Beautiful Music for Ugly Children contains examples of:
- Air Guitar: Gabe and John both play air guitar while listening to Hair Metal.
- Amusement Park: Gabe goes to an amusement park with Paige even though he doesn't like amusement parks because he needs a distraction from his problems. They go on a drop tower and a roller coaster, after which Gabe feels too sick to eat lunch, so they wander around and look at people. Gabe spends half an hour watching a DJ to learn how to act in front of a crowd.
- Bully Magnet: Gabe has been picked on since third grade for acting like a boy.Plenty of other kids take shit from everyone, but I get it double because nobody knows where to put me. Lesbian? Guy? Ugly and can't dress herself? I don't fit anywhere.
- Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship: Paige, who has been Gabe's best friend since kindergarten, is pretty, popular, and good in school. Gabe is one of the least popular kids in class.
- First Period Panic: Gabe got his first period while bowling when he was thirteen. For obvious reasons he was more upset by it than most kids, so much so that he considered jumping off an overpass. Paige talked him out of it and said she'd help him with his gender, but neither mentioned it again until Gabe came out to her at eighteen.
- Forced Out of the Closet: Gabe flirts with a caller named Mara who talks him into meeting her in person for a date. It doesn't take long for her to recognize him as Liz, who would always buy a Pepsi when Mara worked at the snack bar at school. Mara outs him to his fan club, the Ugly Children Brigade. By that point Gabe is out of school and doesn't have to deal with transphobic classmates, but half of the UCB's members leave and two people who go by Jason SerialKiller and Scream GonnaGetCha start posting death threats on the club's Facebook page. Mara eventually feels guilty and tries to apologize, but Gabe thanks her for forcing him to live openly as himself instead of continuing to live a double life.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Gabe's mom deadnames him during an argument: "Elizabeth Mary Williams, you do NOT talk to your father like that!"
- Intergenerational Friendship: Gabe's only real friend besides Paige is his next door neighbor John Burrows, an elderly DJ who was the first person in the United States to play Elvis Presley on the radio. John is the only person Gabe knows who's as obsessed with music as he is. He even got Gabe his job at KZUK.
- Is This Thing Still On?: During his show, Gabe gets caught up talking on the phone to Mara, resulting in several seconds of dead air. Gabe says, "Oh shit!" and puts on another song. Then Mara starts laughing because his words went on the air. Gabe is worried he'll get in trouble with the FCC, but John tells him not to worry because everyone accidentally curses on the air at some point.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Jason and Scream call Gabe "It," both on Facebook and in person.
- Like a Son to Me: John tells Gabe that he sees him as a grandchild.
- Milholland Relationship Moment: Paige urges Gabe to tell John he's trans, but Gabe is afraid John will react as badly as his parents did. But when he finally tells John, he's totally accepting. John already knew about trans people because he's a fan of Billy Tipton and has met so many kinds of people that being transgender doesn't seem strange to him.
- Queerphobic Hate Crime: In addition to threatening Gabe online, Jason and Scream harass and assault him in person, wearing the same masks as their namesakes. They also target his friends — they go to Paige's workplace to push her and make death threats and crash an Ugly Children Brigade gathering, where Scream hits John with a baseball bat, putting him in a coma for a week. They turn out to be Gabe's former classmates, Paul Willard and Kyle Marshall. Paul wants revenge on Gabe because his girlfriend, Heather Graves, has been flirting with Gabe over text. Heather changes boyfriends every couple months, but Paul seems to be especially upset that she liked a trans guy more than him.
- Security Blanket: Paige's wubbie was a pink baby blanket that she sometimes brought to school when she was in kindergarten. In the present, she lets Gabe in on her secret: she wears a scrap of her wubbie in her bra close to her heart every day because it still makes her feel safe.
- The Show Must Go On: John tells Gabe his favorite no-dead-air story. He stepped out onto a balcony to watch a Halloween party and locked himself out of the studio with only a minute left of the song. John leapt off the balcony, scraping his hands, twisting his ankle, and losing all the candy in his pockets. Then he tore open a window with his bare hands, climbed into the building, and ripped two doors off their hinges to get into the studio. He made it just in time.
- Small Town Boredom: Gabe lives in Maxfield, Minnesota, which according to him has zero excitement and no good radio stations besides KZUK.
- Taking the Kids: John used to be a Married to the Job alcoholic. His wife got fed up and left him in 1974 with their thirteen-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son. John spent the next five years getting drunk every day before going cold turkey on the anniversary of the separation. He's barely been in contact with his family since they left. Gabe calls John's kids when John is in a coma, and while Margaret is willing to talk to him, Patrick tells him that his father has been dead since 1974.
- Textual Celebrity Resemblance:
- Paige tells Gabe he looks a little bit like James Franco.
- Gabe thinks his new boss at the music store looks like an older version of Beck.
- He thinks Mara looks like a teenage Björk.
- What Would X Do?: Gabe often asks himself what Elvis Presley would do, especially when he's trying to work up the courage for something.
- "Which Restroom?" Dilemma: Gabe and Paige dance at a karaoke bar in Minneapolis. He uses the men's room because no one knows him there. Back in Maxfield, they stop at Perkins so Gabe can go to the bathroom again, but this time he uses the girls' room because the risk of running into someone who knows him as Liz is too high.
