remember trying out makeup and dresses for a school dance and stuff but i always felt lowk chopped, like I liked experimenting but at some point I just stopped doing that lol. Also uhhh I cut my hair short in 9th grade and I liked that it was short but ngl I haven't found a hairstyle that makes me feel like myself until recently lol. I also think around middle school I just kinda felt a lil isolated from my friends cause they were getting into makeup, cutesie outfits, stuff like that and I just wasn't interested. (Also I remember once doing like masc makeup or whatever and actually liking it lol.) I also always liked hanging out with my one friend who surprise! later turned out to be trans bc our friendship didn't depend on gender yknow. Uhhh yeah at some point I started going by she/they even tho nobody called me that and also I remember getting gender envy from like. The first actual one i remember is mercutio from romeo et juliette but the french version specifically😭 yeah and at some point I started experimenting with more masc fits (looking back at them they lowkey SUCKED) and uh yeah idek

BROOOO holy yap omg🫩🫩 rip whoevers reading this cause im not gonna go back and edit it😭 but yeah, basically it was never One thing but just like. A lot lol.

Look at Pitts' expression when Cameron finks on Keating ????? He is so betrayed :[[

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high-school romance or middle-age romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bent // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high-school romance or middle-age romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bent // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high-school romance or middle-age romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bent // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane

(on the one-shot it depends bc sometimes it's so long i end up reading it as if it's several chapters lol)

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high-school romance or middle-age romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bent // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high-school romance or middle-age romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bent // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane

THIS WAS SOO HARD WTH? I LOVE FLUFF, ENEMIES TO LOVERS, MUTUAL PINING TOO!

some of these were so hard to choose form LOL

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt/comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // smut or fluff // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high-school romance or middle-age romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bent // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane