James Fawcett

[James Fawcett]

TW: Evangelical upbringing, homophobia, etc

The Basics

Name: James Anderson Fawcett
Nicknames: Any nicknames
Age: 33 (September 26th 1986)
Pronouns: He/him
Orientation: Homosexual
Desired Rank/Job: music teacher
Powers: non-powered
Play By: Mika

The Details

Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Height: 6'
Any Piercings? none
Any Tattoos? none
Any Scars? nothing noticeable 
General Appearance: James is one of those people who easily blends into the background, a fact he is glad of and helps along with a lot of slouching and generally looking as if he hopes he's invisible. He undercuts this with a love of somewhat loud suits for work and for even his casual clothing to have that slim fit body hugging look. Around Christmas time he wears nothing but Christmas sweaters, finding them fun rather than tacky.

Everything about him screams long and thin: His lips are long and thin, his fingers are long and thin, his nose is long and thin, his face is long and thin, his legs are long, his eye lashes are long... He was scrawny up into his twenties but he’s finally gone from bony to slim thanks primarily to a low appetite and a not particularly athletic disposition. Southern food isn't known for being kind to the waistline, but for someone who only eats one meal a day it isn't so bad for weight. Now, whether or not its slowly clogging his arteries anyway is another matter entirely.

His most outstanding feature are his mass of dark curls, which tend to become very uncontrollable if he doesn't keep his hair short and tamed with gels and mousses, although it's still prone to becoming out of control if he gets sweaty or the weather is particularly humid or someone douses him in water. He favors apple scents when possible, but regardless of whether or not he was able to purchase apple scented hair care products anyone with a sensitive nose will be able to tell just how much product is used in his hair.

His default expressions are either brooding or complete and utter confusion, even when he isn't particularly unhappy. Smiles are reserved for specific occurrences rather than as a default. This isn't solely due to his reserved nature, although that's certainly part of it; growing up his siblings (and sometimes other members of the family) liked to tease him about his front teeth, saying he looked like a rabbit. And although he's no longer a child that has stuck with him and he's self-conscious about his smile.

The distinctive South-Eastern drawl may be fading in suburban Georgia, but in tiny Hahira (Hay-haah-ruh to the locals), closer to the Florida border than the metro area, the accent is still very pronounced. The Fawcett's aren't wealthy, and so they don't have the non-rhotic tendencies that many people associate with the South. There are distinct R sounds, and elongating short vowels, gliding after long vowels so that they turn into double syllables, using double modals instead of single, unstressed e's turn into short i's, and certain turns of phrases such as fixin' to or slower than the second comin' are all fixtures of James' speech that he hasn't shaken off and probably never will.

The only time he doesn't drawl his words is when singing, thanks to the rigorous training at college. His focus may have been on playing the piano and organ rather than singing, but what choir teacher can't also sing? He's naturally baritone, but with enough range that he's sung both tenor and bass parts assuming they don't get into the outer reaches of those ranges.

Personality: James is largely quiet, especially in large gatherings; he prefers being a wallflower rather than an active participant. When in a one on one situation he'll be somewhat more talkative, especially with someone he trusts. If the discussion turns to music, particularly Church music, he may become excitable and chatty even in a larger group but with a palpable nervous energy about him, ready to sink back into silence at a moment's notice. AT times he may initiate conversation in an attempt to be polite, but he's admittedly not a very good conversationalist. The boundaries between what's acceptable and not in terms of sharing are blurry at best, and invisible at worst, and he doesn't always process the entire context of a conversation until after he's already stuck his foot in his mouth. This combines with his anxiety to cause conversations that often confound other people as he waffles back and forth between icy aloofness and spilling out his life story, interspersed with apologies for nothing and no acknowledgement of real faux pas. And, sometimes, completely unreasonable meltdowns due to hyped up anxiety.

In a performance, however, he’s much more confident. There’s a set order for notes and music, and he’s practiced the exact same scenario countless times before performing. Unexpected technical difficulties he can handle; it’s the unexpected conversational topics that leave him floundering.

His confidence is especially noticeable during church services, because there’s a limited number of songs that get pulled from the hymnal and he has those handful all but memorized. After all, the congregation won’t sing if they don’t recognize the songs and so why branch out?

James finds socializing difficult and exhausting. However, he doesn't dislike people; quite the opposite, actually. He likes people a lot. He wants only good things for the people around him, and tries very hard to be a good listener. However, he can't really read between the lines very well, which makes being a good listener challenging at times. He has trouble reading other people, but even when he might otherwise understand them he's come to expect that he doesn't understand and thus overthinks what should be obvious and direct communication. If he had an easier time with this then he would enjoy being around other people more, and when he finds those rare people he can spend time with and understand them without a lot of struggling and anxiety he's happy to spend hours at a time with them.

His difficulties in social interactions is exacerbated by the fact that he wants people to like him and he’s afraid that he’ll say or do the wrong thing. Frankly he would rather have a script ahead of time so he can avoid the inevitable pitfalls that come with human and human adjacent interactions. This has the unfortunate side effect of making him a pushover because if he has a spine people might hate him. Never mind that being a doormat actually doesn’t gain anyone respect.

He's aware of this on some level but even the perception of conflict causes him to feel nauseous. He's convinced that if he started dealing with conflict directly he would just feel sick for the rest of his life, because surely that reaction wouldn't eventually fade. Nope. Too hard. Its possible to get along with everyone all the time, right? At least when he's performing he knows when he did well or did poorly and so other people's opinions are usually irrelevant. Unless the opinion is from another musician he respects, in which case he can handle a negative opinion as long as he's given information on how to improve.

Although he now lives far away from his family and has rejected some (but not all) of their belief system he hasn't exactly recovered from being raised by Evangelicals. He has a lot of residual anxiety and self-loathing towards himself that he tries to ignore. After all, when you're raised to believe that everything you feel is suspect and to never trust yourself, well, you end up not trusting yourself. And the Bible is only so useful as a replacement for your own intuition, particularly when maybe not everything you're taught really aligns very well with the actual texts. But if you interpret anything differently, that's Satan trying to trick you into going against God.

And now you're going to Hell.

Its really not a mystery where his abundance of anxiety stems from.

He also is very forgetful and disorganized. He leaves his music all over the place, forgets deadlines, forgets to put books back where they belong....he's a disaster when it comes to organization and requires a great deal of help managing his time. In some ways the regular rhythm of school helps him, because a certain amount of organization and scheduling is built in. For his church related schedule the choir master has taken to simply texting him regularly, and almost every class he's ever taught has included at least one overachiever who thinks that by trying to turn into his manager they can score extra points. He does put particularly important reminders on his phone, too; technology may have caused some problems in his life, but at least his smart phone can help him keep his schedule straight.

With individual students he's patient, but with groups he sometimes gets a bit impatient if someone is disruptive. He's willing to go over and over and over the parts that the group is failing at. Perhaps with a hint of exasperation.

He has a few topics he's very passionate about and digs in his heels, which can seem a bit surprising to people who expect him to roll over on everything. These topics include "Do we have to sing Silent Night for the candle light service? Why can't we change it up? I know this is what the congregation expects, but there are plenty of other incredible Christmas hymns", "Vivaldi is NOT Classical music" and "the harmony is always more fun than the melody". And if you're not a member of his family he might manage "Being gay isn't wrong" except he's still half afraid that maybe it is, after all. He's practicing telling himself it isn't, though, in the hopes maybe that will help him get over his shame.

Your Vices

Likes:
+ Classical and baroque music, choral music, hymns, and sad indie music
+ Christmas sweaters
+ Apple pie 
+ Hair products 
+ Metronomes 
Dislikes: 
-being contacted by his family 
-guns 
-being the center of attention when not teaching or performing 
-cleaning out drains
-Googles insistence on connecting as many accounts as possible 
Strengths:
+ reading music 
+ performing (piano, organ, singing)
+ cooking and baking 
+ can recognize many south georgia flowers, butterflies, and birds by common name
+ Bible trivia
+ Grooming (he loves hair care products, cologne, and hand lotion) 
Weaknesses: 
- anxious
- disorganized 
- oblivious 
- caffeine addict 
- time blind 
- doormat 

Family Ties

Father: Davin Rhodes Fawcett (b. 1962)
Mother: Elvira Faith Fawcett nee Bowden (b. 1962)
Siblings:  Luke Obley Fawcett (b. 1983), Rachel Leota Perry (b. 1988)
Any Other Important People:
Maybe - his tortoise shell cat
Wilda Cobb (Luke's girlfriend),  Byron Perry (brother in law), Perry nieces Shilo -4yo, Bernice -3yo, Myra - 2yo, and Grace - 9 months old
Suzanne Green - piano/organ teacher and mentor 
Cyrus Ettinger - current best friend/crush
Simon Ettinger - friend (?)
Exes: Cody Leaptrott (from college) and Jim 

History

Hahira is a tiny Georgia town off exit 29 of I-75, which during James youth had a population no more than one thousand. If you take the interstate it's only an hour to the Florida border, but three hours (or more, depending on traffic that gets progressively worse the further to The Metro Area you go) to get to Atlanta. There are occasional blue signs designating hurricane evacuation routes, a reminder that the Gulf coast is only 90 miles to the west and the Atlantic coast is only 120 miles to the east and the storms that accompany the stronger hurricanes make themselves felt even here.

The billboards are a mishmash of glossy, colorful advertisements for nearby hotels and chain restaurants, for popular tourist stores (Three Sisters Fudge! Horsetown! Magnolia Plantation! strippers!) that are many miles away, and faded, peeling admonishments to turn back to God or burn forever in hell. An equal number of American and Confederate flags can be seen stuck to cars or flying near businesses and outside of homes, a symbol of what outsiders often consider an inconsistent attitude towards America as an entity.

There are fifteen churches, but the only medical facilities within town are two pharmacies and a public health clinic. There was a hospital in town until 2002, but the hospital moved to a place 12 miles out of town - still not as unfortunate as many other places in rural Georgia.

This abundance of churches explains the culture very well. Not everyone attends Church, of course - the Righteous can't exist without the Unrighteous as a foil, after all. But Church is important, because church provides the safety net that the government won't. The median income was below $30,000 a year during James childhood and yet few enough people truly support the government providing more help. Some people blame racism for this, and that's not wrong, but it isn't the whole reason. A more complete picture would include those fifteen churches, and listen to the people attending them. She says her life is bad, but she doesn't come to Church, does she? If you want a community you should be part of the community, but you never see him here on Sunday mornings unless he needs something.

This is the culture into which James was born, one where Church was the center of the world. It was the place you went to celebrate or to grieve or simply to socialize, the place that set the expectations and values of the community. They came together to help those who needed it, but were also quick to ostracize anyone who didn't fall into line.

Children’s choir was almost a requirement. The adults were all at church already, and they needed something to do with the children, so children’s choir it was. James enjoyed the typical children’s choir songs - This Little Light of Mine, Fishers of Men, The B-I-B-L-E. Of course the recitals were absolutely atrocious because few small children can keep a beat or stay in tune. Most of them just yelled the words at the top of their lungs. James could carry a tune, which in some ways made singing with the group frustrating. There were definitely times toddler James refused to sing and gave the other toddlers dirty looks because everyone else was so far off the mark that it was messing him up.

However, he adored the actual music part. Whenever they learned a new song he would sing it at home all week long by himself, only to clam up again during group sessions. He wanted to go, though, because that was where he learned new songs. And sometimes if he was lucky his mother would stay to talk to Miss Suzanne (usually about Luke’s inability to sit still) and then James would climb onto the piano bench and bang at the piano keys.

He was especially fascinated with sheet music. Nobody was going to try to teach an entire group of toddlers how to read music when the real purpose of having a children’s choir was free babysitting. But James wished he could understand it; he knew that it had something to do with making beautiful music, because whenever Miss Suzanne played she would have the sheet music in front of her. But it was a mystery. He began to ask his mother every single day to teach him, and whenever they were at church he would find an old ratty hymnal and point to the markings and ask what they were. Eventually she got tired of this and arranged piano lessons for him with Miss Suzanne. In order to practice he had to go to church every evening to use one of the old pianos that so many of the classrooms seemed to have.

Sometimes practice was frustrating. Small children don't have very long attention spans even for tasks they're interested in, and James was certainly no exception there. But his parents were paying for lessons and so they enforced practice even when he whined about it. But he soon found that piano lessons was actually a great deal more fun than choir because he was the only one whose work mattered. There was nobody off-key to throw him off, and so as long as he played the correct notes and the piano was tuned properly the music would sound good.

Furthermore, practicing often and playing well resulted in positive attention and praise from his parents and from his teacher. And as he progressed enough to play in front of people he sometimes got praise from other adults in the congregation. And what budding people pleaser doesn't thrive on endless praise? The harder he worked the more people complimented him, and the more people complimented the more determined he was to work hard. Of course, there was even more praise when he began learning the organ, simply because that was a less common instrument for anyone to know. He sometimes fantasized about learning endless new instruments because wouldn't everyone think he was super great then? But there weren't many options for lessons in Hahira, and anyway piano and organ and school choir took up essentially all of his free time.

This was particularly motivating once he was school aged and was only adequate in his academics. He did tolerably well in English because he loved to read but his tendency to misplace notes and homework worked against him. He was in the school choir, which was more enjoyable than the church children's choir had been because everyone in school choir chose to be there and could sing. Nobody did poorly in choir unless they decided to test to see whether or not the teacher would fail them, which someone tried every semester.

The downside of his motivation being how much people praised him was that he not infrequently spent his entire evening practicing instead of doing any of his homework and so he had to scramble to complete it on the bus or in between classes. This did not help his grades at all, particularly since he tended to finish and shove it haphazardly into his folder so that he couldn't find it again when the teacher collected it, making his last minute scramble a complete waste of time.

His wonderful organizational skills have followed him into adulthood, so its probably a good thing he practices enough to not actually need his sheet music most of the time. Otherwise there would be constant disaster every Sunday while he frantically tried to find the music he needed five minutes before he was supposed to play the invocation.

He had a few choir friends, largely because they had to perform together and took occasional choir trips together. Florida was near enough that Orlando trips were not unheard of. The choir as a whole did not always behave -- there was one trip in middle school were a couple of students were caught trying to shoplift from a gas station during a bathroom stop -- which caused James a great deal of stress because he was torn between wanting his friends to think he was cool enough to go along with their antics and wanting the teacher and his parents to consider him a Good Kid. He dealt with this by not leaving the van during stops and looking like a deer in the headlights anytime anyone asked him if he wanted to get out.

But even in rural Georgia reading only Christian Literature and the Bible and being shy weren't exactly seen as normal, and it was largely Luke's popularity that kept James safe from too much bullying.

There was only one high school for the entirety of Lowndes County, which meant painfully long bus rides for someone who, while already reserved, had all but become a hermit. He had reluctantly come to accept that he was gay, and his inability to choose to be straight or to pray himself into heterosexuality was distressing enough that he withdrew as much as possible. He didn't want everyone to know, because he didn't want them to hate him and disown him and also he didn't want to go to Hell. Hell was a place that everyone was in danger of accidentally going to, but if you were gay then that was it, there was basically no hope for going to Heaven. His only real consolation was that everyone expected Baptist boys and girls to be painfully awkward around one another, and the youth pastor and other adults constantly reminded everyone to "leave room for Jesus" when in mixed gender company and so he could quietly pretend that his disinterest was because he was being Devout.

College was slightly easier as far as socializing went because he was surrounded by other people whose lives essentially revolved around their instruments rather than around a shared love of Jesus. Sure, most of the other students were also Christian, but there was a wide variety of interpretations. There were even people who believed being gay wasn't an automatic ticket to hell.

He kind of liked that thought, but he wasn't confident enough that it was true and so he remained mostly in the closet. The one exception was another young man with a similar upbringing. They gravitated towards one another, perhaps more attracted by the similarities in their experiences than anything else.

Of course, nobody thought he was particularly cool for doing the exact same thing that everyone else was doing which was an adjustment, but everyone understood "I can't go out tonight because I have to practice." And besides, it was rather exciting to have people who knew the difference between Baroque and Classical and Romantic music and didn't just call anything orchestral and old Classical.

The atmosphere was much more competitive than he was used to, but (mostly) in a friendly manner. Everyone wanted to be THE best, but they also encouraged one another. After all, music was so often a collaborative effort that too much direct competition would burn bridges. After the initial shock of dealing with criticism and competition wore off James found the constant striving was exhilarating. Constantly reaching for higher and better, learning from not only his teachers but his peers as well, taking negative feedback and using it to achieve heights he hadn't realized were possible. Alas, he didn't take that attitude towards criticism and apply it anywhere outside of music. But he looks upon those days of challenge with fondness because he saw such huge improvements and improvement rivals praise in terms of endorphin release.

He joined various musical groups, including an attempt at a rock band and then, once the rock band split up he joined an improvisational jazz group.

Hymns, he decided, were much more his style.

In 2010 he graduated with a bachelors in music education. He had initially wanted to major in organ performance, but his parents urged him away from that idea; church organ players ought to do it out of love, and the ones who did earn a salary could rarely support themselves on it. His mother was the one who suggested teaching, because she loved her job despite the evil's of the teacher's unions.

He was able to get a job quickly after graduation in nearby Willacoochee, a city not much larger than Hahira. He taught throughout the week, and on Sundays he played piano for a church too small to have an organ. Occasionally he played for a wedding (the worst for having to fight people to pay him) or a funeral (preferable to weddings). He made a few friends with his fellow teachers, particularly the theater teacher, who was hilarious. He remained closeted, however, knowing full well the lack of protections he existed under.

He spent six years in Willacoochee before he was outed by himself and his own lack of attention to the workings of technology. He hadn't thought much about downloading Instagram onto his phone and following thirst accounts of shirtless men.

He hadn't realized that his account would be recommended to the few people he shared FaceBook with, the two social media platforms assuming that of course he would want people to know about both. If he'd realized he would have signed up with different contact info in order to keep them separate. But he wasn't so savvy, and several of his colleagues and superiors found his account.

He was abruptly fired from his job. To make matters worse, his family had also found his account, and his mother was devastated in a way he had tried never to think about, and on more than one occasion told him between sobs that if he had molested any of his students she would never forgive herself since teaching had been her idea. He had intended to keep his private life firmly private, and not ever tell them. But now they knew, and they went between assuring him they would pray for him to return to God to reminding him that he was going to hell.

He considers his unemployment the lowest time of his life; his parents allowed him to return home while he searched for something else, but not a day went by that they didn't remind him that he was a disappointment and going to burn for all eternity if he didn't turn his life around.

He deactivated both FaceBook and Instagram, although he still is on the family group chat, which means he still gets sent daily Bible verses and links from The Federalist and Townhall and Crossroads.

It was through his theater teacher friend that he heard about a private school up in Vermont that had recently had a music teacher retire. He applied, and then spent the summer taking workshops and making sure his credentials were acceptable for Vermont. 

To his great relief he was accepted and he moved north. Far, far north. North the supposed liberal socialist utopia where everyone hates God and revels in wanton hedonism. Well, it turns out not all of that was correct, and its way too cold, but its also far enough away from home that he feels a sense of relief.

He escaped.

Boy does that make him feel guilty.

He's trying not to focus on that but instead on the excitement of starting the year at a new school, in a state where nobody's going to fire him if they find out he's gay. And maybe he'll be able to figure out how to be a good ally to meta-humans, because that's not something he ever had to really think about before. Maybe someone back home was a meta-human, but if they were they kept it as quiet as he kept his sexuality. He's spent the past two or so months befriending his fellow new teachers, the Ettinger brothers and has developed something of a crush on Cyrus but he's pretty sure that's hopeless. 

What About You?

Name: Oreo
Age: ancient
Experience: as long as some of you have been alive
How Did You Find Us? summoning circle 
Ready To Play? maaaaaaaybe