#rbb countdown

Noo, la countdown fue 5 días y era así:

20 oct:

21 oct:

22 oct:

23 oct:

24 oct:

Louis announced We Made It on October 20th, the first day of the RBB countdown

And we know that he’s releasing the song on the 24th. So we shall wait to see what happens on the 25th. Will the bears come out of hibernation?

In retrospect, there was a lot going on that day (20 October 2015). Here is a summary:

http://bulletproofhalo.tumblr.com/post/152071414556/20-october-2015-a-day-in-1d-infamy

1. An article (InStyle) comes out stating that Louis’ infant daughter has been born 2. Louis gives several interviews about his impending fatherhood 3. Dan Wootton publishes an article saying Louis was signed to be an X Factor judge in 2016 4. Jamie Lawson, their opening act for the Belfast concert, performs. 5. An hour after the scheduled start of the concert, it is announced that the concert was cancelled because Liam has been taken ill (with diarrhea) 6. Harry, Niall, and Louis tweet apologies a few hours later 7. Louis tweets a link to the “Perfect” video 8. A “Perfect EP” is noticed on Spotify, including a new song, not included in MITAM, “Home.” 9. Simon gives an interview to Good Morning Britain (published on People’s website) that he tells Louis to “embrace” being a dad. 10. Louis tweets: I’ll make this feel like homeeeee 11. Louis tweets: 🏠 12. The next day, the boys do promo without Liam

Never before had a 1D concert been cancelled– not for broken toes, asthma, vomiting. It was confirmed that Liam was not in hospitals.

13. On 21 October 2015, the Bears’ Twitter account start their 5-day countdown. Here’s a summary:

http://adifferentkindofson.tumblr.com/post/152073054121/hey-excuse-me-im-sorry-i-wasnt-here-back-then

In retrospect, there seemed to be two competing narratives. 1DHQ was pushing hard to continue babygate (with articles about the birth already written and ready to go); it was also pushing for Louis (and possibly Harry) to stay with Syco in some capacity.

A few weeks before Belfast, the transfer of majority shares of Syco to Sony took place. As a result, Simon lost the controlling interest of his company. In addition, the huge drop in share value meant a loss of several tens of millions of £ for Simon. BG may have started as a promotional strategy for Louis (to raise his profile after Zayn left) but turned into a way to bind him to Syco. Perhaps Louis realized it on that day.

Having seen a few of these floating around I wanted to compile my own as I've had a couple of RBB countdown theories that I'm trying to make sense of. 

So, if everything we see in the screenshot is what will happen (or has happened) that leads to babygate ending, this is what can be crossed off.

BSS: This app may represent Bristol Farm where Louis was seen stunting with Danielle. Because nothing says serious like a trip to the supermarket. 

Freddie Day: The baby, obvs. 

Dragopolis: This app has had me stumped for weeks, ney months. I know RBB heavily featured a lot of drag queen friends but it didn't quite make sense until now. The beginning of the end, that is. Zayn was in drag for the Best Song Ever video and This Is Us. He also has a hand tattoo, coincidentally alike the ones the drag queens have who were holding RBB in a picture for their account. Again, coincidentally, Zayn and babygate news have appeared to be coordinated. And we know everyone has eyes on March 25 because of this.

I am losing my SHIT. Because the thing that’s hurt the most out of all of this is that I’ve always trusted the bears. They’re the reason I went from: ‘huh this is kinda weird but fans are probably just overanalyzing and rpf communities are really unhealthy for everyone involved’ to ‘the only explanation for this is that larry is fucking real.’ And every time I started seriously questioning myself, they’d pop back up with more deliberate reassurance. I can explain away everything except the fucking bears.

Especially because one of the things I do at my college is design a yearly interactive campus wide (400+ players) roleplay/puzzle game that involves building a story that players solve in ways uncannily similar to how the fandom analyzes rbb. So it was something that made sense to me, because I’ve literally done the same thing for four years. Basically we create a conspiracy and then create a series of puzzles and events and characters and the players have to figure out what’s really going on behind the bullshit. Tiny little clues that are related to everything else and secrets deliberately hidden that you have to use the internet in very particular ways to find out and fake social media accounts and reverse image searching and celebrity/movie references and reading between the lines in certain things and finding the connections. And, very importantly, monitoring the ‘players’ to make sure they’re solving everything, and giving them more hints if they miss something important. (with rbb that picture of the drag queen that was repeated 3 times until she was correctly identified still gets me.) And in the end, the players come to the final conclusion and everything makes sense. Like, I’ve honestly been plotting some new puzzles for the next game (which I have a planning meeting for in an hour by coincidence) based on rbb.

So last night when I saw the picture I felt so utterly betrayed because if I was wrong then the bears were deliberate manipulation/queerbaiting that I, despite trying to remain impartial at the start, completely fell for. And that fucking hurt.

And back in October when nothing else happened on day 0, I was also so confused because I’d had such high expectations and nothing happened.

But this, the possibility of the countdown being about the number of months actually left, it’s not only something that makes sense given all the other very coded nonsense rbb does, it makes sense based on other facts and assumptions we’ve already had, about contract end dates and the smear campaign progression and the weird ass cancelled show.