#sbb talks

[shiftybestbrotherever]

Lifty and Shifty are like gnc men to me

[statementlou]

why do you talk about Louis using blue and green signalling as if it isn't about Harry, that what the blue and green are- do you not believe in larrie?

short answer for the reading challenged trolls to cut down on asks yes I am a larrie, not that anything is wrong with not being one. But longer (much more interesting imo) answer: We know H and L were together, but no one really knows if they are still or again- I personally mostly believe that they are, but I get why people don't think so and can't see any reason to get pressed about it. But you make a solid point- blue and green and certainly things like Louis wearing the H shirt don't potentially signify anything other than larry right? Well that's what makes it so interesting to me- I kind of don't think Louis IS using those things that way! As my recent anon pointed out (and I agree) he wants people to think he is Freddie's dad, he is not presently trying to be perceived as gay in the face of people trying to force him in the closet- he is in charge of his image and is choosing to publicly put forward that he is a guy who got someone pregnant and dates women. And I do think him and H are together, but I don't think he particularly wants to talk to us about that, if that makes sense? But I believe he does want to connect with his beloved fans on a more personal level, to revel in the acceptance and love and shared wink, I know you know I know, me and you until the end, our eyes meet, together we're the greatest- and I think he uses the larry imagery to do that, rather than to talk about his relationship. I could do this for days he gives us SO MANY examples to choose from but just to pick one: the all blue and green lighting for All This Time. Think about it- if he actually had images of a rainbow flag on the screens at his shows or waved one or something, it would make the articles and press and be a whole thing and revive every rumor ever about him in every tabloid! But if he makes the entire lighting and screens for a song blue and green (or wears a shirt with a giant H on it or any of the other one million coded things he does), well so what? No journalist would think a thing of it, nothing to see here- but the larrie majority of his fanbase hears him saying "you were right about everything and yes I am gay and I love you for seeing it" and go completely bananas! It's fucking ingenious tbh, SBB at his finest! And the fact that the song he chose for his current unhinged bluegreener fest was All This Time was for me the thing that really cemented this theory for me; I know some people disagree, but to me that song reads as being about him being closeted and his public life and the fans and choosing this lighting for that rather than for like We Made It or something really feeds my conviction that he is bluegreening on main as a way to tell us that he is gay rather than to tell us anything about his personal relationship. TLDR yeah I DO think he is signaling, a lot, but I don't think it tells us anything about the status of his relationship with Harry or anyone else and the reasons I think they are together don't have anything to do with Louis' stage lighting choices, but also that means I don't think it makes sense to say he's not signaling anything ever because you don't think they're together; both can coexist and I think it's just weird to act like he's not making pretty clear choices

[stackslip]

re the last poll. people making revolutionary girl utena into the "Cute Sword Yuri Anime" has had devastating consequences

[abba-enthusiast]

One thing about me is I WILL hang around a train station for half an hour just to wait for the connection where I don’t have to change trains three times

[patchworkgargoyle]

🌙hideous thing snippet: chpt. 7

Sorry for the lack of (shareable) writing lately. Here's a silly lil big bang snippet to make up for it!

Steve and Robin walked together, communicating with expressions and gestures and half-formed sentences that everyone else had learned to ignore. He teased her about how she started rambling at Chrissy, and she shot back by pointing out how he red he got around Eddie.

They kept going, getting to the point of starting to shove each other around–the urge to playfight always got worse with the full moon–until the last people either of them really wanted to talk to caught up with them. Chrissy and Eddie fell in step, both of them looking nervous. Steve gave Robin one last push when she blushed and smiled goofily at the other woman.

“You two really have ants in your pants tonight, huh?” Eddie said.

Steve couldn’t help the tiny flare of hope in his chest. “Yeah, makes us kinda itchy.”

“You might wanna get that checked out, Stevie. Could be fleas.” The slight teasing smile Eddie wore just fed the flame.

“Hey, I’m well groomed, I can’t have fleas,” Steve scoffed, privately delighted when Eddie’s grin grew wider.

“That’s not really how fleas work.”

Chrissy giggled while Steve shot Robin a glare, and she just held her hands up as if to ask what else he expected her to do.

Eddie gasped loudly then, and said, “What if they’re were-fleas?”

While the others ahead of them all kept talking, completely ignorant, the bubble that surrounded Steve, Robin, Chrissy, and Eddie filled with silence. Steve mouthed “were-fleas” with baffled despair. Robin narrowed her eyes like she wanted to study Eddie under a microscope. Chrissy simply sighed.

“How would that even work?” Robin asked, but Chrissy cut Eddie’s impending explanation off with a stern, tired hand in front of his grinning face.

“Don’t get him started. Seriously. He’ll go on forever,” she said, and Steve nodded knowingly. He’d blundered into Eddie’s bizarre, not at all hilarious or charming, rants one too many times now. “And I still have to talk to you, Steve.”

[holisticblight]

i think i hauve the bubonic plague

[stevethehairington]

besties i think i finished outlining one of my two steddie big bang fic ideas 👀👀👀👀👀

[ent-is-indecisive]

[fuctacles]

Eddie picks up a vaginal health pamphlet and really fixates on the part that tells him to "air it out as often as posibble". He's all for that, he's dedicated, he's giddy knowing there's a valid excuse to walk around half naked. He warns EVERYONE to give him a heads up before entering his room.

Steve hates it. Because all he can think about is that on the other end of Hawkins Eddie might be winnie-poohing it around his bedroom while reading, playing the guitar, writing. He tries to be a good friend about it, he knows Eddie is trans and it doesn't matter, he wants to be supportive whenever he gets excited about his body. Even if just thinking about it drives him mad. He's determined to be normal about it, he's a king of friendzone after all, but the newest development in Eddie's antics makes it even harder.

Because one day, instead of putting on a pair of pants to meet his guest, Eddie opens his door wearing a skirt. Steve eyes the new outfit with surprise, but schools his face to fall back into his supportive friend mode.

"Nice skirt," he says with a smile.

Eddie grins at him, swaying his hips to show off the new garment.

"Thanks. It's way easier to go commando."

Steve's dead. The words are like an arrow through his brain. Gray matter is leaking through his ears and he can barely focus on what Eddie is saying at any time because the guy does not follow the skirt etiquette. His legs are spread as always when he sits, and he only barely catches himself before throwing one leg over the other. Steve begs him to put on a movie he can focus on instead.

He realizes then that he has to talk to Robin about it. He needs a proper pep talk before he tells Eddie he has a massive Thing for him and would really appreciate if he wore underwear when they're hanging out.

[check out my SBB fic while you're here] [ko-fi]

[stonerbellybabe]

The pool at my complex closed early just as I was about to take a quick swim so I guess I have to eat pizza in a bikini now :((

[chainmail-butch]

i was talking to a friend who's a trans woman about this. she used to be really weird about butch trans women, but ended up being butch herself. she told me she was adverse to it because "it was like watching someone leave their house completely naked. you feel maybe a little embarrassed for them but you're mostly scared for how other people are going to treat them too. [she] thought "well, [she'd] be embarrassed doing the same and maybe they were having a hard time passing. but then finding out they're doing it on purpose, [she] thought that they were making a joke of being trans, like they were enforcing the stereotype of just saying you were a woman despite not making any effort to look like one. [she] was confused as to why anyone would do that, especially when she'd been having a hard time being treated well even though she did everything to make herself like a cis girl." she hated having to put in so much effort into looking feminine but did it because she was sure that's just what you had to do. obviously, probably regardless of how she looked, she was going to be treated like shit on the principal of being trans and after actually talking to butches and thinking about it more, she decided to just dress how she felt comfortable and still be proud of being a woman.

That's very interesting to hear. That is the consistent impression I've gotten from well meaning trans women.

I had to wrestle with the whole, "declaring myself a woman without making the effort," thing. When I first transitioned I put on dresses, tried on makeup, and got cute jackets. None of it felt right. I knew, entirely, that I was a woman. But doing all of the things women were supposed to be doing made me feel even worse than when I had lived as a man, which is saying something.

I eventually figured out that there is plenty of effort to being a butch woman. There are still styles, there are still pieces of gendered clothing, there are still gendered actions, they're just hidden in plain sight. They're all the things I wanted to do and all the ways that I wanted to be perceived that I couldn't understand until someone (Leslie Feinberg) held a mirror to my face (SBB) and said Butch. Then it all clicked.

I've been doing HRT for three full years now. I've been socially transitioned for three full years now. It is work. It is a challenge. It is walking out of the house with nothing but your soul and what you choose to armor it with. For some women the armor is a dress and a full face of makeup. For me its leather and boots.

I love my sisters deeply. I love women deeply. I love womanhood deeply. But my womanhood is also deliberately not womanhood. My selfish desire is a world where I can be exactly who I am without having to justify it to every woman, trans or cis, that crosses my path. But that's not gonna happen any time soon.

As so many butches, cis and trans, have said, It is a difficult road to walk and I have no choice but to walk it.

[so-idialed-9]

Louis choosing to share photos of him in the "queer wonderland" Scissors tent IN HIS IG from Glastonbury has me very emotional tbh 😭

It has talks and workshops about queer vulnerability and other topics, hair salon, beer garden with pool table, secret nightclub, and DJs. It also includes framed photos of queer icons ✨️ and if this isn't all the most Louis Tomlinson RBB/SBB shit I've ever heard....

I see Elton, anyone recognize these other icons?

"A new queer venue for the park, Glastonbury Festival 2024" and here is Louis and his rainbow 🌈 outfit going to the Park

Hustlers and Mermaids - I need someone to write a fanfiction with this title please

IG photos from Louis

TikTok tour of Scissors

Daily Mail article

[txttletale]

genuine question--would you mind clarifying why the use of trans lesbian is bad in reference to a trans person who is a lesbian? am i missing some context? i tried googling but i got mostly just a lot of vile garbage. nw if you're done talking about this topic, that is understandable. have a nice day (saluting emoji which i dont have but please imagine it here)

sure. 'trans lesbian' is, like, a compound word that means specifically 'a trans woman who is a lesbian', and not just 'someone who is trans and a lesbian', in the same way that idk a 'little finger' isn't just 'a finger that is small'. & obviously i am all for recognizing that labels are just labels, that words are not the things themselves, but 1. this is not, like, some weird backformation or super restrictive definition that people make up to mean arguments, it's how that word is used in common practice by queer orgs, media outlets, the UN, and 2. i think that there is context here that makes it pretty important to be extremely clear about who is and isn't a trans lesbian in this sense.

the context is that trans lesbians (ie, trans women, who are lesbians) are like at the center of the hurricane of transphobia across the world right now. ray blanchard, the fucking pioneer of modern pseudoscientific transmisogyny, specifically singles out the 'autogynophiles' (as opposed to the 'homosexual transsexuals, who are trans women attracted to men') as dangerous perverts. TERF's most hateful transmisogynistic caricatures and canards of trans women as dangerous sexual predators who are threat to Women's Spaces are implicitly about the Trans Lesbian. it's a term that sent the entire transphobia industrial complex into overdrive when it was used in some UN org's tweet:

these headlines are not about Trans people who are also Lesbians--both these articles are filled with all the usual bile about how trans women are really sexually predatory men who want to infilitrate womanhood. neither of the people writing these articles would like leslie feinberg for sure, but they also wouldn't think of hir as a Dangerous Predator Infilitrationg Women's Spaces. & so when the trans lesbian is the fucking like cultural boogeyman that politicians are determined to performatively target and punish, i think that using that language to describe people who aren't transfem is diluting our ability to talk about this kind of transmisogyny.

& i mean like, this is not just an abstract concern, right, because the instant that i initially took issue with was someone essentially saying 'wow, why do you think that people who obsess over SBB specifically and The 80s more generally as the end-all be-all of Queerness and Lesbianhood tend towards a transmisogynist view of thoes things when leslie feinberg is literally a trans lesbian.' like it is explictly and obviously a rhetorical sleight of hand which is why i treated that ask with the contempt it deserved.

[skepticalarrie]

That anon that talked about Louis wanting to create his own identity away from Larry. I agree and just wanted to share my interpretation of something and see what you and others think?

I know most people think there was some weirdness or off-ness during the end of 2022 and 2023 in regards to Larry. At least that's the period people usually point to when discussing a break-up or lack of signalling or whatever.

Up until Louis' first album release and then first tour, all Louis had to hold on to was the support from mostly Larries. During the years between 1d ending and his first tour, I think Louis was still operating on SBB mode a lot because that's all he really knew - all the signalling, clues, hints, etc. That was the fanbase he was accustomed to.

So his tour starts and it's very Larry. It's in a lot of his outfit choices (one that comes to mind is him wearing the red trackies with the embroidered butterfly ONLY ONCE amongst all the black jeans and the day was either harry's bday or valentine's day I forget now), it's in the screaming of the Princess Park line, it's in the Larry posters and Larry dolls that people brought, the rainbow lights and pride flags to an extent.

I think once it really set in for Louis that he could have a successful music and touring career and this wasn't just going to be a once off, he decided he wanted/needed to make some changes. He didn't want his whole identity to come down to Larry. I can imagine the support being nice but equally if not more frustrating. And I think that's when he started pulling away and creating boundaries and shifting the vibe of things. Because the vibe of fitf tour was quite different to walls tour. And some of that can be attributed to different fans coming in but it's also people taking their cues from Louis.

Anyway I don't love the way he's gone about some things and it hurts like a bitch to know that he had some of the most loyal and hard core fans that saw through a lot of the bullshit and were there for arguably "the real louis tomlinson" (or at least more real than the public narrative version) and he essentially saw us and was like "Yeah...thanks, but no thanks. Don't need you guys anymore."

On a side note, I'll never understand how it can be fulfilling for an artist like Louis and Harry to have all these fans that are fans of essentially a made-up version of them. Like if I was up on a stage and I had all these fans that cared a great deal about me but they cared about the person that is straight, and a womaniser, and a father, etc. That would feel a little empty but I'm not them so.

If you read all this, bless you.

I see where you’re coming from, anon, and I understand your points. But honestly, I feel like this discussion is missing the point. IMO, it’s not really about IF Louis is trying to distance himself from Larries, or even WHY he might be doing that. It feels broader than that.. it’s about how it’s being done for me.

In my opinion, it boils down to the fact that I fully believe both Harry and Louis likely want to keep their relationship more private. And I think that has been there since the band ended. If we look back, Harry has been criticized A LOT by larries for years because Louis seemed more “engaged” in the scavenger hunt of larry clues for a while now. Since Louis released Walls he’s taken on more of that role in the dynamic, while Harry built an entirely new fanbase away from that.

And here’s the thing: it’s perfectly fine for them to want to rebrand, attract new fans, or disassociate themselves from certain parts of their image. I don’t see it as a bad thing, it makes sense, especially if they want to keep some things private and you know.. considering all the mess with their closeting during the band. The issue, for me, is how it’s being done. The way this shift is happening feels like gaslighting, and that’s where my frustration lies.

Let’s face it, Harry went through similar criticisms when he made his changes, and Larries tore him apart at the time too. But maybe it didn’t sting as much back then because Louis was still “feeding” us little clues. Or maybe it’s because babygate is harder to swallow. Perhaps it’s the difference in their approaches.. Harry has remained silent on Larries entirely, while Louis has made shady comments and leaned heavily on Larries for support for much longer.

So regardless of the reasons, the way things are unfolding feels like a slap in the face, especially given how much they’ve both benefited from Larry speculation over the years. For Louis, it’s particularly upsetting because of babygate and it really creates this massive cognitive dissonance that’s hard to swallow. I’m definitely curious about their new eras when the time comes, especially Louis’.

[louisisalarrie]

helloooo sweet angels. welcome to the show!

I tend to answer and talk about a lot of bbg/2015 things on here and seem to attract a lot of newer fans & Larries (which is wonderful!!!) but I thought I’d just share some resources that you can refer to so there’s not so much back and forth in my inbox.

Arden (cosmicleeds) makes fantastic, super digestible videos recapping years, bbg, rbb & sbb and the big gay war etc., and I think it’s a really valuable way to kind of get your head around some stuff as socials, especially Twitter, have a lot of misinformation, fighting, wrong timelines, stuff that’s already been debunked etc.

so, here are a couple of faves that I recommend newer larries, or people who want refreshers, to watch as it’s a little less overwhelming than the 15k word essays we have on these topics that are hard to read about when you haven’t kind of been introduced to it initially

The Larry Stylinson Timeline - 2015

Larry denials and why they’re meaningless

RBB, SBB, & the Big Gay War

The difference between larry and the rest of 1D

there is a video on each year of Larry since 2010 too, so you can feel like you were there for it!

as always, I also highly recommend Allie’s (skepticalarrie) tags post if you want more of a read instead of a video, with so many masterposts and specific info on everything larry, and also louis and Harry individually

if you’re looking for fic recs or general larry/1d chats and a heap of receipts, Gina (twopoppies) is also very wonderful

and obviously there are a million other fantastic blogs and videos to watch, but I highly recommend those to start off with at least as they are based off facts and are very clear, as opposed to some wild reaching that goes on these days in certain parts of twitter etc.

we’re all here to be welcoming, have a chat, and be here for you to navigate this wild part of the fandom, and while there can be some nasty folks out there, remember that this is a welcoming place where we love love and we are a community who supports each other. the way it should be.

so, welcome baby larries, you’re in for a wild ride!

(also I’m very excited for this year’s recap - I want something crazy to go down the end of this year because damn rewatching 2015 took me right back to the days!)