Toning down the gay | Louis Tomlinson’s public image | Part 1: years 2010-2013 

yeah especially Niall! He even looked at Harry lol

Yes! I noticed that too

@@seaweedbrain4127 Yeah. And Harry had an amused smile by "girls" too. It was almost like he gave himself permission to laugh once Louis turned it into a joke.

selly I agree with you. I don`t want to imagine how Harry and Louis felt inside, having to pretend to be someone else, possibly with fear of making mistakes like laughing at a wrong moment in interviews or just smiling at each other. There are moments when Harry and Louis suddenly looked so sad and helpless and that`s really heartbreaking. I think at a certain point it was excruciating for all of the boys especially for Zayn. To get an eating disorder the soul has to endure a lot of suffering and pain and that`s why i think it was the best decision for Zayn to leave the band. The best for his physical and mental health. Their management has done too much damage to all of them, let`s hope only the best for the future of these 5 angels. - James Corden would also be my first choice :) and i`m still struggeling with the english language, sorry

Yeah, I agree that it hit Zayn the hardest, and he really had to leave for his own health, but I think the reasons behind his suffering were a bit different from Louis. It wasn’t only about their images, but they were very restricted in many other ways. They spent a lot of time more or less locked up in hotel rooms (mostly for their own safety, of course), and their work pace was insane. Different people handle things like that differently. I think it was really hard for Zayn to have every aspect of his life controlled like that. It was difficult for all of them, but especially for Zayn, and its very understandable. When it comes to Louis, I think he was in many situations punished for acting up or fighting back against their team. Many people in the industry hated him and weren’t even trying to hide it (I’ll talk more about this in the next part). I think he was also used for controlling Harry. It seems to me that Louis’ situation was a lot more complicated than the rest of the boys'.

Silke Adler...beautifully stated and summed up. Heartbreaking- i'd also add 😍💔. Bless their hearts 💙💚💞💌. Travesty to have to compromise/squelch even a fraction of one's personality- Any Time. But ESPECIALLY when YOUNG! And even MORE draconian and a TRAVESTY in conjunction with the prospect of a FEW extra bucks!!!!! As though a greedy gazillion AREN'T ENOUGH!! G'head- management...SELL UR SOULS TO THE DEVIL👿 And if i may a coupla things. 1. I happen 2 be a straight female- who believes in FREEDOM!!!!!. 2. If a leaked vid of management admitting that he encouraged Zayn to drop out because a. He didn't have as much energy as the rest. b. He was dragging the band down-- well I was horrified and disgusted. And happy that the crows came home 2 roost; and a nice slice a KARMA was served up to ya with the soon subsequent disbanding of the rest of the boys. Long LIVE 1D 🕺🕺🕺🕺🕺🤩😘🤙👍👌👏✌😎💙💚❤💌!

@@anniemack6855 Thanks 🙂

Julie McNeil - couldn't have said it better

@@barbaraef9675 Thank you so much Barbara! I appreciate your compliment!😊

This is the best comment I’ve seen in my entire life.

@@annabethchase4582 Awww! I am so not worthy of such praise🙄 thank you so very much for your kind words!🤗💚💙

this comment is exactly how I feel but I am not that great with words

Is it from the X Factor 2018? I've heard of it (I think it was from that), but I haven't seen it. If anyone has it or knows where to find it, please send it to me!

@@FearlessCreature I'm not sure if I remember it well but what I remember is that it's after 1D hiatus, during his solo career

@@christyk9271 What? Aren't they all free? Why is he still self-conscious? 💔💔

@@inmarcesible_sonrisa they may all be on their own doing solo music, but there are a lot of things we don't know. Artists may be bound to certain contracts even after they left the label and Harry is still under a management which may not allow them to be open about it. Also coming out is not easy and they have a lot to worry about like how people are gonna treat them. It is true that us fans are gonna support them no matter what but there still are people who are going to be negative about it. Harry has a huge fandom, therefore he may have toxic fans who are in it for his good looks. So they may not be as accepting when they actually need the support. Coming out in general is a scary thing and when there is the whole world watching you it gets harder. Louis was told to hide his flamboyant nature for years so it must be difficult. As fans we should be trying to be understanding and supporting them no matter what

That's such a lovely comment, thank you!

link pls

'when they said a love like this would never last'

@@yeti6601 Here you go ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EPl5yBxhKtY.html

@@It.is.what.it.is. tyy

It’s true that they seem genuinely surprised. They also seem confused and not quite sure how to answer, and I think there may be multiple reasons for that (one being the obvious: not to say something they are not supposed to). They were aware of the Larry fandom at that point already, but they probably thought it’s a marginal phenomenon. At the same time, the whole Larry fandom thing (and also the whole straight fandom, really) must have felt strange to them in the beginning. The interviewer specifically said that girls like to see guys they are attracted to making out with each other, and the way she says it makes it quite clear that she assumes the boys to be straight. At least I hope she wouldn’t talk to queer guys like that, if she knew they were queer. If you think of it the other way round: if a lesbian couple is told that straight men like to look at them together, I think many lesbians/wlw would feel weird and uncomfortable about it. While it’s not exactly the same for gay men (because of the long history of misogyny, sexism, objectification of women, the male gaze, and so on), it can still feel weird and uncomfortable. At the beginning, I don’t know how much H & L could see the support from the fandom, or if they could mainly just see the “fetishisation” side of it (I wouldn’t really like to use that word, but I can’t figure out a better one). Personally, I don’t think that that’s majorly what the Larry fandom is or was about, but if I think of myself in their place, it might have felt like that. Also, I don’t find fanfiction inherently problematic, not even the most explicit ones (I find certain aspects of some of them problematic, but that’s another issue), as long as they stay in platforms such as AO3 and Wattpad, where you can’t run into them without searching for them. Nevertheless, H & L must have felt weird about reading those. I know there are multiple other reasons for women to write gay fanfiction other than fetishisation, but I’m trying to look at it from the point of view of its subjects at that time (in 2012). Also, I know Larry fanfics are not all written by women, but because what they discussed in that interview was why girls like to look at men being affectionate with each other (and to write fanfiction about it), I only talked about that side here. So, I think they were partly surprised because of being told by their management that their fanbase wouldn’t want them to be together, but partly just genuinely confused and uncomfortable about the whole thing. If I was in their place, I would probably just want to get out of the topic as fast as possible. Even watching the interview makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Just yeah, Shannon! Jo també penso que el treball de compilació de vídeos, i les corresponents explicacions del que estaven vivint els nois, i el perquè dels seus comportaments i les seves reaccions, són coses que haurien de saber tot el fandom (Louies i Larries sobretot). Qui té tota la informació (disponible) analitzada i raonada, i coneix què va passar, els estimarà més que sí només veuen que són guapos (que ho són), que tenen veus precioses i que són grans compositors. No sé si ho he dit aquí abans, però conec les cançons de 1D i d'ells en solitari des d'aquest any. Més tots els vídeos, concerts, entrevistes, timelines, etc que he vist, més l'empatia que han despertat en mi, més la meva visió de mare d'un noi un any més petit que Harry, més el que vist (i m'ha enfadat) de la indústria musical durant uns quants anys, tot això ha fet que m'encantin vídeos com els teus, @fearless_creature. Sé que ets una persona molt madura, i si no t'havia dit, t'estimo i et dono les gràcies pel que estàs fent. Naturalment, estimo els cinc nanos, però sí, la meva debilitat són Louis, perquè sé que ha patit molt sense mereix-ho, i Harry. Freedom and love. Love Is Love ♒💜 ❤️ 💙💚

@@evaserral369 Im so sorry I only know English but the fact that you wrote yes to me makes me think this is all lovely words of encouragement for the boys🥰🥰🥰💙💚💙💚

@@shannonfox3351 oh! so sorry Shannon and Fearless_creature! I wrote in Catalan because in other places, google translates it automatically, but now I see that it doesn't here. I'm sorry. Yes, of course: all I said, in summary, is that all these facts, perfectly explained and reasoned, should be known by the whole fandom, but louies and larries in particular. They would love them even more (besides knowing that they have beautiful voices or recognizing that they are great songwriters). Also that I've gotten to know their music this year, and I've read, listened and watched everything I could from them, in 1D and solo careers, and above all, that my weakness is Louis, and so is Harry. But more Louis 😉 I love their music, and I love them (I'm a mother, so I love them as I would most children, recognizing that they are adults now but they were very young back then). I also really appreciate what fearless_creature is doing, because he does an excellent job with these videos. I send you my love (I'll try to translate all the original text tomorrow, and I apologize again, because I didn't know there was no translator here)

Thanks for reminding how good these post are I just spent the evening watching them again. 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌💙💚💙💚

@@evaserral369 thank you so much for your reply. You think very much like I do. I had a son that I lost through a car crash he was 26 he shares a birthday with Louis and he very much has Louis fighting spirit and fierce and gentle love. He was a musician like Louis and me. I watch Louis grow and it's like I can imagine my Pete growing I'm 73 now and I have a very heartfelt love for Louis because I feel I recognise things in him that I saw in Pete. I love the whole Larry thing because it's so fierce and soft. I am also a song writer so I am in awe of their songs it's like they are standing on two different mountains calling out and answering each other it's just magical. Well that's me a geriatric Larrie and loving it🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰💙💚

what is louis say

@@ariella2828 "Harry's getting head."

@@ariella2828 @tpwk Interviewer: So who gets the head? N: I want the head Liam: (?????) L: Harry's getting head H: Pfthahaha

El karma no és 'instantani', i molts no veiem els seus efectes (de fet, no ens cal) però també crec que els arribarà. Hi ha molts refranys que ho afirmen, a totes les cultures; l'important és que si dónes amor, et torna amor.

Thank you. Harry was branded as “the flirt” already on the X Factor, and his image was heavily built on sex appeal, so I’m not sure what exactly you disagree on. That they didn’t do it for financial gain? I’m pretty sure they did everything for financial gain. However, I agree that when they tried to break in the American market, they wanted to tone down the sexual banter between the boys and to go for a more strictly heterosexual image. I suppose you’re a new fan because the documentary you talked about got a lot of things wrong, including some basic facts that are easy to check and that most fans would know anyway. It was released in 2014, when Midnight Memories was 1D’s newest album. They say, for example, that Harry, Niall, and Liam contributed the most to the songwriting. Now, this is objectively incorrect and easy to check just by going through the songwriting credits on the album. Louis has written on 9 out of 14 tracks on the album, Liam on 8, Harry 4, Niall 2, and Zayn 1. They also say that Little Things (which they called “Littlest Things” in the documentary) is from that album, although it is in fact from Take Me Home. They also say that Niall (whom the narrator calls “Niall Haron”…) was “by far” the most popular member in the US, but they don’t really back this up in any way, apart from the interviewees’ personal opinions. I think there was a time when Niall got a lot of fan support in general because fans felt that he was underrated, but I don’t think he ever really was a “target band member”. All the interviewees in that documentary are showbiz/celebrity gossip reporters, and one of them, Dan Wootton, I have mentioned multiple times in this video series, especially the fifth part, because of how many nasty articles he has written about Louis and 1D. So, if they can’t even get some basic facts right, such as songwriting credits, song titles, which album a song is from, or Niall’s last name, and if you do a little background check on the interviewees, that should tell you how reliable that documentary is.

They are not entirely free. Their old contracts still bind them, and it's complicated. If you want a proper answer, watch this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EXCgLWGyje8.html

@@FearlessCreature I think in spite of this situation, Harry is really ready of coming out, but Louis can’t dare this.. his mind is still in control and i hope one day he will become free and independent 🥀

If you don't know what getting head means, Google helps :)

@@FearlessCreature I've tried and found nothing. That's why I've asked here. You don't have problem to make video about it but can't explain.

​@@fasolanta I tried to explain it, but youtube didn't allow me to post the comment, which I kind of expected, so what should I say? Try Urban dictionary? I don't mind talking about things like that, but youtube does, so...

@@FearlessCreature thank you for that explanation. I didn't know that about YT. Because English isn't my first language I don't always know how to look or write certain things. I've written it exactly using your words and dictionary and I've got it. Thank you I really appreciate that.

So, are you saying that the past abuse was also fine and should just be ignored, or what? He may be fine now (although I think certain things clearly indicate that his past still affects him), but it took him years to get to this point. And being happy in his relationship doesn't have much to do with it. Love alone won't save anyone, and even though being in a supportive, healthy relationship helps, everyone has their own baggage to deal with.

“Harry’s getting head”

Are you seriously suggesting that Harry’s femininity is something Jeff forced on him and not something that is an important part of who he is? Oh my goodness. That’s so offensive to Harry. It has been a part of Harry since the X Factor. If you haven't noticed, maybe you're just willingly ignoring it. It's not something Jeff created.

@@FearlessCreature Like I said.I don't know.I don't get Harry so I stopped following him.Regardless what I feel abt him it's very clear Louis loves & cares for him.So I don't wanna offend Harry.But sometimes I feel if it was someone else other than harry louis would have been more open.I know it was mostly management but I don't think Harry had the strength to take stand for louis anyway.

​@@ns1208 They are closeted, that's why they can't be open. I don't know from where some of you got the idea that Louis' closeting is Harry's fault. It was pretty clear in the beginning that they both wanted to be out and open about their relationship, but for a long time they both were just pieces of a product that 1D was. I don't know why you think that Harry had the power to change things but Louis didn't. I don't think either of them had that power. At the moment, I'm not sure if either one of them is in a place in their careers where they would be ready to come out, but both of them are so stuck in stunts that they can't come out at the moment, anyway. Neither one of them can. But invalidating somebody's gender identity/expression and sexuality like that is really such an awful and offensive thing to say.

@@FearlessCreature I didn't say it was Harry's fault.But it is very clear if it wasn't harry,louis wouldn't have to face such hostile situations to this extent.They not only sabotaged louis' image but also his career.Even to this date solo harries try to demean louis just bcz he is associated with harry.Harry never really did stand up for louis.About his feminine side what puzzles me why harry doesn't dress up like that normally.Harry is too complicated to figure out.When he used to be with louis it seemed like louis was his world.But then it seemed like he doesn't even know louis.I have my doubts abt harry.Ig time will tell. but i can say he liked louis.May be more than he intented to.

@@ns1208 People can have feminine AND masculine gender expression. People can want to dress more feminine in some situations and more masculine in others. People can want to dress more casually in some situations (for example, a lot of women wear more or less gender-neutral casual cloths even if they identify as feminine, you know). Maybe Harry is not too complicated to figure out, maybe it’s just too complicated for you to figure him out. I do agree that Louis’ career has been sabotaged, but I think the situation is complex, and not Harry’s fault. Some solo harries (or quite many of them, to be honest) are just dumb, so there is no point in listening what they say. They hate Larry mostly because they have their het fantasies. But don’t Harry and Louis both act like they don’t know each other, not just Harry? Of course, Harry has a lot bigger career and in that way he could have more power, but I don’t think it’s that simple. I believe Louis and Harry are still together, and I believe they make decisions together as a couple. I don’t think the situation is easy for either one of them.

I’ve made a whole video about Dan Howell’s coming out video and what I think larries should learn from it. You can watch it here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Dw38aTdaoUE.html In Louis’ case, I don’t think you can really separate the gay rumours from the Larry rumours. The Larry rumours started so early on that it’s hard to say how much speculation there would have been about his sexuality if there hadn’t been rumours about his relationship with Harry. If the rumours had been mainly based on stereotypes, and not on everything people saw between H & L, it would have been a lot easier to shut the rumours down, for example, by having a girlfriend, but because of Larry, the speculation continued regardless. Larry was the main reason why people tried to find proof of Louis’ sexuality. 18-19-year-old young adults are not exactly school kids, and extroverted, funny, and sweet are not characteristics that are specifically seen as stereotypically gay, so I don’t quite understand your analogy. The way one acts with their peers, with whom they spend several hours each day at school, is not really comparable with the way one acts in front of TV cameras, in interviews, or on stage in front of thousands of people. Louis was 18-21 at the time, and a person at that age is old enough to understand causality. If you repeatedly make gay sex jokes deliberately in front of cameras and a huge audience, you can’t be very surprised if people start to speculate about your sexuality. Being perceived as flamboyant and describing oneself as flamboyant are also two separate things. I’d say that most, if not all, straight men who would publicly describe themselves as flamboyant are very comfortable and confident with their sexuality, and not afraid of being perceived as gay, since most people understand the connotations of that word. When it comes to Louis, the gay rumours were never just about the way he acted, but majorly about the things he said and did deliberately in public, and about his relationship with Harry. I don’t think it’s ok to make assumptions of a person’s sexuality based on stereotypes, and I’ve said that multiple times on this channel. However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t recognise that those stereotypes exist, or that a person can’t be aware of how other people perceive them. I think it’s highly unlikely that Louis would have only found out at the age of 20-21 that some people perceive some of his mannerism etc. as stereotypically gay, which is why I think that being openly flamboyant and describing himself as such, openly flirting and being very affectionate with another boy, and making gay sex jokes multiple times very publicly are things he wouldn’t do if he wasn’t comfortable with the likely assumptions people would make based on it. And during that time, he seemed happy and confident, and it seemed that he lost his confidence with his flamboyance. I don’t know why you think it’s bad for a straight person to question their sexuality. Introspection is usually good for people. Being heterosexual is very easy in our society, so if someone is straight, they can be straight. They can experiment to find out what they like. There’s nothing wrong with figuring yourself out even if you're straight. It seems that you come from a homophobic environment and have a lot of internalised homophobia, and I’m sorry about that. Dan also talked about internalised homophobia and about growing up in an environment where “gay” was used as an insult, which is why he had negative associations with that word and that’s why it was hard for him to identify with it. However, gay is not a slur. It’s not a bad word and being associated with it isn’t inherently bad. I don’t share your experience that being called straight or gay would significantly impact how we perceive ourselves. I’ve been assumed to be straight, gay, and bi/pansexual, and although I’ve struggled quite a lot with my identity, other people’s assumptions of me haven’t really affected it. I’ve never felt offended or bothered when people have asked me about it because I have always felt that those people have had good intentions, even when I haven’t been ready to give them an answer. I’ve always felt uncomfortable about having to come out, and it has always been a relief to me if people can recognise my queerness without me having to make a statement about it. Your experience is completely valid, but it isn’t universal to all LGBTQ people.

@@FearlessCreature I've just watched your video about the comparison between Dan and Philip, and I agree with 95% of the things you said (At one point, it was like listing to my mind). However, I didn't mention Dan's video to reference toxic fans' behaviour. And, if you felt like I was calling you a toxic fan or anything like that, I am sorry. I swear it wasn't my intention. I did it because I like how Dan perfectly described the heteronormativity, the homophobia and the toxic masculinity people born in the early 90s grew up in. Do I believe that being associated with being gay is wrong? No. Do I believe Louis thinks that? No. But we grew up in a society where kids used the word gay as an insult. And, as Dan said, before knowing the meaning of the world, we were taught it meant something bad. Obviously, it wasn't the same in every part of the world. I got it much better than Dan, and maybe the situation in South Yorkshire was even better than mine (my English relatives say no, but I've never been there, so I can't make an assumption), but that was the situation. Things, fortunately, got much better, but we are still far from an equal society. So, for this reason, I can easily imagine people back at the begging of the 2010s ridiculing and scolding Louis because many Directioners thought he was gay and wrote gay ff about him. Now, obviously, in this scenario, the people in the wrong are the ones making fun of someone because he is perceived as gay, but we can all recognise that the person being ridiculed is not having the best time of their life. You said that Louis must have been aware of how acting in a certain way would have delivered a sexual ambiguous image, and I agree with you. He knew that acting and saying certain things would have caused people to question his sexual identity and possibly attack him for that, but he did it anyway... at the beginning. And this is my point. I believe Louis was conscious and okay with the entire situation at the beginning. But, at one point, it became too big. With the growing number of larry fans and speculation about his sexuality, the number of people calling him gay with a negative connotation also grew. Add to the mix the toxic fans you talked about and the media that only talked about him as the untalented or the gay one, and you will understand why he felt he had to shift the attention to something else. To clarify, I am saying that he felt he needed to change not because he was perceived as gay but because that's the ONLY thing people (by people obv I don't mean Louis fan, or Larry/Directioners that are also Louis fan) were saying/care about him. So, in order to try to be seen as something more than his sexuality, he had to comply with the heterosexual normative. Moreover, working and living in a society poisoned by toxic masculinity and homophobia, you know that being labelled and ONLY remembered for being "the gay member of the band" can reduce your job opportunities. Add the fuc*** management, label (and the entertainment industry) he had which encouraged/strongly push forward/forced (choose the one you find more fitting) and built the new image, and that's it. Obviously, this is just my unsubstantiated interpretation. ((The way my belief that it is wrong to label a person's sexuality based on their fashion choices or to perpetuate any other lgbtq+ stereotypes is an indication of my internalised homophobia is something you have to explain to me.))

@@marziamarini8904 I understand your point and agree that we shouldn’t label people based on stereotypes. However, I don’t think that was what happened with Louis. I think you put way too much emphasis on how people outside of the Larry fandom (and a lot of larries are predominantly Louis’ fans) and Directioners perceived Louis’ sexuality, and I really don’t think that many people outside the fandom even cared about who Louis was, let alone his sexuality. The thing is, like I said in my previous comment, that his sexuality wasn’t labelled primarily based on his mannerism (or on his fashion choices, which weren’t even mentioned before you brought it up now), because the Larry rumours were there from the start. If it wasn’t for Larry, the gay rumours would probably have been much easier to shut down, or at least we don’t know how it would have been, because there never was a situation where there would have been gay rumours of him without them involving Harry. So, even though your speculation could potentially be true, it’s based on circular reasoning and on assumptions that were never true. You claim that his sexuality was the only thing about him people cared for, but that was never the case. And the media never talked about him as the gay one. That was never a thing. So, your interpretation is mostly a guess because the things you base it on are not facts. It was mainly his fans and larries (who were also his fans) who cared about his sexuality, and to other people he was mostly invisible - even more so after he lost his confidence and basically faded in the background. I’m slightly older than Louis and Dan, so I grew up at the same time as them, in a society where kids used the word gay as an insult, and in which LGBTQ people lacked many basic rights, but I grew up in a supportive family, and I was always taught that being gay is normal and valid, whereas Dan grew up in a family where gay was used as an insult, and the trauma he went through was quite extreme. Dan’s story is very important, and I hope as many people as possible watch his video, and I really admire Dan as a person and a content creator. However, luckily, many queer kids of our generation, at least in the West, had a better experience growing up than Dan did. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t faced homophobia, or that I haven’t struggled with my identity; I sure have, but it hasn’t majorly affected how I feel about the word gay, for example, or how I feel about being perceived as queer, apart from some specific situations. From what we know, Louis’ family was very supportive of Larry right from the beginning, so I would assume that his family was supportive of him already before that. Two people can grow up in the same country, or even the same town and be the same age and still have very different experiences. Your family and the friends you end up having, and all that, affect your experience. For example, Phil is a couple of years older than Dan, and based on what he has told, even though he hasn’t talked about his experiences in such depth as Dan has, he didn’t have such negative experiences as Dan did (and Phil’s experiences seem in many ways similar to mine), and he didn’t seem to struggle with the speculation the same way Dan did. Based on what we have seen, I don’t think that Louis had that kind of trauma that Dan had, although we obviously can’t know it for sure. But based on what we know, it seems more likely that his trauma is mainly caused by the homophobic music industry, rather than a homophobic background, peer pressure, or the public speculation. If Louis was confident in his identity and supported in his private life, as he seemed to be, I think it’s more likely that his experiences were more similar to those of Colton Haynes, who would have been ready to be out more or less from the start of his career if it wasn’t for his management that told him that he can’t come out, rather than to those of Dan. The closeting from the industry can easily lead to self-censorship even when it’s not necessary, and Colton has talked about how he had to “fix” his mannerisms, lower his voice, and things like that, to appear straight. It caused him severe mental health problems to the point that he couldn’t work anymore, but it wasn’t because of him not being comfortable with his sexuality or with being perceived as gay, but because of how he was treated in the entertainment industry. Of course, these are multifaceted issues, and the closeting from the industry also leads to the fear of being outed. However, based on the things we know, it seems that the cause and effect in your interpretation are probably incorrect. If the word gay has a powerful negative impact on you, and if assumptions of your sexuality significantly impact your perception of yourself, those are signs of internalised homophobia. Most of us (members of marginalised groups) suffer from some level of internalised oppression and it affects how we perceive ourselves, among other things (I may not have much internalised homophobia, but I sure have struggled with internalised transphobia).

@@FearlessCreature Good to mention that for a DECADE people speculated about Dan and Phil in much the same way as they speculate about Larry. I was in that fandom. And Dan denied it so many times and even got angry at fans. So it isn't hard to believe that Larry could be real too. I truly never thought Dan and Phil would ever actually come out simply because they had denied it for SO LONG and shippers would always say "oh they're just afraid to come out" while antis would say "but it's 20xx, there's no reason for them to be afraid to come out in this day and age, therefore it's not real" and eventually even I started to agree. I'm still shocked they ever came out, so I still hold out hope for Larry despite most former Larries now being anti.

Yeah but there is no way that man isn't gay ☠️