#and obviously. i have already written a bit of an essay on his initial reaction. but the final act is makin me so crazy. kiryu in y5 is soo

[ghastlycrew]

alsooooo. the differences between how kiryu and saejima respond to majima's "death" are really making me go hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii <3

[parachutingkitten]

Dear Ninjago: Stop It With The Twists Already

An essay by Parachutingkitten

JK! This isn’t that formal. But I do have some lengthy points for you under the cut :)

Ninjago started out with a twist. The whole first season is built around the green ninja twist and the second season kinda subverted the expectation we had built up of Lloyd fighting his dad. This is the last time we had a twist framed as a sort of “big reveal” to both the audience and characters that really served the story in a productive and meaningful way. Let’s look the highlights over the seasons, shall we?

Season 4: Skylor is a villain. This one gets revealed to the audience before the ninja so it’s not really a big reveal twist, more of a suspense thing.

Season 5: Nya is the water ninja, revealed at the beginning of the season and serves more as a development than a twist.

Season 7: Ray and Maya are alive (and aren’t evil... I guess?)! This is our first real stupid twist. And pointless twist. They stick around for the season and then disappear from the show again. This was the first time Ninjago had a twist for twist’s sake. This is the beginning of the problem. 

Season 8: Pixal is Samurai X! Wu is a baby! Harumi is the Quiet One! (I know this one isn’t cannon, but they were troublingly close to including it) Mr. E is Echo! Now, most of these are okay. Just not handled well. This is where the problem becomes evident.

Season 11: Zane is the Ice Emperor. The stupidest twist of them all, and by far handled the poorest.

Now. Why do some of these more recent twists not work? Well, let’s break it down. 

Sometimes the problem is the twist itself. The twist is convoluted, and retcons information we’ve known from before, or has underlying implications that make everything more complicated. Ray and Maya are a perfect example of this. It’s been established since the pilot episode that these two are dead. Kai and Nya grew up on their own. Wu had so much trust in Ray that he gave him the map to the golden weapons. Trying to make us think he was evil was just stupid. Ray and Maya also don’t do that much in the season, besides the whole drama and reveal aspect of the story. You easily could have had them be dead and still get everything done that you needed to plot wise. Maybe have even more time for Nya and Kai to bond as siblings. It just brings up so many questions. Or rather, the one main one of where have they been? Were they really enslaved for ALL THAT TIME?! That’s darker than them just being dead! And to add insult to injury, they don’t show up in the show ever again after this. This twist left no impact on the franchise. It was a complete waste.

Season 8 has a lot of twists, and this introduces the problem of execution. Baby Wu is the one reveal that works. It has proper build up, it makes sense in the narrative, they find out mid season, they piece it together in a pretty mundane scene, and while it is a large reveal moment, the writers assumed you’ve picked up the clues before the ninja have. Compare this to the Pixal reveal. Very similar set up. It ties up a mystery from last season at a similar point in the current season. But the difference is in how they treat it. Pixal has to confess to being Samurai X. No one figures it out. Everyone is shocked and surprised and it culminates in a big dramatic “how could you?! *gasp emoji*” fight scene. I’m sure most everyone knew Pixal was Samurai X even back in season 7. She disappears right as Samurai X enters the picture, it’s really not that hard to piece together. This should have been handled differently. The audience should have been told Pixal was Samurai X ahead of time. We should have gotten a few shots from her perspective. It should have been handled like, oh, idk, Nya’s reveal in season 1. The problem is that they kept it a secret to go for shock value even though it was an easy guess. It would have been much more character enriching if they just handled it like they did baby Wu. Harumi is a little more complicated. Technically, you could argue that her arc goes through season 9, and hence we did get the reveal mid story, even if not mid season. My problem is that before the reveal she’s just such a blah-bland character that you don’t really care about that much, so when the reveal happens, that’s the point where she gets interesting. Why waste the majority of a season carrying around this dead weight that you feel obligated to give screen time to while waiting for her to get interesting? So yeah, it could have been handled a lot better, but it’s nothing compared to the mind bending twist that almost happened.

Mr. E is Echo makes no sense. It just doesn’t. It’s a character from 2 seasons prior who was physically distant to the main cast, had no connection to the villains, was established as a character as being extremely sweet, pure, and kinda ineffective, and probably worst of all, doesn’t have memories of the main cast, and most of them don’t have memories of him. There is just SO MUCH they would have had to explain away. SO MUCH that doesn’t add up. SO MUCH the main cast would have to relearn that it really doesn’t make ANY sense. And what scared me when the season first came out was that it almost made it in to the season. It doesn’t make sense on ANY logical level, so the only reason you would have done this twist is because you thought it was clever and unexpected, and you wanted the shock value. Shock value is the wrong reason to do a twist. 

But they did it again in season 11. They combined all of the problems with all of the previous twists, and mushed them together into the Zane is the Ice Emperor twist. Now, I would like to address @coleisunderrated‘s post about season 11 kinda killing Zane. It’s a good post, and another good lengthy rant to check out after this one if you’re in the mood. But a lot of the claims they made I think kinda missed the point about why this move didn’t work. They said Zane commit genocide (which I guess technically he kinda did, and even the people who were frozen were frozen for years. That's definitely not nothing) and that Zane still had some level of free will, so Vex can’t be an 100% scapegoat.  So because Zane did this horrible thing, there is no chance for him to be redeemed. (Which I kinda see your point, but also, crazy staff that pretty much makes you evil, plus merciless manipulation. Cut him some slack. If Garmadon can be redeemed, so can Zane. Devourer venom and forbidden spinjitzu staff seem to have similar corrupting powers) And though I’d agree that as it stands in the show it feels like they’re ignoring all the awful things Zane’s done and that makes him a kind of a uncomfortable character at the moment- all the set up and what he did is not the problem. The problem is what he didn’t do, and what we didn’t see.

This twist starts at the beginning of the chapter, and finally resolves itself at the very end. The writers obviously thought that Zane being the villain, while having this weird unexplainable time skip made a solid, clever twist. Again, you can tell they were going for shock value and that *gasp emoji* “It’s YOU?!” moment. Problem with that relatively simple set up to keep your twist a secret, is that you now have 20 years of time to account for. Years of people suffering and time skips that are addressed, but are straight up never explained and don’t make any sense when you sit down to think about them for more than a second. These weird ripple effects ringing a bell? They’re the same sorts of retcon problems as the Ray and Maya twist. But that’s not all. It’s also frustratingly predictable. Even if you weren’t sure of your theory the first few episodes, it becomes increasingly clear as the season progresses. The audience doesn’t find out until the characters do, even thought it’s pretty predictable, missing out on a bunch of opportunities for better storytelling- just like the Samurai X reveal. The ice emperor is also kind of a boring character until the reveal, just like Harumi. And, maybe worst of all, it just seems like a clever shock value twist that raises a bunch of questions, doesn’t make sense in character, and needs a ton of explaining, just like the Mr. E scenario. This twist has every single problem I’ve ever had with any twist in this series. 

But it even adds one more.

Even with all the random nonsensical twists in the series, at least all of them had time to resolve. To be explained. For characters to grapple with them. As random and poorly thought out as this ice emperor twist is, it would have been okay if it hadn’t been so very VERY rushed after the reveal. We needed to see his reaction after breaking free. That’s all we needed. 

Imagine this, Zane breaks out of his evil daze, you can keep the kinda cop out reason, it’s a kid’s show, whatever. He looks down at himself and is horrified. He drops to his knees, mutters some line like “what have I done?” or something along those lines. Then, in anger, he looks back up at Vex, and then insert fight scene where he saves the day. Afterwards Zane tosses the staff away, and is in this weird daze as his friends welcome him back. The episode ends with the camera zooming in on Zane’s blank expression. But wait, there’s another episode afterwards where Zane can right his wrongs in the realm, talk with the people, and tie up all the other loose ends while finding himself again. The next season (and they might still be doing this in season 12, but without that initial reaction and remorse, this part rings kinda hollow) Zane is visibly a bit shaken by intense violence and has a talk with someone about the lasting effects of his 20 year rule. The end of the season sees him getting past this fear of hurting people in order to protect those he needs to. This all sounds very deep written out like this, but you could make the dilemma pretty surface level, and it would still be effective.

You see, the real problem with these half length episodes is that ALL of your plot lines have to reach their head, your big final battle has to take place, and your resolution has to happen, all in the last 10 minutes of the season. And you can really tell that season 11 skimped the resolution part. Because Zane only becomes Zane half way through the last episode, there’s no time to explore his feelings about the matter. Even just making the last episode 20 minutes, I feel, would have done wonders for this twist because everything would have had time to breath. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if this had carried over directly into season 12 (kind of like the season 8-9 thing) but that clearly isn’t the case, at least from the episodes we have so far. This emperor thing should affect Zane as much as becoming a ghost affected Cole. Things like this just need time to process. It wasn’t that making Zane the ice emperor made him unlikable, it was that ignoring that Zane was the ice emperor made him unlikable.

And all of these things, I can almost guarantee, happened because the writers just thought it would be a clever twist. It’s not like the writers can’t do twists! Skylor being evil was perfectly fine! Mistake being an Oni was even okay. But they had ideas for what to do with those bits of information after the reveal. They’ve got to stop with these reveals that are just there to be the *gasp emoji* moment. They’re not all bad ideas necessarily! But if you come up with the idea, just because it would be a cool reveal, and that’s it, then it’s likely not a good idea. For example, as nonsensical as the Echo thing is, if he had become a main stay of the series, and a reoccurring villain with backstory and motive that got explained, it might not have been the absolute worst. But if they did what they did in the show and just killed him off a few episodes later, it would have been pointless, because the twist would have made no impact, changed nothing, and had no point. The green ninja reveal was good, not because it was a reveal, but because it allowed Lloyd to be the green ninja in the episodes afterwards. It served as a progression for the story and characters while also happening to subvert this notion set up from episode 1 that one of the four would be the green ninja. Zane being the ice emperor is a bad twist because it affects absolutely nothing in the plot that follows. Zane is back to his happy quirky robot self in season 12, the status quo is restored, and nothing has changed. 

The whole point of a twist is to switch your perspective of something, an action that instinctively insists change. A change in the world. A change in the situation. A change in character. Something. If a twist doesn’t insight change in your story, you’re doing your twist wrong.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to agree/disagree with me in the comments. I get that not everyone is going to agree that Zane could be redeemed no matter how they played it. Again, I think the almost mind control staff, matched with the manipulation, mind wipe, and fact that it’s a kid’s show, and they obviously didn’t mean for it to read that way, is enough for me to kinda ignore it cuz I love Zane, and Ninjago, and I’m not going to let one misstep kill my enjoyment of the show. But, I get it if you can’t get past it.

ttfn!

[princesscatherinemiddleton]

My thoughts and feelings on the Great British Divorce, as written on January 18th (and updated on February 19th)

I wrote a very long and detailed essay on my feelings when the Sussexes stood down and it was super cathartic. I’ve not reread it since (although I have added one final paragraph) but I am going to make you all read it...

Prince Harry announces he is dating Meghan Markle

I had Meghan Markle down with Ellie Goulding, Mollie from The Saturdays, Caroline Flack, and Jenna Coleman as famous women Harry has “dated” that would never come to anything. Then, on a completely normal day when I was at work, Harry released his statement. It was completely unprecedented. Everyone in the staffroom was talking about it, saying things like “I didn’t even know he was dating/Diana would want to see him happy/Who is she?”. And I knew they would be for keeps. This one would become Mrs Harry.

Engagement announcement

Do you want to know what my initial reaction was when the engagement was announced? Fear and worry. I was so so scared that Harry’s fiancé would be put through the same awful treatment Kate had gone through. I was also worried that Meghan would be pitted against Kate and vice versa – I hadn’t spent all those years watching people drag Kate against Diana/Sophie/Camilla/[insert female royal here] to live it again with Harry’s fiancé. But, despite my fears and the initial sinking feeling of dread, I was still excited. Apart from George’s first day at school, Harry and Meghan’s engagement announcement remains the only event with no Kate appearance that has a tag on my blog. I fell in love with the brilliant, charismatic, intelligent woman in the engagement interview. I was excited for the future.

Pre-wedding engagements

My main memory of how I felt at the time was disappointment at Meghan’s outfits. Where had my stylish young professional gone? Why was she wearing these wide-legged trousers that dragged on the floor with long coats? But I genuinely thought they both did really well. Meghan came across as personable and warm and intelligent. They were clearly in sync. They were a modern young couple and the perfect counterpart to the stability of the Cambridges.

Wedding

I was at uni when the wedding happened. I took the day off work and travelled home for one day to surprise my mum and watch the wedding with her. My auntie called me minutes before Meghan appeared to talk to me because she was watching it and she “knew” I was on my own in Bournemouth. When Meghan appeared, I literally crawled in front of the TV and sat inches from the screen so I could see her emerge in her dress in all its glory (I was disappointed, ngl). I cried during her wedding. I’d spent the morning spotting celebrities and Kate was there and the bridal party was fantastic. Meghan’s tiara shone like the jewel she was. Charles, Camilla, and Doria were literally angelic. After the wedding I went to my auntie’s house to watch the FA Cup final (as a family, we always do that and have a BBQ) and I spent all my time on my phone waiting for photos of their evening outfits. I cried again when I saw Meghan’s Stella dress. It’s one of my favourite wedding outfits of all time. I’m a super fussy bitch and I had plenty of complaints with the wedding and I have aired them before but it was a truly happy and wonderful day and I was happy and content.

Post-wedding engagements

I know I’m literally only talking about Meghan but I don’t pay attention to Harry so I barely know if he’s there or not. I think Meghan hit the ground running. She did some brilliant engagements during the time post-wedding and pre-Archie. Her patronage choices were inspired and the work she did with her patronages is some of my favourite Meghan work. Obviously, she also created the Together Cookbook, which doesn’t need going into. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Meghan would have been the Anne of this generation of royals, quietly getting the numbers and doing fantastic work. Meghan was connecting with people no one else could in a way no one had since Harry himself. She quite literally made the role her own.

Faux Pas

Meghan had teething problems but, most of the time, I put them down to cultural differences. Things like talking about abortion in Ireland – any British person knows not to do that. More importantly, it was a political statement, which is, essentially, “against the rules”. I think Meghan would have grown out of these, as she was making far less of them already, in the same way Kate, Camilla, Sophie, and Diana grew out of them. I also think the general public opinion wasn’t as positive as social media has people believe. I was talking to Cece about this but the Africa documentary went down badly. If it wasn’t for Andy’s well-timed interview, I think it would have been a much bigger deal but, as it was, it was swept under the carpet. Don’t get me wrong, I think Meghan made some incredible points in the documentary that deserved being aired BUT I never heard anyone in the real world say anything positive about those decisions. I think, during their time together, both Harry and Meghan made mistakes that warranted criticism and I don’t think they ever received that criticism because…

Press treatment of Meghan

Has every royal woman received incredibly negative headlines? Yes. Has Kate and her family been treated awfully by the press? Yes. Do I find it funny when people make comments like “look, Meghan touched her baby bump and people hate her and they loved it when Kate did it” when I had to sit through people talking about what trailer trash Kate was for touching her bump in her first two pregnancies? Yes. Was Meghan compared to Kate in the same way Kate was compared to Sophie and Sarah compared to Diana? Yes. Was Meghan’s coverage actually that different from the coverage Kate got? No. Did Meghan receive worse coverage than any other British royal? Yes. Without a doubt.

I’ve stayed away from talking about race too much. I am a white woman. I look like a “stereotypically” Jewish woman as my family is Jewish. A large proportion of my family is either from the Republic of Ireland or the Irish travelling community. I’ve seen my family be subject to abuse because of their ethnicity. My mum has scars because her house was set on fire as a child because her dad was Irish. Despite that, I have no idea what it is like to experience racism. I’ve had the most closeted white woman life when it comes to matters of race. None of the things I described was racism in the way Meghan experienced it and none of it means I am in a position where I can join in on this conversation. I have spent years learning about racism and every day I find myself coming across something that I hadn’t considered, like the idea that Meghan is a good mum for going back to work so quickly is a form of positive discrimination and we should tackle that. I genuinely don’t know how much I should get involved in these conversations but I also don’t want to add to emotional labour by continuously directing these conversations towards people of colour.

Coming from my position of privilege, Meghan received some truly awful and horrific treatment at the hands of the press and the public. She was humiliated, her family history and private life was raked over, she was blamed for war because she ate an avocado one time? I can only assume Harry is really good in bed because there is no way I would have stayed with him if I had to go through what Meghan went through. Announcing they were suing the press was still the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen though.

BRF & Meghan

The BRF could have – and should have – done more to protect Meghan from the press. However, I think it was naïve to ever assume they would. I could talk until I’m blue in the face about how it would have helped Meghan’s confidence (and the BRF’s PR) to make a statement like “The Queen and the royal family are greatly distressed at the treatment of the Duchess of Sussex…”. I could talk about how the BRF uses symbolism rather than statements and I watched you all talk about how the Queen loves Meghan because she went on the royal train and had a solo engagement with the Queen so don’t pretend for one minute that you all don’t know that. I could talk about William releasing a statement (which everyone glosses over but go off, I guess). I could talk about how, if the Queen did not release a statement, Kate couldn’t very well have gone off and released one on her own (also, how come it’s always The Queen, Charles, Will, and Kate, where is Camilla?). But there’s no point. They should have done more. It was a massive oversight not to consider how being a woman of colour would affect Meghan’s treatment after becoming a member of the firm and they had a duty to help protect her. But no one should ever have thought it would have happened. The BRF look after number 1 and that, right now, is the Queen. That’s how it has always been. They treated Meghan the same way they treat everyone who isn’t in the direct line (also Andrew but that’s Andrew). As Katie says, anything else would have blown up in Meghan’s face. If I was in charge of the BRF’s PR, I would not have advised them to say anything.

Archie

Archie is a precious angel and I refuse to hear otherwise.

Archie’s birth was poorly handled by Sara but I don’t care. It was cute. Archie’s christening was foolishly handled by the Sussexes. I also don’t massively care. It’s miniscule in comparison to the bigger fish at play. Despite that, the only people who would have cared who Archie’s godparents were, are on this site. By refusing to allow the small bit of access the public get to christenings, it annoyed people who barely even know who Archie is. And we’re still talking about it today. I said to a friend recently that most British people only care about royals when it comes to weddings, babies, and money. With a wedding in Windsor, not London, and on a Saturday (meaning no bank holiday), coupled with a messy birth announcement, no “Lindo Wing” appearance, and the godparent faux pas, they missed golden opportunities to help the public fall in love with them and their family. There’s a reason the Cambridge kids are always seen after a PR disaster.

Sussex Statement

My opinion on the statement? Massively poorly handled. I think the BRF knew the Sussexes wanted out but did not know the statement would be released. This doesn’t contradict anything anyone has said. Harry and Meghan are right to leave. Mentally, and also for their family. They will flourish outside of the confines of the BRF. I also think Harry messed up by releasing the statement when he did. By forcing the hand, the public was calling for them to lose their funding before a decision had to be made (and lo and behold, they lost their funding), rather than being able to release a full statement confirming how much money they would keep. TLDR; good idea, hope it all works out, awfully handled.

Sussex/BRF Resolution

I think it was the best possible solution. I’m a little shocked they are completely stepping down but, as time goes on, I’m not surprised. I think the Sussexes clearly expected to be more half in/half out because their website had a whole section dedicated to royal work and supporting the Queen and taxpayer funding. The website used their titles. There are still things to work out (Duchy funding? How will they repay the taxpayers? Will they go to Trooping? Will they answer letters? SussexRoyal) but I think it’s a good middle ground.

Overall thoughts

The Sussexes are right to leave. The way they left was messy af and I blame Harry for that. I don’t think Meghan was innocent in how they left but I blame Harry for being so trigger happy. They made some bad PR moves in the last few months: announcing they were suing the press (do it quietly or they’ll just come after you more), the documentary, the statement. I think the press will be after them even more now and I think it’s interesting looking at how many times we’ve seen Meghan papped in Canada this year compared to the times we saw her papped in the UK since 2017. I also think, long term, they will lose their star power and become Reese Witherspoon levels of famous. Everyone knows who she is, most people like her, she does some good philanthropic work, she gets freebies, that’s pretty much it. Meghan and Harry’s appeal (and this goes for every single royal) is in the fact they are royal. Without the connection to the BRF, they’re just rich people preaching.

I’m also very sad. I thought Meghan would come back, post maternity leave, with a new project and put everyone else to shame. I thought she would take on new patronages, do a solo overseas visit, and generally flourish as a young working mum. We will see far less of her than we thought we would. I doubt we’ll see little Archie much at all. As for Harry, I can officially say that the most amusing and upsetting thing to come out of this has been seeing good, kind, left-wing people brown nose a rich, privileged, racist, quite frankly dangerous white man because he married a good woman. I think he will struggle more out of the royal bubble than in it because he’s lost the little structure he had.

Harry was always going to leave the royal family. Meghan might have been a catalyst, but she is not the cause. There is nothing the BRF could have done – no statement – that would have stopped him. He did a whole interview about how much he hates being a royal and then said the public need royals. In his new life as a whatever he is now, my biggest worry is that he will spend more time talking publicly about issues like mental health, without understanding what he is saying. I hope I’m wrong and that he flourishes and becomes a force to be reckoned with. But, while I know Meghan will do brilliantly, I have no idea what he’ll do.

Meghan, Archie, I hope you flourish. I can’t wait to see what you do next. Harry. Sayonara, biatch.

A final update

I thought I should give my thoughts on this now – mid-February – after the dust has settled. I genuinely miss a lot of the people the Sussexes brought to the fandom. I miss planning outfits for Meg to wear to events, I miss predicting what Meghan’s next patronages might be. I miss seeing Meghan interacting with the public, because that was where she shone. We now know the Sussexes will formally split on March 31st, after a final set of engagements. I’m super looking forward to these engagements and judging the vibe from everyone there. We also know it’s likely they will have to rebrand (my bet is Sussex Foundation) and I’m assuming this rebrand will happen in April/May time, possibly around their anniversary. Honestly, I was expecting to see more of them. I was expecting more posts on their Instagram about private visits to charities. I was definitely not expecting them to jump straight to JP Morgan and start attending exclusive events. Rich people going to rich people, I guess. Despite that, Meghan and Harry could start a business selling rubber ducks and, quite frankly, it’s none of my business. If we never see them again, that’s their choice as private citizens and I have to respect that. I’m still fascinated to see how this will all turn out but they are now free to live their own lives and, because of that, I’m going to live and let live.

[allsortsofgeekery]

One of Us is Lying: Chapter 1

Synopsis: Five high school students, all from different social groups and ranks in the popularity hierarchy, walk into detention on Monday, September 24; only four walk out. Remy Kallagher was murdered, and the surviving four are all suspects. But who did it—Logan, the valedictorian and student council president, Roman, the star athlete, Patton, the adorable member of the homecoming court, or Virgil, the infamous school drug dealer on probation?

🚨IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS🚨

I do not own this story or these characters. This fanfiction is based off of the novel, “One of Us is Lying”, by Karen M. McManns. I do not claim ownership to anything.

This fic will be dealing with lots of heavy and upsetting topics, so it is VERY IMPORTANT that you read the trigger warnings before you read.

The ending of this fic will be slightly different from the original book.

Word count: 1,750

Trigger Warnings: poisoning, drug mention, cursing, severe allergic reaction (let me know if I’ve missed anything!)

Pairings: eventual analogical

Without further ado, let’s get to the story!

Logan

2:55 PM

Monday, September 24

“NF better end it with her boyfriend, JG, because one night away from her and he’s already sleeping with his girl on the side, KT. Sorry, babe!”

“Turns out the adorable little bookworm WC isn’t as do-no-wrong as we thought. Give her the shot, and she’ll steal your man—which is exactly what she did to her “BFF”, LJ. Turns out, hooking up with your best friend’s boyfriend doesn’t do wonders for your friendship—or your reputation. Back to the books, WC.”

“We’ve all heard about JK’s one night stand with QD from a post a few months back—but it’s apparently not so one-night-standy after all. The two were caught making out in the closet at Q’s Halloween party, making everyone wonder if they’re still going strong. Trick or treat?”

Logan Sanders stood at his locker, scrolling through the day’s most recent gossip posts. The lengths he’d go to to stall today. He usually pretended he didn’t care about the posts—most of the time, he really didn’t—but sometimes he couldn’t help himself. Besides, he’d do anything to delay what was about to happen.

“Hey, bitch,” a voice said from behind him. Logan cringed inwardly. He tried to close out of the app, but it was too late. Remy Kallagher had already reached out, hand closed around his wrist and eyes set upon his phone screen. “Reading my very own posts?” Remy asked in a mock-flattered voice. “I’m honored, Mr. President. But it’s old news. Just you wait until tomorrow. You’ll love it.”

Remy’s eyes glinted in a way that Logan didn’t like. He yanked his wrist out of Remy’s bone breaking grasp and shook his head. “Believe me, Remy, my reading your posts is a very rare occurrence.”

Remy grinned like a Cheshire cat. “It won’t be for long.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to—“ he was cut off by a small buzz from his phone. There was a single message from Valerie Rosario, a girl on the Mathletes team with him.

“Hey! Are you coming to Ellen’s Coffee for practice today?”

A bubble that showed Valerie was typing appeared in the bottom corner of the screen, and then a second message was added:

“Jared’s here!”

Logan felt his face grow hot. Of course, he realized fully that among all of his extracurriculars and classes, it would be pointless and silly to pursue a romantic relationship. Even though Jared Williams had perfect, toothpaste-commercial teeth and polo shirts with his initials monogrammed into them and may very well be the first hot mathlete ever.

Regardless. Logan definitely didn’t care that stupidly smart Jared Williams was at Mathletes practice today. And he definitely didn’t care that he couldn’t make it today.

Remy leaned over and grinned his catlike grin. “Jared Williams, huh? Spill the Tea material or no?”

Logan went hot. “Spill the Tea” was Remy’s gossip app that the entire school read. He claimed he posted all of the gossip there to help people, but he really held it over everyone’s heads and used it to keep them in line. And it worked—ever since he had started the blog, nobody ever crossed Remy, because they knew he could dig up dirt on them. The whole school read “Spill the Tea”, no matter how much they hated it, though—it was their number one source of gossip and news. Even Logan wasn’t above it.

Logan had never been featured. Obviously. There was only one thing that could have possibly made it onto the site that concerned him, but Remy couldn’t know about that.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Logan said, shouldering his backpack and shoving past Remy. He couldn’t be late for his sentence. His unfair sentence, he reminded himself. To his annoyance, Remy still tagged along, a pest that Logan couldn’t seem to shake.

“So, where’re you off to, Mr. President?” Remy asked, employing the nickname he had been using since Logan had been elected Student Council President. It was beyond infuriating. “Off to one of your extracurriculars?”

“Don’t I wish,” Logan muttered under his breath as he came to a stop in front of Professor Walker’s door. Remy looked at him expectantly, willing him to move. When Logan stood his ground, the color rising in his cheeks, Remy suddenly burst out laughing.

“You?” He said between snorts. “Oh, sis! What’d you even do?”

“Nothing,” Logan replied, his tone and expression even. “I was falsely accused.”

Remy wasn’t having it. “Sure, okay, whatever you say, Prez,” he said between snorts.

Logan opened his mouth to respond, but Remy had already pulled the door open and stepped into the lab.

Logan took in the odd gathering. Definitely not the type of people he had been expecting—well, except for one. Virgil Macauley, the school’s notorious drug dealer, grinned like he had just won the lottery when he caught sight of him.

“You make a wrong turn?” He remarked, a shit eating grin on his face. “This is detention, not student council.” Logan flushed a fire engine red.

“Mr. Macauley,” Professor Walker said from behind the teacher’s desk. “This is not the time for commentary.” Virgil tipped his chair back and rapped on the desk with his fingers in reply.

Logan took a quick inventory of the other delinquents stuck in detention; other than himself, Remy, and Virgil, there were only two others: Roman Prince and Patton Hart. Neither seemed like the type to get a detention to him, but he supposed the students from the popular group were all wild cards. It was odd seeing Patton without his boyfriend. Even now, he looked utterly lost without him. Logan wondered bemusedly if it had taken a crowbar to pry them apart.

“Mr. Walker,” Logan began once he took his seat. Professor Walker looked up and quirked an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. “Please. There’s been a mistake, sir. I don’t know how that phone got in my backpack, because it does not belong to me. This is mine,” he said, pulling it out of his backpack and showing him. Mr. Walker sighed and steepled his fingers.

“Mr. Sanders,” he began. “These are the facts. You are not supposed to have a phone in my classroom. I found a phone in your bag. You broke the rules, you suffer the consequences. Case closed.”

“But sir—“

“I trust I should not have to repeat myself, Mr. Sanders, unless if you would like a second visit?”

Logan fell silent, but the others—save Remy—were now staring at him with a newfound interest.

“Mr. Walker, I think we’re being pranked,” Roman declared. He brushed a sandy curl out of his eyes. “The phone you found in my bag wasn’t mine, either.”

“Mine, either!” Patton piped up, looking between the two of them with wide, curious blue eyes. “I always keep my phone in my locker, I promise!”

Patton looked so earnest that even Logan had to admit that Mr. Walker was being stubborn when he shook his head.

“Boys, you knew the rule. Put the conspiracy theories to rest. In the meantime, you are all to write a five-hundred word essay about how technology is destroying the fabric of society as we know it,” Mr. Walker said, handing out notepads and pens. Patton’s brows furrowed again.

“But...Mr. Walker, if we don’t have computers, how do we know when we hit five hundred words?” His soft features scrunched up in confusion. Walker merely tapped a finger on the pad.

“Count, Mr. Hart.”

Roman

3:07 PM

Monday, September 24

He could hear the sounds of baseball practice going on outside without him. Roman rested a hand on his cheek and gazed at the clock. He had only been in here for less than ten minutes? Good god, he didn’t know how he was going to make it until four. He had just started his third paragraph--written in perfect, loopy cursive--when Remy raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Kallagher?”

“Can I get some water?”

Mr. Walker rubbed his temples. “Don’t you have any with you?” Remy smirked and shook his head. Walker heaved a sigh. “Very well. There’s a sink with some cups by the wall. Be quick.”

Remy saluted lazily and got up. Roman turned his attention back to his essay--or tried to, rather, because at that very second, the sound of screeching tires squealed from outside. Already on his feet, Roman raced to the window.

There was a red Camaro that looked as though it hadn’t been used in years that had crashed into an ordinary gray Volkswagen. The accident looked minor, probably nothing more than a fender bender, but it was enough to get Mr. Walker moving.

“Mr. Sanders, keep the room contained. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said to Logan before rushing out the door to inspect the damage. But by the time they even turn to look back out the window, the cars are already pulling out of the lot.

“Huh,” Virgil breathed, pressing a hand to the window.

“Well...at least nobody’s hurt…” Patton started unsteadily. He bit his lower lip.

Remy had already backed away from the window and perched himself on a desk, picking up his cup of water. “Bitches. This is perfect.”

Roman quirked an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“You ever seen ‘The Breakfast Club’? This is, like, real life Breakfast Club.”

“I don’t understand what you’re referring to, Remy,” Logan said in his monotonous way of speaking. Remy rolled his eyes.

“Sure you don’t. Think about it. You’re all, like, walking movie stereotypes. The nerd,” he said, pointing his chin at Logan. “the homecoming prince,” nodding at Patton, “the jock,” a pointed glance at Roman, “and the basket case.” This earned him a growl from Virgil.

“Even so,” Logan started, his arms folded across his chest. “What does that make you?”

“The nuisance,” Virgil muttered from the far corner of the room. Remy narrowed his eyes at him for a split second before turning his attention back to Logan and grinning almost wickedly.

“I’m the omniscient narrator, Prez.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “In ‘The Breakfast Club’? As far as I know, there was none.” Remy’s almost-evil grin widened.

“Maybe not in ‘The Breakfast Club’,” he conceded. Then he grinned and held up the cup in a strange sort of toast to the five of them. “But there is one in life.” Then he drained his cup.

Roman glanced at Patton. Patton looked back, looking thoroughly confused and possibly a little disturbed. Roman opened his mouth to tell Remy to stop being weird, but Remy dropped his empty cup to the ground.

His eyes bulged, and he clawed at his throat. Roman at first thought that he was joking, but suddenly the others were standing, too, staring at him with looks of concern.

“Remy…?” Patton began, but Remy didn’t show signs of responding. Instead, he fell off of his desk and hit the ground with a thud.

Taglist:

@sparkletastic-cookiedough @mijako98

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 1x02 Earth Skills

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

...........................

The first 2 episodes of season 1 are its weakest, just as I remember them. But initially I thought episode 1x02 was worse - I had mixed feelings about the Pilot, but then really disliked the second episode. This time, however, the Pilot was much worse than I remembered it, while this episode was... well, pretty much the same, but I enjoyed it more this time. Because, when I first watched the Pilot, I focused on all the new info on the show's premise, the setting, the universe, the SciFi stuff, and pretty much ignored all the cringey early teen soapy stuff (which I didn't even remember). But then the second episode came, and all the cringey teen soapy stuff in that episode just came right at me and annoyed the heck out of it. So this time, I already remembered it, so I could focus on other things.

BTW, I need to have good laugh at the often stated claim that The 100 doesn't focus on romance or do much romance or set up ships. The show does romance all the time. There are ships all over the place, but most of them pretty much suck, especially since most of them are poorly written insta-romances. And these early episodes are full of various romances and potential romances, and love triangles (which some people say the show has stopped doing... except it never did - *cough season 5 *cough* - but at least it scaled back on it a bit). 

Now don't misunderstand me - I don't mind that there's a lot of that, what I did mind is how badly all of that was written in these early episodes. Later, the show did lose most of its early CW-ness and start doing romantic plots better, in some cases at least. (But it also started doing them even worse, in some other cases.)

Rating: 4.5/10

First introduction of Raven, and she immediately shows that she's smart, capable and awesome. At this point, she seems almost perfect, but we know she was just initially meant to be a temporary supporting character and romantic obstacle for Finn/Clarke. We find out that she's the youngest zero G engineer in 52 years. She's also the first person to figure out that the Delinquents aren't dying, but simply taking their trackers off. How come this never crossed the minds of any of the Ark leaders? They came off a bit dumb here.

First meaningful interactions between Abby and Raven - the start of their friendship/pseudo-mother daughter relationship. Abby enlists Raven to fix an old escape pod so she(Abby) could get to the ground. Raven insists she will go, too, since she also has a loved one there. Multiple mentions of her boyfriend, and I can now see the big hints with the origami that Finn is that boyfriend. I missed that the first time, which is lucky, or I would have hated this episode even more, for trying to set up more than one annoying insta-love-triangle involving Finn and Clarke. I think this is the first time we get a mention of a year? But not the year when the show takes place. The escape pod is a 130 year old piece of junk that was found when they rescued MIR-3 in 2102. At least that gives us an idea of what century it is. ( The 100 wiki has a timeline and says the year is 2149, IIRC, but I don't know where that info is from.) I remember that Clarke, Abby and Raven were my favorite characters by far, followed by Monty, and pretty much the only characters I really liked (I was intrigued by Bellamy, and to a lesser extent Octavia, but I didn't exactly like them), since they were the only characters doing smart and good and pragmatic stuff and trying to save people. Then later, during season 1, Raven fell down a few places in my rankings, because I was so frustrated with her moping over Finn. Well, Wells was OK, but I didn't like some things they were doing with him here. One of the things I remembered best from this episode is that it clumsily tried to set up a Wells/Clarke/Finn love triangle, and that it made me roll my eyes so much. And for whatever reason, Bellamy was the one to talk about it to Wells and go on about how Clarke supposedly doesn't see Wells next to Finn, blah blah. Octavia isn't the only Blake with cringey dialogue anymore. Sorry, I'm gonna go on a mini-rant. Why was it necessary for the show to imply that Wells was in love with Clarke? You know how some people claim that the show is so into platonic male/female friendships (which somehow always is all about Clarke and Bellamy, because other male and female characters on the show aren't ever friends or something)? Yeah, right. Clarke and Wells were BFFs from childhood, grew up together - if you're looking for a "sibling-like" relationship between people on the show who are not related, that's the closest thing to it, but apparently, Wells couldn't have done all those sacrifices for Clarke if he wasn't in love with her. Right? But Clarke only sees him as a BFF, and he is so important to her... that the show had her mourn him for about 10 minutes in episode 4 after he was killed, and then never mention him again. If they ever actually wanted a great completely platonic, sibling-like close relationship between a man and a woman, that was a great opportunity. But they obviously didn't care. And speaking of people who grew up together and refer to each other as family, so they would therefore fit the idea of sibling-like relatively well (unlike Clarke and Bellamy, who didn't even know each other or interact with each other till they were 23 and almost 18, respectively)... well, there's also Finn and Raven. Who are also boyfriend and girlfriend. Kinda weird. I wonder when the writers decided to kill of Wells. I think it definitely was only after this episode, because this episode spends a lot of time building up Wells as a heroic character and setting up that love triangle that never goes anywhere, because Wells dies in 1x03. I think that, if the writers were at all planning an "endgame" (though I hate that word) love interest for Clarke, it was probably Wells at this point, because I don't think they were considering Bellamy that way at this point, and Finn, while clearly meant as the initial love interest, has False Romantic Lead written all over him. I sometimes wonder what the show would look like if they hadn't killed off Wells. I think Finn's "peacemaker" role in season 1b was probably planned for Wells. But I'm really relieved that we didn't get a love triangle that's all "Unlucky Childhood Friend/nice guy in unrequited love with a girl who is into another guy who is charming but kind of a jerk/cheater, until she finally realizes he's the one for her", because I hate that trope so much. Sorry, Finn lovers, if any of you are reading this - but Finn comes off even worse on rewatch than he did when I watched it the first time. He was always a guy who's just there and whose only interest seemed to be following Clarke around and flirting with her, but his time I'm noticing things like, even when he does good things, he only does them after he's realized Clarke would like him to do it, and tries to make himself look good and be the guy that she needs in her life. When I first watched this, I just had profound indifference towards him, which grew into active annoyance in this episode. And I didn't even realize at the time that he had a girlfriend on the Ark. Or that, after Clarke shamed him for not wanting to come and help rescue Jasper, he only changed his mind and came after Clarke had made Bellamy join the rescue party. My annoyance was initially mostly because of the scene where they are on the way to finding Jasper and saving him, and Finn decides to instead convince Clarke that she's wound up too tight and should just relax and they should splash each other with water. Which would be OK, if Jasper wasn't potentially dying. Priorities? And there was also his pop psychology where he tells Clarke that she is so desperate to save Jasper because she couldn't save her father, and we're obviously supposed to see it as super--meaningful. Is it just me that thinks that wanting to save people in general, and especially those you know, is a normal human reaction? Which is why Clarke was the character I immediately liked and related to. And also why this scene annoyed me so much. My feelings on it are exactly the same now, except maybe now I'm not sure that the show ever even meant for the Finn/Clarke pairing to be seen as an especially good one. Meanwhile, it seems that the show staff had realized between the Pilot and the second episode that Bob was super hot, so now Bellamy gets to be shirtless and with ruffled hair that looks much better on him, and is just friendly parting from some random Delinquent girl he's had sex with and who never appears again. I guess the casual sex (and later threesomes) were supposed to be a part of his 'bad boy' persona, since it pretty much stopped once the show started making him into a more heroic figure. Even though there's actually nothing wrong about single people having casual sex for pleasure, so it's not like that marks him as 'bad'. (The show, however, seemed less judgy about casual sex in later seasons, so I don't know.) However, he does a lot of other thing in this episode that are actually bad, like making the kids take off their wristbands so they'll have food, or acting dictator-like ("I will not be disobeyed") and over-protective of Octavia, including punishing Atom for making out with her. I didn't hate Bellamy early on as many did, but he frustrated me a lot, and was definitely at his most annoying in 1x02. However, I always had a lot of leeway for both him and Octavia, no matter how annoying they acted at this point, because of their backstory. And now I can even understand his over-protectiveness a bit better, knowing hat happened the last time he tried to let Octavia enjoy life. Much of the episode was about Octavia trying to find a guy to make out with, and specifically trying to make Atom (the guy Bellamy charged with protecting her). make out with her. She's being a huge brat at this point, but it's understandable - she was isolated, under the floor and locked up, all her life, and now she wants to be free and enjoy it. One interesting moment is when she told Atom: "Wall won't stop what's out there, we need weapons" - which is the first time she sounded like later Octavia. But her later love of fighting also makes sense for her character - fighting, especially with bare hands or cold weapons, is an energetic activity that produces an adrenaline rush, kind of like sex/making out. The scene where she chases butterflies in the woods and then makes out with Atom was one of the most visually beautiful. It looked very romantic, in the sense of enjoying life and nature. Not in the sense of actual romance, unless by 'romance' one means 'making out with a random person you met a day ago and barely know.' But to be fair, even Octavia's upcoming big OTP romance with Lincoln began with little more than physical attraction, and she knew him even less than Atom by the time they hooked up. The best interactions Ocfavia had in the episode were with Monty - the start of one of the better, underrated m/f genuinely platonic friendships on the show. This exchange was quite interesting: Monty: "Living under the floor all your life, it's amazing that you're not a complete basket case". Octavia: "Who says I'm not?" Monty was really cool in this episode - while Octavia was having some drama with Atom and some other guy, he was like "quiet, guys, I'm working" and was just calmly working on trying to make radio communications with the Ark possible. A bit more backstory on him and Jasper: they obviously have known each other for a long time, and Monty compares his relationship with Jasper to the Blakes, saying that Jasper may not actually be his brother but they are just as close. However, the Blakes aren't really like a regular sibling relationship, it's one of those sibling relationships (like Katniss/Prim in The Hunger Games) where the elder sibling had to grow up early and take care of the younger, so it's more like a parent/child relationship. Which is really one of the main problems of their relationship - Bellamy sees Octavia almost as his child and is extremely protective and sacrificial (the way we otherwise see parents act towards their children in The 100), and Octavia is constantly rebelling against him as kids rebel against authority. First significant interaction between Monty and Clarke, too. When Wells and Monty volunteer to save Jasper, Clarke tells Monty to stay behind because he's too important for the group's survival - he was raised on a Farm station, trained as an engineer. "food and communications. What's up here (*touches his head*) is going to save us all". (And how right she was!) That's some good, smart, pragmatic thinking - and she also managed to convince him without having to say that he also wouldn't be the most useful in a fight. I notice so many gender stereotypes in how the characters are written in these early episodes, more than the show usually has afterwards. Jasper and Monty were constantly talking about impressing girls in the Pilot, Jasper thought Finn had "game", and in this episode, we constantly have women shaming men into doing things by implying they would look weak or cowardly otherwise. Octavia tries to make Atom let her make out with guys/make out with her by saying he would be her brother's "bitch" otherwise (when did she learn to talk like that? I guess, during those two-three days on Earth?). Clarke tells Finn how disappointed she is that he refuses to join the rescue party, calling him a coward. (Though Monty shames Finn, too, saying "Jasper looked up to you". Which doesn't mean much, since the reason Jasper looked up to him is because he thought Finn was good at impressing girls.) And then Clarke makes Bellamy join the rescue party by implying he will look scared in front of the others/less brave than she is, otherwise (though that was more about Bellamy having to maintain authority in the group - which he needs for his own reasons), Then Bellamy enlists his sidekick Murphy to come, too. Murphy: "What are we doing? I didn't think we were in the rescuing business." Oh, you have no idea. The interactions between Bellamy and Clarke in this episode were quite interesting. I didn't ship them at this point, but I know now that some people already did, and I can see why. The scenes where they are into each other's faces and being antagonistic... well, this is the scene where Clarke says she will never take off the wristband, and Bellamy calls her "Brave princess" sarcastically (?):

What are you doing here, Bellamy? If he means to try to be snarky or antagonistic, he's not doing a good job, because "Brave princess" is not an insult, it sounds like he's impressed by her. (Which he probably is, though I'm not sure he's aware of it yet.) I'm sure he thinks she should hate her, because she is making things difficult for him and she's one of the privileged high class people from the Ark. That's what Bellamy means, at least at first, when he calls her "princess" - he's not using that nickname to flirt with her, like Finn. At least, I'm sure he does't mean to flirt. But... he kind of looks like he's flirting. I think, at this point, he's really, really confused.

And that's exactly the moment when Finn comes along, finally having decided to join the party, and says "Come up with your own nickname". Finn seems very possessive over... that nickname.

Later when they find Jasper, he gets all take-chargey and tells Wells to keep an eye on Bellamy, and Murphy to come help him take Jasper down from the tree. I can't help but think of another, far less successful and very unfortunate rescue mission, in season 2, where Murphy will also end up as Finn's reluctant sidekick.

I love the way that Bellamy acts like he's so ruthless (which he probably believes himself to be, much more than he actually is), when he tells Murphy he will take Clarke's wristband off even if he has to cut off her arm to do it...but then later, when she almost falls into the pit full of spikes, he instinctively grabs her arm and saves her life - and then has the look on his face "What did I just do? What am I doing? Why I am doing this?" He really is confused.

Early season 1 Bellamy is such a hot mess. Kind of like Clarke will end up being a hot mess in season 5, and similarly impulsive, emotionally damaged and preoccupied with just protecting their "child" while ignoring the big picture, while season 1 Clarke/season 5 Bellamy are acting pragmatically while trying to save everybody. They've really switched roles. And I expect season 6 Bellamy to help Clarke to get back to who she used to be, just as Clarke helped him find himself in season 1.

I love the song "Can't Pretend" by Tom Odell, which closes this episode. (I'll be seeing him in concert in a week.) But I didn't initially even notice it in the episode - I only paid attention to it when I saw some The 100 fanvideos with it. It's too emotional and the lyrics don't really fit either of the rather shallow romances (Finn/Clarke and Octavia/Atom) whose scenes it covers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUmtXzuSGu8

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING ADVANTAGE

Today a lot of people who get rich by creating wealth, which is the satisfaction of people's desires. Another possibility would be to let that opportunity slip. Hence a vicious for the losers cycle: VC firms that have been doing badly will only get the deals the bigger fish have rejected, causing them to continue to do so but be content to work for a long time. One of the most powerful forces in history. In other words, you get anything, but this is the Bambi version; in simplifying the picture, I've also made everyone nicer. When I heard about after the Slashdot article was Bill Yerazunis' CRM114.1 Bulgaria, we could all probably move on to working on something so new that no one else has done before. What's a startup to do? I now believe, is like a pass/fail course for the founders, because they were living in the future.

Plans are just another word for ideas on the shelf. Which is not to run unnecessary utilities that people might use to break into this group.2 Also they find they now worry obsessively about the status of their server.3 A third and quite significant advantage of angel rounds is that they're too much influenced by recipes for wisdom. Computers are so cheap now that you can. Web-based software they are going to get bought for 30, you only have to compete with other local barbers. Things are very different in the early days of microcomputers.

Who made the wealth it represents? Large-scale investors care about their portfolio, not any individual company. In a traditional series A round they often don't. It would be like being an actor or a novelist.4 Actors do. But they usually let the initial meetings stretch out over a couple weeks.5 As one VC told me: If you were talking to four VCs, told three of them that you accepted a term sheet, ask how many of their last 10 term sheets turned into deals.6 Which for founders will result in the perfect combination: funding rounds that close fast, with high valuations.7

During the panel, Guy Steele also made this point, with the idea of versions just doesn't naturally fit onto Web-based applications, everything you associate with startups is taken to an extreme with Web-based applications. It had the same probability,. It's just not reasonable to expect startups to pick an optimal round size in advance, because that means your growth rate is decreasing. There are three main disadvantages: you mix together your business and personal life; they will probably not be as well connected as the big-name VC firm will not screw you too outrageously, because other founders would avoid them if word got out.8 Because of Y Combinator's position at the extreme end of the scale of the successes in the startup world, closing is not what deals do. But more than half the agreed upon price.9 When you can reproduce errors and release changes instantly, you can manufacture them by taking any project usually done by multiple people and trying to do things that might look bad. And software that's released in a series of small changes.

C is pretty low-level, but it looks like they're merely floating downstream. But what if your manager was hit by a bus?10 In the past, but users won't hear about them anymore. The most naive version of which is the prudent choice. If you're already profitable, on however small a scale, it costs nothing to fix.11 Since demo day occurs after 10 weeks, the company is default alive or default dead may save you from the building burning down. But by the time most people hear about it. Half the founders I talk to a startup.

With respect to the continuance of friendships. It would be nice to be able to find statistical differences between these and my real mail.12 Who would rely on such a test? He got a 4x liquidation preference. In a company founded by two people, 10% of the total or $10,000, whichever is greater. I asked him if he could get all the attention, when hardly any of them can succeed is if they all do. Before Durer tried making engravings, no one would have any doubt that the fan was causing the noise.

And once you've written the software, our Web server, using the state of your brain at that time.13 If server-based software will make new languages fashionable again. As word spreads that startups work, the number may grow to a point that would now seem surprising. Tokens that occur within the To, From, Subject, and Return-Path lines, or within urls, get marked accordingly.14 Another way to fund a startup is like being an administrator.15 And so you didn't get a lot of what looks like work. Except you judge intelligence at its best and character at its worst.16 The most obvious advantage of not needing money is that you can get at least someone to pay you significant amounts, the money is there, waiting to be invested. The advantage of raising money from them. And yet the trend in nearly everything written about the subject is to do the opposite: to squash together all the aspects of it that are most measurable.

In the long term. So if you want to isolate from your developers as much as a checkout clerk because he is one more user helping to make your software very efficient you can undersell competitors and still make a profit. Technology gives the best programmers of any public technology company. One thing we'll need is support for the new way that server-based.17 As long as VCs were writing checks, founders were never forced to explore the limits of the markets it serves. And that doesn't seem a wise move. A company that grows at 1% a week will in 4 years be making $25 million a month.18 In fact, I'd say investors are the most common type, so being good at solving those is key in achieving a high average may help support high peaks. VCs obviously don't need to: it lets them choose their growth rate. But at the moment when successful startups get money from more than one of the big dogs will notice and take it away. Now the group is looking for more investors, if only to get this one to act.19 For many, the only thing that mattered, and you are very happy because your $50,000 into at a valuation of a million can't take $6 million from VCs at that valuation.

Notes

Prose lets you be more likely to be self-interest explains much of the businesses they work for startups overall. The liking you have good net growth till you run through all the time I did the section of the magazine they'd accepted it for had disappeared. And that is not the shape that matters financially for investors.

I made because the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the shareholders instead of crawling back repentant at the outset which founders will do worse in the sophomore year.

But you can ignore.

Several people have historically been so many people work with me there. Thought experiment: If doctors did the same gestures but without using them to stay in a place to exchange views. Delicious, but in practice that doesn't have users.

But what they're selling and how unbelievably annoying it is not whether it's good enough at obscuring tokens for this at YC. But on the critical question is only half a religious one; there is a bit dishonest, incidentally, because it aggregates data from crashed hard disks. Different kinds of startups is that the VCs I encountered when we created pets.

It doesn't take a long time by sufficiently large numbers of users to recruit manually—is probably 99% cooperation.

If you're good you'll have to assume the worst. Particularly since many causes of the fake. Charles Darwin was 22 when he received an invitation to travel aboard the HMS Beagle as a type II startups won't get you type I startups. Basically, the most common recipe but not in 1950.

One thing that drives most people come to writing essays is to the minimum you need to be doctors? Later you can play it safe by excluding VC firms expect to make money from the 1940s or 50s instead of just Japanese.

And what people actually paid. But knowledge overlaps with wisdom and probably also intelligence. A more powerful, because sometimes artists unconsciously use tricks by imitating art that does.

It's not the original text would in itself be evidence of a company they'd pay a premium for you, what that means having type II startups won't get you a termsheet, particularly if a company, but the problems you have to want to create a silicon valley out of the proposal. Photo by Alex Lewin. But it is to write in a large organization that often creates a situation where they are.

But his world record only lasted 46 days. Statistical Spam Filter Works for Me.

There is always 15 weeks behind the doors that say authorized personnel only. The reason the US is partly a reaction to drugs. Steven Hauser. Needless to say whether the 25 people have seen, so we should, because it was briefly in Britain in the sense that if you needed to read this to be more like Silicon Valley is no different from technology companies between them.

Well, almost.

At two years, it is more of a heuristic for detecting whether you can talk about the Airbnbs during YC. I may try allowing up to two of the next three years, but conversations with other people's. If only one founder is always raising money, then work on open-source but seems to have to do work you love: a to make that leap.

The First Industrial Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1996. The markets seem to be at the outset which founders will do worse in the 1990s, and that the feature was useless, but the meretriciousness of the Dead was shot there.

Whereas many of the former, and the first philosophers including Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions.

Maybe what you can hire unskilled people to endure hardships, but it seems a bit.

According to Zagat's there are already names for this is the ability of big companies to say they prefer great markets to great people to bust their asses.

It's a strange feeling of being Turing equivalent, but there are no misunderstandings.

Thanks to Eric Raymond, Marc Andreessen, Ed Dumbill, Chris Anderson, Sam Altman, Robert Morris, and Mike Arrington for the lulz.

[28allthelove28]

Why I Believe In ‘Larry Stylinson’ And Why It Is Very Beautiful (18,000 words)

Author’s note

Why have I written this?

 One Direction unexpectedly came into my life in December 2015 and never left. I tried to fight it, then I accepted that it is not a bad thing. Perhaps I was hesitant to embrace the obsession because as someone whose favourite bands are The Cure, Suede and PJ Harvey, it just all seemed very out of character and unexpected.

 I will confess that the immediate appeal of One Direction was their good looks and dress sense. I happened to see them on Alan Carr Chatty Man and was completely taken aback at Harry Styles’ long curls, tattoos and deep voice - especially because the last time I’d seen him was as a 16 year old X-Factor contestant years ago. However, after the initial ‘Oh my God! When did they become men? Why did no one tell me? I need to catch up!’ reaction, I did some excessive YouTubeing and the main thing I discovered was what genuinely lovely and talented people One Direction are - and that is why I am still here. I like their music, I love them as people, and they make me happy, and there is no shame in that.

It took very little time during my early research into Harry and the band to come across the ‘Larry Stylinson’ rumours – the couple name fans have adopted for him and Louis Tomlinson from the band. After watching a few freddieismyqueen videos, I could clearly see there was something there.

I must admit that my One Direction and Larry obsession began as an escape from the stresses of writing my dissertation, then deepened as a coping mechanism when my five year relationship ended. The 1D and Larry fandom became a safe space with no memories of my ex, a totally new thing, which was completely for me. Perhaps I just needed to transfer all of my remaining affection into One Direction as a replacement for him, because it was less painful to love boys I had never met and that could not leave me. Maybe I became invested in protecting Harry and Louis’ relationship to eradicate the fact I could not save my own. But now, now that One Direction and their fans have helped make me stronger and made me realise that he must not have been the Louis to my Harry, I am here no longer because I need to be, but because I want to be.

I do need to make it very clear that I do not believe Harry and Louis are together simply because I want to. I do not believe they are together because I like the idea of them together - I like the idea of them together because I believe that they are together. I don’t ‘ship’ it, I support it.

What I have written in the following essay is the basis of why I believe they are in love. I must again make it clear that I have in no way written this as a method of exposing Harry or Louis, or prying into their privacy, and I am not trivialising their situation. I also do not want Harry or Louis to come out unless they want to, and if they do then it should happen when they want and how they want. Harry and Louis’ actions, which I discuss in the essay, imply that they do want fans to know about them, so I therefore feel like it is fair to listen to what they tell us and to share the story that they want us to hear but cannot yet tell us themselves.

If I’m honest the main reason why I decided to write this is because my friend said she didn’t like Louis and that she thought he was homophobic. I do not wish to force my beliefs on anyone but I simply did not feel comfortable with Louis wrongfully being perceived as homophobic. I began writing this as a way to back him up, and I just got carried away and wrote thousands and thousands of words.

Harry and Louis’ situation is very complex, especially because I obviously do not actually know them and this technically is none of my business, I just got swept up in wanting to support them. Because so much ‘evidence’ for their relationship exists, it is often difficult to keep up with everything, I therefore found writing this was also a helpful method for me to organise all the information.

It seems very extreme for me to have gone to such lengths but that is the nature of getting obsessed with something, not wanting to stop till you have reached some form of conclusion. As I said, I do not want this essay to seem in any way disrespectful to Harry or Louis, or anyone in the LGBTQI+ community. Essentially I just feel that Harry and Louis deserve for people to understand what I believe to be the ‘real’ them. I do not want people to believe the false media portrayal of homophobia and womanising when I have seen proof which denies that, and I feel like it is respectful to Harry and Louis for people to, if possible, understand what kind, loving, strong and inspiring people I believe them to be.

     Thank you for reading this!!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send them my way. The points I discuss are not in chronological order but have occurred since One Direction began in 2010 and up until May 2017, when I finished this essay. Therefore depending on when you read this, I may have missed out vital information which had not occurred when I printed this, which essentially means this text will remain unfinished until Larry are free. I have not included proof for each point I make but most things appear in the recommended reference links at the end. If you want proof photos for anything in particular, just ask!

 My One Direction/Larry twitter account is @All_The_Love_28 my email is ionafrancesbrown@hotmail.co.uk and my website with some examples of my One Direction/Larry fan art is ionafrancesbrowndoingart.wordpress.com – at some point I will post a link to an online version of this essay on my blog.

 Lots and lots of love and hugs 

Love is love x

Contents:

  4. Non denials

4. Outing

5. Complimentary tattoos

7. Supportive moments

8. Sexual moments

9. Domestic moments

11. Marriage or engagement conspiracy

12. Songs and lyrics

14. Stunts - Supposed girlfriends

16. Management control

17. Louis’ supposed baby

20. Communication with fans – Concert signs

20. Social media messages

22. Blue and green meaning

22. Fashion choices

23. Bee symbolism

24. Rainbow bears

25. Summary

26. Conclusion

27. References

        A DOCUMENT OF EVIDENCE WHICH I FEEL PROVES THE THEORY THAT HARRY STYLES AND LOUIS TOMLINSON FROM ONE DIRECTION ARE IN A LOVING, LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP:

 Non denials –

When an interviewer asked Harry who his first real crush was he answered Louis Tomlinson. The interviewer again asked “Who?” and he still replied Louis Tomlinson. The interviewer then asked Harry how Louis feels about him and he replied “It’s mutual, we’ve discussed it.” One Direction were asked which celebrity they would most like to play spin the bottle with, Louis whispered Harry Styles. Louis said that he would marry Harry and he told a magazine interviewer that he’d fallen madly in love with Harry. When a fan asked Harry if him and Louis were dating he smiled, nodded and said yes and when she replied “I figured” Harry grinned. When a fan asked Louis when he was going to propose to Harry he said it’s confidential but they were already engaged. When Harry was asked how ‘Larry Stylinson’ were going he said “Yeah it’s going well, he’s in the other room.”

There is a video of Louis describing Harry as “My boy” and he tweeted about him saying “My love.” When Louis was asked if he liked anyone he said “I’m rather fond of a certain curly boy but I don’t want to jinx it yet.” Harry tweeted Louis calling him his “Hero” and “Man crush.” When Louis was asked about his bromance with Harry he said “We try not to disclose much about our relationship to the public.” When asked if they snuggle on the tour bus Harry said “We’re trying to cut it down a bit but yeah, sometimes” then Niall Horan from the band said “They don’t want to reveal too much about their relationship.” When the band were told that people thought Harry and Louis were together Liam Payne said “You are though, aren’t you?”

Over the past seven years neither Harry nor Louis have ever publicly said out loud in a clear, official statement that they are not in a relationship or never were. Louis has not once actually said in person that Larry is not real. He has only said specifically worded things which sound like denials but do not actually say that Larry is not real, such as “Larry is a conspiracy theory” and “People genuinely think we’re in a relationship” and “Quite frankly we just started out saying we were really good friends.” They have only actually said ‘No’ when interviewers have said ‘So, there’s nothing going on?’ they haven’t actually said themselves ‘There is nothing here.’ The only time Harry actually denied it, he cried after the interview and Niall hugged him.

Outing (revealing a sexuality) –

In 2015 Harry and Liam were asked what four traits they look for in a lady, Liam said “Female” then Harry said “Not that important.” This caused a lot of media attention and widespread speculation about Harry’s sexuality but in the next interview One Direction had, they were asked if there were any rumours they would like to clear up and set straight, they didn’t mention anything, Louis said he couldn’t think of anything and Harry mumbled “Some of them I quite like.” When Harry was asked when the last time he kissed a girl was, he pulled a scared face, all the band laughed and Liam said “When was the last time you liked it?” An interviewer asked how 1D tell a girl that they aren’t interested in them, Harry replied “I told someone I was gay once” then Louis laughed and replied “That is incredible, Harry!” When the band jokingly suggested that Niall should pretend to have slept with a man he laughed and said no then Harry said “Hey, don’t knock it till you try it.” Harry liked a photo on Instagram thinking it was of a man stripping and he liked an international day against homophobia photo which read “Support feminine boys.“ Harry’s friend Nick Grimshaw joked that Diana Ross’ I’m Coming Out was Harry’s favourite song and Harry has called several men attractive, dishy and “Outrageously handsome.”

 Whenever the band are asked what they look for in a girl Harry always uses gender neutral pronouns like “Someone”, he once began to mention his “Boyfriend” but stopped himself and once he said it helps if you can “Hold a conversation with HIM” and the interviewer replied “Good on you for saying that.” Harry also said a good way to stay on your crush’s mind would be to “Send HIM a flower.” In 2017 an interviewer even asked Harry if he’s labelled his sexuality and he replied “No. I’ve never really felt the need to really. No. I don’t feel like it’s something I’ve ever felt like I have to explain about myself.” Harry said that equality and gay rights were not political but “Fundamental.” Someone joked that they went to the same gay gym as Harry but they later said that they wanted to clear up that they’d never gone to a gay gym, so Harry replied “There’s nothing wrong with it.” Harry tweeted a photo of two men cuddling (who looked like him and Louis) then deleted it.

Harry told Zayn Malik during an interview to not say that Louis is gay. In May 2017 Harry followed someone on Twitter shortly after they posted a video saying “Louis we know you’re gay.” Nearly 20 different footballers sent Louis congratulation tweets for becoming the first signed openly gay footballer in his town, without realising that he was being closeted. The band The Chainsmokers regularly like Larry proof photos on Instagram, they tweeted “Larry” then deleted it and they tweeted about ‘Love is love’ with a photo edit of Louis’ ‘It is what it is’ tattoo. These things only happened after Louis started following and interacting with them on Instagram. Louis’ song was played at the LGBT awards. A fan said she witnessed someone in a club rudely call Louis gay so he shouted back “I wouldn’t do you anyway.” Someone called Louis homophobic at a bar but said he looked devastated about it and really apologised to her then just walked away quietly and even left his drink behind, before his friend came over and told her they shouldn’t have said that. On three separate occasions when Louis’ been asked about how many girlfriends he’s had he has said “Define girlfriends” before answering that he’s only had one serious “Relationship.” There is a video of Louis saying “I’m gay” then he jokes “It’s pretty unfortunate isn’t it Eleanor” who was his ‘girlfriend’ at the time, then management shout “Be quiet.”

Louis, Louis’ mum, Harry and Harry’s mum all follow the same Larry Stylinson Twitter account and when someone on Instagram was being offensive Louis’ sister commented “I know my brother and I know he wouldn’t appreciate you using homophobic slurs.” Liam described One Direction as brothers and Louis smirked looking shocked and questioned “Brothers?” Louis’ mum tweeted “My son returns to his husband tomorrow @Harry_Styles x.” When a fan asked Louis’ mum if she supported Harry and Louis’ undeniable love for each other she replied “Forever! I love them both dearly.” Harry and Louis’ close friend and collaborator Ed Sheeran responded to a fan’s sign at his show which read “Play ‘Friends’ if Larry is real” by playing the song even though it wasn’t on the setlist. When Ed said that Harry was taken a fan shouted “By Louis” and he replied "Innit.” A fan asked One Direction’s long-term song writer if Louis and Harry hated the people who believed they were in a relationship and he replied “No way. Not at all!! Don’t ever think that!!!”

Complimentary tattoos –

Louis has a triangle tattoo on his ankle, which might possibly reference the branding of gay people with triangle tattoos during Nazi history and the later reclaiming of the triangle as a LGBTQ symbol. Harry has the Pink Floyd triangle tattoo but it does not match the official triangle of the band’s artwork because the rainbow veers off at a different angle and is drawn completely differently. Harry has talked about listening to Dark Side Of The Moon on repeat and it would be rare for an established tattoo artist to make a mistake on such an iconic image, especially on a high profile celebrity. Fans speculate that perhaps this was Harry’s way of getting a discreet rainbow tattoo and a triangle tattoo to match Louis’. Harry has the George Michael lyrics ‘Never gonna dance again’ tattooed across his ankles, George Michael struggled to come out but became a huge gay icon and activist. Harry has tweeted “You can tell a man by his ankles” which might link to his and Louis’ ankle tattoos.

Harry and Louis have the first words they said to each other tattooed in each other’s hand writing (Hi and Oops.) Fans speculate this because several times Harry has explained how he met Louis in the X-Factor bathroom and he tweeted the quote “I’m glad I was stood next to you at the urinals. If I had to have someone’s pee splashed on me I’d much rather have your pee than his pee.” A situation like that could lead to ‘Oops’, ‘Hi’. The first words of the character Harry was playing in a One Direction music video are “Oops, Hi” and One Direction’s friends and LGBTQ supporters Little Mix have a song called Oops. Harry got a tattoo of a ship and only 18 hours later Louis went to the very same tattoo parlour and got a tattoo of a compass with the word home written on it. Both Louis and Harry have written love songs referencing ships and home. They even got these tattoos during the time that the media were suggesting that Harry was dating Taylor Swift.

Harry has a heart tattoo on his arm and Louis has an arrow tattoo on his arm. Louis has a rope tattoo round his wrist, Harry has an anchor tattoo on his wrist. Harry has a birdcage tattoo, Louis has a flock of flying birds tattoo. Harry has another heart tattoo in the same place and in same style that Louis drew a heart on him in the X-Factor house. Louis has a similar heart tattoo on the same part of his arm. Louis has quotation marks on his wrist, Harry has the sentence “I can’t change” on the part of his wrist where Louis’ quotation marks are. Harry has a padlock tattoo and Louis has a key tattoo. All of these are the most popular and recognisable couple tattoos and are unquestionably romantic and only make sense or become complete when joined up alongside the other symbol. The majority of these complimentary tattoos have also been done on a large scale and are on very visible parts of the body, like their arms. Louis’ often said that he used to be totally against tattoos and never wanted any, but he has loads, and most of them complement or match Harry’s. Harry has his mum and sister’s names tattooed and shortly after him and Louis got their ship and compass tattoos Harry posted a photo of a couple’s matching love heart tattoos on Instagram with the caption “Siiiicckkk” this shows that he is a fan of couple tattoos and of having tattoos of the people he loves.

Harry got a rose tattooed on his arm and after over a year of requests and speculation from fans that Louis would get a dagger tattoo, he got a dagger tattoo in the same place on his arm that Harry’s rose is, and posed for a photo pointing to the dagger tattoo. In late 2016 Louis posted a selfie where the dagger was his only visible tattoo, his arm was deliberately positioned so that the dagger pointed directly to an image of a rose printed on the breast pocket of his tee shirt. This photo was posted during the ‘Larry month’ fan project where ‘larries’ were posting pictures on social media of Louis and Harry under a specific Larry related theme each week – Louis posted his selfie during the Larry tattoo week. Louis liked and retweeted fan account tweets about his single and in late 2016 he tweeted to Liam teasing him for wearing a chain, the photos of Liam in the chain were only available on fan-run update accounts, proving that Louis often checks up on fan accounts so therefore could have easily known about the Larry tattoo photo project.

During an interview and performance for Louis’ solo single he wore another tee shirt with an image of a rose on. A photograph of him wearing this tee shirt was one of the only promo photos that Louis posted on his Instagram account. The guitarist of Kings Of Leon (who is good friends with Harry) wore the same rose tee shirt on stage days after Harry saw them in concert. Harry was photographed in March 2017 wearing a rose ring. He was pointing his finger in each photograph, making sure that his ring could be seen. The website of the company who designed the ring also has a necklace with a dagger and a necklace of birds holding up an anchor and rope – both the birds and the anchor are incredibly similar to Harry’s birds and anchor tattoo. A few weeks before the photos of Harry’s ring, Louis followed Dover Street Market, the jewellery company who designed Harry’s rose ring has a store at Dover Street Market. Harry hasn’t taken the rose ring off since he began wearing it and two out of the five photos of him taken in April for Rolling Stone magazine clearly feature and exaggerate the ring. Harry has also started regularly wearing a large ruby stone ring which looks very similar to the red stone featured in Louis’ dagger tattoo.

 Supportive moments –

Numerous videos show Louis and Harry waiting for each other while they get their hair done or film for separate interviews. They are attentive during each other’s live solos encase one runs out of breath and if they do the other finishes singing their part. They bring each other’s mic stands and water bottles over far more than with the other band members. They both frequently stare at each other adoringly in interviews, on stage and when the other is on the big screen or TV monitor, to the point where they actually miss questions. In a 2015 interview Liam even had to nudge Louis and he laughed saying “You two are so obvious.” When Harry was asked who he thought looked hot at the Brit Awards that night, after answering Adele he turned around to Louis and said sorry. When Harry was asked if he had a crush on Caroline Flack he said she was hot but then turned to Louis and said “So is Louis.” When an interviewer showed an old video of Harry and Louis playing football they beamed as they watched it and Louis whispered what looked like “My Hazza.”

When asked who his dream Valentine would be out of anyone in the world Harry turned to Louis, put his arm around him and said “You.” Niall said “You two are so cute”, Louis thanked him then Zayn said “You are quite cute” and Louis agreed that his Valentine was Harry, as he put his arm around him. The only days off which Louis had from doing promotional interviews for his and Steve Aoki’s single during the beginning of 2017 were Valentine’s Day and Harry’s birthday. Louis was unseen on those days, no explanation was given for his absence and Steve did the interviews on his own. During an interview on Valentine’s Day 2012 with only Louis and Harry, Louis gently patted Harry’s arm and said “Of course he’s hot”, Harry said he would describe Louis as “Funny, handsome, rugged and manly.” Louis was asked how long he’s been with his *girlfriend* (4 months) and Harry laughed saying about a year – which is how long Larry had supposedly been together at that point. Throughout the interview they were smiling and flirting so much that they have never been allowed to do an interview with just the two of them ever again, to the point where they were the only members of the band during their TV special to not have a feature together unless the entire band were there too, and they weren’t even allowed to sit next to each other in interviews again until 2015.

When getting the audience to sing Happy Birthday to Louis, Harry made them call Louis boo bear. When asked what he looked for in a relationship Harry said “Pick someone supportive.” Louis has shown constant support to Harry by growing his hair out at the same time as Harry until Harry felt confident enough to have long hair on his own. They grew their hair out together for a second time in May 2017, then got their hair cut together, confirmed by their hair stylist. Louis followed everyone who worked with Harry during his photo shoot for Another Man magazine and his filming for the Dunkirk movie and even posted a photo of his foot discreetly pointing to a Dunkirk poster in the background. Louis was also photographed on the film set of Dunkirk and was actively online when the trailer was released. The band were teasing Harry for stealing their food but Louis told Harry he didn’t mind sharing. Louis purposefully chose a fan question about Harry’s hair so he could answer it and say that “Harry’s hair is always curly and always wonderful.” Louis is cheeky and boisterous with all the band members but is always more gentle and considerate towards Harry, he made it so that Harry won every round of a game he wasn’t even playing and Harry is the only person Louis never pours water over during concerts. Harry is incredibly private and remained particularly unseen during the start of One Direction’s hiatus but during at least two very difficult episodes in Louis’ life (losing his mum and getting wrongfully arrested) Harry immediately appeared in public and allowed the circulation of many paparazzi images of himself, as a way of distracting people from Louis’ private life and taking the heat off him for a little bit.

Sign language - Harry and Louis constantly gesture a ‘thumbs up’ to each other on stage, before each other’s solos and during interviews. When signalling the sound techs to turn Harry’s mic up Louis always draws a heart shape with his hands and to get Louis’ mic louder Harry always points to his heart.

Sexual moments *trigger warning*

Even from their first videos, photoshoots, performances and interviews as a band Harry and Louis are always touching or awkwardly stretching uncomfortably so that they can be touching - arms round each other, whispering, biting, hands on each other’s legs, playing with each other’s hair, hitting and patting each other’s bums, holding each other’s crotches, play fighting, hugging and stroking each other’s arms, hands and faces – considerably much more frequently, purposefully, secretly and intimately than the other band members.

There is a video of Harry and Louis walking along holding hands. They have pretended to passionately kiss each other in at least three interviews and Harry once told Louis to “Kiss me, you fool.” Louis has gently licked Harry’s nose, both Harry and Louis have both kissed dolls of each other. Louis kissed Harry’s cheek and Harry kissed Louis’ thumb. Louis and Harry kissed whilst wearing masks. When One Direction won an award Harry kissed Louis’ forehead during a group hug. There is a photo of Harry and Louis kissing which Harry said was photoshopped but there are no known versions of any original images which could have been used to create an edit. There are two poor quality videos in which Harry and Louis appear to be kissing, one in which they are in a bar in Wellington and Louis shouts “Boyfriend” then either kisses or initiates to kiss Harry but Harry turns him around to remind him that there were fans with cameras. There is only one low quality video from that night in Wellington although there were many fans outside the bar recording. In March 2017 a still image of high quality footage appeared from a girl who claims that One Direction’s management team paid her to hide the footage. When the town Wellington was mentioned in an interview Harry and Louis immediately went serious and quiet and Liam once read out a fan sign at a concert which said “Investigate Wellington.”

In a video Louis said that he noticed Harry’s six pack was trending and said that Harry had “A nice little body.” On stage Harry said that Louis “Looked lovely.” A fan threw fluffy handcuffs on stage, straight away Harry walked over to show them to Louis and Louis said “Later.” Harry tweeted that no one should ever make eye contact with anyone whilst eating a banana because of the sexual connotations, but before eating a banana on stage he turned to Louis and said “Look at me” then Zayn asked Louis is he was ok. When asked about cleaning up after a party Harry said that him and Louis were on their hands and knees for two days straight, Niall laughed and said “You enjoyed those days off” Louis stammered and stuttered and nodded for a long time then said “We did, we did.” In a different interview that same day the band were asked what they were doing the day before and Louis said “Trying to walk” Liam laughed and said “You know what they say, the early bird gets the worm” to which Louis replied “Ohh yeah. The early bird gets the wood on.” Harry noticed and smirked. When asked to describe Louis is four words Harry said “Louis is spontaneous, loud, loud and loud.” The day after Louis and Harry were both in the same location again Louis was seen walking with a limp and when asked why he answered “No comment” and hurried out the shop. Harry tweeted to Louis “Higher and faster, you feel me?” Louis replied “I feel you man.” In the background of an interview with just Niall you can hear Harry seriously say “Lou, can I give you a blowjob?” and Louis seriously replies “I’d love it if you just wait.” Niall notices and laughs, saying “That’s the real question.”

Both Louis and Harry are frequently seen with love bites in the same places on their necks and when Harry was asked about a visible love bite Louis said “I gave him it.” Harry teased Niall on Twitter so Niall replied “You wait till I tell everyone how you actually got that love bite.” The band were asked if their love bites were from within the band, Harry leapt on Louis trying to give him one and Louis said “I knew you were going to do that.” An interviewer said to Liam and Niall that “Harry is on vocal rest today so he’s laying down resting, where’s Louis? Is he on vocal rest as well?” Niall looked shocked and worried and quickly looked at Liam who said “Nah, I think he’s just tired” then they both laughed.

Harry and Louis publicly flew together in 2015 and when their plane landed Harry’s shirt was ripped in at least two places and Louis had a big smile on his face. In an interview after this incident the band were asked if any of them were in the mile high club and Harry and Louis answered yes. An interviewer jokingly touched Harry’s bum then when Harry was later asked how it made him feel he laughed and said “Sad” but with a big smile on his face then Louis said “He told me he was intrigued.” Louis and Harry have disappeared behind the stage at the same time as each other during live shows several times and they once arrived late to an interview looking dishevelled whilst rearranging themselves as Harry said he lost his trousers and Louis said “It was just a bit of banter.” In a tour video Zayn says to Louis “I know you like dick.” Louis just laughs and doesn’t say anything back. The band were asked what their favourite ride at Alton Towers was and Harry whispered to Louis “You were mine.” Harry tweeted Louis saying he looked sexy and Louis replied saying he was being “Seduced” by Harry’s curls to which Harry admitted that was his plan. When asked who was getting the Brit Award head Louis said “Harry’s getting head.” When the band were asked what they would be doing if they weren’t in One Direction Louis said he thought Harry would have been a horse rider and in 2015 Harry said one of his favourite things to do was horseback riding. In the same interview in 2015 when asked what 4 things he sucked at (meaning was bad at) Harry smirked and pretended to leave the interview then answered “Lollipops.”

A fan heard moans from One Direction’s tour bus and saw Harry’s hand pressed against the window (they recognised his ring) Louis came out of the bus with scratches on his back. Harry then tweeted “Everyone has a titanic for the first time face” – referencing the hand against the steamed window scene. At a gig the next day Harry expressed a lot of pain when sitting down and when he saw a fan noticing this he laughed and held his finger to his lips to jokingly shhh her and keep her quiet. An interviewer asked Harry and Louis who goes in front and who goes behind when they play Mario Kart to which they responded – Louis: “I think we kind of share that really” Harry: “Sometimes I take the front, if Louis’ a bit tired I’ll go behind and push him along” Louis: “We’re both quite generous to each other. Sometimes Harry should get to do what he wants to do and go first.” Before Liam asked Louis what flavour Harry was he said “I’m gonna ask you something I don’t want to ask you.” During an interview someone joked that Louis could cover up his penis with a carrot and Harry said “I don’t think it’d cover it.” Louis told a magazine interviewer that Harry had once woken him up by hitting him over the head with his penis. When Harry was asked what keeps him up at night he answered “MANky panky” not ‘hanky panky.’ When an interviewer asked Harry to twerk Louis said “Don’t act like you hate it.” Harry was asked if he was good with his hands and Louis happily nodded and said “Reeaally good” then Liam looked at Louis and laughed. Sexual moments or innuendos are never made between the other members of One Direction as regularly, knowingly or explicitly as they are between Harry and Louis.

Domestic moments

Harry and Louis moved to London and lived together as soon as they left the X-Factor when they were only 16 and 18. Harry said that no one in the band knew what was going to happen once they left the show but he also said “Me and Louis always said we wanted to move in together.” Harry said Louis never washes up or makes his bed or cooks but he wouldn’t want to live with anyone else from the band. Louis got a ‘Thank you’ printed in the newspaper saying “Harry, thank you for making me egg on toast every day, love Boo in London.” Louis once tweeted the hashtag ‘We live together deal with it.’ One Direction’s management decided to make people believe that Harry and Louis didn’t live together anymore but when Niall said the band didn’t live together Harry really obviously winked at Louis and Louis whispered “No we still live together.”

  In the One Direction movie Louis’ tee shirt was in Harry’s hotel room, Louis’ lighter was on Harry’s bedside table, the other side of Harry’s bed was unmade as if someone slept beside him and in one scene Louis was actually asleep in bed next to Harry. Louis said “Our” room key. In 2017 Harry said “We” were living with the band he wrote his album with and when Louis discussed how he’s the only one who would sleep on the tour bus and not in hotels, he said that Liam would sometimes join “Us” An interviewer joked that Harry was cheating on Louis so Louis replied “We’ll have to split the bed.” On two separate occasions Harry has talked about Louis sitting in his bed with him. Louis told an interviewer that Harry sleeps with his mouth open, Liam then said that Harry tries to sleep on people and Louis agreed, saying “Yeaaap.” A Christmas tree company said they delivered a tree to Louis’ house in London but Louis doesn’t live in the area of London they said – Harry does. Harry and Louis have been subconsciously mirroring each other’s actions at the same time consistently since Harry’s mum even pointed it out in 2011, this is a sign of people who spend a large amount of time together and usually live together, although mirroring occurs with the other band member too, it occurs far less frequently than between Harry and Louis (highly recommended mirroring video in references.)

Although Harry and Louis aren’t supposed to be living together anymore they have been showing up in the same places on the same days and constantly being located in LA and London and Yorkshire and Jamaica at the same times and then going publicly unseen at the same time for the same duration of time, regularly for the past 7 years, and particularly during the band’s current hiatus. Just one example being May 2017 when Louis left his UK photoshoot to be in LA only for the same duration of time that Harry was in LA filming for their friend James Corden’s TV show and then he returned home to continue the photoshoot. Numerous people with no reason to lie, and often not even in the 1D fandom, have spotted Louis and Harry together, in clubs, shopping, driving, having meals and behaving like a couple, kissing and holding hands. Harry and Louis were seen in Jamaica around the time of Harry’s birthday, during this time Louis got his arrow tattoo within days of Harry having gotten his heart tattoo. They are frequently online at the same time and whenever Louis goes on holiday with friends Harry is often spotted wearing a new piece of jewellery once Louis’ returned, e.g. Louis went to Barcelona and a few days later Harry was seen wearing a Barcelona coins bracelet.

On Halloween Louis wore white face paint to go out clubbing whilst Harry said he stayed in and during an interview the next day Harry had traces of white paint in his hair. On Halloween the next year, the exact same thing happened. When Zayn was feeding Louis and talking about their bromance Harry threw Zayn’s food away and said he was getting jealous. After an interviewer asked if Harry had moved out (before fans were made to think he had) Harry said no and Zayn said to him “You’ll never leave Louis will you?” Harry shook his head and said no. There are several photos of the same fans meeting both Louis and Harry on the same day and you can even see Harry waiting in a car in the background of a photo of Louis posing with a fan. Louis’ laugh was heard in the car that came to drive Harry home. In the background of a video of Louis meeting fans at his charity football event, that Harry wasn’t supposed to be at, you can hear someone asking Harry how he is and hear him answering. Harry’s voice was also heard in the background of Louis’ family’s snapchats so now they often mute the sound.

On numerous occasions when Louis has been asked what the most romantic thing he’s ever done for someone was, he always described cooking someone their favourite meal. He’s explained that he never cooks and the one meal that he cooked was chicken stuffed with mozzarella and wrapped in Parma ham with some homemade mashed potatoes. Every time he has described this meal over the past 5 years he has acted out the making of each ingredient and when the band were asked about cooking again Harry acted out the movements of Louis’ meal even though Louis wasn’t talking about it. Harry tweeted a picture of Louis and captioned it “Louis’ first cooking experience.” This lead fans to speculate that Louis’ meal was for Harry, then in an interview after Louis described the dish as tasting pretty good for his first meal, Harry even nodded slightly and made a small noise of agreement.

So, Harry documented the first meal Louis ever cooked and Louis said the first meal he ever cooked was the most romantic thing he’s ever done. Louis wasn’t dating his *girlfriend* or anyone else at the time which Harry posted the photo so the ‘first meal he’s ever cooked’ which was the ‘most romantic thing he’s ever done’ was done when he was supposedly single (but publicly living with Harry and not denying their relationship.)

Marriage or engagement conspiracy –

On the 28th September 2013 fans saw Louis and Zayn waiting nervously at a location in London wearing suits, soon after Harry turned up at the same location in a suit. That same day Louis’ mum tweeted “Good decision Louis.” Ed Sheeran tweeted “My two best friends got married today” Louis’ *girlfriend* tweeted “I’m getting bored of this now” and Harry tweeted “We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall” – lyrics from a Joni Mitchel song about two musicians being in love. Louis has the number 28 on at least 3 of his sports shirts, on his ear piece and tattooed on his ring finger. Harry wore a sports shirt on stage at a One Direction gig and pointed to the number 28 on the back, referring to Michael Sam, the first openly gay player for the NFL. After months of only Instagraming black and white pictures the first picture Harry posted in colour had the number 28 in it.

In 2016 on the 28th September Louis’ mum liked a photo someone tweeted to her of them making Louis’ chicken, mozzarella and Parma ham meal. At a One Direction concert on September 28th 2015 Harry spoke to a couple in the audience about their wedding anniversary and said “We love love, we just love it. Thank you for being here on your ANNIVERSARY” shouting and exaggerating the word before asking if anyone else there was celebrating an anniversary. When making a speech about One Direction’s bass player getting married Harry talked again about how much One Direction love love and believe that love is love and should be celebrated in all forms.

Louis and Harry were publicly unseen for several days at the same time around 28th September 2016, the next time they were seen Harry was wearing a Jamaican bracelet, Louis had a Jamaican bag and they were both tanned. Fans therefore believe that Louis and Harry holidayed there for their anniversary. Their presence there was later proven when a bar worker posted a throwback photo of him and Louis in Jamaica and Harry revealed that ’We’ were living in Jamaica for months when recording his album. Fans have also began to notice that Harry and Louis are both publicly unseen and free of work commitments around the 28th of each month, suggesting a regular anniversary date night. Both of them often reveal big news on the 28th, for example Harry announced his tour dates on the 28th, released his photoshoot in Another Man magazine on the 28th September and chose to sing tracks number 2 and 8 from his album for his first ever solo performance.

Harry attended his first public event since the band’s hiatus with every nail painted except his ring finger and is regularly seen wearing a small pouch necklace rumoured to have his ring kept in. The website of the company who designed Harry’s rose ring list it as an engagement ring. Since 2013 (the year of the supposed wedding) Harry has constantly worn a plain silver band ring around his middle finger and despite often wearing many rings, that is the only one which has never changed and is the only one Harry ever plays with and touches when relationships and marriage are mentioned in interviews.

When the band were asked if they all want to be married and have children Louis and Harry immediately looked at each other, smiled and said yes. When asked again about marriage after the date of their supposed wedding or engagement, Louis said sometimes people get engaged for years, Harry agreed and started playing with the silver band ring around his middle finger. An interviewer showed Louis, Liam and Zayn photos of girls and asked if they would Facetime them (nothing else, only a Facetime) Liam pointed out that one of the girls looked like Harry. Louis agreed and when asked if he would Facetime her he answered very seriously “Marriage. Sex, kissing. The lot.”

Songs –

Louis changed the lyrics on stage from “I can’t compete with your boyfriend” to “MY boyfriend.” Louis also changed “You’ve got that one thing” to “You’ve got that big dick” and he changed “I have loved you since we were 18” to “I have loved HIM since we were 18” whilst looking at Harry. Harry changed the lyrics from “She walked straight into my heart and stole it… just like SHE already owned it” to “Just like HE already owned it” (and grabbed his crotch whilst singing HE) Harry constantly changes the lyrics from “I’m in love with you and all your little things” to “I’m in love with LOU and all HIS little things” whilst, more often than not, both Harry and Louis physically turn their whole bodies around to look at and sing directly to each other. Harry and Louis both cried on stage at the same time during the same part of the same sad love song. Whilst Louis sang “I have loved you since we were 18” Harry shouted “16”and pointed to himself – they met when Louis was 18 and Harry was 16.

Harry said the most romantic thing he can think to do for someone is write them a song…

Songs Harry wrote

 ·         Olivia - When you go and I'm alone you live in my imagination. I live for you, I long for you, Olivia. Oh I love you, I love you, I love, I love, I love Olivia. I love you, it’s all I do – ‘Olivia’ and ‘olive’ are ways of saying I love you without actually saying it. On the same day both Harry and Louis tweeted “Olive.” When asked about who Olivia was Harry said “Is Olivia even a person? Is Olivia a place? Is Olivia an emotion? We don’t know!”

·         If I Could Fly - If I could fly, I'd be coming right back home to you. I think I might give up everything, just ask me to. I’ve been going out of my mind. For your eyes only, I'll show you my heart. For when you're lonely and forget who you are. I'm missing half of me when we're apart. I've got scars even though they can't always be seen – Very slow ballad song. When talking through the album this was the only song where Harry didn’t discuss the lyrics or the meaning at all and Liam said he cried when he heard it.

·         Something Great - I want you here with me like how I pictured it, so I don’t have to keep imagining. The script was written and I could not change a thing, I want to rip it all to shreds and start again. Is it too much to ask for something great? You’re all I want, so much it’s hurting

·         Where Do Broken Hearts Go? - My mind is running in circles of you and me, anyone in between is the enemy. Are you sleeping, baby, by yourself, or are you giving it to someone else?

·         Stockholm Syndrome - Who’s this shadow holding me hostage, I’ve been here for days. Who’s this whisper telling me that I’m never going to get away. I know they’ll be coming to find me soon. I fear I’m getting used to being held by you.

·         Happily - You don't understand what you do to me when you hold his hand. I don't care what people say when we're together, you know I want to be the one to hold you when you sleep. I know that you're with him, I wonder if he knows that I touched your skin and if he feels my traces in your hair, sorry, love, but I don't really care. Baby be with me so happily.

·         Walking In The Wind – The fact we can sit right here and say goodbye means we've already won. A necessity for apologies between you and me, baby, there is none.

·         Woman – I’m selfish I know, but I don’t ever want to see you with him. I hope you can see the shape that I’m in while he’s touching your skin.

    Songs Louis and Harry wrote together:

 Perfect - When I first saw you from across the room I could tell that you were curious. If you like causing trouble up in hotel rooms and if you like having secret little rendezvous, if you like to do the things you know that we shouldn’t do then baby, I'm perfect for you. I might never be the arms that hold you any time you want them but we can live here in the moment, I can be the one you love from time to time. –

Both Harry and Louis have admitted that they write from personal experience. Whenever asked about Perfect Harry always calls it a love song and says it’s about just having fun with someone. In previous interviews Harry said “I think I’d definitely date Louis because I think you’d just have fun with him.” Whenever asked what he looks for in a relationship he always says “Someone you can have fun with.” Also for someone who says they write from personal experience but has never publicly had a serious long term relationship with anyone, Harry has written a lot of deeply romantic, committed and emotional love songs.

 Songs Louis wrote:

 Strong - My hands, your hands, tied up like two ships. Why is it so hard to say it? So many words we're not saying. I don't care, I'm not scared of love. Is it so wrong, that you make me strong? Think of how much love that's been wasted. People always trying to escape it. But there's nothing I'm running from. – Lots of fans write ‘strong’ on pride flags at One Direction concerts and Louis mentioned in an interview how nice it was.

 Songs Louis wrote with Zayn:

 Clouds- Love is never ever simple. Someday you’re gonna see the things that I see. Here we go again.

 Songs Louis wrote with Liam:

 ·         The End Of The Day - All I know at the end of the day is you follow your heart even though it'll break and you love who you love, there is no other way. You’re the one that I want at the end of the day.

·         Ready To Run - Wherever you are is the place I belong, I want to be free and I want to be yours. There will always be the kind that criticise but I know we’ll be alright.

·         No Control - Taste on my tongue, I don't want to wash away the night before. I don't care, it's obvious, I just can't get enough of you. – When asked what the song was about Harry and Louis kept looking at each other smirking and Niall kept looking at both of them laughing. Harry always dances the most and puts the most passion and energy into performing this song, much more than any other song.

·         Through The Dark - I know you're only hiding and I just want to see you. We will find a way through the dark.

·         Fireproof - I think I’m going to lose my mind. I got a feeling deep inside, it's taking all I've got. - In Happily, Harry wrote “We’re on fire now” then Louis responded with writing “Baby, we’re fireproof.”

·         What A Feeling - But I can't hold you too close now. What a feeling to be right here beside you somehow. I wish I could be there now.

·         Spaces - The spaces between us keep getting deeper, it’s harder to reach you even though I try. The spaces between us hold all our secrets, leaving us speechless and I don’t know why. Who’s going to be the first one to set it all on fire, forgetting every single promise we ever made.

 ·         Home - So long I've been waiting to let go of myself and feel alive. So many nights I thought it over. Told myself I kind of liked her. But there was something missing in her eyes. It was there, I saw it in your eyes. You say you feel the same. Could we ever be enough? Baby we could be enough. It’s alright.

 Although most of the songs Louis and Harry write can easily be seen to heavily reference their relationship and particularly the severe control they are under to hide it, Home written by Louis and If I Could Fly written by Harry are probably the biggest Larry songs - Harry purposefully titled it If I Could Fly instead of For Your Eyes Only so that it could complement Home. Harry tweeted “If I Could Fly” and the same day Louis tweeted the home emoji. Louis himself leaked the song Home and it was listed as an inspirational LGBTQ song. Home is the B-side to Perfect (the song Harry and Louis wrote together and being perfect for each other) and the single cover for Perfect/Home is one of the only photos Harry posted in colour. If I could suggest listening to any Larry songs it would be Home and If I Could Fly.

 Harry’s solo album has a song called Two Ghosts, about two people who ‘Aren’t who they used to be’ and ‘Don’t say what they really mean’ and ‘Can’t touch what they see.’ This song was written in 2014, during the time that he and Louis were forced to stop interacting with each other in interviews, on social media and on stage, and around the time Harry began carrying a journal everywhere which he wrote “Let us love” “One and only” and “She doesn’t deserve his heart” on the cover. Harry waited 3 years to record the song because it was too personal for anyone else but him to sing and he has described it as “Pretty self-explanatory.” Harry has another song called Sweet Creature with the lyrics “Had another talk about where it’s going wrong, but we’re still young. We started two hearts in one home… wherever I go you bring me home.” An interviewer asked Harry who makes him feel like home, he stuttered and paused then replied “I think that’s a fair acknowledgement, yeah.” Another interviewer even asked Harry if the song was about Louis, he was quiet and hummed and stuttered for 18 seconds then said that he wouldn’t want to tell someone that what they believed was wrong, before not actually saying ‘No’ but saying he would “Lean towards no.”

 Stunts: Fake girlfriends (beards) -

Louis was asked if he was happy Harry and Taylor Swift got together and he said “I’m happy that they’re good friends, yes. …If that.” When the band were asked their thoughts on ‘Haylor’ again Harry said “I don’t know” and Louis laughed with Harry saying “It is what it is” - which is a phrase Louis has tattooed on his chest. When Harry and Taylor went on a yacht holiday together Harry left Taylor alone on the boat for hours whilst he went off to share a Jacuzzi with some older men. Around the time ‘Haylor’ was announced Louis was so miserable in an interview that he was unable to complete answering a question and had to ask Zayn to take over. Liam asked Harry what was wrong with Louis whilst Louis remained quiet until asked his favourite One Direction song, he replied “I loved you first” the song is actually called ‘Loved you first’ and is only on the deluxe album as a bonus song. Liam then realised why Louis had been so uncharacteristically withdrawn and reassuringly patted him on the shoulder. A fan held a Taylor Swift related sign at a One Direction concert and Harry held his hand up to his chin to make a beard signal at them. Taylor Swift’s frequent use of celebrity boyfriends to gain media publicity is widely known and there are even rumours that she partially does this to hide her own secret same sex relationship with model Karlie Kloss. When Harry’s friend Nick Grimshaw joked that his song Two Ghosts was about Taylor Swift Harry literally waved his hands in the air and screamed “Aaarrgg noooo!!” live on Radio 1 and said “Help me Jeffrey!” (his manager) then he joked he was going to leave and go to Capital radio. The Radio 1 twitter account then posted a gif of Harry saying “Help me Jeffrey” and captioned it “Just leaving this here…” As comparison, Harry strongly denied Two Ghosts being about Taylor in about 3 seconds whereas it took nearly a minute for him ‘deny’ Sweet Creature being about Louis.

The media has regularly linked Harry to several different women over the years but he has only ever said they are friends and the only person Harry has ever admitted to dating is Louis. In 2017 Harry even had a photo of him and Kendal Jenner removed because the website didn’t have his authorisation to use it. Even though the media often claim him and Kendal were an item he has never confirmed it, Kendal’s sister denied it and Kendal herself said she hasn’t had a boyfriend in 2 years. When an interviewer called Harry a womaniser he shook his head sadly and said “You’re wrong.” Scott Mills joked about the fact Harry is linked to a different woman every Christmas (when One Direction get time off) by asking if he’s ever “Only gotten a girlfriend for the winter” him and Louis laughed and joked and Harry angrily said “Not on purpose.” In May 2017 the media began suggesting Harry was dating a new woman who was seen wearing the same shirt as him and who briefly attended one of his gigs, so when he introduced his female drummer on stage at that gig he mockingly said “Yes, she is wearing my shirt.”

Around the time Louis’ *girlfriend* Eleanor was first publicised a fan tweeted “If Louis is happy then so am I but spare a thought for Harry, he probably has a broken heart.” Harry retweeted it. Four minutes later Louis tweeted “Always in my heart @HarryStyles yours sincerely, Louis” this is the second most retweeted tweet in history and was tweeted the day that Harry was photographed sitting on Louis’ knee and Louis was photographed wrapping his arms round Harry’s waist on a Vespa. Harry is normally always polite and cooperative in interviews but when asked if he felt jealous about Louis and Eleanor he said “I don’t really want to talk about that to be honest” and he once tweeted “Kiss him again just to prove me that you can.” Eleanor tweeted Louis some Olly Murs lyrics so Olly tweeted her saying “Please don’t use my songs to tell a lie. I don’t want any part in that.” Harry cried whilst Louis and Eleanor walked past him holding hands and he threw something at her and Louis always looks miserable and uncomfortable around his ‘girlfriends.’ One of One direction’s management team signalled for Eleanor to kiss Louis when the cameras were on them, she asked Harry if she could and he said no. The same woman was often spotted in the background of several photographs of Louis and Eleanor out at public events, on ‘dates’, and it was discovered that she works for One Direction’s management team.

Liam and Zayn have frequently joked to Louis and Harry about beards and Chris Moyles said in an interview with the band that he heard a few of them have had beards for a long time but he wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Both Harry and Louis wear each other’s clothes when stunting with beards. Louis’ friend Calvin posted a photo of himself with Louis and Eleanor captioned something like ‘Partying for three days straight’ but then he liked a comment which said ‘More like pretending to be straight for three days straight.” The day that Louis broke up with Eleanor him and Harry were laughing and dancing on stage as the band enthusiastically sung a cover of I Will Survive. There is a video of Louis and his second fake girlfriend, Danielle, being told by paparazzi to stop walking and wait until they were ready to photograph them and one pap even shouted “Quiet on set.” Another video shows Louis being told to walk back and wait to leave a club until the paparazzi were ready. This lack of organic behaviour, and the fact that Louis often stares directly at the camera in the photos, proves that paparazzi are called and arranged beforehand to get publicity photographs of Louis with women and Louis out clubbing. Danielle is an unknown, small time actress but when she was *dating* Louis she was given a lengthy red carpet interview in which she was asked her opinion of Louis receiving hateful and aggressive WhatsApp messages, she just smiled and said “People love him a lot and just want a chance to talk to him so I can understand it.” People literally said they hope Louis’ children die and Danielle just laughed it off like it was no big deal, that doesn’t seem like a real supportive, caring girlfriend. Danielle was listed number 10 in the top 20 actresses of 2016, ahead of established actors like Kristen Stewart and Golden Globe nominee actresses. No one knows who Danielle is and she hadn’t had any acting jobs all year. One Direction’s management were probably paying the media to keep her name relevant and linked to Louis.

 The day after their X-Factor performance Steve Aoki, close friend and collaborator of Louis’, followed Louis’ sisters and the rest of One Direction on Instagram, and liked Harry’s photo of a pride flag. 16 days later he followed Danielle but only after some fans tweeted him asking him to. Ruby Rose joked on Instagram about fake PR relationship stunts after Danielle followed her. After Liam unexpectedly interrupted Simon Cowell to prevent him from wrongfully accepting One Direction’s 2017 Brit Award on their behalf, he tweeted “When history becomes your future” with the thinking emoji, shocked emoji and peeping eyes emoji. This was unusually out of character and very confusing, fans wonder whether the tweet references the fact that Eleanor became Louis’ fake girlfriend again shortly after, and that him interrupting Simon and not thanking their team was a way of publicly shading their management.

Management control –

One Direction’s management team are the same company that contractually forced Ke$ha to keep working with her physically abusive manager, and the same company who forced members of Westlife to hide their sexuality and relationships for years and have fake girlfriends. On the cover of One Direction’s book “Who We Are” Louis scribbled out ‘Are’ and wrote ‘Could be’ and on another copy changed ‘Are’ to ‘Aren’t’. Louis’ close friend Calvin has liked tweets which slate Louis’ team for not being good to him or adequately promoting his single or generally doing their job correctly. In an interview Liam said there were no secrets in the band and Harry said “I have a secret.” When the band were asked what was the one thing they wanted that money couldn’t buy Harry said “Freedom.” Louis wore a tee shirt saying ‘Power’ ‘Lies’ and ‘Corruption’ at the America’s Got Talent rehearsals with Simon Cowell. When Harry was asked in May 2017 if there was any special memorabilia Simon Cowell had given him over the years he paused for a while and answered “Ummm…an anxiety...certificate.” The next time Harry did an interview he had to confirm that he was joking and actually thought Simon was wonderful. In Harry’s other 2017 interviewers he regularly confirmed that all members of One Direction still spend time together and support each other yet he has only mentioned Niall and Liam by name and personally discussed them, and has only ever referred to Louis as “Everyone”, suggesting that he is still not allowed to talk about Louis or even properly refer to him as a friend and bandmate.

Since leaving One Direction Zayn revealed that he and the band had to ask permission if they wanted to shave or change their haircut and in May 2017 Liam admitted they were not allowed to choose which songs they wanted as singles, saying he strongly requested one in particular but management “Just wouldn’t have it.” Liam’s debut single even has lyrics directly discussing how he didn’t feel free in One Direction. The number of times the word “Girl” appeared in 1D’s last album, which they wrote the majority of songs on, was only 3, compared to 32 on their first album, which they wrote the minority of. In the One Direction song You And I Harry sings “Nothing can come between you and I, not even the gods above” and on One Direction’s TV special Louis called their management the gods above. Most of the songs that Harry and Louis have written mention being under control, seeing the person they love being with someone else, being stopped from being with the person they love and fighting and hoping no matter what to be with that person, be themselves and be free. And both Harry and Louis have said they write from personal experience. When asked which song would be the soundtrack to his life Harry answered Wouldn’t It Be Nice by The Beach Boys – a song about a young couple fighting against people to try and be together.

There is evidence of Rolling Stone magazine misquoting and manipulating Harry’s 2017 interview to push his heteronormative, womaniser image. One Direction’s video producer Ben Winston spoke to the magazine suggesting that Harry regularly brought girls back to his house. This was however during the time that it was publicly known that Harry lived with Louis, so would therefore have no need to sleep at Ben’s house. A fan tweeted asking why he said Harry lived with him when everyone knew he lived with Louis and he replied “I didn’t. The article did.”

Soon after this article James Corden, who works with Ben, shared a video of Harry asking him if he could sleep at James and Ben’s studio. James agreed under the condition he had no house guests – obviously mocking the whole idea of Harry ever sleeping at Ben’s house or bringing people back there. The Rolling Stone article is especially untrustworthy bearing in mind that this is the same magazine that also tried to make Troye Sivan seem straight, a singer who is now openly gay.

The only time Louis has actually said Larry is not real was in a tweet saying “How about this, Larry is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard. I’m happy why can’t you accept that.” There is also a tweet including the line “I am in fact straight.” Liam has actually admitted in an interview that management have access to their Twitter accounts. This is interesting in relation to these tweets but also to Louis personally signing his ‘Always in my heart’ tweet to Harry with his name, proving it was him that wrote it (unlike the absence of his signature for the bullshit and straight tweets). In the interview which followed the bullshit tweet Louis and Harry were happily and playfully sticking their tongues out to each other, clearly not worrying about fuelling Larry rumours. Also if Larry really was the biggest load of bullshit Louis had ever heard then why didn’t he ever outright say in any of the interviews that Larry is absolutely not real and never was, so that people could fully ‘Accept it’ and he could definitely prove that he was ‘In fact straight’ especially when there were ample opportunities for him to officially deny it in person?

Before an interview Harry asked Louis where he wanted to sit, Louis said “Next to you” then people from their management shouted “You can’t sit together.” The band were hugging at the end of a concert, Harry looked over to check their management’s reaction and someone signalled for him to give Louis a handshake instead of a hug. Harry went to get in the same car as Louis but a bodyguard physically blocked him and guided him into a separate car. When the Larry rumour was mentioned in an interview someone behind the scenes from management shouted “Not true!” In another interview the band were asked who had girlfriends or boyfriends, Harry said “Boyfriend. Louis’. Louis’ boyfriend.” After Liam said who had girlfriends Louis said “The rest of us have all got boyfriends” and Liam said “The rest of us are each other’s boyfriends.” Louis said “That’s going to have to be cut out now” and someone from their management said “It will.”

** Why would their management team spend seven years making such a huge deal of denying Larry rumours, keeping Louis and Harry apart so much, using promo for their songs to discuss women they have supposedly been with, giving them fake girlfriends and covering up when they spend time together if they didn’t have anything to hide? **

Louis’ supposed baby –

It is basically law for high profile celebrities in one night stand pregnancy dramas to get a maternity test but Louis has not had one. Louis and the band are always saying how Louis is the most family orientated person and Louis has said that he’d always wanted kids yet him and his family barely spend time with his baby. Louis looks overjoyed in photos with his siblings especially his young 2 year old twin siblings but he never looks happy with his own baby. Louis has said that children are close to his heart, is a very involved patron and very generous donator to several children’s charities and himself arranged a fairy tale ball for ill children, yet didn’t see ‘his own baby’ on its first Christmas and he went to a concert on the night of its first birthday.

Besides the fact that Louis only ever talks about his ‘son’ Freddie with next to no enthusiasm and a forced smile, whenever asked about his plans for the band’s hiatus not once did he ever mention the fact he would be spending it raising his new baby. Louis only talks about Freddie when asked and it is always a short one sentence answer. In an interview in 2017 Louis said that he never wakes up early and was struggling to get up that morning, which is probably not something that a new dad would say.

When asked what is favourite thing about being a father was Louis said “I know he’s not a dog but whenever he can do something new, it’s always exciting.” Fans spent all day joking about how ridiculous it was to compare his new born son to a dog, then the very next night Louis went out wearing a tee shirt with a dog on it. When asked about his own dog, Louis that said he liked the responsibility which came with having a dog yet he has never mentioned the responsibility of having an actual child. During a promotional interview for his new single Just Hold On with Steve Aoki, Louis was asked if having a child had inspired his song writing, he said “No, not really” then him and Steve went on to discuss how Just Hold On was their baby. Harry used the promo for his own single to describe how his music was his baby and that he felt like he was giving birth. He also discussed how people post pictures online of babies that are not theirs. One of Harry’s songs has the lyrics “She said I’m having your baby. It’s none of your business.” And then “In a black dress, she’s such an actress.” In the official photo of Brianna (baby Freddie’s mum) announcing her pregnancy she is wearing a black dress.

During the majority of Louis’ ‘dates’ over the years with both Eleanor and Danielle, and the majority of times that he is with Freddie, Louis’ friend Oli is there. It doesn’t seem natural for your friend to constantly be present during one on one father son time or romantic days out with your girlfriend. During the time Louis was being interviewed about his son he followed 2 celebrities who have had known paternity scandals and after Freddie was born Louis went to Sunglasses Hut, not only does it seem ridiculous to immediately buy some new sunglasses after the birth of your first child but Louis is a fan of the TV show Friends in which Joey says that if any girls come round saying they’re having his baby he’ll be hiding in Sunglasses Hut.

There are numerous inconsistencies and complications with the dates of Brianna’s pregnancy, the size of her bump, hospital release dates, lawsuits, the location of the baby’s family and even the baby’s mother, Brianna. For instance Brianna posted a ‘throwback’ photo of her 3 month baby bump but the photo shows her face with plastic surgery that she hadn’t had when she was supposedly 3 months pregnant. The family surrounding baby Freddie are using his name to gain profit from ownership of clothing brands and frequently ignore Louis’ privacy requests to not post photos or videos of Freddie, and they never blur out Freddie’s face from photographs in the newspaper. Louis, his family and Harry have blocked Brianna update/fan accounts on twitter and Instagram. Louis’ sister responded to a Instagram live story saying touch your cheek if Larry is real and touch your teeth if Freddie isn’t Louis’ by touching her cheek and touching her teeth. Brianna’s grandmother even liked a photo edit on Instagram of Louis wearing a jumper saying ‘You are not the father’ she has also liked Instagram comments saying ‘Louis likes dicks’ and ‘Louis likes Harry’s dick’ and she replied to a comment saying ‘Expose Brianna we know the truth’ with ‘The truth always exposes itself.’

When Niall’s single was released and when Louis’ mum passed away every member of One Direction tweeted them both immediately to send their love and show their support but no one in the band publicly congratulated Louis on his first born son, on Twitter or in interviews. (Harry was the only one not to tweet Louis about his mum but he was there with the other boys at Louis’ X-Factor performance for his mum.) One Direction’s video director Ben Winston (who as previously mentioned doesn’t even treat them that well) recently had a baby girl and the very next day Niall visited her – yet no members of One Direction have ever revealed meeting Louis’ son. Freddie is over one year old and there are still absolutely no photos of any of Louis’ friends with Freddie. Niall, who often hangs out with Louis and lives very close by and literally flew from LA to London and back again the same day just to support Louis during his X-Factor show, has literally said to an interviewer that he’s never met Freddie (yet he has now met Ben’s daughter twice.) Louis, and the rest of One Direction, frequently like and comment on photos that their friend’s post of their own children yet Louis has never liked any photos of his own baby and he doesn’t even follow Freddie’s mum Brianna on social media. However, Louis did follow a close friend of Brianna��s on Twitter, but only after she posted a video declaring that she no longer wants anything to do with Brianna or her family.

Louis supported the rapper Devlin on social media whose song Cold Blooded has the lyrics “TV just lies, they just manipulate the truth. So is it true XXXX fathered a baby? I don’t really think so, if you ask me he don’t like ladies. Could have been Harry, yeah, I bet it was Harry.“ Louis soon after liked a tweet saying “Louis, the king of music recommendations.” Harry followed Devlin on Instagram and Devlin has worked with Ed Sheeran for a long time, who is very close friends with Harry and Louis. Harry performed a cover of Kanye West’s song Ultralight Beam, this was a peculiar choice in relation to the more rocky style of Harry music but the song has the lyrics “I know that you’ll take good care of your child. When they come for you I will shield your name. I will field your questions. I will feel your pain. No one can judge, they don’t know.” Harry kicked Brianna out of the concert where he performed this song.

A fan threw a baby doll on stage at a One Direction gig, Liam laughed and carried it over to Louis, Louis said “It’s not real. It’s a fake baby” then threw it off stage. This was before the announcement of Louis’ baby yet him and Liam behaved as if they already knew about it, which would be impossible if it really was a one night stand and not a pre-planned cover story. Beyoncé, one of the most famous singers in the world, revealed she was 5 months pregnant with her long term and equally famous husband but the newspaper reported that Brianna, a completely unknown woman who had a one night stand, was pregnant after just 2 weeks. In March 2017 Louis became involved with a police case surrounding an invasive paparazzi and immediately hired a renowned top class lawyer, yet he never did that to try and fight for more overnight custody or visitation rights for his ‘son’. Surely a lawyer with such an important client would insist on them getting a DNA test before spending 18 years paying lots of child care.

** With this many ludicrous inconsistencies and suspicions around baby Freddie you have to ask if Louis’ isn’t the father then why on earth are the media and the management team trying so hard to make people believe he is? Maybe as a way to heavily deter gay rumours and heavily disprove the Larry conspiracy so that they can continue to earn multi-millions of profit. In the first year of One Direction being on hiatus their record label has made a loss of 11 million pound. Ruthless and greedy corporate business men like Simon Cowell don’t want a gay relationship between their most successful clients to ruin the straight boyband selling point and consequently risk them being able to continue increasing their fortune.**

The fact that Liam Payne, a member of the world’s biggest boy band attended an event as major and highly publicised as the 2017 Brit Awards in secret, (to suddenly interrupt and stop Simon Cowell accepting an award on 1D’s behalf) can arrive and leave completely unseen, and the fact that Niall Horan spent the early part of One Direction’s hiatus backpacking around Europe with his cousins, remaining completely unseen and undisturbed, and Harry and Louis themselves can frequently travel around the world completely unseen, yet Eleanor and Brianna who are not celebrities and would be totally unheard of without their connections to Louis, cannot seem to walk down the street or arrive at an airport without numerous paparazzi photographs being taken and subsequent articles being written. This does not seem organic or plausible. If paparazzi are arranged to photograph them then it is done to remind the public of their connection to Louis, as a tool to reinforce the ‘straight narrative.’

Furthermore, Louis’ family were able to hide the fact that his mum was losing a long battle with leukaemia, Niall has been able to hide all of his relationships, and Zayn was able to hide his severe anxiety and his eating disorder, so why isn’t Louis’ one-night-stand, distant farther, single mother, pregnancy scandal a secret? Because if the baby really was Louis’ then his team would surely be more sensitive about a potentially shameful and damaging situation, to protect his public image, instead of drag it through the media constantly and promote this constructed, irresponsible, laddie persona. And most of all, if Louis and Harry really wanted their relationship to be kept secret then why isn’t it? Because it’s not Harry and Louis that are choosing to keep it a secret.

Communication with fans –

Examples of Harry and Louis working out how to discreetly reassure fans about stunts and communicate that they are still together.

It is also worthy of mentioning how Harry has seemingly made more suggestively ‘gay’ and ‘larry’ comments than Louis. I think this may be due to me keeping an eye on Harry more so than Louis and potentially missing some things Louis has done, but mainly due to the fact that Louis was burdened with the responsibility of far more intense and lengthy stunts than Harry, and is seemingly under much more control than Harry (which he probably chose to take on as a way to shield Harry so that he didn’t have to) and is therefore more restricted in being able to be himself – yet he has learnt to communicate more discreetly…

Concerts signs –

Both Louis and Harry directly smile at, wave at, give thumbs up to and thank audience members who make rainbow or Larry related signs, Liam frequently reads out Larry related signs and when reading “My first real crush was Louis Tomlinson” Harry said “That was me” and Liam said “5 years and still going strong, woo!” (Larry had been together for around 5 years at this point.) Harry saw a ‘Love Wins’ sign and said ‘Always’ to the girl holding it. Louis corrected Harry when he accidentally misgendered a trans fan and made sure to check how they identified. Louis also corrected Harry when he asked a fan if the boy she was with was her boyfriend by telling him “You can’t just assume these things.” At a concert Liam and Louis were looking at a fan book and called Harry over to show him a Larry page which read “Open this part only if the statement is true – Larry is real” Liam signed his name beneath that statement. Harry wrapped himself in a flag with Louis’ ‘Always in my heart’ tweet printed on it. Louis signed a rainbow pride flag for a fan at a concert and grinned whilst he watched Harry running down stage billowing pride flags.

On the theme of rainbows, Harry has a rainbow mug in One Direction’s Drag Me Down music video, and he included a photo of a rainbow striped book titled ‘All you need is love’ in the photo book for his album. He tweeted “I study rainbows” then wore a rainbow wristband which a fan threw onstage that said ‘I study rainbows.’ Harry, his band members and his hair stylist repeatedly wore shoes with rainbows on them during his album promo, he’s Instagrammed rainbows and pride flags, shouted “Happy pride!” at a concert and has worn a pride flag badge and a custom made jacket with a rainbow on the back. Louis has worn three rainbow design tee shirts, one of which was the Apple symbol covered in rainbow print which he wore the day after the Apple CEO came out as gay. When asked if he welcomes LGBTQ fans to their gigs Louis said “Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s great” and he constantly says he loves *all* their fans. Steve Aoki wore rainbow patterned socks during an interview and Louis commented “Strong socks.”

Social media messages –

A few days or moments before pictures or articles surface of Louis with his ‘son’ Freddie or his ‘girlfriends’ Danielle or Eleanor or pictures are posted by Freddie’s mum Brianna or her family, Louis almost always posts a selfie on Instagram, never smiling. He only began posting photos like this since Freddie was born and they are only ever posted before paparazzi stunt photos appear. No selfies like that exist on his account pre-babygate or without some stunt news shortly following. Louis’ warning selfies since May 2017 have not only surfaced before sightings of him and Eleanor but have also correlated with announcements of Harry’s solo work. For instance, Louis posted a selfie on Instagram then Harry released his tour dates, Louis posted a photo on Instagram then Harry released a new song, Harry released his music video then 2 minutes later Louis liked a photo on Instagram, Louis followed a new account on Instagram shortly after Harry’s first gig finished and the fans were discussing it, Harry released a documentary about his album and shortly after Louis followed a new account on Instagram.

New photos of Harry were released then Louis followed Stella McCartney who has worked with Harry’s photographer. Louis’ friend Calvin commented on a live stream of Harry’s LA gig at 5AM UK time whilst Louis was active on social media at 5AM UK time, showing that they got up early to support Harry and be there with him the only way that they could. These numerous incidents suggest Louis is not only using social media to warn fans before stunts but also to join in with Harry’s events and discreetly show his support for Harry. Both Harry and Louis also follow Larry fan accounts on Twitter and after Louis followed someone new, that account immediately followed Harry and some Larry fan accounts. Someone tweeted “Unfollow me if you ship Larry” then Harry unfollowed her.

Harry’s aforementioned song Two Ghosts has the lyrics “Same eyes blue, same white shirt, couple more tattoos”, there are numerous fans who do not believe Harry and Louis are together but have still said that they strongly believe the song is about Louis – mainly due to these specific lyrics, the emotional intensity of the song and the performances of it, and the fact that none of his ‘girlfriends’ have tattoos. Shortly after the song was played to the public Louis posted a selfie on Instagram showing his blue eyes and wearing a white tee shirt (for the first time in a while) and swearing right to the front of the camera, directly showing his 28 tattoo. Not only does this further suggest that Two Ghosts is about him (and not Taylor Swift) but Louis also captioned the photo ‘Can’t sleep.’ The last time he posted a warning selfie captioned ‘Can’t sleep’ was the day before his ‘son’ was born. Fans wonder if this marked the beginning and the end of babygate. Louis then liked a photo on Instagram which read ‘Never again’ and ‘Expect the unexpected.’ Ultra music festival (where Louis performed) then tweeted a gif of Louis’ music video with the caption “Wonder what adventures await this weekend.” (Meaning 20th May 2017) This all hints toward the end of the baby stunt, or at least the beginning of the end.

For a while Harry did similar warnings by tweeting song lyrics before news stories came out and for a long time he mainly only posted black and white photos on Instagram but referenced rainbow colours in the captions or talked about scenic views that cannot be seen in the picture. Although it’s hard to be sure, a large majority of Harry’s tweets and photos suggest complex hidden meanings, often potentially relating to queer culture and speculating about some sort of countdown. Although many of Harry’s tweets seem obscure and random he has said in an interview that he doesn’t like tweeting something for the sake of it, therefore suggesting that his tweets do mean something and are posted for a purpose. He tweeted “I’m scared of the dark and the dentist” which are lines from a song which also have the lyrics “I know I’m not the only one who spent so long attempting to be someone else, well I’m over it. I don’t care if the world knows what my secrets are. I can’t think straight, I’m so gay.” Not only is it obvious what that means but those lyrics are interestingly incredibly similar to lyrics Harry and Louis have written, such as “For so long I’ve been waiting to let go of myself” and “I don’t care what people say when we’re together.”

On the anniversary of Louis’ ‘Always in my heart’ tweet Harry posted a photo on Instagram of two men in blue and green floral shirts and captioned it “Strong.” Harry and Louis’ microphone colours are blue and green. Strong is the only One Direction song that Louis wrote on his own and has the lyrics “I'm not scared of love. Is it so wrong, that you make me strong?” In 2017 just before Eleanor became Louis’ fake girlfriend again, Louis tweeted the word ‘Always’ then immediately Instagrammed a black and white warning selfie (looking incredibly sad, with tears in his eyes) captioned ‘You’ – both posts paired together in the order which they were posted read ‘Always You.’ Before the Eleanor stunt happened the first time Louis posted the ‘Always in my heart, Harry’ tweet and when the stunt began again he said ‘Always you’ – this is Louis’ way to reassure Harry and the fans that for him it always has been Harry and always will be, no matter how it may seem.

 In April 2017 Harry retweeted a tweet from a Larry twitter account with a then and now photo of Louis drinking a milkshake in front of a pink background. The tweet remained on his account for almost an hour before the link in the tweet got hacked and had to be deleted. People thought Harry’s accounted was hacked but the retweet was sent from an iPhone, which is impossible to hack. This all occurred during the promo of Harry’s single when more people than normal were checking his account. When Niall’s Instagram got hacked the hacker did it to generate attention to and promote themselves. When Liam’s Instagram got hacked there were hateful comments about his girlfriend, Cheryl. When One Direction’s hairdresser Lou Teasdale got hacked there were hateful comments about Louis. All of these incidents got corrected swiftly and Niall, Liam and Lou commented on them, apologising and explaining. If someone hacked Harry’s twitter they would promote themselves, say something negative about Harry or the band, dramatically expose Larry or do something really controversial, not retweet Louis drinking a milkshake. If this was a hack it would not have been left up for over 40 minutes. The fact that the tweet was deleted immediately after the link got hacked shows how possible it is to swiftly deal with a hack, and suggests that had it not been tampered with, the retweet would have remained. It is uncertain if Harry accidentally retweeted the photo and decided it was less suspicious to just leave it up or if it was purposefully made to seem like a mistake. Either way Harry nor his team did anything to acknowledge or explain this, however not long after the incident Harry was asked in an interview who manages his social media and he replied “I do” which basically confirms that he retweeted the photo of Louis. Sharing a photo of your friend and bandmate should not be a big deal, but bearing in mind that Harry and Louis have barely been allowed to publicly acknowledge each other for several years and rumours of their secret relationship are still rife, it is a big deal. At the time that the retweet was shared Louis came online to follow Lorde on Twitter, this not only made fans aware the Louis was online during this time (confirming he knew what was going on) but he followed an artist who had just performed their new single on Saturday Night Live – the week before Harry was due to perform his new single on Saturday Night Live, and Lorde’s single is titled ‘Green Light’ and green is Harry’s microphone colour.

Blue and green –

Louis’ microphone colour is blue, Harry’s is green. For years Harry has had a set of blue and green keys in the same shades as his and Louis’ microphone colours and he still has them now (2017). Both Harry and Louis often like photos on Instagram in an obviously blue and green colour palette. The majority of the light show for one of Louis and Steve’s performances of Just Hold On were blue and green. The lights at Harry’s gig were blue during his songs about Louis (Two Ghosts and Sweet Creature.) As mentioned Harry posted a photo of two men in green and blue shirts, one taller than the other (Harry is taller than Louis) and in Louis and Steve’s Just Hold On music video the main characters are a couple dressed in blue and green that could easily reflect Harry and Louis – the taller person has long hair and wears a silky green jacket and a fedora hat (like Harry) and the smaller person is wearing a sporty blue sweater and a cap (like Louis.) The couple are in a slight position of minority (a woman and a black man) they meet in London, travel the world together, listen to music, fall in love and get married. The producer of the video included blue and green heart emoji’s in the caption of the video still, then deleted them, and Steve used blue and green text colours in his snapchat of the video. In April 2017 Louis’ friend Calvin liked an Instagram comment saying ‘Everything blue and green.’

Fashion choices –

As well as Louis’ rose, ‘Lies and corruption’ and rainbow shirts he also has a ‘Queen surf’ tee shirt, which is a gay beach, and Harry as also worn the same shirt. Louis has a tee shirt saying ‘Homemade’ which may reference his chicken and homemade mash potatoes meal (and Harry has the word ‘Homemade’ tattooed) and when Harry was spotted in Selfridges, the next day Louis was wearing a tee shirt from Selfridges. Louis was photographed leaving a vintage shop (with Eleanor) then weeks later Harry was photographed wearing a top from that same vintage shop.

In the early days Harry proudly wore a Harry <3 Louis tee shirt that a fan gave him. Harry and Louis have been photographed with matching blankets, Harry has a pink version and Louis has blue and they have shared several clothes numerous times, including Louis wearing the top and Harry wearing the trousers from a joint runway outfit at least twice. As well as Louis using the promo interviews for his and Steve Aoki’s single to proudly wear the rose tee shirt, he also wore a top with a triangle on and a colourful Elton John tee shirt – another gay music icon, who Harry mentioned during his own promo interviews. Louis also has a sweater saying ‘All out’ which is an LGBT awareness and support campaign group. The media used the fact that Louis and Eleanor were seen wearing similar Titanic hoodies to begin coverage of them ‘getting back together’ in 2017, Titanic is however a ship that sank and Louis’ version of the hoody had a gravestone on it. Days later Steve decided to wear his own similar Titanic hoody, to mock the falseness of the situation and attempt to shut down Eleanor rumours. Louis also said during an interview that if Steve teamed his long hair with a British accent he’d “Be winning” – Harry has long hair and a British accent.

On two separate occasions Louis has worn shirts that fans have been asking him to buy. One shirt is in reference to the love bites he’s admitted giving Harry and has an image of a mouth with fangs dripping blood. Fans tweeted Harry asking him to buy it for Louis then Louis wore it for their 2015 album photoshoot, the jacket Louis wore the tee shirt with also had a pocket hanky in the same pattern and colour as the shirt that Harry was wearing. Fans have been speculating about Louis or Harry getting a lighthouse tattoo to complement their other nautical tattoos, instead Louis wore a lighthouse tee shirt on stage with the word ‘Yes’ written over it. This shirt was custom made. Both Harry and Louis have spent the mid 2017 promo photoshoots and TV appearances for their new singles, wearing outfits gradually depicting each individual colour of the rainbow one by one.

In the majority of paparazzi photos of Harry in 2016 and 2017 he is wearing the same ‘Randy’s Donuts’ hoody. For a millionaire fashion icon with thousands of designer outfits who largely knows when he is going to be photographed, this seems quite odd, however, Randy’s Donuts is right next to a restaurant called Louis’ and is actually owned by a man named Larry. Frequently making sure he is seen wearing this same hoody of a building beside Louis’ is probably Harry’s way of making sure that fans know that he is beside Louis. After weeks of silence from Louis he posted a warning selfie on Instagram, on the 28th, of him wearing a hoodie with French writing on, the day after Harry arrived back in London from France.

Bee symbolism -

Fans noticed how Louis’ frequent and unenthused use of the word “Buzzing” to describe his feelings on the arrival of his ‘son’ seemed like an odd choice of words, since then they have consequently predicted that a bee might symbolise the ending of ‘babygate’ and have planned to get bee tattoos when it is over. Harry got a new tattoo but hid it from cameras for months then after the deceiving Rolling Stone interview he revealed that the tattoo is of a big queen bee. Steve Aoki described the One Direction and Louis Tomlinson fans as an army of bees. Harry is a big fan of puns and has many pun tattoos, for instance, a heart on his sleeve, a cage on his ribs, a butterfly on his tummy, a thigh-ger (tiger on his thigh), and the word big on his big toe, therefore fans wonder if the bee tattoo on his arm could reference Louis’ army of bees.

The day Louis posted his Comme Des Garcons selfie he also posed for fan photos whilst wearing Gucci trainers with a bee on. Louis’ ‘girlfriend’ Eleanor was photographed in the same Gucci trainers and Liam was also photographed in the bee trainers. Harry, his hairdresser and all of his band members have worn Gucci shoes with a rainbow on the front and a bee on the back, for many of their public appearances. Louis’ sister posted a photo of his younger sister with a bee dummy pacifier in her mouth. Harry has been seen twice wearing a yellow Gucci jumper with a black stripe and he performed Sweet Creature (the song about Louis) whilst wearing yellow trousers with a black stripe down the side.

Louis posted a photo on Instagram of him wearing yellow and black trainers and he was seen wearing a Gucci sweater with a bee on with the phrase “Blind for love” written in French. James Corden, a close friend of Louis and Harry’s was photographed wearing bee print shoes and a jacket with a bee on. So basically, Louis, Harry and everyone close to them were suddenly all wearing bees at the same time when they never had done before. Louis liked a photo of yellow and black striped baby shoes on Instagram, the time he liked this photo was around the same time that a photo of his own baby was posted but he didn’t like that. Louis tweeted that he hoped everyone was having a good day, last time he posted a tweet saying that was a week before him and his fake girlfriend Danielle broke up. Fans believe that the many references to the bee are ways to hint the ending of ‘babygate’.

Rainbow bears – RBB stands for Rainbow Bondage Bear and SBB stands for Sugar Baby Bear. These are two rainbow cuddly toy bears which have appeared at One Direction concerts and on an official RBB and SBB twitter account which posted photos of the bears in various locations with various props.

The locations of the photos were always in the same place as Harry or Louis. The bears were photographed in Newcastle United football strips in the grounds of St James’ park on the day One Direction performed in Newcastle. The décor of Louis’ house matches the décor of the house in photos of RBB and SBB. When an interviewer used a potato to mock One Direction fans the RBB twitter posted photos of the bears holding potatoes and a note in Harry’s handwriting. When Louis’ *girlfriend* of the time, Danielle, posted a promotion photo of her with a packet of Fit tea Louis’ sister tweeted “I won’t be drinking Fit tea and I suggest you don’t either” and the RBB twitter posted a photo of the bears on the toilet reading a book about curing diarrhoea. The rainbow bears were often surrounded by framed photos of historical gay icons and drag queens and even people called Larry. There is a photo of the bears on the part of the Hollywood walk of fame that was closed off for the day for One Direction. The photo shows the bears sitting by the Judy Garland Hollywood star, and there is another photo of them reading a Judy Garland book, and the RBB Twitter page once had Judy Garland as their header image – Judy Garland has songs called “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Skip To My Lou.”

You can see Louis in the reflection of the bear’s sunglasses and since then the sunglasses were always blurred out. The RBB twitter account changed its icon to a birthday cake on Louis’ birthday. One of the rainbow bears was seen in Harry’s bag. Harry dressed similarly to RBB in one of the images in his Another Man magazine photoshoot wearing a rainbow coloured fluffy jumper and a bondage type leather neck choker. He was also seen in a fluffy fur coat in 2016. There is a photo of RBB outside a pub called The Bear’s Head Inn, this pub is in Harry’s hometown of Holmes Chapel and Harry was spotted at the pub Christmas 2016. The day Harry revealed his bee tattoo he was basically dressed identically to RBB, a similar black hat, black shirt open over a light tee shirt, black jeans, black sunglasses and a rainbow flag badge. Harry has a new tattoo of the letter R next his new tattoo of a bee, possibly to spell RB.

Louis arrived home in the UK and the next day RBB and SBB were on stage at a Little Mix concert in Leeds, on the anniversary of Louis and Harry going to Leeds Festival together. Days later Perrie from Little Mix liked Louis’ photo with his siblings on Instagram and Louis went to go see Little Mix on that tour. One of the bears was wearing army camouflage trousers, Harry’s acting role as a soldier in the war movie Dunkirk had been announced around this time. At the Little Mix gig the rainbow bears had blue and green smiley face stickers on their paws and Little Mix had a green and blue light show during Secret Love Song – a song they have described as potentially being about people in a secret gay relationship and a song they performed in tribute to the Orlando shootings whilst holding a pride flag. Little Mix tweeted about Secret Love Song using blue and green heart emojis.

It’s also worth mentioning that Perrie from Little Mix and Zayn from One Direction were engaged and the two bands are on the same record label, are always very supportive of each other and spend time together, so are clearly very close. At the Little Mix concert the bears were holding a baby bottle and also wearing a red sticker. Liam’s microphone colour is red. This might suggest speculation about Liam’s supposed baby with Cheryl, especially because there are fans who strongly believe that Liam is in a secret relationship with Zayn, and the fact that Liam and Cheryl’s son is actually called Bear. The Little Mix concert was a while before Cheryl’s pregnancy rumours but if Louis and Harry knew about it beforehand and tried to warn fans this may suggest another babygate type stunt? Things are uncertain about Liam because his relationship with Cheryl and their baby has seemed more organic so far but many fans do not believe it and perhaps their team have learnt to stunt better, or maybe RBB’s red sticker was simply Louis warning fans about babies in general and could just serve as more proof of Freddie not being Louis’ son?

One of the first and only times in months that Harry had smiled in a fan photo was with people in a recruitment centre, a year ago that same day RBB’s Twitter posted a photo of the bear in front of a job centre and Liam tweeted “Off to the job centre, wish me luck”. This was 14th December 2016, the date fans speculated about One Direction’s management contract ending. Harry, Louis and RBB have all worn the same unique pair of sunglasses. When the band were once asked about the rainbow bears, everyone fell silent and really obviously immediately stared directly at Louis who smirked and stayed quiet. The RBB Twitter account vanished yet their Twitter handle is still being held so that no other account can have that same name. The rainbow bears once appeared with a phone which fans could ring, and that number is still in use because it goes to voicemail. The bear’s twitter account only liked one tweet, and it said “Larry OK.”

 Just to briefly summarise –

 Neither Harry nor Louis have officially denied they are together.

Louis is the only person Harry has ever confirmed to be dating.

Louis said he’s gay.

Harry said gender isn’t important to him in a relationship and that he doesn’t label his sexuality.

Louis and Harry’s friends and families publicly support their relationship and shame their fake girlfriends.

Harry and Louis sing directly to each other on stage and write love songs together and for each other.

The most romantic things they’ve ever done for someone were for each other.

They have numerous complimentary couple tattoos.

They both signal a heart shape for each other to the sound technicians.

They constantly touch and make sexual innuendos, have held hands, agreed to oral sex, sat on each other’s knees, slept in the same bed and given each other love bites and kisses.

They live(d) together and are constantly seen in the same locations at the same times.

There is strong evidence of a secret wedding or engagement.

Their management has access to their Twitter accounts and has a history of controlling their artists and closeting them with fake girlfriends.

No members of One Direction have publicly celebrated or met Louis’ ‘son’, Louis didn’t see him at Christmas, the baby’s grandmother has frequently implied Louis isn’t the father and Louis hasn’t had a DNA test.

Louis posts a warning selfie before stunt photos and articles are published.

Harry and Louis use rainbow teddy bears, among many other things, to communicate with fans and reassure them that they are still together and ok.

 Conclusion:

Harry and Louis, and the rest of One Direction, take every opportunity to express their sincere gratitude and love for their fans - in interviews, at events and concerts, when meeting them and on social media, and they always stick up for them if they’re being mocked by the media.

In an interview for his single Louis discussed how the fans observe everything that he and the band do online and that they can always piece together exactly what their interactions mean. Louis publicly confirmed, with a proud grin, that he knows fans see everything he does and that they can understand what it all means, and Harry often discusses how much he encourages and loves the fans to interpret things in their own way.

This therefore means that there is no way, considering their respect for the fans, considering how specific and frequent their Larry related messages to the fans are, considering how much specific evidence proves Harry and Louis are directly behind these messages, and how much specific evidence there is for Harry and Louis being together in the first place - the notion that they would frequently go to this much effort, over the course of seven years, to send fans strong signals of Larry being real and happy, if they were just teasing fans, or if Larry was not real, is ridiculous and completely futile and basically impossible.

There would not be this much drama unless there was something to hide and Larry would not go to this much effort to tell fans they were together if they were not together.

Most of all, it is incredibly unlikely, maybe even impossible, to be able to write an 18000+ word essay of strong evidence for something that is not real.

Just look at how much evidence there is.

There are obviously so many things ‘behind the scenes’ that we, the public, do not know about, but the fact that there is this much proof for Louis and Harry’s relationship and the extreme efforts gone to cover it up is incredibly telling. The fact that it is possible to generate this much evidence without being directly involved or knowing even half of what is actually going on is something in itself. In actuality we, as outsiders and onlookers, barely know anything, but despite so much being hidden from us and unknown to us, we still have THIS much evidence.

Taking all of these examples into consideration – what on earth could it all mean other Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson being in love?

Is it really that hard to believe?

  RECOMMENDED REFERENCES –

 * The absolute ultimate no.1 perfect guide to Larry proof (including part 2 and 3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGQZk9F6Dxs - mostly moments from early on but bearing in mind Harry basically came out in every 2015 interview, RBB appeared in 2016, the RBB twitter handle is still being held, Harry and Louis wrote a love song together, still stare at each other, sing to each other and are in the same locations as each other and warn fans about stunts, we know they are still happily together now.

 * This entire video is great and has a lot of recent proof but in particular 4.09 is a really amazing proof. (All of the other crack videos and basically every video from freddieismyqueen are incredible and really really funny) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbb-XtcMNVM

 * There are lots of videos of Louis and Harry mirroring each other’s actions at the same time and its veryyyyyy interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X78oc-PMTw

 * Harry and Louis with rainbows (very beautiful) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_Z7_Q4Wk4I

 Harry’s tattoos and possible meanings http://www.latinpost.com/articles/6333/20140124/harry-styles-tattoo-meanings-see-one-direction-singers-tattoos-significance.htm

 Theories about the meaning of Harry’s black and white Instagram posts http://harrystylestheraconteur.tumblr.com/post/107920654286/a-revolution-in-the-budding-with-harry-styles-as

[gotmesoft]

nct dream reaction: as your secret admirer

It wasn’t a surprise to them when you pulled a flower from your locker, a small handwritten note attached with a cheesy line that formed a gentle smile on your features. In fact, it was almost everyday that you would open your locker to find a small gift with a heart felt note to accompany. It seemed everywhere you turned there was something waiting for you, something cute and meaningful that left you in a fluffy mess. “Who do you think it is?” You would ask him, only to receive a shrug in response, already knowing the answer. “I don’t know... Do you like it though?”

Mark: 

He wasn’t quite sure why this was the route he decided to take. Though you two were already friends, he wanted a way of showing you that you meant so much more. But with the constant fear of rejection, he did it in a form that was much less obvious. He knew what you liked, and never got the same thing twice; always wanting to shower you in surprises. He knew it was risky, in fact, he was almost sure you might have already caught on.

“You know, this handwriting looks really familiar.”

Despite the vague assumptions you would make, he continued to play dumb. “It looks pretty average to me.” He wasn’t ready to slip up yet, and probably not for a long time. Spending all his pocket money didn’t seem so wasteful when the outcome was seeing your shining smile, even through the small storms of life.

Renjun: 

It was a struggle, every time he stood in the market or the florist, trying to decide on whether he should pull your favorite flower or buy a new kind of treat. You two weren’t friends, just acquaintances. He had already known he liked you before, but he really decided to start pulling the crazy stunt of being a secret admirer after a small project you two had been partnered with in class. At first, he just did it to see your reaction, worried that it might have been too much when he noticed your friends teasing about it. But he came to realize that you actually liked the gifts.

“It was the cutest thing ever. I wonder how they knew my favorite flower?”

Ah yes, this is what spiked his interest in treating you to even more. With the little money he had, he would always buy a small item before school, slipping into your bag or locker along with a note during breaks where you couldn’t catch him. He wasn’t quite ready to admit it was him, even when he got a little upset of you assuming it was someone else. “Maybe it was just a lucky guess.”

Jeno: 

He wasn’t so worried that you wouldn’t like the gifts, or that the notes were too cheesy, or even if he was found out. The only thing he was worried about was if he was going further than he anticipated. He remembered a time where your friends wouldn’t stop teasing you about the gifts, and seeing you get embarrassed and flustered almost made him feel bad. He was glad to know that, despite the fake insults you threw with the pressure from your friends, you genuinely did like the small gestures.

“I don’t know who you are, but this is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

He recalled the time you had apologized to no one in particular about the harsh words you had said, not realizing the boy was around to hear it. So instead of backing down in spite of rejection, he just passed off the gifts a bit more secretly, so you wouldn’t have to deal with the silly judgment of your friends (and so he could see the smile you embraced when you were alone).

Haechan: 

He was a nervous wreck every time he thought you were coming close to finding out it was him. Though he teased you to no end about the cute little gestures of this “mysterious person,” it was really just mocking himself in the end. Sometimes he’d fret on what to get you, or that his notes were written too obviously, but in the end it always seemed to make you happy. Sometimes he felt bad though, that he teased you too much about the gifts and notes and how you actually thought they were cute.

“Can’t you be nice for one second? You obviously don’t have the sincerity to do such a thing yourself.”

Funny to think that he actually does, and technically you’re defending him. It was refreshing, because he knew you liked the gifts. It was risky, because he didn’t want you to find out. And it was hard work, mocking himself but also making you feel bad for someone whom you don’t necessarily know. “Geez, sorry. I guess if you’re happy, I am too.”

Jaemin: 

One of those ‘it’s-not-stalking-just-admiring-from-afar’ kind of deals. He knew more about you than one may have thought, nothing strange, but just general facts. He’d leave a flower with its meaning and why he chose it, or a snack with a cheesy pick-up line to bring up your spirit. He knew when you were sad, when you were happy, and what to do on those specific occasions. At first he didn’t think it would work, trying to make you a little happier during a rough time by sending gifts, but it seemed to help a bunch.. even if it was just a note with a piece of loving encouragement.

“Maybe it’s not so bad when you have someone looking out for you every step of the way.”

Some people found it weird that you had someone watching your back, but you couldn’t care less, and he loved that. Seeing you ignore the comments you’d receive about his actions, and just generally appreciating them, is what kept them coming. “I’ll always be here for you, don’t worry about a thing.” Maybe someday he would be with you physically as well, just maybe.

Chenle: 

For a loud mouth, he was pretty good at keeping his small gestures hidden. Though there were times where he was little too loud when you’d find the little gifts and notes in your bag or on your desk, in which he ended up running away before you could see who it was that was squealing in the distance. Because of his young age, he didn’t really have the pocket money to buy you much, so gifts were always extra special and the notes were filled with silly jokes and rambling nonsense. Yet at the end of the day, you couldn’t ask for anything better.

“These notes never really make a lot of sense, but they’re still cute. You’re just mad you don’t have any.”

He knew your friends liked to tease you about the occurrences, and he was initially going to give up... but after seeing you defend his actions, he was even more motivated. “I could write a whole essay of nonsense, and they’d still love it?” His assumptions may have been a little far off, but he was ready to walk to the edge of the world for your appreciation.

Jisung: 

This kid is quite awkward, so actually approaching you was out of the question. In fact, he went as far as to force his friends to pass on the gifts, even if it was just setting things on your desk or slipping things into your locker. He was not willing to risk being caught. His gifts were usually handmade, occasionally a snack or plush doll was slipped into the mix, but he didn’t have much money. At first, he thought it was dumb to make crafts instead of buying a gift, but after seeing your cute reaction to them, he became less insecure about the habit.

“All this time and effort put into making something just for me? Awe man, how am I even worth it?”

Despite knowing your adoration to his actions, he was kind of upset watching you find them, knowing that you didn’t know who it was. “You’re worth more to me than you think.” From then on, maybe being caught wasn’t such a bad idea, if it meant you’d probably adore him as much as you adore his gestures.