( sadie laflamme-snow, 27, cis woman, she/her ) ☆ all the way from NEW YORK, NEW YORK, supernova records is excited to welcome LAILA LAKHANI! as our resident FEMININOMENON, you remind us of sheet music steeped in highlighter, an alarm for every waking hour, and character shoes clicking against hardwood floors. you’re also expected to be ORGANISED and CONSCIENTIOUS at all times. we know you tend to be OBSESSIVE and COMPETITIVE as well, but let’s do our best to keep that under wraps, okay? we look forward to ensuring you shine under our guidance! – cade, 24, bst @supernovainfo
basics.
full name. laila lakhani.
date of birth. 24 august.
age. twenty-seven.
gender. cis woman, she/her.
orientation. allegedly straight. actually putting the l in lgbt.
occupation. singer and dancer in honeydew.
personality.
positive traits. diligent. efficient. strategic.
negative traits. controlling. neurotic. repressed.
likes. being right. bustling cities. golden age broadway. headphones. schedules.
dislikes. alcohol. bad reviews. getting attached. mess. silence.
would… offer you a fully fledged stationery kit if you asked for one pencil. greet you good morning at 4am with the energy of a thousand suns. sing through entire albums in the shower. hold a lifelong grudge against you for naming the scottish play in a theatre. be the first to arrive at and last to leave rehearsals.
would not… slow down on the sidewalk so you can catch up to her. drink from someone else’s water bottle, dehydration be damned. stop herself from hard selling honeydew’s discography to strangers on the street. respond to your last text with something short of an essay. tell you how she really feels.
appearance.
faceclaim. sadie laflamme-snow.
skin. on the lighter side of olive. tans deeper in the summer, supposing she isn’t stuck in another summer stock theatre.
hair. dark brown. grown a few inches past her shoulder. compulsively combed and conditioned to be as straight as the laws of physics will allow for. call that manifestation.
eyes. dark brown. either staring directly into the depths of your soul or looking longingly over your shoulder, searching for something so interesting she simply must cut this riveting conversation short.
clothing. personal style leans towards flexible fabrics and cool/neutral tones, without much ornamentation or innovation. performance wardrobes are a different beast entirely. in the nicest way possible she will try to wrangle everyone on that stage into visual coordination.
accessories. a thin, v-shaped golden ring worn on her right hand.
story. (subject to further development based on future plotting!)
tl;dr. local girl gets tossed like a hot potato from young mother to aging grandparents. local girl gets in her head about becoming mother’s antithesis. local girl gets into performing arts high school. local girl gets Very Serious about starting performing arts career and apparently dgaf about how many enemies she has to make along the way. local girl gets little to no action from her abundance of attempts at starting said career and begins waitressing at a family friend’s restaurant. miraculously, local girl gets into supernova records’ premier music group and will do anything – and that means anything – to stay in it. or break out of it after seriously impressing some industry moguls on tour. whatever the label wants. siri play opportunity from annie (2014)
cw for child abandonment. laila’s mother was a free spirit. it only made sense, then, that she gave laila up to her parents so freely. spring of her final year of college, she clambered into their apartment through the fire escape, reconnecting with them for the first and last time in months. there was a baby in her arms, two truths and a lie on her tongue. she’d made a mistake, she said. she’d finish her studies and find a job far away from the man who’d made this mistake with her, she said. she’d come back for her laila, for their family, once her life was in order, she said. moral of the story, as her grandparents will tell it many years later: playing fast and loose does little but put you on the fast track to losing all that matters.
the first time laila saw her grandparents smile, she was four years old, wrists aching from an imperfectly executed series of cartwheels. she can’t remember what spurred the show on in the first place, nor will she ever learn, for her grandfather’s camcorder had been too focused on the floor to capture the moment. she can remember that the show had singlehandedly turned their tiny house, brimming with crumpled bills and other debris from endless cut corners, into something like home. she remembers how they’d call their friends over on weekends and cram them on a dusty old couch, all so they could watch her belt her heart out, grinning like her front teeth hadn’t fallen out the night before. her grandparents, eager to make good on their second chance at child-rearing, supported her talents to no end, fashioning her guitars out of rubber bands, bringing her along to open mics at a family friend’s restaurant. though she tried to pay attention to more practical pursuits as she grew older, throwing herself into class presidencies and spelling bees, she couldn’t shake the thought from her head. the thought that she was meant to perform.
fever dreams turned into reality with her admission to a performing arts high school. what was once an indefinite desire to do her best became, and it showed in the days she spent at dance studios, the nights she spent poring over chord constructions. gone was any doubt that this was the trail she needed to blaze. after all, it wasn’t her future alone that depended on her continued academic success. over the next few years, her grandparents took the liberty of replacing her rubber band orchestra with a real guitar, her beat-up sneakers with shoes that could keep a beat, and in doing so, paid physical tolls they couldn’t hide half as well as the price tags. she was meant to perform, and performance meant finally repaying the people who’d raised her when her own parents wouldn’t.
cw for familial death. laila graduated on top of the world. then, some weeks and a surprise hospital visit later, she watched her grandfather get lowered into the ground. she remembers some of the platitudes offered by neighbors, though mostly because the majority felt like deliberate offenses. it was his time to go was the worst of them all. how could it have been, when he hadn’t gotten to watch her accomplish anything of note? determined to compensate her grandmother, at least, for her continued investment in a career that hadn’t taken off quite as quickly as hoped, laila accepted a job offer from an old family friend, the one who owned that restaurant. it wasn’t the most enjoyable experience, trading in a stage for a slippery diner floor or a handsewn costume for a perpetually-stained apron, but laila liked to look at waitressing as a practical exercise in smiling, serving, and shutting up. a much-needed exercise, so to speak. or, well, not speak.
between shifts at the restaurant and busking around only somewhat shifty train stations, laila learned that it was one thing to intellectually understand that new york spotlight chasers were as ubiquitous a species as subway rats. it was another thing to actually scrounge around casting platforms and her contacts list for one chance at the breakthrough she thought all her training had basically promised. months turned into years. many, many auditions turned into a couple of backing vocal credits, ensemble roles in student filmmakers’ avant-garde 12-hour shoots, supporting spots in musical workshops. maybe she could’ve garnered some kind of social media following if she posted anything but covers, but the prospect of releasing any personal projects required a level of risk-taking obviously reserved for people who weren’t her. people braver than her. people richer than her. then came–
honeydew. neither the presence of someone she didn’t think she’d cross paths with until their 100-year high school reunion, nor the peculiarities of their production, could stop laila from basking in the glory of her breakthrough, however overdue. she had clear expectations to meet and all the reason to meet them. everything was as it was meant to be.
keyword: was. laila can’t tell if supernova’s latest panoptic publicity scheme is meant to be a blessing or a curse. on one hand, she’s stopped worrying about the reception of honeydew’s debut ep. on the other, she cannot stop worrying about what reception she’ll receive on their debut tour, considering who else is on its lineup. she’s resolved. how many stops she’ll last with these strategies remains to be seen.
misc.
childhood music taste was mostly derived from her grandparents’ 70s-90s-focused radio picks. as a teenager she learned how to tune into whatever played the spice girls/tlc/destiny’s child/pussycat dolls/[insert every other iconic contemporary girl group]’s latest single on loop and it was over for the oldies. presently her playlists include a healthy mix of both genres, albeit with a possibly unhealthy amount of songs centred on ruminative regret
she might also have a playlist of honeydew’s discography that she plays (muted) on loop overnight because they deserve the support (she might’ve just stockholm-ed herself into blindly liking their music) but that’s not important rn
always has a signature pen on her. god forbid a girl thinks she’ll get asked to sign someone’s paper bag at the grocery store. better safe than sorry!
used to take am i gay quizzes just to click all the obviously heterosexual options and pat herself on the back for reaffirming her romantic perpendicularity
somewhat resentful of the woe-is-me reality she’s created where certain people’s careers are being advanced by their queer relationships. tries to hide this resentment behind overenthusiastic, overbearing, i-bought-target’s-pride-collection-for-my-gay-child parent type allyship. does it work? we’ll see about that
semi-related to the above: constantly emptying her browser history. the most personal thing on her phone is a sticker of the playbill logo on the back
has gotten wicked good at the kazoo over the past decade. i'm sorry my girl was doing anything to pad her resume except spend money on more real instruments
has strict time limits set on all social media apps because she’s already wasted at minimum a year of her life refreshing self-tapes just to watch zero views tick up to one. takes pride in what little screen time she has being split between music software and messaging apps. and, like, the lowest quality version of solitaire on the digital market
would unironically play wonderwall first thing at a party
bonus text posts
