#proofread a few times but sorry if i missed any misspellings/grammar fuckups

[crescendonot]

“ i get no answers, so the question still remains - am i ever gonna see your face again ? “

introducing dali stratford as crescendo !

gday everyone !!! just a little about myself first and foremost, my name’s vic, i’m a 19 year old soon-to-be journalism student, and i’m from australia - now onto the important stuff ! this is miss dali stratford aka crescendo - here’s a couple real quick links to her full app / isolated full bio which i’ll be doing my best to summarise, and also her playlist and pinterest - now, let’s get going !

QUICK STATS !

full name: dali eleanor stratford known as: dali  gender & pronouns: cis female & she/her orientation: bisexual biromantic date of birth: april 18, 1984 age: twenty-two hometown: los angeles, california status: deceased

HISTORY !

dali was born the first and only unplanned daughter of jodie stratford, an aspiring costume designer who’d moved to los angeles from middlesbrough against her parents wishes in order to follow her dream. unable to contact her possible father, she decided to raise her alone in the tiny apartment she managed to make into a home.

even though she wasn’t conventionally ‘popular’ in school, she managed to get along with most of the other students, and spent most of her classes just talking to her classmates instead of working - mainly because she genuinely couldn’t do the work. she struggled with reading and writing since day one, but her teachers just sort of wrote her off as a disruption instead of trying to help her out - the root cause was visual dyslexia, but she never got diagnosed. 

jodie, instead of forcing her to keep going with work that obviously frustrated and upset her at home, allowed her to relax and focus on her passions - one of which was the music that she’d been raised on. when the rolling stones came through california with the voodoo lounge tour, she managed to scrounge together enough money for them to get tickets, and it ended up being the hands-down best night of her ten-year-old life. october 19, 1994 - the night that she decided that one day, she’d be a musician. 

her elementary school hadn’t had the funding needed for music classes, but her middle school did, and for the first time, dali was actually passionate about what she was learning. after experimenting a bit with each instrument, she finally settled on the electric guitar, and even though she couldn’t go off sheet music like everyone else, she dedicated all of her focus to memorising notes and chords through muscle memory. her mother bought her a second-hand guitar ( a 1972 competition fender mustang, orange ) for her eleventh birthday, and literally every spare moment dali had was spent practicing and memorising. 

on the night of her first proper performance, doing guitar and backing vocal for her music class group’s rendition of footloose for her school showcase, one of their lead singers dropped out last minute, and so her teacher asked her to fill in. without really thinking, she said yes - and the experience was incredible. before then, she’d only wanted to play music, but from then on, she knew that she would. 

forming a band was her biggest priority when she got to highschool - cadenza was an obvious choice, but it took a bit longer for her to properly ask ritenuto to join up. when they got to rehearsing, though, she knew her hesitation had been utterly unwarranted - killer conclusions, she knew for sure, was going to make it big. they were perfect. 

she didn’t end up graduating with high enough grades to go to college, but it wasn’t as if she’d been planning on going, so it really wasn’t that big a deal - afterall, it left her with plenty of free time to work, both for money ( having a position as a cleaner at a local stadium ) and on music for the band. when she, cadenza, and ritenuto decided to move into their own place, leaving jodie behind was heartbreaking, and on her final night in their apartment she silently vowed that to make up for all she’d done for her, she’d buy her mother her own house as soon as the band got big. 

the next few years of her life were solely dedicated to working, so when they finally got a call from someone at atlas, it was starting to feel like everything was paying off. the gig at club 2000 was more like a tech rehearsal than anything else, so when it went off perfectly, she came out of it feeling as if nothing could go wrong. 

and then it did.

coming back felt like stepping onto a final stair that isn’t really there. it was a terrifying experience, but once she got past the shock, dali was just angry. angry at the other driver, sure, but mostly, she was angry at herself for not just sabotaging her future, but getting her two best friends killed. right now, she’s really struggling to move past the fact she’d dead, and is still harbouring a lot of that guilt and anger - moving on isn’t much of a priority, not yet, not until she can somehow make things right. 

HEADCANONS !

dali was named after salvador dalí, but if she hadn’t been born a girl, jodie would’ve named her casper, a name that she’d loved since she was a kid - this would have been able to add a slightly ironic note of humour to the whole being-a-ghost situation, but tragically, chance doesn’t care for comedy. 

she’d always wanted to get plenty of tattoos, but she ended up dying with just the one - an angry-looking gamecock rooster on the back of her left shoulder, designed by her mother and chosen in honour of her childhood nickname, ‘chook’.

bill & ted’s excellent adventure is the first movie she remembers going to see at a cinema, and it’s still her favourite to this day, though it’s closely followed by baz luhrmann’s romeo + juliet, which also served as her bi awakening. 

though she probably could have upgraded at some point, the only guitar she’s ever happily called her own is her old orange fender mustang. 

born on the 18th of april, 1984, dali’s an aries sun, sagittarius moon, scorpio rising.

when she first decided she wanted to be part of a band when she was a kid, she was absolutely set on the name ‘the billy goats gruff’, and though she did eventually change her mind, one of her favourite jackets did have an angry-looking goat patch on it in honour of what could have been.

jodie had a policy of total honesty while raising her daughter, so dali grew to be a very honest person - occasionally, brutally so. because of this, she never really had a need to hide her feelings, either from others or herself, so with only a minute few exceptions, she’s pretty no holds barred about how she’s feeling. though her honesty can make her very harsh at times, it also gives her a certain earnesty when she says how much she loves those around her. 

when she was alive, dali was a genuinely good cook - she’d often have to make dinner for herself and her mother since jodie would work pretty late a lot of the time, and i like to think she would’ve cooked for the band when they got their own place. 

tall queen at 5′10″ 

big on the warm colours - reds, oranges, yellows, give her all of it. in terms of her fashion in general, she’s pretty much incapable of going monochrome, and always liked to spice things like her jackets up with a decent few patches. 

she doesn’t know who her father is, but with jodie being the incredible mother she was, she never really felt like she was missing anything. as of yet, she hasn’t been able to try and find out what happened to her mother. 

dali’s favourite genre is, obviously, rock, with some of her favourite bands being ac/dc, squeeze, the rolling stones, and queen ( to name a few ) but she’s not opposed to a bit of pop - abba holds a special place in her heart, and if she’d lived four more years she would’ve been a huge fan of mika when he took off in 2009. 

she’s always been a huge people person - whenever the band performed, she was literally incapable of not bantering with the audience at least a tiny bit. 

#♫ / crescendo — about ! #phqs.intro #tw death #THIS IS SO WORDY whoops im so sorry i just love my girl !! #proofread a few times but sorry if i missed any misspellings/grammar fuckups #anyway the main point im trying to get across is stan jodie stratford <333