#1d (the boys themselves) were not allowed to have

[the-technorats]

ok ive been wanting to post abt this for a while. i think a part of the reason that i started to grow away from the 1d fandom recently (and more into 5sos, actually, which will be relevant later) is for these exact realizations. it became pretty clear, during the band's lifetime but mostly once the band went on hiatus, explicitly and implicitly, that being in one direction was extremely unhealthy for the talent involved.

and so not only did it become a kind of moral dilemma, bc how do you support and love something that you know is abusive, but it ruined the mirage of the essence of the band, which was, as louis put it, about having fun and being normal guys but terrible, terrible dancers, because you knew that under the surface of their silly, goofy live shows they were probably not having that much fun all the time and were definitely at points in either physical or mental anguish or both at once.

it feels so disillusioning because their primary appeal to their fanbase wasn't that they were like, hot or whatever (though they were and that was definitely part of it (but also their fanbase was so fucking queer that that metric could only do so much)), but it was that they were friends. the explicit marketing was sex appeal, sure, but the implicit marketing was community.

we wanted to think they were having as much fun as we were, that they loved being in the band with each other as much as we loved them. and once they broke up ("went on hiatus") and people started realizing they weren't quite as good of friends as we all thought they were, that they were coworkers, that they don't even have each other's phone numbers, that's when it didn't feel as good.

which is interesting. we all wanted so badly to be convinced that what we all knew was happening wasn't.

i think we desperately want that. as 1d put it: to be loved and to be in love. and we want to think that friendship and community and love can withstand anything, no matter how abusive and oppressive. because we want the hope that in our own abusive and oppressive life, our community can carry us through it. we're like, fantasizing about unionization and collectivization in a way that feels safe. and no one wants to hear this, but this IS a weapon of which we (and your faves) are victims.

like, god, if the success of capitalism isn't that it makes you think you want it. people want community? people are realizing that collective action is what overturns oppressive systems? give them this. this band of boys from working class backgrounds who love each other and made it to superstardom through nothing but the power friendship and love and art. give them that experience through an artificial projection of community that only ever makes you complicit in the commodification of yourself and your artists. the strongest sedative is the one you already want to take.

and if that isn't the reason 1d were doomed to fail. because they were created by the exact power that people want to push back against. you can't eat your young and have them too.

if being in one direction was all sunshine and rainbows, the boys would have come back after that hiatus and zayn would have never left.

behind closed doors, those boys were suffering.

it kills me that i never saw that because all i saw was that they made me happy and surely they were happy too.

that couldn't have been farther from the truth.

this is killing me

[ckret2]

The second dimension has burned (along with half the neighbors) and now there's a bunch of survivors stranded in Dimension Zero; which means the gods have to talk Bill into letting them leave.

Which should be easy, right? They're a bunch of gods and he's just one puny little mortal. Look how small he is.

Puny little mortal. 👍

Here have a fic.

This is part 6 of an ???8-ish??? part plot about the Axolotl meeting this friendly harmless innocent little triangle in the wake of the Euclidean Massacre and then getting repeatedly slapped in the face with all the atrocities Bill's committed. If you want to read and/or look at the pretty art on the other parts, here's one, two, three, four, and five.

####

It hadn't taken long for VENDOR to make preparations to receive another ten million-odd sentient refugees; but then, the Axolotl supposed it wouldn't, considering that THEY could pop out a planet capable of supporting quadrillions at the snap of a finger. (Somebody else's finger, presumably, since vending machines didn't have any.) The most time-consuming part had been determining which gods would be responsible for the refugee shapes currently stranded in Dimension Zero once they were rescued—for speaking for them, for finding out what they ate and supplying it, for finding new suitable 2D and 1D homes for them in dimensions with compatible laws of physics and chemistry. The Axolotl doubted the shapes themselves had been consulted on who they'd like to speak for them.

And then, THEY'd approached the unstable border barely holding the miasmic rubble of half a dozen burned universes inside Dimension Zero, and said, "I hope you're ready to come out of there."

And just like that, the barely visible, twinkling yellow light in the center of the dimension appeared at its border, as if he'd always been there.

Behind the triangle, deep in their "dream realm," the shapes that the triangle had kidnapped/rescued from the cosmic flames, living and dying and undying and unliving, were still trapped in their eternal dance party. How many of them were paying attention to the proceedings through their forced dance? Did any of them understand the negotiations the triangle was making on their behalf? 

The Axolotl was sure their "Magister Mentium" wouldn't allow anyone but himself to speak for the shapes, but VENDOR could find that out the hard way. The Axolotl didn't see any benefit to trying to warn THEM first.

And as expected, the triangle retorted—just as haughtily as VENDOR—"I'm ready to talk. Are you?" The triangle was swirling a drink in a red disposable cup as though he were aerating a fine wine, looking for all the world like he'd been waiting there for hours and VENDOR was the one late to an important meeting.

VENDOR grumbled something that the Axolotl didn't catch besides the word "attitude," and then said, with a diplomatic air that just edged into patronizing, "Well, as long as we're making progress. Come here, let's get started."

"Hmm... nah," the triangle said. "Howsabout you come over here."

VENDOR stared, THEIR camera whirring as its focus narrowed in on the triangle.  "Excuse me? You expect me to get closer to that thing?" (The Axolotl assumed THEY meant the entirety of Dimension Zero.) "Absolutely not. You're already right on the border; just go through it."

The triangle was, indeed, right on the surface of Dimension Zero, like a fleck of glitter stuck on a bubble. He swung back and forth along the dimension's cellophane skin a few times, as though weighing up the thought of peeling himself off of it; and then shrugged, lounged back against the barrier, and sipped his drink. "Naaah, don't feel like it. You come to me! Get cozy! It'll be intimate!" The triangle purred unseductively, "C'mere, big boy, lemme whisper in your... whaddaya got, microphones? An intercom? What are you, some kind of office building?"

"Of all the—! I'm a vending machine!"

"Wooow, really? You're yanking my chain!" He drew a ghostly blue chain out from the esophagus under his eye like a clown pulling a trail of handkerchiefs out of his sleeve.

"It says 'Vendor' on my face!"

"Really? I figured 'Vendor' was the name of the company renting you!"

VENDOR gasped. "You think a god can be rented—?!"

While THEY tried to find adequate words to express THEIR outrage, the triangle's chain disappeared and he squinted at the silver continent-sized logo listing VENDOR's name. "I don't know how you expect anyone to read that anyway; it's all one color," he said. "Well, they make 'em large where you're from! But okay, vending machine, get over here and lemme whisper in your coin slot."

"No!"

"Hey, big as you are, narrow as I am, I bet I could slide right in without even touching the sides!"

VENDOR shuddered hard enough to set off earthquakes on several of THEIR planets. "Is this how you speak to all your gods, mortal?" The two cops at THEIR back bristled menacingly—the crablike cop with two mushrooms for eyes clacking his claws, and the cop made of two interlocked flaming wheels spinning faster and burning higher. 

"Whoa, since when are you one of 'my' gods!" Smugly, the triangle said, "I thought I heard I'm in Lady Morgenstern's district."

Before they could come to blows without ever starting the discussion, the Axolotl called over to VENDOR, "He can't come closer. He's the only one able to keep his dimension from collapsing back into a singularity on the refugees—he has to stay in there in case emergency maintenance is needed."

"Ugh," VENDOR said. "Nevermind, stay where you are then."

With a singsong lilt to his voice, the triangle said, "If you insii-iist!" He settled back against his bubble and took a long, slow sip from his drink.

The Axolotl hated to admit it, but in spite of it all—the horror, the massacres, the cult recruitment, the dancing corpse puppets—he was starting to really like that triangle.

Along with VENDOR and THEIR unofficial police escorts—both of whom seemed content to do nothing but lurk behind THEM and look imposing—several of the gods involved with helping the refugees had assembled to observe the negotiation with the triangle. The storm cloud currently in charge of the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force's operations—who had less to do now that most of the cosmic fires were under control—was drizzling over several other apoc agents, and the tornado in which it carried its personal effects twisted back and forth in a figure 8 beneath the cloud, as though it were pacing in place. At some point, the barricade keeping the reporters from getting too close to the scene had been breached, and now dozens of them—messenger gods, gods of wisdom, gods of truth, twin-headed deities of secrets and revelations—circled the scene with enormous eyes and sharp ears and pens and recorders and cameras.

Until it burned down, the Axolotl had always called Dimension 2 Delta a "wall," because that was always how he was oriented to it during his daily commute—flying home with the dimension to his side—and the now-bloated Dimension Zero where the wall used to be was oriented the same way; but up and down and left and right were arbitrary directions in space when you could just rotate and change them. VENDOR and THEIR accompanying gods had reoriented themselves in relation to Dimension Zero so that it was like a floor rather than a wall—so that they were looking down on the triangle, and forcing him to look up at them.

Even the Axolotl had unconsciously reoriented himself so that he matched the other gods. He couldn't pretend he had any business in this discussion as anything but an uninvited witness; he'd been flying in nervous circles around the group, only just barely within the perimeter established by the reporters, gazing down into Dimension Zero as he did. Even though the triangle was staring straight at VENDOR, his slitted eye felt like one of those trick paintings that gave off the impression that, no matter where the Axolotl was, it was looking directly at him.

He ended up circling near the Time Giant, who was also avoiding the conversation as she worked on her official report on what she'd found in Dimension Zero. As he passed, she absentmindedly patted his head between his frills. Her glove was coated in grease, heavy metals shavings, and stardust.

The triangle said, "So pitch me your big evacuation plan."

"You don't need to worry about the details; it's our responsibility to handle the situation, not a mortal's."

"Humor me," the triangle commanded.

VENDOR valiantly bit back the urge to say something else snide. "Fine. It's a simple process, at least for you. First: you'll all be temporarily relocated to a safe world, where you'll be taken care of. Somewhere... suited to your species's anatomy, as best as we can manage on such short notice." As THEY spoke, THEY began idly flipping through THEIR worlds, juggling them between THEIR coils, apparently mentally measuring up the triangle before THEM against THEIR available selection. The Axolotl had seen THEM do that earlier. A nervous habit, he supposed. The god from the urban planning committee deciding where a few more residents could be moved.

A few of the partiers far below the triangle had apparently noticed the conversation, and had broken off from the party to fly a little closer to the barrier, eavesdropping on the discussion. There was a quiet flurry of excitement at the suggestion they might be getting a planet. (They had so little in there, didn't they?)

"Second: we clean out the rubble that fell beneath the multiverse and ensure everything is stabilized again. Third: we set off Big Bangs to put up new 1D pillars and 2D walls where the old ones used to be, and repair all the standing walls and pillars that were damaged in the fires. We'll likely recycle much of the rubble into the new dimensions. There, that's nice, isn't it? Your new dimension could be made out of what's left of your old one." THEY talked like an adult who didn't like kids trying to persuade a child that this new toy was just as good as one that had been accidentally thrown away.

As VENDOR spoke, the triangle slid off his tall black hat and held it in his hands, looking down at it. No, the Axolotl realized, not at it—into it. He was looking at his speck. The little pearl that contained the scant remains of his universe.

"Fourth: all the refugees are returned to their native dimensions or their replacements."

The grip on the brim of his hat tightened. The triangle looked up sharply.

A few of the shapes who'd broken off from the dance party to eavesdrop looked dubious of this news—the Axolotl noted the line that the triangle had been dancing with earlier among them—but the vast majority looked ecstatic. One of them—a nearly square blue rhombus—rushed back to spread the news to the rest of the party.

But he stopped without reaching them when the triangle demanded, "You think you're going to split us up?"

"Of course! You can't possibly be placed together long term—you're all from so many different dimensions that your molecules probably don't even operate on the same laws of physics." VENDOR pointedly added, "Besides, I know some gods are very eager to have their people returned to them." The Vitruvian Mandala must have talked to THEM about how the triangle got his new followers. (How many of the listening shapes were eager to return to their gods?)

The triangle stared at VENDOR, eye wide and expression unreadable; but for a split second, an inferno of absolute fury raged behind that blank white sclera. "What about me, genius? You don't have a god to foist me off on."

"No, I suppose not," VENDOR sighed. "Naturally, as the last surviving soul from your dimension, you'll be afforded a few more special protections than the others." (The triangle didn't protest the accusation that he was the last.) "Eventually, you'll have the option to move into an afterlife in whatever replaces Dimension 2 Delta, but until then, you'll have to be housed elsewhere, just like the other refugees. Did you have diplomatic relations with any of the neighboring dimensions?"

He said tersely, "No."

(Then that settled the question for good, the Axolotl thought: none of the other shapes came from his home dimension; and he really hadn't known the shapes he'd kidnapped from other universes and called "his" people.)

"Of course not. That will complicate finding another dimension to move you to, but I'm sure he'll help you with that part."

VENDOR tilted in the Axolotl's general direction. Terrific, THEY'd progressed from accusing him of being a stranger's lawyer to volunteering his services.

"Of course, you should expect to be judged and sentenced by the standards of whatever afterlife you join—"

The Axolotl cut in loudly, "I think he'd rather remain a wandering ghost." It was clear the triangle still saw himself as alive. (Maybe, to his species's culture, he was still alive. If the Axolotl had learned anything during his service as a psychopomp, it was that death was as much cultural as it was physical. Most species saw a soul shedding its body as the end, but others saw it the same way as a butterfly shedding a cocoon.)

VENDOR shuddered in distaste. "I can't believe this district still hasn't outlawed letting unruly expired mortals meander around."

Of course THEY were anti-wandering ghosts. The Axolotl didn't know what else he expected. He made a mental note to throw a campaign donation at Municipalitron before the next election. "Yes, it is still legal, and technically isn't illegal on a district-wide level anywhere in the multiverse—wandering ghost legislation is decided at the dimensional level—"

"You can explain his options after he's come out here into civilized space," VENDOR said sourly. "The bottom line is, everyone gets sent home. And that's the plan! All right?" THEY glowered down at the triangle.

With a flick of his wrist, the triangle's hat poofed out of his hand and reappeared above his top angle. "If you want my opinion—"

"There is nothing I have ever wanted less."

"—you're wasting a lot of time creating a worse solution to a problem you invented! Splitting us up, gentrifying our dream realm, forcing us back under gods and locking us up in afterlives? Yikes! We're not refugees, we're liberated—for the first time in our lives! We don't need to be 'sent home'! We're already living in our home!" The triangle put unnecessary emphasis on the word living.

The excitement slowly drained from the eyes of the listening shapes. They looked so tired. How many were already dead? How many wanted to rest in an afterlife?

The triangle said, "Look, I can save you a lot of time on red tape and bureaucracy." He gestured back into Dimension Zero. "Just give us an empty spot outside reality's butthole, we'll pack up our dream realm and fly it there ourselves, and then everything's hunky-dory!"

"Pack your— Fly it—?!" VENDOR scoffed in disbelief. "You must be mad. It would most certainly not be 'hunky-dory'! Your little organic mortal mind can't even grasp how much more difficult, dangerous, and inefficient it would be to relocate and rebuild this wreck instead of simply recycling what's left of it and setting off a new Big Bang. Is it even possible?" THEY'd directed this last question to the Time Giant.

"Hm?" It took her a moment to drag herself from her paperwork and process the question. "Hell, I hope not. It's the worst idea I've ever heard."

"See? I don't even know which district's jurisdiction such a ridiculous project would fall under!"

"So what's the problem?" the triangle asked. "It probably won't be yours! You can foist the paperwork off on some other sucker!" (The Axolotl choked back a laugh.)

"It would circle back around to the urban planning committee eventually," VENDOR said wearily. "We simply don't have room for a—" They turned to the Time Giant again. "How big is this dimension, anyway?"

"'Bout twenty percent bigger than D-2Δ was."

"Oh, what a disaster. Two dimensional?"

"Technically, zero, but it behaves like it has five or six."

"Absolutely barbaric." VENDOR rounded on the triangle. "We don't even have zoning for an oversized zero dimensional property shaped like a six dimensional property! Every last Planck length in the multiverse is already in use; this is a planned community— Are you paying attention?! Don't you roll your eye at me!"

He was indeed rolling his eye as he took a long, slow sip from his red plastic cup. He held up a finger to signal VENDOR to wait until he'd finished. This wasn't doing the triangle any favors, but the Axolotl had the sneaking suspicion he'd decided to ignore VENDOR because VENDOR had started to ignore him.

"Of all the—you're the one who wanted to waste my time finding out how your evacuation will work! You could at least listen!"

VENDOR still thought THEY were giving instructions to a mortal who didn't quite yet fully understand that it was his responsibility to simply obey, and the triangle still thought this was a parley between equals in which he had the option to say no. And, the Axolotl realized, they were both wrong.

A single reality could simultaneously operate on so many vastly different scales. The Axolotl could still hear the triangle saying that he felt every dying thing that fell into Dimension Zero; he could still see the triangle's gaze unfocused from pain and the distraction of holding up a dimension on his back. While a minor local elected official was arguing about zoning law, a mortal was suffering a trillion trillion deaths.

And on a smaller scale even than that, a trillion trillion lives were suffering death—once.

The Axolotl wondered—what justice was there in the fact that the most trivial concerns of gods were infinitely vaster than the worst horror a mortal could ever endure?

(But what justice was there in the fact that one mortal could force so many more to endure the horror with him?)

The triangle finished his drink and sighed, "Yeah, yeah, I'm listening." Like a bored child fidgeting in his seat, the triangle peeled off Dimension Zero's skin and swung backward into his dream realm, so that he was dangling over his eternal party with the soles of his feet still stuck to the bubble. "And all I'm getting out of your yammering is that you want to destroy my dimension because you don't want to deal with a little red tape!" (He stared at the eavesdropping shapes. They flinched and retreated to the party.)

"No," VENDOR said venomously, "I'm saying we can't move the rubble pile you're calling a dimension, because it would require knocking down half of existence to restructure it around your whims."

"Great! Which half do you want me to knock down?"

The Axolotl could faintly hear the click of VENDOR's camera shutter closing and reopening in horror.

The storm cloud had been brooding quietly back with the other apoc agents while VENDOR and the triangle attempted to negotiate, but now it let out a thunderous rumble as it swept like a cold front into the discussion. "Out of the question. The whole point of clearing out the rubble is to prevent any more damage to the surrounding dimensions. We're not going with a plan that causes more apocalypses."

"Oh, for— No one's talking to you, Fog Brain!" The triangle tried to wave the cloud off. "Who do you think you are, the Killjoy God of Stopping Apocalypses?"

The cloud's tornado swerved down to hold its Apocalyptic Threat Task Force badge where the triangle could see. "Yeah, actually."

He gave it a dirty look. "Okay, Officer Fun Police. Here's the deal: me, my people, and my miasma in here are a package deal. I'm not going a-ny-where without them, and they're not going anywhere without me. So if you don't want us knocking the stilts out from under your palafito, then you'd better make an offer better than Coin Slot's little refugee plan!"

"Your people? What gives you the right to speak for them!" The storm's tornado jumped in intensity from F0 to F2, and only grew faster the more it spoke. Through its clouds, the eye of the storm glared down at the triangle. "You mean the people I've watched die all day thanks to your attempts to kidnap them from their own dimensions?!"

The triangle glared right back up into the eye without flinching. "Yeah, and my attempts to rescue them from our world would have a lot better success rate if you incompetent losers didn't keep getting in my way!"

In a startling display of unity, the storm cloud and VENDOR both started shouting at the triangle, one after the other: "Rescued?! The ATTF was already rescuing them! We're professionals! You're the one mucking up all our operations—"

"And you're the only reason these mortals need rescuing! You caused this crisis in the first place; you spread all the fires—"

"—and mangled or cremated half the people you're trying to save—!"

"You're forcing millions of people to float aimlessly in an unstable, barren void! Those mortals belong out here, under divine supervision, on a real world!" VENDOR punctuated this with a rev of THEIR motors and THEIR coils half twisting forward, like THEY were tempted to launch THEIR whole stock of worlds at the triangle in anger. "I am a vending machine full of planets. Any one of these would be better than your colorful cesspit! What are you offering?!"

The triangle was glowing red-hot, trembling with rage. "Everything they were ever told they can't have," he said. "Freedom. Immortality. Utopia!" With a noise like a whip crack, the triangle snapped his arm down (up?) to point at his eternal dance party; and suddenly his eternal party was right there, and he was in the middle of it. "This is what I'm offering! Isn't that right, gang?! We're keeping this party going forever!" A loud roar of voices cheered in response. (It was, the Axolotl thought, nowhere near ten million voices. The shapes that had been eavesdropping earlier had blended back into the crowd. The only one the Axolotl could still see was the blue rhombus, glaring resentfully at the triangle.)

With an impressive synthesized approximation of the sound of speaking through gritted teeth, VENDOR said, "Why would you want to squat in the rubble of half a dozen destroyed dimensions when we could recycle it into a new dimension?!"

In truth, the Axolotl was wondering the same thing. He could understand if the triangle were just trying to maintain his independence from an overbearing god—the triangle clearly liked being in charge—but then why not offer the rubble from Dimension 2 Delta in exchange for the right to rule the new dimension that would be made with it? VENDOR would never agree to that deal—not that THEY even had the authority to agree—but that hadn't stopped the triangle from making even less likely demands. Or why not trade the rubble to the gods in exchange for an equivalently-sized stable universe to throw his unending party in? Hell, why not say he'd take a newly-vended planet as long as he could rule it without any unwanted divine intervention? His people didn't want to live like this. Why did he?

With great dignity, the triangle straightened out his hat, casually swirled his drink, and floated up off the surface of the bubble—and the Axolotl realized that the triangle hadn't been standing "upside down." All along, he'd been doing the same thing VENDOR had done to him: repositioning himself so that the surface of the barrier between the zeroth dimension and the third dimension was his floor, so that the gods he spoke to were beneath his very feet.

He didn't answer VENDOR's question. Instead, he asked his own: "Why would I want to be a dead freak in somebody else's universe, when I can be an eternal god in mine?"

So many things—his insistence that he was alive, his contempt for the gods that tried to assert their superiority, his determination to repair his own reality, his absolute control over his people—suddenly made sense.

VENDOR leaned away from the triangle. "You? Think you? Get to be? A god?" THEIR two police escorts, who so far had managed to stay silent, burst out in mocking laughter.

The triangle stared imperiously down upon VENDOR, THEIR hundreds of worlds, and the countless gods watching. "It seems to me like I already am one!"  Arms outstretched, he gestured around himself at Dimension Zero, at his eternal party. A cacophony of every song at once poured out into the higher dimensions and all lights shone on him like a strobing halo. "I created a universe by myself! A dream realm where ideas and reality overlap, where a thought's just as powerful as an act! A dimension of color and life that's free from all laws and restrictions—even gravity! If that's not godly, I don't know what is!"

Honestly, the Axolotl thought it was kind of impressive that the triangle had spun his failure to get the gravity working into a perk.

The crablike cop hooted with laughter and said to his partner, "How stupid does he think we are?"

"You're no creator god," VENDOR said. "Everything you have fell in from Dimension 2 Delta and its neighboring dimensions—we know that much."

The triangle was silent for a long moment; and the Axolotl got the sense, by the look in his eye, that he was choosing his next words very carefully. Like a creator god preparing to speak a reality into existence.

Voice low and hard, he said, "You don't think it got in here all by itself, do you?"

VENDOR gasped sharply. THEY weren't the only one. A crackle of thunder and a low rumble filled the still space—followed by hundreds of tiny, twinkling lights from the outer ring of gods, the flashes of the reporters' cameras. Recording the mortal who claimed he'd killed an entire universe.

The triangle, glaring defiantly down at them all, seemed to glow a little brighter with each flash.

No. Not that curious, cocky, bright-eyed little triangle. The Axolotl couldn't believe he had wanted to destroy his own dimension.

But... he did believe the triangle had done it. On some level, he'd known.

The storm cloud cut in, "Hold on, hold on, hold on." It seemed to be the only one who could find something to say. The Axolotl was sure it had known, too; it had only been waiting for confirmation. Making a valiant effort to rein in its rage, it retrieved its interview and asked, "How did you destroy your dimension?"

The triangle's hands curled into fists, crushing his cup. "I didn't say I destroyed it. I renovated." He said it so haughtily. He said it like he needed to believe it himself. "It was close-minded and claustrophobic! It needed a lotta work! The whole thing ended up being a teardown! A place like that, the only thing you can do is—burn it down and start over."

The Axolotl could hear the triangle's voice catch and fall quieter as he regretted his choice of words before he'd even finished saying them. His heart broke. No. He knew the triangle didn't mean that. He was torturing himself to keep as many of his people alive as possible, he couldn't have meant to destroy all those lives—

The triangle raised his voice again—not quite shouting, but straining to project his words, to ensure everyone, everyone, would hear him. (Over the next trillion years, the Axolotl would come to think of this as the default way he spoke.) "We're building a better world here. One where we're all finally free. Isn't that right?!" His undead, undying revelers cheered and applauded. This speech wasn't for the storm cloud; it was for his followers and the reporters. He was putting on a performance. What a show it must be through the cameras: the lights, the music, the proud glittering shape in the center of it all.

The storm demanded, "How did you do it?"

The triangle hesitated again, searching again for the right words, the right story. His eye darted to the side, toward his listening people. Like a bad radio signal, the dance music was infected by a rising static hiss.

But before he could come up with an answer, VENDOR snarled, "It doesn't matter; that's all we need to know! We don't need to wait for him to enter the third dimension anymore—" THEY turned to the cops, "—arrest him now!"

The triangle flinched. "Wait, what?" He glared accusatorially between the Axolotl and the Time Giant. "You! You set me up!"

"Did not," the Time Giant muttered resentfully. "I gave the ATTF my verbal report. What they do with the report ain't my problem."

The Axolotl didn't even respond to the accusation. Operating on pure reflex, he'd already dove in front of the triangle, gills flared and curled forward, putting himself in between the accused criminal and the gods of punishment.

"You can't be serious!" His gaze darted in disbelief between the gods he'd spoken to the most throughout this whole wretched incident. The Time Giant's jaw was set hard and she kept her face turned from the scene as she continued to work on her official report; the storm's cloud had darkened and its rain fell heavy and cold; and VENDOR—well, VENDOR still looked like a vending machine, but the Axolotl had no doubt THEY were determined to carry this through. "He's a refugee seeking asylum! You should be worried about getting him and his people to safety!"

The Axolotl felt the triangle's eye on him like a laser. "They can't do that." (He had only heard that nervous waver in the triangle's voice once before. Yesterday—before Dimension 2 Delta burned—the very first time the triangle had ever met a higher dimensional being.)

"We can." VENDOR's camera focused on the Axolotl. "Unless you have any legal objections."

He nearly demanded THEY explain what legal grounds THEY possibly had to arrest him—and then realized what an idiot he was for not seeing this coming. He'd been so blinded by the fact that he was sure the triangle hadn't meant it that he hadn't registered what the triangle had done.

The triangle had burned down multiple dimensions by ignorantly messing with the fabric of reality. He'd selectively targeted entire populated worlds—and accident or not, he'd incinerated them. On the immense scale of crimes this triangle was operating on, personally kidnapping millions and slaughtering billions who got caught in the crossfire was the least of his sins. VENDOR didn't want the triangle shuffled into some afterlife to get him out of the way; THEY wanted him damned.

But the gods had divine laws, and how they judged the mortals and sentenced the dead were among the most complex branches. What you could punish the living for, and what you had to wait until their death to punish; whether a ghost could be allowed to wander; where a psychopomp could escort the dead; when and how gods could reincarnate a soul... Rules, rules, rules.

And one rule was that a god couldn't legally arrest a mortal outside their own jurisdiction, under any circumstances, without permission from a god who did have jurisdiction.

Any gods who once held jurisdiction over the souls born in 2Δ were dead. The only gods who could arrest the triangle now were whatever gods had authority over the territory he was in.

No one and nothing had ever had authority over Dimension Zero.

The triangle had stumbled his way into the only pure neutral territory in all of reality. He could not be legally arrested.

That was why VENDOR had been so eager to get the triangle out of Dimension Zero; that was why THEY were so impatient with his protests and questions. This was all just a ploy to lure out the triangle so they could make an arrest that neither the witnessing reporters nor the neighborhood's most stubborn afterlife lawyer could legally challenge.

However... those were the rules for arresting a mortal. Arresting a god was different.

Any gods that operated on a higher than galactic level agreed that nothing mattered more than preventing divine threats to the multiverse, by any means necessary. Whoever could make the arrest should make the arrest, and they'd figure out who was in charge of the troublemaker later. Jurisdiction was irrelevant when it came to stopping a god who committed crimes against reality.

Which was exactly what the little triangle had claimed to be.

"Well?" VENDOR pressed. "Any problems, attorney?"

The triangle had the kind of eye that gave off the impression that he was always looking at you, no matter where you were; but now it felt different. Now, the Axolotl truly felt the triangle was looking directly at him.

It wasn't one of those creepy being-stared-at feelings that made his back prickle and his gills curl. It was more like the sensation he got in court whenever one of his clients was looking to him for support and protection, when the Axolotl was the only thing standing between them and death, damnation, or worse.

The Axolotl wracked his brain for any reason to object to an arrest. He was sure, he was sure, that the triangle didn't want to hurt anyone... but the Axolotl's opinions weren't relevant. The triangle was a self-professed god who had confessed to deliberately destroying his home dimension. He was more than an active threat to existence itself—the fires were still burning.

But... "You'll have to prove he's a god." Which was more difficult than one might think. A legally airtight definition of what was and wasn't a god was notoriously elusive. "If you cross dimensional lines to arrest him and then can't prove he's divine, any decent defense attorney could get the whole case thrown out." Which was maybe a slight exaggeration—any decent prosecutor wouldn't let a mortal who'd destroyed a dimension go unpunished, even if they had to hunt him down with their own scythes and fangs—but the Axolotl didn't see any judges here to call him out.

"Pinky's right," the crablike cop said—and only then did the Axolotl realize he and the flaming wheels hadn't budged an inch at VENDOR's order. "Shoulda waited for him to come out."

VENDOR spluttered indignantly. "But you don't have to prove he's a god to arrest him, do you? Just—just that you had reason to think he's one? Isn't that how it works?"

The crab's mushroom eyestalks and the wheels' hundred eyes exchanged a look. The wheels said flatly, "If we claim we had probable cause to believe the mortal's a god because the mortal himself said so, we'll be laughed out of the courtroom."

"Hey! Are you calling me a liar?!" The triangle flared red hot. Some of his shapes had stopped dancing again to stare at the argument. "I made a dimension! If that's not godly, what is?!" Frustrated, he gestured again at the party behind him and the dream realm beyond. (One of the shapes who'd stopped dancing waved.) "Were you listening to that part of the conversation? Or didja get too many retinas to leave room for a cochlea or two, Eyeballs?! How about you, Pinchers; is that gunk growing out of your shell clogging your ears?"

The rings' flames blazed a bit hotter as he seethed, but the crab's two mushrooms reeled back in offense and he clacked his claws furiously. "Those are my brains, you idiot!"

"No kidding?"

The Axolotl swore he could see the malice in the triangle's eye as he thought of ways to abuse this new information. Before the triangle had a chance, the Axolotl dove in the way of his line of sight to the cop and hissed, "Shh! Whose side are you on?" Handing his future prosecutor ammo was bad enough; he had to insult the cops too?

"I could ask you the same thing! All I hear you doing is telling them a better way to arrest me!"

"You don't want to be charged as a god—!" 

"Maybe I do!" Growing more heated, he shouted, "Nobody could do this by accident! It's impossible! Obviously I meant to do it, how could it have happened if I didn't mean to do it?!"

Oh, the Axolotl thought. Oh. Oh, no. This poor child.

The crab laughed loudly. "This pipsqueak's funny!"

"You're a mere mortal with some magic tricks," the flaming wheels said coldly. "You probably have a superpower or two. That doesn't makes you a god."

The triangle's gaze locked onto the cops like a prison searchlight on two escaping convicts. His eye darted between them, sizing them up like a predator choosing the easier prey; and then focused on the crab. "You want me to prove it?" He shoved his crumpled red cup over to one of his nearby followers. (In his rage, he didn't seem to notice that he'd shoved the cup into his follower, in the middle of his 2D organs.) The triangle pointed at the crab. "Come over here! I'll show you!"

"He thinks we're stupid," the rings said.

The crab jabbed a claw toward Dimension Zero. "If you were a god, I wouldn't have to come over there for you to pull whatever dumb trick you're trying! You'd be omnipotent enough to just do it!"

"If you're so sure I'm lying, you've got nothing to lose! So what are you waiting for?! Sounds to me like you're scared! Afraid a little mortal pipsqueak might hurt you if you step into his domain? You scared of pipsqueaks, Pinchers?"

The crab clacked his claws angrily. The two wheels' fires flared up, their furious eyes as bright as stars, glaring at the triangle with the force of a hundred steel-melting sunbeams. The crab growled, "Of course I'm not scared of a stupid little—"

"Then what're you waiting for, fungus brain?!" The triangle didn't even squint under the burning ring lights. If anything, he seemed to soak up the light, growing brighter by the second. He slung an arm around a nearby trapezoid (who started as the Magister Mentium somehow gripped her through a dimension she couldn't see) and said, "Everyone here knows that you're a big, scared coward who's too afraid to face down one puny little mortal. You big chicken!" He turned to shout to his imprisoned people, "Hey everyone, look at the big chicken who's scared of a mortal! What a loser!" 

"Fine! I'll show you what a god is—" Claws crashing together like thunderclaps, the crab stormed up to the border of Dimension Zero.

The second the crab stuck his face through, the triangle twirled upside down.

The entire dimension turned upside down with him. It ground against the nearest walls as it laboriously rotated; all of reality shuddered.

The shapes trapped inside shrieked.

The crab wobbled back.

His face was upside-down, the stalks of his mushrooms were tied in a bow, his claws were attached backwards, and his shell was unevenly coated in purple glitter glue. "Well," he said woozily, "I think that triangle's a god."

"Now will you arrest him?" VENDOR demanded.

The flaming wheels shook themselves out of their shock. "Fall back, kid," they said sharply. "I'll handle this."

"Sure, sarge." Trying to get his mushrooms untied, the crab cop stumbled sideways back toward Dimension Zero. One of the other cop's wheels hooked around one of his legs and tugged. The crab stumbled sideways the other direction. 

And then the wheels turned their full attention on the triangle. "It's too bad hubris isn't illegal here." The rings grew, and grew, and grew hotter, and hotter; until, at last, they were vast enough that one ring could have held a supermassive black hole in its circumference. "YOU COULD HAVE LEARNED THE EASY WAY WHY IT'S A BAD IDEA."

The wheels whirled like some eldritch cross between saw blades and pulsars as they approached the border of Dimension Zero. Their countless eyes opened and shut in hypnotic patterns, red and blue, red and blue. The reporters' camera flashes petered out; the ones taking notes into recorders fell silent. The power that poured off the whirling flaming wheels, both physical and psychological, was suffocating. Even as ancient and powerful as the Axolotl was, and even though the display wasn't aimed at him, he could feel it like a pressure on his lungs—feel it like swimming through water without oxygen. This was the sort of god that could incinerate a million worlds with one rotation. 

But the triangle only momentarily flinched back at the red and blue flashing; and then the display made the triangle stronger. Soaking in the heat, the light—glowing brighter, hotter, redder, angrier. "You wanna get me?!" 

The empty space around him burst into flames—pale, blue flames, reeking of burning hydrogen. Several of the more lucid nearby dancers shrieked in terror.

The helpless shapes burned up. But the triangle simply burned.

He grew in size, larger than the Axolotl, than VENDOR, than even the flaming wheels—larger than all the assembled gods combined—filled the entire visible cosmos with light. "Then come get me!"

Lightning and his knuckles both cracked menacingly; and the sound echoed across a dozen fracturing realities. Gouts of fire erupted from Dimension Zero, shooting from the second dimensions into the thirds. The gods froze as the fabric of reality vibrated with trillions of trillions of voices screaming in agony as they were incinerated.

The triangle's eye was wider than the twin rings' circumference. Dimension Zero pulled taut around him. Dimension Zero was triangular. And though it hadn't moved, it was clear that the gods were no longer looking down at Dimension Zero; they were staring up into it.

The twirling rings skidded to a stop as they realized that, in all their million-world-incinerating wrath, they were a matchstick next to this volcano. "Whoa—whoa! Stay back—"

"Whatsamatter, handcuffs? Can't handle the HEAT?!" The nauseating, kaleidoscopic miasma behind where the wall used to be lurched toward them. Every god flinched back as the formless color feigned grabbing at them. "Shoulda thought of that before you stepped into my kitchen! I'll boil you alive!" The triangle let out a terrible, hysterical, shrieking laugh that echoed between the stars. 

Columns of roiling colors, like amoeba-like feelers the size of a galaxy, bulged out of Dimension Zero, curled around the edges of the crumbling husks of the neighboring dimensions—2 Gamma, 2 Epsilon, 2 Zeta—and reached out, looking for somewhere else to get purchase. Whatever had filled Dimension Zero appeared to be trying to crawl upside-down out of its prison and into the third dimension. In all his existence, in his worst nightmares, the Axolotl had never seen anything like it before. Oozing reality dripped lava-lamplike from Dimension Zero, lurching closer to the shaking twin-ringed cop, preparing to crush them like two pieces of cereal in a formless palm—

And then existence itself let out a howl of pain.

Everyone froze.

The triangle shrank back to his usual size with the speed of a balloon popping. His wide eye darted around nervously. "What."

The multiverse was still. The triangle shook it off, pushed against the border of Dimension Zero, and tried again to squeeze his dream realm out of the bloated singularity into the multiverse—and reality screamed again, like the sound of solid metal being twisted and ripped in half. Its echoes continued long after the triangle froze again—followed up by an alarming series of creaks and punctuated by a CRACK that made everyone assembled flinch.

The Time Giant swore and muttered, "That sounded like something important."

The triangle jerked back again, and only then seemed to notice that he was still burning. He looked at his hands, coated in pale blue flames.

The Axolotl couldn't see the trapezoid the triangle had had his arm around a moment ago.

The apoc agents were already a flurry of activity. The storm cloud—so terrified that it had started hailing—shakily pulled a walkie-talkie from its tornado and demanded info on the status of the second dimensions, trying to figure out what had cracked and what they could possibly do to mitigate the devastation. Replies tumbled in, overlapping each other, frantically reporting fires in dimensions the Axolotl had never heard of before. He could already see how the line of blue fire on the cosmic horizon had grown so much brighter, stretching out into space. Please, don't let the fires have spread to the third dimensions.

The triangle was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Trying to sound more confident than he looked, he squeaked, "I think I've made my point! I'll let you losers off with a warning this time!"

The cops had somehow managed to put the entire line of reporters in between them and Dimension Zero. The crab ducked his mushrooms down when the triangle addressed them. The rotating rings shrank a little smaller, but muttered, "Well—we're—we're watching you."

The triangle surveyed the ring's hundred eyes. "Yeah," he drawled, "you look like you're good at that."

Voice shaking, the Time Giant barked at the triangle, "Are you nuts?" She gestured furiously toward the growing line of fire on the horizon; spurts of blue flame were still erupting into the third dimension. "I told you that moving around would damage—!"

"Don't. Don't provoke him," the Axolotl said. "He still has hostages in there."

"Hey!" the triangle shouted, and the Axolotl flinched. The triangle strained against the thin membrane of Dimension Zero to lunge at the Axolotl. "Watch who you're calling hostages! Hey, are any of you hostages?" He whipped around to stare at his people.

None answered. The ones who were lucid and living simply stared in silent terror.

"That's what I thought!" the triangle said. "Now, why aren't you dancing! Is this a party or not!" He whipped around again to face the Axolotl. "If you wanna go too, let's go. Just try to enter my kingdom, see what happens."

"No." The Axolotl could take it. The Axolotl was an axolotl; anything he lost, he could regrow. But the shapes that would be caught in the crossfire couldn't.

"Didn't think so," the triangle snarled. "If you want to kidnap my worshipers, you'll have to come in here and get them." His voice dropped to a deep, booming growl that echoed through the stars. "Because we're staying. Right. Here."

The Axolotl could hear VENDOR's motors whining in stress as THEY tensed up at that ultimatum, but THEY knew better than to argue. The triangle's eye twisted into a satisfied smirk.

The triangle couldn't leave his "dream realm," the Axolotl realized. That was why he threatened to fight anyone who crossed his borders: he couldn't attack them before then. He could crawl out of Dimension Zero, but not without dragging along the entire world he'd built inside of it. No wonder he hadn't even considered VENDOR's plan to move him somewhere else so Dimension 2 Delta's rubble could be recycled. He and his miasma were a package deal.

But—why couldn't he leave his dream realm?

"You know you can't stay in there," the Time Giant said, gently pushing aside the Axolotl when he tried to shush her. "It's too unstable—"

"I'll repair it."

"And I told you the entire multiverse will collapse if you keep making 'repairs'—"

"Your multiverse isn't my problem," the triangle said icily. "I can stabilize my dimension just fine. Maybe you need to get off my hypotenuse and worry about stabilizing your own dimensions." He was speaking past her now, talking instead toward the reporters—talking to the whole multiverse.

"It'll be your problem when the omnipocalypse crunches you, too! What'll you do when all those higher dimensions crash down on yours?!"

The triangle spread his arms and said, simply, "Welcome them to the party."

####

(Thanks for reading!! If the art lured you in and this is the first chapter you read, this is part 6 of a 7-or-8-or-9 part fic that keeps getting more parts, about the Axolotl in the immediate aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. I'll be posting one chapter a week, Fridays 5pm CST, so stick around if you wanna watch the Axolotl deal with the fact that the sweet little triangle is, in fact, the bad guy. :,(

It's ALSO chapter 66 of an ongoing post-canon post-TBOB very-reluctantly-human Bill fic. So if you wanna read more of me writing Bill, check it out. If you're not sold on the idea of a human Bill fic, I've also got a one-shot about normal triangle Bill escaping the Theraprism if you wanna read that.

If this is NOT your first time here and you already knew all of the above: tbh this is probably all of you at this point, but I'm maintaining hope that contextless art of Bill & the Axolotl doing stuff will continue to lure in curious new readers until this arc is done lmfao.

At long last, the characters learn what the audience has known the whole time. This chapter had several big moments, looking forward to hearing y'all's thoughts!!)

[twopoppies]

Idk if you know anything about Paramore but is just another example of the music industry being so fucked up. A few days ago their contract with Atlantic records finished AFTER 20 YEARS!!! A contract that they signed when all of them were like 17.

When the contract ended all of their digital presence was wiped out and they said it was just because it was a new chapter and they're figuring out new record deals and whatever but now they cancelled all their latam concerts and nobody knows what's going on but surely is nothing good.

Like how is allowed to have a contract that long??? It's so fucked up. And I'm no trying to be disrespectful towards them but when they signed they were unknowns and they became very famous but not global sensation famous... And people want me to believe that the 1d boys signed a super fair contract and after only 4 years they were released of their contracts with no problems and now they're walking around the world free of obligations??? Yeah, right.

We obviously don't know any details but people can't be that obtuse

Oh, anyone who thinks that any of the five of them are free and clear, is lying to themselves. We’ve all heard so many stories of so many fucked up recording contracts. I hope everything is okay with the members of Paramore.

[foxyprincessworld]

After few days, i feel like i need to write few words about Liam

My mind is still processing and a part of me will probably never accept it

Still, now i can't pronounce the word Liam and passed together without feeling weird

I'm feeling an emptiness that never happen in my life

1D wasn't just a band to me, those 5 boys raised me and walked with me during my teenage years, and also thanks to them I'm the woman I'm today

Sometimes I forget that they were babies themselves, not only me

Yet they were able to make me dream and laugh and cry and gift me the most joyful and healthiest adolescence

But at the same time, they did not only do that, they protect me and give me a reason to laugh and smile during one of the hardest period of my life

I watched them performing live during the midnight memories tour on June 29th 2014, and they allowed me to escape the reality I was living at the time

If I didn't have them, if I didn't have their concert, I don't know what would've happened, I don't know how my life would've been and I don't know how much bigger my traumas would've been

And even if now I'm trying to process that I will never watch them being a band of 5 again, I will be forever grateful for have you in my life

Being your fans will always be my favourite thing, and this is probably why now I can't love a singer as much as I do love you

To Liam, I hope now whenever you are, you'll find the peace you deserve and were searching

To the boys, you lost a brother, but I hope you will live in his memory, cherishing everything you achieved together

To his family and sweet boy Bear, i hug you and pray for you, we are all mourning someone who touched our lives and changed them forever

Thank you Liam and thank you boys, for changing my life and truly being with me 'through the dark'

[zot3-flopped]

I have a lot to say on the subject of why Harry was behaving as he was in the last two or three years of 1D. (That Letdown blog is so biased, obviously, she’s ignoring so much.) It all depends on how you really, truly view all of the people in the band, maybe excluding Niall, who seemed miraculously exempt from all rancour but also interest.

I see Louis as a disruptor, a nasty little man whose idea of fun is to harm people and laugh about it. Lazy and untalented. Louis fans see him as a soft and vulnerable sweetheart with a vast intellect and sense of integrity (literally incredible to me). I see Liam as his sidekick, a young man who’s said openly he doesn’t know who he is, who followed Louis in his antics, but who worked hard on stage. I see Zayn as a person who isn’t temperamentally suited to being famous, talented up to a point, but not a giver in any sense. Fans of Zayn want him to be a musical genius with an off-the-scale talent but the fact is he’s just a somewhat good singer who unrealistically joined a boy band that got bigger than he could cope with, and anyway ended up sour because they weren’t going to be able to do r’n’b (can you imagine how pathetic it would have been for them to try).

Then I look at Harry, who must have been seeing everywhere, day after day, that he was the one with ‘it’, that he was the beating heart of the band - and he was looking round at these young men who were fucking about, disrupting stuff, taking advantage, staying unrealistic. So of course he planned to get out of 1D, which let’s face it wasn’t going to last because boybands don’t. But he never hid it, he did a lot in plain sight: building his relationship with Jeff, learning to write songs with others, changing his style, never socialising with the others, and of course being up front about not wanting to sign another contract. His fans were aware so the band was aware.

I just don’t see how any of that means he was underhanded about it. It could not have been more clear. That’s just the stuff we know about. If you think Louis is a little baby boy who deserves the world, then you must think Harry was being cruel - but to accuse him of being devious is to misuse that word. If you think Liam and Zayn deserved the most because they’re good singers, then it looks unfair that Harry wins all the time, but it’s a misunderstanding about what makes entertainment.

It’s my opinion that Harry took everything in, got the piss taken regularly by his bandmates, hated how they didn’t nurture themselves personally or professionally, wanted more for himself, knew he could deliver it. He wasn’t going to sacrifice that opportunity for the sake of a few people who would never, ever thank him for it. He worked out his contract and is only ever complimentary about his time in 1D. He made a couple of jokes/comments about Zayn but never about the others, and is on the record as saying multiple times that he enjoyed his time in the band, that there’s a strong bond between them, that they are in touch still (not sure I believe that actually but we do not know). Letdown mod seems fixated on him saying that he felt some shame and anxiety about contracts, but that doesn’t negate anything he’s also said. We are all capable of negative feelings whilst also appreciating the good in something: if we are emotionally mature, that is. In any case those aren’t the words of someone who is shitting all over his time in the band or slagging off his bandmates.

TL;DR if you are unrealistic about who 1D were as people, you might also be unrealistic about why at least 3 of them were not good to work with. It’s been years now, it’s been established that everyone knew what Harry was doing if they only had eyes to see: he wasn’t hiding it, and he was actually allowed to not sign another contract, people do that all the time if they don’t like their job.

👏👏👏👏 Agree with every word.

[silas-ng-dc-blog]

Fans or Fanatics?

We all have expressed our admiration for a celebrity at least once in our entire lives. Be it towards a famous music artist, actor, author or sports athlete, humans are not shy when it comes to showing our passion towards the talent of others. Fandom, as its name suggests, is a community made up of fans that show the same interests in a certain topic. A.R.M.Y, a fandom of the popular K-pop group BTS, is an example of a fandom that is heavily devoted to defending their favorite boy band. They come together to support the group’s success, defend any attempts to scrutinize them as well as celebrate their idols’ achievements. Fandoms are basically 'hubs' of superfans. 

According to Later (N.D), a “fandom” refers to a community of fans who are deeply passionate about a specific form of entertainment, like a TV show, movie series, book, video game, or music group. On social media however, “fandom” describes a group of fans who bond over a shared enthusiasm for a specific person, franchise, celebrity, TV show, movie, book, or other forms of entertainment. More specifically, the word “fan” in “fandom” is derived from the word “fanatic”, which usually carries a somewhat negative meaning (Iyengar V., 2022).  The word was initially used to refer to people who were passionate about sports, however, the term slowly changed its meaning and came to describe people with an unrelenting interest towards pop culture-related topics.

The formation of fandoms can be attributed to humans and history. We as a species have evolved to thrive in groups, seeking a sense of community and identity with others. According to Team MindPeers (2023), the idols we look up to, the stories that connect with us, and the collective people of fandoms we share experiences with all play a role in shaping our personal narratives and, ultimately, our identity. Other than just connecting with others, fandoms allow us a break from reality and the routine of everyday life (Team MindPeers, 2023).

The significance of fandoms in today’s society is immense, and it begs the question, who is more prone to join a fandom? Temming M., (2022) notes that people with empathy are more inclined to fall in love with fictional worlds or become a superfan. Empathy allows them to connect emotionally to the fictional characters, topics, or celebrities more often than others and these people tend to put themselves in the situations of others. Another characteristic of fans that determines their likelihood of joining fandoms is how easily they connect with the story (Temming M., 2022). The immersion of a fictional story can change the perspective of an individual and can in turn, foster a fandom.

An aspect of fandoms that people usually shrug off is the ability for fandoms to carry out acts of solidarity, support, and sometimes, even activism. “Directioners”, fans of the popular English boy band One Direction, helped raise 2 million pounds for Red Nose Day, and this paired with various other fundraising efforts by the fandom lead to the creation of “Action/1D”, One Direction’s very own charity (Lavelle B., 2024). It’s not just music fandoms that have used their power for good of people, other fandoms such as the anime and manga fandoms have their writers participate in events as well. These writers will create custom work based on the good acts of charity to Palestinians by fans (Lavelle B., 2024).  

However, more people means more opinions, and in big fandoms where the number of people is vast, there is bound to be high volatility and many disagreements. Some fandoms may even come together to spread their dissatisfaction on someone or something, and this act of hate can lead to disastrous consequences. The term used to describe this phenomenon is “toxic fandom”, a dark side of fandom that the majority of people generally associate with fans. Most of these negative acts are carried out online in websites or forums such as Twitter and Reddit, although they can also be observed in physical meetings or conventions (Vinney C., 2023). An infamous example of toxic fandoms carrying out their repulsive acts is in 2016 when a segment of the “Ghostbusters” fandom opposed the reboot of the original movie and directed racist and misogynistic tweets at star Leslie Jones (Vinney C., 2023).

All in all, fandoms, while often celebrated for their passion and dedication towards their shared interests, are complex communities that can bring good and harm to others. The sense of identity and belonging that these communities provide further notes their importance in our society. Ultimately, the power of fandoms lies in the hands of those who are in it. As fandoms around the world continue to evolve, it is essential that we acknowledge its capacity for both good and bad, and that we can approach it with an open-minded perspective.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References:

Fandom, Later, viewed 13th November 2024, https://later.com/social-media-glossary/fandom/

Iyengar V., 18th July 2022, What Is the Psychology of Celebrity Fandoms?, Psych Et Al, viewed 13th November 2024, https://www.psychetal.com/post/what-is-the-psychology-of-celebrity-fandoms

Lavelle B., 18th September 2024, How fandoms create communities and support larger causes, IndigenousX, viewed 13th November 2024, https://indigenousx.com.au/how-fandoms-create-communities-and-support-larger-causes/

Team MindPeers, 3rd August 2023, Behind The Screens: Unraveling the Psychology Behind Fandoms, MindPeers, viewed 13th November 2024, https://blog.mindpeers.co/behind-the-screens-unraveling-the-psychology-behind-fandoms

Temming M., 10th November 2022, Why fandom feels good – and may be good for you, ScienceNewExplores, viewed 13th November 2024, https://www.snexplores.org/article/fandom-fan-psychology-comiccon-marvel-fiction

Vinney C., 28th November 2023, What Are Toxic Fandoms?, VeryWellMind, viewed 13th November 2024, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-toxic-fandom-5214499

[alarrytale]

marte about this: https://www.tumblr.com/alarrytale/741869080128241664/it-didnt-help-that-harry-totally-distanced?source=share

Did the other boys also distance themselves from 1D? Because it's kinda a dick move of H to do so the other boys didnt do that. Also, do you think harry wanted to be better than the rest and never tried helping them get as big as he is?

Hi, anon!

No, they didn’t distance themselves at all, quite the opposite. While Harry needed to distance himself to grow his career, the other boys (bar Zayn) needed to play up the connection to 1D to keep their career. They didn’t have the large label backing, funding and record contract lined up for them like Harry did. The remaining boys also needed to fight for directioners attention on their solo careers. Columbia's plan for Harry was to rebrand and distance himself from 1D to get the gp and non boyband target groups on board his new solo career. They had funding and tools to do it. The other boys didn’t have that and continued on with their former images or tried to find their own image and sound to attract the gp. But for them it was important to not lose the 1D stans, so they talked postively about the band and their time together.

I think Harry has the professionalism, but most importantly the drive and motivation, to do what needed to be done to reach superstardom. He wants to be the best he can be. Reach as far as he can. He's in a competition with himself. Sony recognised that early on in 1d and knew that they were going to put all their money on him after 1D. So they positioned him in 1D to be the most loved, famous and successful member of the band. A de facto frontman. If Harry wanted a career after 1D he didn’t have another choice than go with a Sony label the way their contracts were written. I think the other 1D members are happy for Harry and the opportunities he's been given. I don't think they're bitter. They also know it has a backside, it comes with less freedom, more stunting, more lies, heavier workload and more pressure.

The boys main competitors are each other and they're under different labels, so i'm not sure how much they're allowed to help each other. They do help each other with playing unreleased songs to each other and get their opinions. They support each others album annoucements etc. Liams post about H's grammy win made me cry. You can see how much they love each other and want the best for each other. But i'm not sure if Liam, Niall, Louis and Zayn having Harry's current career would be the best for them. I don't think they want to trade places with Harry.

[ghost-of-you]

Why do people feel the need to produce break up rumors out of thin air after every tour/album 🫥 the expectations of some people in this fandom are wild to me.

What do people think they should do? Even if it weren't for Michael's baby, they released an album last year and played two tours, of course they'll need some time to recharge now. Why would you expect new music or ANOTHER tour now already?

And they have not said or done anything that would indicate that they are thinking about breaking up and still people choose to be paranoid instead of putting some trust in them and just let them rest.

Idk maybe I'm the opposite of those people who are still traumatised by 1D or whatever but my other favourite band just had a 5 year gap between albums, they didn't play any live shows for like 4 of those years (partly bc of the pandemic od course) and the front man did a solo album + tour in the meantime. One other band member did some stuff as a producer and from like 2 of them I think I saw a total of 4 social media posts during that time lmao. I didn't see a single person worried that they would break up. That never came up as a possibility anywhere. And then I go to 5sos fandom spaces and people are freaking out when the band goes on a break because one of them will have to care for a damn newborn like please 💀

Sorry for ranting, I'm sure you have a lot of this stuff in your inbox now. No need to respond, I just needed to express to someone how truly baffled I am by this behaviour.

Honestly, I blame one direction for a large part of it. Obviously not the boys in 1D but the whole culture and the intensity around them. I like them but I was never in really invested in them so I did watch everything that happened from the outside and I keep seeing the effects of it. A lot of people did not handle their break up and since 5sos has this connection to them that ended bringing fans over to 5sos people get triggered. But it's bullshit because 5sos is a band that wanted to be the band they are. To act as if 5sos is doomed to follow 1Ds footsteps is stupid because 1D was a bunch of kids who didn't want to be in a band, who got put in a band package and explored until they broke. And all of them are doing the thing they wanted all along, which is be solo acts, so the comparison is not fair. You can't compare 5sos to the boyband curse, because they are no are not a boyband. And this is the dumbest argument ever but it is true, 5sos has a lot more freedom with each other to do other things while still keeping the 5sos project alive. Everything they do that's not exactly like the 17 yo posting keeks and doing twitcam from a mansion creating a constant stream of content creates a wave of mass histeria and honestly, I am so tired of it. Even if 5sos were about to take a decade long break, which I don't think they will, they like making music with each other too much to just stop, they can. They gave us over a third of their lives already. They are allowed different dreams.

Also I think there's this layer of desensitization surrounding famous people in general, that makes people not see them as real people with real feelings or see them as this character they get mad won't follow the script they made in their heads. And the whole way some parts of the music industry just want a really fast rotation that's not really possible and things like K-pop that end up having a higher rotation that creates a bigger stream of content that's not really sustainable in a healthy way for very long but creates a weird expectation anyway. And people think they're allowed to demand shit just because (and this goes from the temper tantrum for the lack of tour to the obnoxious hbg chanting)

5sos already did the killing themselves for the band. Now they live and have a band. I rather to see things this way. They are happy, they are thriving in other aspects of life. If that means waiting another 2, 3, 5, 10 years for new music, so be it. To use 5sos own metaphor, they're driving the bus, we're just along for the ride so whatever stops and turns they want is what goes. They can do whatever they want because is their life and it's their band. And I'm not worried they're gonna break up. Not even a little bit. If not seeing them for a year while Michael settles into being a father is what it takes for them to be happy and healthy, then so be it, let them exist outside the band.

[breefarrow]

I got this anon a few weeks back after sending someone else an ask about h*ylor 2 years theory when the whole song fiasco happened and even though there was a reply that could have been given it was not worth my time and effort that night to reply so I just blocked the anon who sent me it.

But since this anon was sent to me a week or 2 ago @thoughtsthatarehardtoexpress has DMed me so many 💀💀 h*ylor tweets about them having been a thing for nearly 2 years so now I can't help but explain why believing h*ylor was a thing for nearly 2 years without having been seen together till nearly a decade after Jan. 2013 makes no sense vs why believing larry is a thing for 10+ years without having been seen together publicly since xfactor 2016 does.

If h*ylor had been a real couple and they were together until 2014 during peak 1D fame and peak 20s pop taylor fame we 100% would have had photos at some point of them being seen together !! + their teams would have milked their relationship for some added PR bc newsflash even real celeb couples milk their relationship publicly for extra PR !! How tf do you have two of the biggest under 30 stars of the 2010s dating and NOT be seen once ??

While the notion of larry being a real couple for 10+ years means their closeted bc when it comes to H specifically 1D and his solo team have been marketing him as a womanizer/lady's man since he was a fuckin teenager! And larry being seen together after 1D in any capacity fuels larry rumors, thus fueling 🏳️‍🌈 H rumors, which his team doesn't want. So why would it make sense for them to publicly go anywhere together and allow themselves to be seen if their teams [especially 1D/H solo team] has been actively wanting to mute the buzz on larry/gay rumors? But of course any time H gets mentioned in louis solo interviews he's all hearts and blushes.

So do the math on why it makes sense for larry to be a long term real couple without having been publicly seen together since 2016 vs why it doesn't make sense for h*ylor to have been a long term real couple without having been publicly seen together after the dramatic boat pic of taylor all alone and don't send anons on how we make no sense but h*ylors do.

I won't even bother going into a long rant about the part of this anons ask, saying no lyrics of their songs directly reference the other except hello princess park ?? we saw ed in manchester ?? same lips red same eyes blue same white shirt couple more tattoos ?? and all of louis major love songs talking about one long term lover he meet when he was young [who else did he met then when he spent 90% of his late teens/early 20s with the 1D boys] and no this is not a rhetorical for any anti to come mention the dog walkers name in response. 🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️

[louisisalarrie]

With the NDA in contracts do you think the 1d boys will ever be able to talk about the abuse they live during one direction?

aaaaahhhh weeeeellllllll maybe? I hope so.

I’m sure you’ve probably seen it, but Rebecca Ferguson last year talking about the abuse on the X Factor she (and others) endured is really an amazing step in the process of holding these assholes accountable, and understanding that these contracts are truly insane. This quote in particular,

Ferguson has also been critical of “The X Factor” itself, saying she was “forced into contracts” with managers, accountants and lawyers since contestants were not free to choose their own. “You are given contracts the size of a Bible,” Ferguson recalls. “Some of them are lifelong. There’s one contract I’m bound to that I’ll be bound to forever. And that, to me, is unacceptable.”

is extremely telling. My assumption of what kind of contract she’s still bound to, is money related. Because she became big on X Factor, Sony will take a certain percentage of every record she puts out, even after she’s long left the label and it’s been 50 years since she initially signed. Horrific though, right? A life long contract? Terrifying. You can read more of what she said here.

She also said this:

So, she came out and broke her NDA and talked about it, which is nice, but she was also not dating her band member, and these contracts would’ve just gotten bigger and more complex after signing 1d and larry being forced into the closet. Longer NDAs, and stricter NDAs. I have no doubt that the boys’ contracts have exact instances that they aren’t allowed to mention ever, but I think they will. I think they are strong and loud and they won’t sit back forever.

Already with Zayn mentioning stuff about why he left 1d, he danced around it carefully, but did mention a little of what was going on behind the scenes, and didn’t just blame the boys themselves. I think there will be a tell all, like how Robbie Williams has recently done (although not the same circumstances, but still), but the larry stuff is very complex. I hope they’ll break their NDAs and just yell about it, and tell us everything. I think one day they will. They won’t be scared of these lunatics forever, and already have established careers. So, fingers crossed!

[harrylights]

Happy Louis’ birthday day! What does Louis mean to you?

thank u love!! 🫶

being that i don’t know him personally all i can speak to is the impact as an artist that he’s had on me, and getting to sort of watch him grow up while i grew up as well. so w that in mind i think i’ll just share some memories/what comes to mind when i think of him

• him being my fave from day one and getting so excited whenever we’d get some more louis solos as the 1d albums were released

• also on that note, when i was teenager i had a bestie who was also into 1d and she got us a 1d puzzle as a silly little thing to do while we were basically living together (lmao) and let me tell u his face was the first to get put together like my life depended on it and i just remember that so fondly and vividly

• the overwhelming feeling of pride when he first released just hold on, and that feeling only growing as he released solo albums and started touring. having seen him go from a lil 19yr old boy to a fully grown ass man who’s doing his own thing and doing it so well has been such a source of inspiration for me and i’m so so so proud of him

• similarly, having also lost a parent recently and trying to keep finding my own creative path, it amazes me that louis has been able to do everything he’s done in the last few years. like it seriously leaves me speechless thinking about it. and honestly i really needed someone to look up to that i know has been through their own version of the same thing, it’s helped keep me going these last few months and only makes me want to keep growing even tho it’s harder than it’s ever been before. again, words can’t fully describe how i fully feel about this tbh

• i’ve said this before a million times but seeing him live is an experience that will always be so dear to my heart. he brought such a sense of safety and community into that venue and even in the lineup waiting to get in. he seems to have this energy to him that allows others to feel safe to be themselves completely and also be kind and take care of one another, and that is exactly what i want to do w my life in my own way. i admire that about him so fucking much.

• also finding community through fandom surrounding him in particular has been both insane and amazing and i love my louie mutuals w all my heart <3

• i also can’t not talk about the amount of Gender he’s always been giving. lately he has been a really good person for me to look to fashion-wise as I’ve been carving out my own gender expression, and i may or may not use him as a reference when i get my hair cut now fhhdjsks

anyway. i’m endlessly grateful for him and his music and i hope that 32 is another great year for him 💙

[liinos]

My sisters are both so judgy about my music :( like I was listening to 1d earlier (which I do with headphones so not even like anyone else can hear it) and my sister was so condescending about it :( like cant I just have some fun theres nothing wrong with pop music it makes me never want to tell them anything I like ever

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

Sat 29 May ‘21

Production director Krupa, who does tech as part of Louis’ live team, posted a video captioned “won’t be long now” showing a banner with Louis’ smiley on it behind a drumset, with voices audible behind the camera; seems like it was old, from the tour shows that happened in 2020, but we know LT Tour ‘22 is on everyone’s minds behind the scenes with pieces very much currently in the process of being shuffled and arranged and tickets being sold, so it makes sense people are posting about it even though it’s so far away. Anyway does the voice in the video say “Styles when I start the video don’t laugh”? It does sound like it but whoever is there doesn’t laugh and is pretty much inaudible so we’ll never really know who it was but fans ask; why is this yet another example of someone associated with Louis who doesn’t follow any of the other 1D boys (and why would they) except… Harry? hmmm. Well, regardless of that if the voice in the video really finishes up by yelling “bukkake” we don’t want to dig ANY further into THAT but I will choose to believe they are instead yelling “we’re cocky” cause well, they ARE! What are they doing here! Plus then we don’t have to uh get into that other thing (bukkake). Krupa, enjoying the response to all that, then posted a picture of the bass drum head with Doncaster postcode taped on that had been used on tour. Robert Harvey (the songwriter from yesterday) is also enjoying the high of Louis-related posting and fan attention and charmingly joked about people being there to see his workout content.

“You don’t see a lot of Nialls around,” said Niall, who is in business with a guy named Niall Horgan, while being interviewed by a guy named Niall Grey, and shares some of the ways people say his name- “Neil, Noel, Nigel,Howoon, Heran”, plus “some of the lads call me Nelly”. He also said he’s “in the studio again, writing the third album and this is feeling really good. Hopefully I can get it out, I don’t really know when. When the world is all vaccinated & ready to go, I’ll probably try and get out on the road again” (and he says he was in the studio yesterday, how does he have TIME with all the promo?) In today’s entry into the tell all we’re compiling one sentence at a time over years, Niall says that the reason he just sat there during the whole “pregnant lady going into labor” nickelodeon prank (played on a young 1D for televised laughs, HAHA watch Harry stress the fuck out-- hilarious! :| ) was that he realized it wasn’t real right off (and that he went and spoke to someone who told him to get back in there), but to be fair is it tell all material given that he says right in the original video post-reveal part that he knew? He also said, “I'm pretty carefree, I care less now. I used to be really agitated and wanted to be doing stuff all the time and it [2020] really gave me an opportunity to step back from things. You didn't have to be moving all the time to be yourself,” and that yes he DID spend some time with his special friend (Amelia) during quarantine, “we have been doing a lot of cooking, it made lockdown a lot simpler... I think I would have gone mad on my own,” and “it was good to be at home and chill out, I feel bad saying that with all that's going on in the world but it was a nice thing.” Anne Marie said about the video “I was driving because back in the day, there wasn't a lot of pictures of women driving a car. So I took the control- we did nearly die. It was all hills and stuff, going round the corner of a hill, and I couldn't turn it, so we nearly died” and “I LOVE US,” and Niall said "if you don't like it, don't listen to it" about the single; StreamOurSong trended.

And an unseen picture of Harry from his shoot with Tim Walker was posted; he’s sprouting from earth like a beautiful flower, just like the ones he is draped in, fantastic! And museums are reopening to display Harry’s clothes all over the place; first the grammy museum, now the Victoria and Albert in London has at last reopened their doors, allowing the masses in to see the famous JW Anderson patchwork cardigan in the, uh, wool. Everyone wants some of that Harry Styles™ magic for their business! Even indie rock musicians; duo Bachelor’s new music video is all about getting some of that Harry magic for themselves. The two play exaggerated caricatures of harries, who happen upon someone they mistake for Harry and kidnap him and keep him in their basement (where they force him to sing Stockholm Syndrome repeatedly? No! Truly a missed opportunity, disappointing). The video is “about the dark side of fandom” they say, SIGH. Well, they may have portrayed fandom in the worst possible light, but at least they threw some money at the women they were condescendingly mocking while they were at it, their fan made product budget must have been huge-- like c’mon, just those redbubble bedspreads cost a fortune! 

[youmakemestrong]

Ok on that note: mathilda being about 1d and then post 1d? Like not to say that the boys were not a family (they were and they are) but family as a metaphor for the whole 1s-adjacent team and the whole environment around them? Like esp the „leaving and growing up“ I assume that it must have been such an immensely difficult situation to say „ok we will disappoint so many people with this but we need to do this before sth truly bad happens“ and feeling so guilty but then after a few years being at a point where you can say that it was actually okay to do this and you don't have to feel guilty or sorry for doing what was best for you in that situation and you can still go on to do your own thing (his own band/music) and make it so much better and more rewarding for everyone (also this is about louis wanting to sign his own acts but that's a story for another day)

Like this isn't supposed to turn into a whole lyric analysis but also the bike stuff from the beginning being about trying to get big with 1d but the system is actually old and flawed but they told themselves it was no big deal and that they'd make it work somehow anyway and having to perform and smile and not let on that everything was going wrong behind the scenes and downplaying everything in your own head bc you can't even comprehend all that is going wrong? And being nothing more than an empty robot formed by syco (once again I don't really wanna drag larry into this but „you showed me a power that is strong enough to being sun to the darkest of days??? Hello???)

In conclusion Mathilda is about Harry telling Louis (and himself) that leaving 1D behind was actually a good and necessary idea that will and has allowed all of them to finally grow up in a more normal way.

i really enjoy your analysis here anon so i’m not really going to add anything to it 💔

but i do think it’s mostly a pep talk to his 2015-2016 self

[1ddotdhq]

🙇🏼‍♀️Fri 6 Nov ‘20 🛹

Yesterday was the most absurd night I’ve seen on tumblr in the last five years. Just wanted to throw that out there. Between gay Supernatural news, Nevada going to bed again, and Putin possibly stepping down, we also got discourse™️ about Zayn and Gigi. Two women on twitter stepped forward and have claimed to have been sleeping with Zayn when he was with Gigi. The first woman says that when they were together in 2016 Zayn told her that Gigi was PR, and not an actual relationship, and that she called it off when she found Gigi's medication at Zayn's place. The second woman said that she saw Z from 2016 until February 2020 (and that yes, Gigi was pregnant at that time). She says she got him the custom Dusk ‘til Dawn skateboard that he later gave away in a fan event, and posted at the time about angrily entering the contest to try to get her unappreciated gift back. In another angry tweet (these women were spilling for a reason, they're mad as hell), she said the biggest lesson she’s learned this year is, “never let a boy with a girlfriend convince you into dyeing your hair because you’ll end up with damaged hair and he’ll still have a girlfriend”. Here’s hoping that she goes into 2021 without damaged hair and with someone that wouldn’t give away the gifts she gave them - everyone deserves that! The pair are mostly fighting with each other so more details for us popcorn munching bystanders are thin on the ground; for example neither gives a clue as to whether Gigi supposedly knew about them. Fan reaction is split between not believing the women, insulting the women, insulting Zayn, and insulting each other. I want to say it’s not my place to judge any of them, but I think that at this point I’m just screaming into a void, so I’ll say this: if you’re going to be cruel (especially if you're sexist/racist) about any of them in my notes, you’re going to be blocked.

Niall went live today with a special announcement: Ashe will be joining him LIVE on tomorrow’s show! That’s right: they flew her out to London two and a half weeks ago, had her quarantine, and will now have her perform exactly ONE SONG with Niall: Moral of the Story. Don’t get me wrong, I’m SUPER excited to see her, but uh...I have questions. Has she only flown in and quarantined for one song? Or will Niall do what Liam has been and use her as an opener, allowing her to play her set? I guess we’ll see tomorrow! The Independent reported that 90,000 tickets have already been sold for the concert, which is $1.8 million dollars towards paying Niall’s crew and the WeNeedCrew fund, which is amazing and will go a long way! We also got some instagram stories of him rehearsing, and he sounds great! I am getting more and more excited for this show as time goes on. Some set mock-up pictures of DWD were released, as well as some on site pictures of Jack and Alice’s house: it’s the Kaufmann house, which was made famous by Slim Aaron for his “poolside gossip” picture. It was put back on the market last month for $25 million, though I’m sure the price will only go up after this film premieres. 

Liam, who spoke in the interview that just came out yesterday about the futility of responding to the press and how it just stirs up more press about the same thing, responded to an article about him. The Sun drew on that same interview to report that Cheryl had told him to temporarily “take a break” from his son and insinuated that it was because of partying and addiction struggles, in a call back to their recent article about Liam's drinking (like literally calling back; they linked themselves as their source). Liam took to Instagram to say that the Sun had completely taken his remarks out of context, the context being that he said them in May, and that the thing that had separated him from his son was, “the worldwide pandemic, not because I had anything wrong with me”. He says he was “discussing not being able to see my child which is difficult for any parent. I wish sometimes these people would do the research and give the context instead of painting people a certain way for click bait”. I have no opinion (no thots empty head) other than that Liam was 100% right about one thing: there are now six more articles on this topic which would not have been written had he not said anything. 

And last night's memeing dredged up a lot of trips down tumblr memory lane, a regular retrospective of the last five years, and brought the uncomfortable emergence of a lot of locals posting about babygate ("haha next we'll find out that guy from 1D really wasn't the dad!" ha...ha...uhhh.) A good reminder of how many people are uninvested but still very much aware of the babygate rumors and of how major any kind of announcement or revelation would be, the absolute impossibility of just "ending it while no one is looking!" And in totally unrelated (and unwanted) news, Briana and Nick unshuttered their instagrams. "I'm back!" posts Briana. Ugh, read the room people: you are an unasked for cactus. That being said, please let's all take a deep breath and drink some water and get some sleep. It’s what I’ll be doing all weekend!

[alarrytale]

I think a lot of it comes from old 1D fan culture where we blamed everything on Modest. We were convinced Modest was the reason behind the boys not getting enough breaks, Niall and Louis not getting enough solos, Harry not being allowed to wear nail polish, everything, and that HL’s freedom from Modest meant their freedom from the closet. When that didn’t happen fans became disillusioned and started thinking of all talk of contracts and oppressive management as crazy fan theories. But Modest was just a small company hired by Simon to help manage 1D’s affairs while in the UK (and ONLY while in the UK). The issue was always Syco and, on a larger scale, Sony.

1D was huge. They were raking in ungodly amounts of money for Sony. Knowing what we know about the contracts (like you said from direct sources like court docs and Rebecca) why would Sony let them disband after just five years? It’s because boy bands have a ticking clock (they grow up, fangirls grow up) and they needed to strike while the iron was hot on creating the Beyoncé or the JT of the group. First they tried with Zayn, then with Harry. H is a massive success for them. Him and L negotiated themselves out from Syco but they both still very much work for Sony. They’re under the same contracts they were as teenagers and likely will be for a long time or until Sony decides they’re no longer profitable to them.

Hi, anon!

About Modest. Yes, very much so. All blame usually fell on Modest. But it wasn't without reason. They were badly mismanaged. I don't think it was Syco/Sony that locked them in their hotel rooms, driving them to drink to pass the time (as Liam's talked about) that was all Modest. It was also easy to blame Modest because they were the executor. It was what was clearly visible to us at the time. They were the ones who said that H and L couldn’t sit next to each other and they were the ones who told H to remove his nail varnish. They were also the ones that 1d was visibly fighting against. We didn't all have phds in music business, public relations, contract law and the history of bearding like a lot of us do now.

Many things are so much clearer to us now. We have gained a broader understanding of things and see the puzzle pieces together. I just sometimes wish they would visibly show us that they are still being controlled and are not agreeing to what they have to do. I get that living in constant opposition to Sony like that is exhausting and that giving in and going along with it is easier. They have no choice after all. At the same time we now have fans who thinks that everything that's happening is by their own choice, even larries. And that thought makes people leave, because of their current image and how they act. So here we are...