#and the conclusion was that naielle was trans but on account of the setting that this was basically irrelevant

[isaacathom]

im gonna elaborate bc i can only say the same thing on xitter so many times so :)

the core of the HS au is the study group - Kirsty, Delia, Filip, Noelle, and Zachary. these 5 come to be friends through a rambling chain. Noelle and Kirsty have been best friends since primary school, though only started officially dating recently. Through Noelle being a very academic-minded student, she befriends Zachary, a younger student in an advanced program that has seen them doing higher year level classes for a bit. Through Zachary, they're introduced to Delia, who is not in an advanced pathway but is doing a variety of fairly cerebral classes, like eng lit and physics, and so sharing a few of them with both Zachary and Noelle depending on context.

Filip comes in through Kirsty - the above chart is inaccurate, as both of them are on the school basketball team/s, and have been for a few years.

the study group is hosted at Kirsty's uncle's house, which is located pretty close to school. It started late the previous year and has continued into the final year for Noelle/Kirsty/Filip, with the latter only really being there when he's doing nothing else.

basic bit:

Noelle is a trans lesbian who recently came out to her family and got kicked out over it, now staying either with her girlfriend or with her aunt, who lives a decent train ride away. Her twin brother Quentin is very chiil, but her two younger siblings (Olivier and Marie-Louise) are nightmares in their own way. Noelle likes History and Physics, with a particular love in her heart for space and the stars.

Kirsty is a lesbian, staying alternatingly with her lovely family or with her uncle, largely because her family lives a decent clip away and her uncle is happy to host her and her friends. She's a social butterfly who makes friends easily, and loves to help. Study group was her idea, even though she's not remotely the most studious in the group. She's going business and econ.

Delia is a cishet woman who is, for lack of term, minmaxing her grades. She's deliberately taking the harder classes to bolster her percentages, and is putting in the work to make that successful, with varying results per class. She is also a deep lover of music and the arts, and so to make up for not taking near-any humanities classes (bad for percentages), she takes music lessons outside of school (piano and violin) and has performed in every school musical since she got here. English lit is the class she does best at.

Zachary is an enby who is the definition of a nerd. in an advanced pathway as well as balancing various extracurriculars, zachary adores learning more than most things, and loves to share their knowledge with their friends whenever possible. They work at their parent's secondhand bookshop, and like to volunteer for library events. They specialise in Eng Lit in particular.

Filip is a hot mess bi man who barely wants to be at school at all. He's at least a year older than his cohort due to having been kept down a year, and is very much trying to get the damn thing over with. He's on his P plates and drives an old Nissan Navara he got fifth hand off a guy. Clearly does not and has not lived at his parent's house in over a year, bouncing around wherever he can. Is doing an apprenticeship as a building carpenter, and only really enjoys sports classes.

The plot, such that it is, revolves around the year that N/K/F are in their final year. Over the summer Noelle came out to her family and got kicked out, and Filip came close to simply not returning to school at all, only being convinced to do so by members of the school basketball team (which includes Kirsty).

Early in the year, when the school holds auditions for that years musical, they get a disappointing turnout. To save the show, which Delia so adores doing, she works to convince the study group to all audition. Kirsty and Zachary do so eagerly, though its noted that Zachary is quite a wooden performer whose main strength is script memory. Noelle takes quite a lot of convincing, eventually agreeing on the proviso she gets a minor role with few lines. She tries her best, and Kirsty insists she has great stage presence once she forgets she's on it. Filip refuses doggedly, despite Kirsty and Delia insisting he greatly suits a particular role and would make a competent singer and dancer.

It takes the intervention of Ms Calliope Desmond, the musical's choreographer (and possibly director) to convince him that, okay, if you don't want to be on stage, you could help with suit building or as a stage hand? He agrees to that. He still ends up attending a lot of the rehearsals to support his friends, when he's able.

a few more people join the musical in some capacity off the study group - Zachary invites their younger sibling Paz to audition, and Paz's twin Shani will be involved in the orchestra as a member of the school band. Noelle's twin brother Quentin also auditions, "for fun", he says.

During the school year, Delia gets into an "incident", which she broadlt refuses to detail but evidently involves her, her dad, and her dad's car. After missing a week of school, she ends up in a very similar situation to Filip - crashing on whoever's couch is available. At some point, the two end up doing this together, leading to a widespread rumour that the two are dating. this is a change of pace from the two's usual dating rumours, which involving the leading man in the play and the center of the girl's basketball team, respectively. Filip, incidentally, is utterly unaware of any of these rumours and is decidedly NOT dating Delia.

there's also a sense that, over the course of the year, that things are not great in Zachary's house, but because of their age its a lot harder for them to simply 'fuck off' like 3/5s of the study group have done.

it probably sort of comes to this idea, for the group, that the way to make the year 'good' is for the musical to go incredibly well. its not even like they need to save a community theatre or whatever, there are no material stakes, its about what the kids need, cathartically. Filip even probably says at some point that he's mostly sticking around to see the musical through.

i think it does go well for them, ultimately. the sorts of issues happen that you expect with amateur theatre, people forget their lines and mess up their placements, miss their cues, whatever. delia possibly nearly misses the first night entirely until filip takes that busted navara and goes out of his way to pick her up or something. noelles sister marie-louise tries to sabotage the play is some orchestrated and nonsensical way that is ultimately self-destructive/gets others hurt, whichever is more interesting at the time. but things turn out alright. the musical goes well. by final night noelle has relaxed enough to be a better performer. zachary has had some specific 'liveners' introduced to their performance to make it less stiff. filip spends most of the show backstage helping people costume change and preparing set pieces for getting sent on stage. it goes well. its nice.

:)

my friend pondered a highschool au for their ttrpg ocs, and then i went 'hmm. interesting. what if my ocs?' and then, well,