Grae can you gush more about the boys and them helping the LGBTQ+ community?
Ye!
Extension of this post!
I said before that Patton gets involved with LGBTQ+ orgs, and he does it pretty publicly because the more awareness he can help raise for these orgs, the better!
Virgil, several years down the road, supports similar orgs but quietly. He does a lot of donations and sponsorship stuff to help out too
Logan lives and dies by “Pride Is a Protest” mantra. He’s spoken at protest rallies for LGBTQ+ rights and such, and does his best to amplify the voices of those really at the front of the rights movement.
Roman gets pretty passionate about asexuality awareness and visibility, especially because of the volume of misinformed interviewers he engaged with after he first came out as ace.
Logan also becomes vocal about LGBTQ+ youth and mental health concerns. His whole philosophy is basically “I am in a position of social power and privilege where I can be safely out and vocal about these issues, so my silence would be my acceptance. And I refuse to accept this without at least trying to fight for a positive change.”
What I’m saying is that Logan has a bit of punk to him in this AU. I mean... they all do, but Logan especially.
Also like. I know you said “the boys” and probably meant the Core 4 but Remy? is always lowkey bursting with Pride (pun somewhat intended) at all the ways the boys embrace their own and each other’s identities
Once he was asked in an interview if he ever wished the boys were different when it came to that (namely that Logan wasn’t so vocal about queer justice issues) and he had half a mind to walk out of the interview. What he actually did was quirk an eyebrow at the interviewer and was like “honey, if you think I wish Logan was quieter about the issues he’s tackling, then you’re not listening to him in the first place.”
One of Roman’s songs on the “Us” album tackled his internalized aphobia. He doesn’t perform it live very often because it’s... emotionally challenging for him to sing. At first because it drudges up a lot of those insecurities, then later on because it reminds him of how much he used to struggle with it.
Once in an interview with all four of them together that was dealing predominantly with queer identity and music, the interviewer asked “what advice do you wish you could go back and give to your younger selves?” and nearly in unison, the four of them said “it gets better.”
Thanks so much for the ask!