farawayfromthemoon

[farawayfromthemoon]

do you ever have a conversation and think “I am not heterosexual enough for this”

[farawayfromthemoon]

10 years of Rainbow Direction!

Exactly 10 years ago a girl named Danny printed out this rainbow poster and took it to the first concert of One Direction's Where We Are tour:

Anniversaries are always a bit arbitrary, and Rainbow Direction's was always a hard one to pin down.

This blog is just a day or two short of celebrating 11 years and without it Rainbow Direction would have never existed, because the people who were at the start of it would never have met, but its purpose and setup were entirely different and RD was still far from being developed.

The suggestions that eventually took form in "Project Rainbow Direction" were first submitted to the blog in late 2013. The first brainstorm between Kat, Li and Ellis about it, and further strategy talks with Ed and Molly took place in the early months of 2014. The project was announced in February. Haven and Red submitted their winning poster designs in March. Amy developed a logo and opened a merch store for us in early April.

While we've often referred to that midnight brainstorm on a cold January day as the origin of rainbow direction, that was only its conception. We don't even have a record of which date it was. We could also have chosen any of the more pin-downable dates: announcing the project, announcing the poster contest winners, opening the store. But really, all that Rainbow Direction was at those moments, was an idea, a plan, the hope that we had that it was within our, the fandom's power, to change something for the better for the LGBTQIA+ fans in it.

For months all of us, and especially Li, had worked tirelessly to encourage people to sign up and commit to bringing a rainbow poster to a show.

And then the big moment was there. First day of tour. The moment of truth. Would the people we'd encouraged actually have the courage to take a rainbow to a show, and stick it up in the air? Would it matter to people? Would it actually change something?

10 years on, we know that it did. So much more than we could ever have imagined.

But that was was anything but self-evident at the time. We had no idea. We nervously monitored the wwa tag and the blogs of those who had signed up, and then, after a few days, finally this report appeared. Danny from Bogota shared the first Rainbow Direction fan report.

I think if you'd ask any of us who were here at the time, they'd remember fondly how knowing that someone had actually done it, something happened in the real world, and if one person had done it, more would, how that sparked a fire in our hearts. A ball of warm feelings, not quite the same feeling as before. Before, there had been buzz and excitement and drive, but this, this felt different. Hope. A sense of the personal strength, and collective power, that could come from this if we could make it grow. It took a lot of hard work from a lot of people who committed themselves tirelessly to the campaign, but grow it did.

Thanks to Danny. Thanks to all of you who at some point or other, crafted something rainbow at home, took a rainbow to a show, put a rainbow on your blog, showed that you believed in your own power to change something, and showed the LGBTQI+ people in the fandom that they mattered, and that you cared.

It has been quite the roller coaster ride. As the coordinating group, we've had many ups and downs, and by now, for most of us, our attention has been drawn away from the fandom by our real lives and new pursuits. But regularly, when one of us checks in and sees the rainbows at one of the boys' shows, we share, revel, and sit amazed at how this thing, that once took so much effort on our part to get one, two, three people per show signed up, has grown into a regular staple, with people spontaneously taking it upon themselves to organize for entire venues to light up in a coordinated rainbow pattern, to design new posters and rainbow outfits, or to hand out hundreds of mini rainbow flags in the audience. This community has taken it up as its collective responsibility - let's get those rainbows out. How beautiful is that?! You are all so so amazing.

Thank you, you beautiful people, for becoming a part of this, for making it your own, for making it better, for carrying it forward, into the future.

So long!

#‚this is literally just a pride parade‘ = me to my friend at our first Louis show 🥰 #+ the only time I cried during any of my harry shows #when the whole stadium of 80.000 people lit up in rainbow lights for fine line and sott 🥲🌈 #+ so so many more moments of queer joy 🥹 #honestly that’s one of my favourite things about those concerts you feel so accepted and at home for a few hours :)) #thank you for making this possible #🏳️‍🌈 <3

[farawayfromthemoon]

LOUIS TOMLINSON: LIVE on YouTube

The Greatest

Face The Music

Bigger Than Me

Holding On To Heartache

We Made It

Chicago

Fearless

Common People

All This Time with She Is Beauty We Are World Class

Walls

Written All Over Your Face

Out Of My System

Saturdays

Silver Tongues

(25 April 2024)

#listening to it while one the bus and it made me soo emotional?! 🥲 #flashbacks to my concerts 😭

[farawayfromthemoon]

[farawayfromthemoon]

Happy April 25th

#cries in 5 degree northern German weather

[farawayfromthemoon]

FITF LIVE the DIY bonus tracks (RIP covers and Lucky Again official live versions😪)

~will update with more, but these are the ones I'd already sorted out for me to have; requests for other missing tracks accepted and added on if people want~ 505 live from Cardiff 7 live from Rio de Janeiro Night Changes live from Cincinnati* Back To You live Lucky Again live from Chicago** Beautiful War from Live From London Megamix live from Austin (yeah it's gonna be on the record and sounds better but here's this for now)

*beginning is a little bit messy but best audio throughout I found... plus the way he says 'beautiful!' in the middle is 🥵 **I could not find as good a sound quality version of this as I would like at all :( if anyone has a better version please send it!!

[farawayfromthemoon]

@lthqofficial via Instagram story! (24 April 2024)

x

#wait so it’s all online now and people went to the locations for nothing? #why change it like ten hours after you announce the original idea :( i was so hyped to go there today #also like it would’ve taken me at least three hours to go there and back #bc our arenas are really far outside the city so thank god they decided to change it now

[farawayfromthemoon]

Ticketmaster is such a scam - they don’t even have a customer service hotline wtf?! Sorry but if I have a problem with my overpriced Tickets the online forms where I only get automated answers are really not going to help me in any way and they know that 😤

[farawayfromthemoon]

ok so to recap LTHQ posted a presave link to ????, then a link to "JOIN IN" that leads to a map of hotspots worldwide; most of the hotspots are at venues he played (both tours) plus a few for countries he wasn't able to play yet; the hotspot links will reveal 15 puzzle pieces to fill in a square. They are each open for two hours, mostly midday local time (except the oceania ones in the evening and all the US ones at the same time to make it a little less drastically staggered); the first ones open in about 10 hours ANYWAY FITF LIVE ALBUM IS COMING HELL YEAH and the puzzle pieces will for sure be the cover reveal imo*, the last hour has been a busy week for us etc

*disclaimer I am often wrong about everything

[farawayfromthemoon]

louis: give me your email address

me: what for

louis: doesn’t matter

me: ok

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louis after posting a blurry pic with a link ending in 369 and asking for everyone's emails with no context:

[farawayfromthemoon]

THERE ARE 15 SURPRISES HIDDEN ALL OVER THE WORLD. SCAN THE QR CODE TO LEARN MORE.

#yayy there’s one in my city #question is will I commit to a 1 1/2 train ride just to get there lmao

[farawayfromthemoon]

#good omens

[farawayfromthemoon]

When taking group photos in Germany we don’t say “cheese” for synchronized smiling, but instead we say “Ameisenscheiße”, which translates to “ant shit” and I think that’s beautiful.

[farawayfromthemoon]

Dieses Titelbild...

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[farawayfromthemoon]

someone explain to me how I managed to stain my air pods case red with a green safety case 😭