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Hi I just needed to like, get this out of my head. So.

Encanto.

Bruno, totes queer. Idk what spectrum of queer. I honestly don't care. Maybe he's aspec, maybe he's gay, maybe he's both. Maybe he's a homoromantic asexual or a homosexual aromatic. Maybe he's a bisexuality disaster. Idk, but man is queer AF. Abuela is obsessed with legacy and she somehow didn't manage to convince her only son to procreate? Yeah.

Anyway, point is - he's our queer uncle. I will come back to this.

The house, yeah, la casita? Totes Abuelo Pedro's spirit. Playful and loving, keeping a watchful eye on his family and has the ability to nudge the magic. I will ALSO come back to this.

Here's where our story actually begins, and it does not begin with Mirabel.

It begins with Camilo. Camilo, who is only a few months older than Mirabel. They were best friends when they were wee ones. They shared the nursery together, all their siblings having long vacated it by the time they came around.

Camilo, who was born Camila. Who always knew he wasn't the little girl his mama and papa insisted he was. He tried to tell them, more than once. But it was always 'Little Camilita and her games! Such a character!'

No one believed him.

No one except for Mirabel.

Mirabel, who would stubbornly stomp her foot and burst into tears whenever she saw that Camilo was upset because the family Just Didn't Get It. She would loudly pronounce that 'Camil-OH was the BEST cousin and the BESTEST little BROTHER Dolores has and the COOLEST SON Tia Pepa and Tio Félix would ever EVER have'. The family saw Mirabel as excitable and dramatic and a little too invested in their nursery games, but didn't hear her. And didn't see Camilo.

At least, not until the day he got his door.

On that day he was so nervous and anxious and he didn't feel RIGHT because Abuela and Mama put him in this dress and wouldn't listen to him when he said he didn't wanna wear it.

But then.

But THEN.

He walks up the steps and he gets to his door, and when he reaches out and touches the doorknob everything suddenly feels right for the FIRST TIME. His door glows, and he sees the image of himself before he realizes what exactly has happened. It's an overlay of silhouettes, and at the center... is him, is a little boy with a sweet but mischievous grin.

He gasps, awed and delighted and excited, and whirls to show his family - and oh, oh they have seen. Abuela's eyes are wide. She fumbles.

And it's Bruno who steps forward, who understands first. He didn't know before this moment, because the little ones were a bit afraid of him and he was a bit afraid of them because like wtf do you even talk to a kid about? But he could connect the dots now. And he smiles and his holds up a hand to offer a high-five and he says, 'Congats, Camilo.'

And it's the first time a GROWN UP called him by HIS NAME! Camilo grins, so fucking excited, and that excitement and appreciation and thoughts of Bruno fill him up. He jumps and goes to high-five Bruno, and turns into him!

As one, the family and the crowd sighs - because it all makes sense now, of course, Little Camila is a shapeshifter!

Only Bruno and Mirabel, clinging to her mama's skirts with the rest of the family, see the hurt on Camilo's face as he realizes this is all gonna be ignored, too.

Except.

Except Camilo has the power now to be EXACTLY who he is, and he's gonna use it.

Over the next few weeks, tensions begin to rise because Camilo - when not playing with his gift - always defaults back to the same little boy from the first night. Bit by bit, the rest of the family start to get it - and while many aren't really sure how to feel about it, they begin to come around.

All except Abuela.

Because what does this mean? Why is this happening? Their Gifts were supposed to help them serve the town and protect them, not be used in a selfish way to cause dissent! She doesn't understand. She doesn't try to understand.

One night, Camilo hears thunder. This doesn't scare him, not really. Thunder usually just means his mom is worked up about something. So Camilo isn't scared. But he IS incredibly curious, so he sneaks out of his room and down the hall, and as he gets closer, under the thunder he hears voices.

His mama's, Tio Bruno's, and Abuela's.

And they're fighting... about him.

"It is not right!" Abuela says. "It is not... natural!"

"Mama!" Pepa protests as hail begins to clatter onto the floor. "We all have magical gifts and a talking house! My son just having to go an extra step to get all the boy bits hardly counts as being unnatural compared to that!"

"Well, I mean, the house doesn't talk but it does have a personality," Bruno mumbles. "I like to think it's dad, you know, watching out for us. I think-"

"Bruno, if your father could see what you have become he would be sick in the heart."

Bruno flinches, and thunder crashes.

Something else rumbles too, something other than thunder. Something that feels like it came from the bones of the house. Camilo is afraid of THAT sound, that quake beneath his feet, and he scurries back to bed.

That night, after rowing with her children, Abuela prays. She prays to Pedro, she says, "Pedro my love, if you are still here with us... if you can see us and help us... please. Help us. Sometimes I feel like I am losing them. I do not understand. Help me see, Pedro. Help me."

And it isn't long, and then it's Mirabel's turn at her door.

And here's where we get back to that bit about the house. And how it's can influence things. And how maybe it really IS Pedro looking out for his familia. Because there is Mirabel, looking up at her glowing door, and she was always the one with the most open mind. She accepted Camilo right off the bat. She doesn't need people's gifts to tell her who they are, she SEES. And he knows that's what his love needs. He knows that is what his family needs. But he needs to make them see her, he needs to make sure that they are not distracted by shiny magic because, as he has always known, the Gift has always been his family. His beautiful love and their children and now their children's children. The Gift is them, not some magic that they have.

So as Mirabel touches the door, he blows it away. Like the flicker of a candle extinguished by the wind, where only a single twist of smoke remains.

And Abuela knows. She knows this means SOMETHING. But instead of reading this sign as a reminder that their children ARE the gifts, she sees it as a reprimand for not listening TO the gifts. If the magic says Camilo is supposed to be a boy, then Camilo is a boy- who is she to doubt the miracle?

And while it's good that Camilo can be fully accepted now, the reasons and the motives behind that acceptance are skewed. Because it is a blacker mark on a Madrigal to not have a gift than to be trans, at least through Abuela's eyes. Mirabel has no door, no gift, and to pile on top of all of that, Tio Bruno leaves too.

And Camilo - Camilo is SO CURIOUS about Tio Bruno. The moment he's gone, he's all Camilo wants to talk about.

But Pepa is hurting. Her brother left them. Moreover, her brother left Camilo! Camilo, who could have used some guidance from the one other queer man in the family.

"We don't talk about Bruno," she tells him for the hundredth time. "We don't talk about Bruno!"

"But Mama why!?"

And Pepa, angry and grieving and confused, tells her son that her brother was a troublemaker, that he abandoned the family, that he doesn't care about them, that he even ruined her wedding day.

Camilo is hurt, and he doesn't understand why. He's too young to realize that he'd already started to form a bond with Bruno, that he was already starting to look up to him - because Bruno was the first adult to acknowledge him - the first adult to SEE him. Because Bruno, Bruno felt a little bit like him, in some ways, even though he wasn't sure at the time why or how.

And to make this easier to compute, that this man who should have been his Tio, his family, his guide, left him right as he was stepping into his journey - being a trans-boy with the ability to shapeshift - left him... left all of them ~ Camilo makes him a caricature in his brain. Because he can't miss someone he barely knew, right? He can't miss someone that was clearly that bad... right?

He gives him a seven foot frame, rats along his back.

And when he calls your name... it all fades to black.

#trans camilo

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