#Bearding

[alarrytale]

those tweets felt like emotional manipulation, feeling disgusted. It’s toxic to hate on your racist gf but is okay for your fans your fans to always get de*ath thre*ats? lmao ok

Hi, anon!

Louis underscore out here policing fans again, aww how cute. Not happy with fans not buying and supporting your new fake relationship, maybe? Not happy with people turning on you and not tolerating your behaviour? Has he seen the negative social listening and sentiments statistic, perhaps? Scared it will affect your album sales? Need i remind him that the number one reason this fandom is toxic is *drumroll* Louis underscore Tomlinson on twitter?

Need i also remind him that the hate and negativity he (and ZMcD), who are public figures and chose to expose themselves like this, gets half of the hate us larries do? Larries who have done nothing but believe in and support a gay relationship and reject all attempts at gaslighting?

Does he need a reminder that my inbox looked like this a few days ago? And has looked like this pretty much since 2012?

The toxic environment is all on you, pal. It honestly is a miracle he still has any fans at all. Does he think by saying this that he'll get a less toxic environment in his fandom, and not a lot of solos and antis who'll feel even more entitled to send larries hate? Christ.

Being scared your album might not be recieved well by a fandom you've mistreated and disrespect for years? That fear is very much warranted at this point. He should be scared.

The only thing that will save Louis' career is ending bg at this point. Or else it's only downwards from here. Good luck!

[summer-lovin-09]

Saw someone on TikTok say “Imagine bagging Danielle Campbell just for people to say it’s fake/a stunt”

Girl. Imagine bagging HARRY STYLES and not being able to say that you did. I fear that this life sentence is far worse.

[twopoppies]

This fandom is so annoying, I don't know how you do it Gina😭 I understand there's new people here but do we really need to do the same things every time there's a new stunt??? Like bsffr.

Yes, they're going to take pictures with the "girlfriends"

Yes, they're going to have very public "private" dates

Yes, their families are going to interact with the stunt gf

Yes, the tabloids are going to said that they're serious, that they've never been this happy with someone and they're thinking of settling down

Yes, they're going to meet eachother families because they're so serious and coincidentally only be spotted and pictures by some "fans" because they need something more that the obviously staged pap pics

Yes, both harry and Louis and their eventual stunt gf need the PR. There's no celebrity in this world that's too good to do pr

Yes, the relationships are fake no matter if WE as fans don't understand the purpose of why are they doing it

Yes, they look uncomfortable with the PDA because THEY ARE GAYYYYYY

No, they didn't became straight and they aren't using their "GFs" to get over eachother

No, this time isn't any different. They don't talk about their gfs because they want privacy it's because they're lucky if they know their names

No, paps don't hang around in Yates or private properties waiting for a miracle celebrity sighting with a touch of PDA.

Did I cover everything??? I'm so sorry for ranting in your anons but bloody hell this is unbearable

🤣 I am just going to be using this as my standard answer from now on.

[keepingsecretstokeepyoutk]

This is going to be very long and sound a little crazy at first, and maybe a little mean but please hear me out…

I’m convinced that Taylor sometimes purposefully includes one line or multiple lines of poorly written or clunky lyrics in specific songs to make a point.

We all have seen some version of this with bearding songs like London Boy, a simple bop whose lyrics were immediately detected as sounding disingenuous, even with the general population (the locations she was signing about were the most touristy and too far away from each other to visit on the same day, etc, basically implying that she doesn’t actually have a long term local bf there that she spends a bunch of time with exploring the city with, etc).

But just like everything else on the album, I think she’s doing maybe a more in your face version of that. No holds barred.

So High School is an obvious example of this, with all of the early 2000’s hs imagery, she seems pretty blatantly to be mocking the idea the public has of her “living out every American girl’s high school fantasy” of dating the tall popular football player. With lyrics like “touch me while your friends play grand theft auto” (barf), etc, shes being clear enough that this is not a serious song.

This is the possibly controversial part, but I’m so curious to see what others think about this - I think another iteration of this on this album is the title track, The Tortured Poets Department. Hear me out.

(First, I want to reassure you that there are lines in this song that I really like and think are well written, like: “you’re in self-sabotage mode/throwing spikes down on the road” and “but you awaken with dread/pounding nails in your head/but I’ve read this one/where you come undone/I chose this cyclone with you”. And I fully agree with the idea that these sentiments are from Karlie’s perspective. Basically, when you take out the chunks I’m about to talk about this song makes way more sense and has a beautiful sentiment of undying love behind it - which makes the following parts stick out that much more!)

The first time I listened through the album, and this was the second song, I got terrified because I didn’t understand its place in the whole narrative and when I heard the first clunky line “scratch your head like a tattooed golden retriever” I got the ick. Then the bridge with no structure and no wit and no clever turns of phrase, no metaphor, just “you put my ring on the finger people put wedding rings on” and “that was the closest I’ve ever been to my heart exploding”. So over simplified and cheesy, and doesn’t sound anything like her writing, especially the caliber of her recent lyrics

I know art is largely subjective, but I insist there is no way that the same person who wrote Cowboy Like Me wrote these lines into her title track if she didn’t have a reason and a point to make. To make it clear that this isn’t a matter of genre personal taste, because I know CLM is a very specific sound and a style that music snobs often take more seriously - I love SO many of her candy pop bangers, they are infinitely more clever, articulate, and overall works of art by a true wordsmith than this. Karma, The Very First Night, etc are all a master classes in clever words and tight writing being tucked into an “unserious” pop song.

The lyrics I cited above to me sound like what haters believe her writing sounds like, even fans who make little jokey TikTok’s about her and make up a spoofy something to sing while in character - that’s what these lyrics sound like.

Im worried im being too harsh, but please stay with me because the more I think about the more genius I think it actually is.

In the context of the themes of rest of the album, (her being trapped, miserable, manipulated, ready to burn it all down, screaming to be seen) this theory became clear to me. I think she’s leaning into her public persona (in more ways than one, we’ve already seen it with the stunting), in a way setting a “trap” for her fans and the public, that will essentially call them all out on how they ignored the real her in favor of her pr narrative, making the album about paternity tests, etc, all of which I’m guessing will become very clear in retrospect, possibly after she comes out? (Of course it’s already clear to us now, which is another purpose of the beard songs including clunky writing - to signal to us that these are not serious and that she knows that we know that she knows (like Phoebe on friends lol))

Ultimately, this is (along with So Highschool) a classic beard song. When she writes in this voice, she embodies the most extreme versions of her public persona, not just the one she has cultivated on purpose, but also the one that people have of her that don’t know her (as she did in Blank Space), including those that don’t take her seriously - because her identity as a boy crazy psycho ex girlfriend is directly tied to people dismissing her art as vapid because, they’ve only ever heard her singles, they don’t know the full her.

That voice is the straightest, the most boy crazy, the most one note, and sometimes the most unsophisticated writer version of her that people have in their minds, including her fans - the fans that refuse to see her as a whole person, the real, that believe she is head over heals for big football boy, that believe “he knows how to ball, I know Aristotle” is a romantic line about how opposites attract, the fans that say they don’t “get” some of her most beautiful and well-written songs, the fans that don’t see her and haven’t been seeing her.

They didn’t see giant Taylor on the eras tour, they refuse to see all of her queer signaling, etc, and I think she’s making the bearding songs obvious to underscore the difference between her Taylor(TM) and Taylor(person) personas.

She knows that despite the fact that the lyrics don’t even come close to measuring up to the rest of the album, the public, and many of her fans, will make this song one of the most listened to simply because they are looking for evidence of her relationships from the past year. We’ve all commented on how insane it is that this layered, complex, devastating album is being reduced to the usual paternity tests. This is currently one of the top songs precisely because it is “about Matty”. And of course, So High School is one of the tops songs along with it because it’s “about Travis”.

The juxtaposition of the bearding songs alongside her beautifully written poetry of Prophecy, Peter, Whose Afraid of Little Old Me, Cassandra, How did it end, The Albatross, etc mirrors the juxtaposition of her two selves during the Midnights era.

She has proven the point that if they think she wrote every line of this song completely in earnest, then they see her largely no differently than her haters do, as a subpar writer who writes absurdly cheesy love songs praising trashy to mediocre, problematic men. By eating it up they tell her that’s what she’s good for, for being the subject of tabloids and warring fans who make this entire album about two (purposefully) mediocre songs and the men who “inspired” them.

She has proven her point - that a subset of her fans will be distracted by a lesser song simply because they think it’s about one of the greasy men that’s she been seen holding hands with. That they will ignore once again all of her pleas to be seen, that she’s in pain and caged, and has been driven insane by their willful ignorance. That they don’t appreciate her full potential and talent, that they don’t even see it, and just want to be confirmed in their ideation of her.

This song is essentially the “forget him(her)” pill at the beginning of the fortnight mv, but it’s a sedative for the fans, who are addicted to her straight narrative. Similar to Willow’s 13 chants of “that’s my man” that started off evermore, casting a spell of heteronormativity over everyone who wanted it, so that they could choose to just completely ignore the following 14 gayest songs ever written. Don’t pay no mind to her singing directly about women with zero male perspective - she said “that’s my man!” We’re good! She’s still straight!

Taylor in the fortnight mv had to a take a sedative to be able to go into the next room and write her bearding songs - ie she self medicates to deal with keeping up the straight persona and to get through having to release dumbed down songs to feed the masses. (I also see the pill as something forced on her, I think it represents both layers)

From the first time I watched the music video I thought the writing Taylor looked so miserable and the bearding songs are why.

In this room she’s trapped, churning out the songs that her fans expect of her, the songs that make her team money, the songs that make her money, but that she has to compromise her truth to create.

But when she frees herself she’ll burn the stories that weren’t true, the filler that doesn’t represent her.

I’m curious to hear other’s thoughts on this - have you ever felt like Taylor purposefully inserts off-sounding lyrics that are written in a different voice to make a point?

I want to reiterate that it’s not the entirety of either song that I think is terrible, I genuinely love bopping along to both So High School and TTPD (track). Like I said above, when you remove the clunky lines from ttpd (track), the song has another layer and likely gives voice to some Karlie insight that is beautiful and tragically profound. It’s the red herrings, the pieces specifically meant to tie this song to a bearding narrative, that I’m dissing, and the only reason they are suspicious in the first place is because I know how gifted Taylor is with the written word.

Taylor is such a skilled writer that she can embody the voice of the bad writer that dismissive ignorant idiots believe her to be, just to make a point!

I even wonder if maybe there is a second version of this song locked away in one of those drawers in the fortnight writing room that leaves out the red herrings and is a thousand times better than the bearding version we got.

I hope one day we get to hear it.

[lesbianwriter64]

April 27th is the Tayvis Breakup Date

Well, it probably is. We've been noticing a lot of signs that Taylor and Travis will breakup soon: Taylor disappearing from the public eye, the recent posting about Fresh Out The Slammer (a song theorized to be about coming out and ending her bearding), and other theories such as the Valentines Day movie theory and the Bejeweled/"she ghosted" theory (I recommend looking up those two theories, because they've helped make me think a breakup is imminent).

Anyway, here's the evidence that it's going to be on April 27th specifically:

First, I ran the numbers, and April 27th is 83 weeks after Taylor and Travis's first public appearance together, at one of Travis' football games.

Second, the numbers for April 27th add up to 13, 4+2+7 = 13

Onto the third, and in my opinion most interesting, point: the religious significance of it all.

Some gaylors guessed that something would happen on Easter, because of the many biblical and Jesus references on TTPD, and the specific reference to Easter on Guilty As Sin?:

The rolling of the stone is both a very clear reference to Jesus rolling the stone away on Easter, and a possible allegory for coming out. Besides this, Easter fell on the day after the TTPD anniversary. However, I think gaylors got the wrong Easter Sunday.

That's right, there's a second Easter Sunday, that on the next Sunday after Easter, and is often called the Second Sunday of Easter. The "second" part could be significant, because of the association between TTPD and the number 2 (two fingered peace sign when it was announced, fortnight being announced at a single at 2 p.m., 2 a.m. tracks).

Some other names for this date are White Sunday (TTPD was Taylor's White album), Bright Sunday (like Daylight?), and Thomas Sunday (I can't even get into all the Dylan Thomas references on TTPD).

Finally, this date also has the name Quasimodo Sunday. I'll just leave this below:

In case you can't make that out, the name is based off a verse from PETER, and mentions newborn babes in the verse... "Words from the mouths of babes, promises oceans deep, but never to keep"

This Sunday is also sometimes known as a day of reconciliation or mercy... remind anyone of the lyric "Forgive me peter, my lost fearless leader, in closets like cedar, preserved from when we were just kids"?

Some of this is kind of a reach, and it could mean nothing, but I felt that I should put this out here (just in case I turn out to be right, lol). What do y'all think? Could this be something?

[laurelchell]

She isn't even being subtle anymore

I find it funny how in So High School, a song where it's really hard to ignore the Travis Kelce of it all, Taylor's subconsciously begging people to end her misery.

[butdaddyiloveh3r]

Gaylor lore: lookalikes

[spn-ish]

How Jared sits next to his wife:

📸- lightofsam

Versus how he sits with Jensen:

📸- whereismxd

📸- povmemyself

[alarrytale]

Marte the stunt has hugely ramped up & we're in for a grim few days. ZmD just posted from Costa Rica on her stories.

Hi, anon!

Ohhhh so that's why he didn’t leave CR with the others. It's stunt time!

Time to unleash the anon i got a month or so ago and kept on hand until an eventual tropical vacation? Lol. Here it is:

My older sister knew Za*a McDer*ott at secondary school and still hears information about her from their old friendship group. The reason there's been no movement on the L/Z relationship is because they're arguing over the terms of the contract. Photos are supposed to appear once a month and Louis took this to mean pap shots of them leaving a club or restaurant. Zara thinks this means photos her own photographer has taken which she can put on her IG, which the tabloid press can then pick up on.

They're also supposed to go on vacation or at least look like they're on vacation very soon. Louis just wanted to go down to the south coast and get papped walking on the beach before travelling back to London the same day. Zara is arguing that this location doesn't fit her image which is all about expensive tropical vacations. She likes the idea of Anguilla or St Lucia but Louis has put his foot down and he won't devote that much time to the stunt. Now they're at a stalemate.

Pinch of salt and all that, but lolz.

[summer-lovin-09]

I have a strong feeling that shit is about to go down in this fandom.

Let’s look at all recent events side-by-side rq:

• Louis changing his bio on IG to “Head of Film” and deleting it right before Z*ra’s presence in in Costa Rica was confirmed.

• The “Yawncaster” Pleasing post.

• “Techno is my Boyfriend” hat

• H being papped/accosted by fans at an alarming rate (paired with all the gf allegations)

• Everything we know about LT3 is already being weirdly connected to Harry (this isn’t surprising in itself. It just feels like it’s happening at much quicker rate this time around)

I have a very eerie feeling, and it’s been a while since I’ve had one of these. This is either going to be really good or really bad. It’s undeniable that the whole Mcdomlinson shit is fake. That’s not what’s getting me. This fandom is already well-equipped to handle pr moves. This stunt just feels especially sinister to me and idk why.

Seems like we’re getting a bunch of subtle SOS messages from H & L. Especially Harry’s recent “We’ll be alright” message. It’s setting alarm bells off in my head. I may just be getting jumpy. I’m just speculating at this point, but I felt the need to share.

These boys do NOT deserve to be put through anything else. :(

Really putting my faith in the future rn. This is not the time for us to leave and give up, though. That’s what the media and management want. I know a lot of people are exhausted, but we have to stay strong. Think about how exhausted they must be…

[twopoppies]

I recommend you and your followers and especially your wishy-washy anons watch this video as a bit of reassurance when it comes to how this industry works. This person is a former lawyer who was a big part of the Free Britney movement (all those fans were called conspiracy theorists until proven right) and in this video she’s basically saying how PR does not practice the same standards most people believe in which is honesty. She was saying how if anyone questions the media they’re written off as conspiracy theorists etc until something is exposed and then people pretend like they knew that all along to save face. I related it immediately to how the public treats Larry fans because until the boys come out themselves, the public will continue to call us conspiracy theorists, pathetic, and ignore what’s in their faces. The public is so easy to manipulate it’s scary and in this vid she talks about how PR knows that and laughs about that fact. https://youtu.be/L892eMANoq4?si=d70ClE6NVceDehLN

Thank you so much. I'm super interested to watch. And just from your summary, I know it's going to be stuff we've been saying for years.

[keepingsecretstokeepyoutk]

Not a single mention of James in the Betty Speech for Paris night 1. Instead talked about how since she was 13 writing songs for her fans helped her process her emotions and feel less alone 😭😭😭

[maryflowerw]

He just gave away the game

[daisyswift3]

The Black Dog x Come Back…Be Here x Maroon while her “boyfriend” is in the audience 😭😭 she’s making it very clear she’s talking abt a dream girl not that man

[holyyground]

I may have just cracked the story behind burning down the lover house on tour. I was looking at this photo that LWYjadeMD on twitter posted of the version of Taylor during the bad blood visuals that burns the house down:

And the person who posted this pointed out that this Taylor has a side part. I realized that burning a house down ties in to the idea of ghosting, like the theory I’ve seen floating around that she’s going to ghost Travis’s proposal (I don’t have a link to the original post I’m sorry). And that’s when it clicked—Taylor, currently, has had a side part for the last few days, which is a look she’s never worn before, at least not like this.

We have the theories that she’s going to ghost Travis, based on the bejeweled video. She’s not building a new lover house with Travis, SHE’S BURNING IT DOWN. That’s why the tour visual lover house is ever so slightly different than the original, it’s not the “Joe” lover house, it’s the Travis lover house. And Taylor (I believe with her hair not in a side part but I’d love a visual to confirm) slips out through a mirror earlier in the performance (and there’s been lots of conversation about the mirror visual and the associated queer themes already). Then later, once the real Taylor is free, the fake Taylor, the side part and bearding Taylor, is the one to burn the empty house down.