Nathaniel

evan makes himself as small as possible. he assumes he is the problem and is very much aware of the fact that he is alone, so he clings to any scraps of affection he can find. he hides himself, and getting pulled out generally just means messing up, so he just hides more.

connor's loneliness also morphs into self hatred but has different consequences. rather than try to make himself as small as possible, he assumes everyone hates him as much as he hates himself and projects that onto interactions, lashing out because of perceived hostility that mostly isn’t there.

jared tries to ignore it. he pretends like it's not there, like he's not lonely because he’s not alone. he makes everything into a joke so he doesn’t have to care about it and generally just avoids thinking about his actual feelings.

zoe molds herself into perfection. but not the outstanding kind of perfection, the average kind of perfection. the "gets good grades but doesn't brag about it" kind of perfection, the "isn’t bad at anything, but isn’t good enough to make connor feel bad about himself" kind of perfection, the "apologises for what connor does, but once he's not around" kind of perfection. the goldilocks kind of perfection, so she can slip away into a vaguely nice memory for everyone she meets.

I have no mouth and I must laugh at my girlfriend's ass piano playing

waaa I wanted to say thank you SO MUCH everyone for likes and reblogs!! I didn't expect anyone to like my stuff tbh !!🫶🫶🫶

But in real life, in the physical world, she's at Riley's bar. She's surrounded by other queer people. He killed himself but she's alive in a place hosted by the nonbinary person he resented. She has the community of other queer people that he rejected.