#Videos of some of louis' security talking to the fans saying that he had left that they don't have to wait blah blah

[theirloveisgross]

.

#Stumbled upon some twitter drama about Louis going into the bus and not leaving #Apparently the buses were there at the venue well into the night #People saying that it's fishy because he didn't go say bye to the fans waiting or something #Videos of some of louis' security talking to the fans saying that he had left that they don't have to wait blah blah #He was really nice to them #So the facts are that he went into the bus around 1am without greeting some people #Then around 2am that guard came to talk to them saying they were gonna load up and leave #People on twitter thinking it's because H is there 😭 #I have a better theory #They have to take a boat from Sweden to Finland #Right? #So if that's the case the buses were probably waiting for the trucks to be loaded up so they could leave at the same time #And takes around 3-4 hours #Most times the buses leave well ahead onto their next destination and the trucks follow after #But no. Of course it's because H is there. Which it's in the realms of possibilities but also... No. #Learn to think outside of that sometimes idk #See all possible scenarios maybe?

[liam-93-productions]

Summary of Liam’s episode on Happy Hour podcast – Part 3

Note: Since the podcast is long, we’re dividng these summaries into parts. Hope you guys understand.

- Liam says that people always have that friend that they annoy relentlessly and his person his Conor. Liam says that he is the one being “bullied” constantly by his manager, Steve. - Mentions The LP Shows and how cool it is to do these shows. He said that he usually annoys Conor when he is editing a few videos of it as a joke and that Steve usually is sympathetic towards Conor even though he is the one performing and he can’t get it wrong. “Quick monkey perform!”. - They joke that Liam has 3.31 million YouTube subscribers and that Liam should be the one promoting Jaack and Stevie podcast. Liam started doing something like a podcast and at first it started off with having ideas about the livestream and he thought that it would be a good idea to rewatch the show alongside fans (especially for those in different timezones). He feels like it’s a little podcasty in a sense. He also thought about doing like a “round table with fans” where every week different people could talk about the show with him. “I hate watching myself”. - If he had a podcast he would love to talk with for example Justin Bieber and Robbie Williams. A few years ago, he was able to talk with Justin Bieber off camera. Liam feels very fortunate because he had 4 other boys who were growing at the rate as him, in the same circle and they knew exactly what it was like being him. For Justin he only had himself. “Angel” by Robbie Williams was his go-to karaoke song and he loves Robbie, feels like they can relate to each other a lot. - Liam jokes that he left One Direction and that people will use this as a new headline, “You have to be so self-aware”. Jaack asks him seriously if the band will get back together and he says “We’ll at some point. Everybody keeps asking it. It’s probably like everybody is sick of answering it”. Liam said that he sometimes gets in trouble while being honest. - “So it’s like having that family unit because we’ve had to kind of grow that around each other in One Direction to have people that were with us.” He mentions that in 1D they had people that were with them since the start. “My day ones”, these people are his day ones. - Liam feels like 1D needed a break and that if it didn’t happen at that point in life then he feels like he going to be even crazier. He felt scared sometimes because he had a security guard that lived in his house and he was always thinking that people were watching him. - He and Jaack made some puns with What Makes You Beautiful. - Liam mentions that sometimes people will pretend not to know who he is. He told a story where he was walking down the street one day and somebody called him Harry Styles. Liam also told a story of a woman that approached him and was convinced she knew him from some place, asking him questions. Told a story about Louis once having a bad experience at the shops where he tried to play a joke on a woman where he tried to confuse her saying he wasn’t “Louis Tomlinson” and the lady told him that he was better looking that the Louis from 1D. - Mentions that Louis was more hands on the behind the scenes part (backstage), but Liam always thought that the stage was his domain. “Together we’d kind of lead this together, mainly because we couldn’t get out egos out of the way.” Nowadays, it’s the same way. They help each other a lot in everything they need.   - Jaack says that Liam transitioned into a very successful solo career and asks Liam when did he notice it. He says that it was scary being alone and especially lately, he became more aware of it and sometimes things go wrong. “I have had moments where it’s gone pretty wrong.” - If things went wrong on stage with the 1D boys, they would usually do Fresh Prince of Bel Air skit to entertain people. Liam usually tried to talk with the crowd while things were sorted (for example, then the sound was down). - Liam mentions that he had a big problem remembering lyrics and at the time he was taking a prescribed medication, due to not feeling very happy at the time. Certain lights on stage would really bothered him and he needed time to adjust himself with talking sometimes and even remembering his own name. He felt so anxious with this, that now he usually has the lyrics on a prompter because “I just don’t want to mess up someone’s show”. He stopped taking this medication after he read a few articles claiming that people were forgetting their dissertations and classes for example. - Best show: he usually doesn’t mention it, but when the boys did the 2012 Olympics, their first big performance after coming out from X-Factor. It was amazing to him being so close to so many amazing artists, it felt massive. - Liam asked Jaack if he was alright and if he needed a cuddle after he mentioned that 2012 was the last good year he had. “How shit is the world if you can’t cuddle Liam Payne?” (Jaack) and Stevie answered that “Not many people can”. - Liam watches a paranormal show every week called “Ghost Adventures” and it’s one of the longest running shows. According to Liam, the show is just people walking into a room and shouting at walls. He isn’t a believer of ghosts, but he thinks that what if it’s real at the same time. He was supposed to participate in an episode of a scary tv show, but he couldn’t get to America in time, and he was supposed to stay a night in a hotel that has a history of scary stuff happening. - Liam mentions his visit to the Haunted Museum in Vegas and how they weren’t supposed to insult a haunted doll, but Steve insulted the doll and the doll said Liam’s name (he thought he was going to die). - Talks about his house in America that the lights would turn on in the middle of the night and doors opening and closing. The cleaner told him that she was seeing a person and it was “Alan the Ghost”, one of the old owners of the house. - Liam keeps saying that he needs to see real things to actually believe in ghosts. He wasn’t scared of doing things at the Haunted Museum because he wanted to live through it, but when weird things happened, he also doesn’t believe it. “I’m sorry, I just got to know.” - Liam’s theory is that if you watch something going into space, you’d be able to know what to expect when something came to earth. He feels like he would like to know there is something out there (aliens). - They start questioning if Elon Musk appeared before Iron Man. Even though it’s a character from a comic book, Liam thinks that maybe Robert Downey Jr. thought that he should base the character on Elon. Jaack “I think that we, as a collective, just discovered a new conspiracy theory”.

#liam payne #happy hour #liam's interviews #19.11.2020

[ifwethinkandwishandhopeandpray]

Just a warning that this might piss you off. Get over it.

I was at the Atlanta show and witnessed the calamity during Copy. I can’t believe it is repeating itself.

There are two types of people. The hand wringers and the pedestal awarders, and then there is me who saw a different picture.

My whole dash was filled with people typing that multiple people had passed out. Louis was on a higher level saving lives. He was so happy all went well.

And I posted one post during the show that read…”I am pissed.” I was not believing my eyes. I was embarrassed. Where were these passed out people? I saw no security or medics attending anyone. I saw no one go over the front rail and taken to safety.

I have been in pits when people were packed and dealing with crowd surge and fainting. That crowd had room to film and dance and turn around to talk. When Louis twice asked them to step back I saw no movement. Seemed everyone had space. Watch the videos on YouTube. He speaks to the supposed fainter. One video I saw where they were asking for water and it looked like Louis goes for his bottle causes the girls to scream how lucky she was. Another has girls pointing to someone needing water but there was a fan that acted like it was for her so she chugs like she was dying and the video shows her absolutely fine up to that point. For 15 minutes fans asked for bottles of water as if it wasn’t available at any point at the concession a few feet away.

Louis left stage looking irritated to me. People posted how he left so security could do their jobs.

He came back and people posted how he was looking out for fans…like aww. I could feel his frustration as he he said if you felt bad, to step to the back or sides and get some water and have a moment and he was going to try to keep the show moving.

For the love of all things proper, people…use common sense and hydrate, step out and get air if you are thinking you’re about to pass out. Act like it’s not your first f’ing concert. Don’t ruin it for Louis and every fan in there. As we were leaving, waiting at the elevator, security was telling these two girls the importance of hydrating and this dipshits say…well I had an energy drink.

I fear for this generation. Yep, I’m old. I have knowledge and common sense. I was pissed.

That’s all.

P.S. As soon as I posted this I saw the Sun article. Happy now?

[canonicallysoulmates]

Hi. Hope you're doing well. Can I ask you to give me a run down on the whole Louis and Harry situation? I listened to their music on and off but never followed their personal lives (other than the highly publicized thing with TS). But the situation, from what I gathered, seems... Interesting. What are the theories here? Hope it's not too much trouble. Thanks.

Hi, anon!

Sorry, it's taken me so long to reply to you but I wanted to find and provide some links with more information on the things I will be mentioning.

Now I'm going to do my best to give a quick rundown of Louis and Harry's history touching upon some of the bigger theories but Larry is a lot, it's multiple theories and years of history and multiple things seemingly happening at once like doing the research for this I fell down this hole all over again because there's just so much so this turned bigger than I was planning but let's get into this...

For those that don't know Louis and Harry are singer-songwriters that started their careers as members of the group One Direction. From pretty early on in the conception of the band fans noticed the close relationship between Louis and Harry and it wasn't too long before tumblr gave them a couple name: Larry Stylinson. 

Now, all 5 boys were close and got along well but Larry was magical to look at:

And what at first was a tumblr/fandom thing kept growing to the point it left fandom in a way I'd never seen before and have yet to see again with a lot of focus being put on Larries (people who believe in larry) themselves with articles being written about the theories and those who believe in them in an often mocking way; Larries were turned into villains, mocked and painted as silly little fangirls by the fandom and the media, and to this day we are still looked upon that way by those in and outside the fandom (and even by those who were once larries but that's a convo for another day).

Point is Larry grew and theories are aplenty, so let's look at some of them…

Theory #1: Louis and Harry are/were romantically involved and made to hide their relationship by management.

As I said, there's a lot of theories surrounding these two but this is I'd say the original one, the biggest one, and the one a lot of other theories come back to; I don't know when speculation about the boys' sexuality and their relationship started but it has been going on for years to the point, as I said, that it left the fandom.

The theory is self-explanatory: Harry and Louis have been together since their X Factor days but made to hide their relationship by their management for years, and all the girlfriends they have had publicly have been beards including Miss TS herself. (As a bonus fact, that made a lot of people in this fandom dislike her, and some think it’s because of Larry or because she was dating Harry, no it’s because she shaded him multiple times.)

You probably noticed that I said "are/were", the reason for that is that there are some larries (are you still a larrie if you think they've broken up?) that believe Louis and Harry were together but have since broken up. That's not the case with all larries since there are also plenty who believe they are still together, and some who even think they got married in 2013, I'll talk about that a little bit more later on, for now, let's go back to the early years and some of the things that made people believe in this love story:

This is not in chronological order by the way.

Other than the heart eyes, soft touches, and overall fondness displayed towards each other by both boys there was…

That time in a radio interview when the boys were asked about girlfriends or boyfriends and Harry said Louis’ boyfriend and management were heard saying to take that bit out. Now there is some debate about whether Harry said Louis’ boyfriend or we're all each other's boyfriends so I suggest taking a close listen. 

Harry saying his first real crush was Louis and that it was mutual. 

The autograph signing where a fan asked Harry if he and Louis were dating and he said yes. 

The AIMH tweet:

Louis being asked if he does romantic things for his partner and answering he once cooked a chicken stuffed with mozzarella wrapped in parma ham (a dish he mentions often) but he's also said in the past he's only cooked one proper meal and his first cooking experience was with Harry. 

You can also check these timelines from the early years for more examples and cute gifs and photos: Larry 2010 timeline, September - October 2011 timeline. 

Those are just some of the reasons people believe in Larry, it's not even the tip of the iceberg; I'll be talking about the tattoos and song lyrics in just a minute but before we move on to the next theory I do want to add what happened with Larry in the public eye.

Those familiar with my blog know about separate narratives well Larry didn't get a separate narrative they got an "enemies" narrative. When the rumors got too big about them they got shoved farther into the closet, they rarely interacted, they weren't seen together and rumors were spread through managements favorite gossip newspapers that they were feuding and hated each other. 

And to this day some fans and solo stans claim this to be true even though Louis has complimented Harry on his solo music, said he’s proud of Harry work in the movie Dunkirk, said in an interview that Harry messaged him congrats when he released his single:

and Harry follows a bunch Larry accs and Louis fan accs on twitter.  

Theory #2: Complementary tattoos.

Also, called matching tattoos by some but they're actually more complimentary not matching but anyways this is another reason why some believe in Larry, it technically falls under fact but for this answer, I'm going to present it as a theory simply because neither of the boys has outright confirmed that their tattoos are meant to complement each other.

Harry and Louis have several complimentary tattoos there's the famous rose(Harry) and dagger(Louis):

The Ship(Harry)and Compass(Louis):

The Oops(Louis) and Hi(Harry) (this one has a more personal significance as there’s a theory that those were the first words the boys said to each other):

The Rope(Louis) and Anchor(Harry):

Masterpost of Louis and Harry’s tattoos.

Theory #3. RBB and SBB

This one is harder to explain, and as far as I know, it's still a fandom mystery.

It all starts when at some point during the boys' Where We Are tour a fan throws a rainbow teddy bear on stage. Someone kept the bear, put some tape on it to make it into bondage bear and the bear got a twitter account. Yes, the stuffed bear got a twitter account, I know it sounds insane but it's a thing that actually happened. At first, it's just silly fun with the bear appearing on tour and tweeting, at some point the bear gets named Rainbow Bondage Bear or RBB by the fans, then the bears twitter acc gets suspended and he is not seen again.

The boys start a new tour, their last tour, the On the Road Again Tour.

The boys are back on the road and so is RBB! Once again, at first, everything is silly fun with the bear appearing on stage when one day out of the blue….a second bear! A small one. This second bear gets labeled Sugar Baby Bear or SBB. The bears are always together, the costumes get more elaborate, the boys don't acknowledge them, and the fans have no clue who is behind it all.

Then things get weird…er, the bears start posing with props including books like a biography of someone coming to terms with their sexuality.

And remember how I said some fans theorize Harry and Louis got married back in 2013? Well, on September 24th the bears appear as always on stage, this time dressed in wedding outfits in front of a signed picture of a man named Larry. On the 29th Harry tweets:

The theory is that Harry and Louis got married on September 28th, 2013. 

The number 28 does seem to have a lot of significance for the boys with Louis even having it tattooed on his body. 

And there was that recent "Louis Styles" moment from Roman Kemp who is from my understanding friends with Harry. And after that happened Christian Saad who Louis follows tweeted (and later deleted):

And liked:

Make of that what you will.  

Back to the bears...after that things get even weirder, the bears get security, they get another twitter account, they keep posing with props, things get more and more elaborate and none of the boys acknowledge it. At one point the boys are set to appear on Kimmel and a really mocking potato bit is done which offends fans, that same night RBB and SBB post a picture looking as angry as two stuffed bears can be next to a box of mashed potatoes.

When the boys are finally asked about the bears all of them immediately look at Louis - and I just have to say Niall's reaction will never not make me laugh - and when he says nothing Harry says he believes it was the crew, and the boys act like they have no idea what is being talked about.

The theory is that Harry and Louis were behind RBB and SBB and were using the bears as a way to communicate with fans. 

RBB & SBB masterpost

Theory #4: Song Lyrics.

Okay, last theory we will be discussing on this ask. I hope you’re still with me on this way longer than intended post.

As I said in the beginning, both boys are songwriters and it is theorized that both have written songs about each other and their relationship. There are parallels in their lyrics and Music Videos* (*Walls and Lights Up also have similar themes song-wise.) 

Among the songs that are said to be about each other is Habit from Louis first album Walls, which contains the lyric:

“come so far from princess park”

And Sweet Creature from Harry’s first album:

“And, oh, we started Two hearts in one home”

The lyrics I highlighted are significant because Harry and Louis lived together in Princess Park Manor.

And if you take a close look at the lyrics both songs also have similar themes, with both being about a relationship that has its struggles but they’re both still deeply in love with the person. 

Now Harry was actually asked in an interview if Sweet Creature was about Louis and after stumbling a bit he eventually answered that he didn’t want to tell anyone that they’re wrong on what they’re feeling about a song even if they’re not necessarily right but he thinks if you really listen to the lyrics you can work out whether it’s about that or not and he leans towards no. 

It’s pretty funny to hear him stumble around for an answer that could have been answered with a simple yes or no. 

A funny comparison that was often done is that in another interview Harry was asked about another one of his songs, ‘Two Ghost’ and if it was about TS because it was rumored on the media that it was; he tries to dodge the question at first but when the radio host introduces the song as the one about TS Harry screams out and shouts ‘NO!’.  

Something to note is that Harry’s stumbled through answer on whether or not Sweet Creature is about Louis is presented in the media as Harry flat out squashing those rumors, while Harry’s scream of ‘no’ during his Two Ghost question is ignored with the media focusing instead on him saying that it’s self-explanatory, with some acting like its confirmation and some even writing articles about all the TS hints in the lyrics. 

-

And there you have it anon a not so quick rundown of Harry and Louis that doesn't even cover the tip of the iceberg and some of the bigger theories surrounding them. I hope you found this informative and that is answered your question! 

One last Larry gif for the road (this one’s one of my favs) 💙💚

#larry stylinson #larries #larrie #larry #anon #ask #i'm more used to talking about j2 so this was different #annianvi #in case you want to read about another believed to be closeted relationship #tinhat things #non spn #Anonymous

[tigsousa]

INTRODUCING TIGS… @gallagherintro​​

⌠ CHAY SUEDE, 22, CISMALE, HE/HIS ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, THIAGO “TIGS” SOUSA! according to their records, they’re a FIRST year, specializing in UNDECIDED; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (a shittier silver chain than connell’s, eDgY shirts with missing buttons, book rolled into back pocket, flipping everyone off, rolled cigarette tucked behind ear, bruised eyes or just bags?). when it’s the (aquarius)’s birthday on 20/01/1998, they always request their COCO POPS from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation.

INSPO:

liam gallagher

BIO

grew up in a pretty rough and dangerous neighbourhood in dc, filled with Street Rats

parents: irresponsible, violent, addicts, basically only kept him for the benefits. home life was pretty miserable where he picked up most of his traits and habits.

but at one point it got so bad, his grandma reported them and took him in. they served some time in jail. he doesn’t know what they’re up to now, doesn’t care to find out either.

no one’s perfect -- his dad obvs gets it from somewhere -- but his grandma's love doesn’t make him cry. 

but he was an ungrateful lil shit ! so after a big argument, he left her and ran away/taken to LANDAN with a gang of grifters he met on da streetz for some gigs and what he thought would be Big Money

street fights were a common occurrence re: snatch *mickey o’neil vc* i’ll fight ya for it … if dc is here he learned how to fight, london is where he learned to fight dirty

the gang began to pull cons on a Bigger Scale until they got caught ! he was a Big Coward and ran away … but was sent back to the u s of a with 0 money lol (was p traumatic actually! ppl got killed! it still haunts him!)

came back 2 grandma n said sry a bajillion times n they made up

gma works as a housekeeper for a big time politician fam in d.c. and would get a few smol jobs for him as a pool boy or whatever else rich ppl have

but then his gma got ill and they don’t have medical insurance or da money for treatment so he dropped outta school and continued 2 swindle, in d.c. or where the money was tbh

gd thing about d.c. is politicians and they have lots of money !!!

it felt weird to scam people by himself. he wasn’t used to working alone so he started off small: hung out in bars, targeted politicians. end up in a hotel - they paid for it. long story short he got enough ammo to blackmail them into giving him $$ or he’d sell photos/videos to journalists ... n we all know how homophobic politicians are :clown emoji:

newayz … one of the cons ended up being a trap (fffff). they knew about his lil tricks n wanted to use him so proposed a deal: they’d pay for his gma’s everything, put her in the best hosp, pay off debts, send him to a good school which would secure his future !! in return they wouldn’t hand him over 2 da popo, clear his record, but he’d work for them + blackmails their opponents to strong arm them into votes or w/e

obvs he said yes bc he luvs his gma ..

PERSONALITY

Edgy n Cockney

has a dog called amigo

eats cereal out of the box for breakfast lunch n dinna xx it’s vegan xx

talks rly slowly, super lazy, as if he’s high 25/8

had 2 grow up quick so he is Mature but wasn’t allowed/able to Process all of his Shit so acts out + has childish tendencies (shock!)

super selfish + looks out for himself First … soz it just how it be it’s nothing personal

prefers to ruin things on his own terms so he is unforch #TeamFuckThingsUp

likes breaking thangs, likes burning thangs, likes gettin into fites .. For Fun !

rly just does what he wants regardless of whether it hurts other ppl – doesn’t rly care abt right/wrong .. aloof/detached/boner 4 nihilism yada yada

maybe that’s due to him liking d.c. coke a lot … a coping mechanism<3 microdosing mostly<3

if u get over all of that lol then he has a Deep side n has a lot of thots (which will b hard for me but o well) can be caring etc.

anti govt, anti rich, fuck da system a la vincent cassel in la haine etc. etc.

surprisingly Smort, likes 2 read + retains info like a sponge, good at exams without rly trying, will happily take exams for $$

likes getting to know ppl tho not out of genuine interest but also won’t say shit about himself

everyone at gallagher is stupid smart n kinda show offy abt it … highkey grinds his gears because he rly hates rich ppl and the govt and will fight u on it

will rationalise himself being at gallagher by saying he’ll destroy the system from inside out !!! lol ye rite

prefers to sit at the back, blend into the background, do his own thing

never chases after anything so if he does be suss

big fan of documentaries - louis theroux daddy

CONNECTIONS

friends: prefers 2 b more lowkey, more of a small chill group of ~pals than big groups of dumbos re: bros chat.

ex-friends: gimme platonic heartbreak! he has a tendency 2 fucc things up on purpose and will not hesitate to burn bridges 2 hide in da smoke (deep)

flings: type to kick u out bc he sleeps better alone and won’t hit u up for at least a week … no hard feelings</3

ex-flings: no emosh capacity for a full on relationship but it could’ve ended for a lot of messy reasons !! makes me laff

exes? he doesn’t rly believe in monogamy i’m sry . probs would’ve messed ur chara around a bit :// or mb it could’ve been legit srs i o n o

fre/enemies: he just … has 0 loyalties tbh so

met ur match: someone who just runs circles around him + plays his game better than he does ! its Messy !

senator’s kids: ur chara’s parent the one who took tigs in! probs shud be a Baddie tho

i cleaned ur pool: mayhaps he was ur pool boy one (1) summer + stole some of ur shit, maybe they got along, maybe they hate each other

pot head gang: talking about conspiracy theories on da rooftop at 2am pls ty

anti-painkiller: someone who is feeling shitty so hits him up to feel even worse . this cud become soft tbh . extra Spice if she wants 2 keep it a secret

underlined the good bits: based on dis lil nugget but instead of saving mankind make it taking down the government lol or a lil discussion or legit anythinnnn :-) bonus points if they dk each other :-)

why didn’t u ask me to stick around?: *peyton sawyer vc* erry1 alwayz leaves … n so did he !

the worst best partner: they were forced 2 partner up together but they rly rile each other up but lowkey werk well together and got a smashing grade ! he doesn’t care abt grades so probs someone who is a Show Off so he gets Aggro

if any of these fit ur chara/u vibin wit em, holla + we can go from there: uno, two, three, three and a half, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten point five, and most importantly: ot3 !!!!! and another one

#gallagher:intro #joining the 'pretend he looks less angry in this gif' gang #benefit of letting this sit for months is comin up wit actual connections uwu #idk wat im doin

[abundanceofsoph]

SkyFire 1: Chapter 25

The last show of OTRA: November 2015

Word count: 2.2k

SkyFire 1 MASTERLIST

>Instagram posts

Aurora walked off the stage after the sound check to find Steve glowering at the side of stage. “You ok Pops?” she asked.

“Your father is going to kill us,” Steve mumbled.

“He’ll get over it,” Aurora replied, smiling with excitement. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go work out what I’m going to wear.”

Steve watched his daughter walk away from him, his face softening at the skip in her step and he knew that no matter how angry Tony was going to be, it was worth it to see her excited about anything again. The smile on her face was worth it and he decided to wait to tell his husband until afterwards, when he would have videos and photos to help explain why she needed to do this.

Not long after the end of sound check, the boys’ families started arriving and soon the green room was crowded with people, voices rising above each other and plenty of hugs shared. Anne, Robin and Gemma were the last of the family members to arrive and after hugging each of the boys they were shocked to see Aurora and Steve amongst the small crowd.

Anne started tearing up as she wrapped her arms around Aurora. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Glad to be here too, Mumma,” Aurora replied with a soft smile, neither woman missing the double meaning in their words. Anne pulled back from the hug, grabbing the younger woman’s right hand to inspect the diamond ring with a smile a mile wide.

“Thank god that boy of mine finally plucked up the courage to ask you,” she said, her eyes darting over to where Harry was standing with his Steve, Gemma and Robin. “You make him so happy, love.”

“He makes me so happy too, Anne,” Rori promised. “I don’t know what I did to deserve him.”

“None of that,” Anne chided. “You both deserve to be happy and I’m just so glad you have each other. Couldn’t have asked for a better daughter-in-law.”

Aurora’s eyes started to well with tears in response to Anne’s kind words, and the two women hugged each other again before Robin came over to interrupt.

“Hello darling,” Robin greeted, hugging her tightly once she let go of Anne. “Congratulations,” he added, kissing her cheek and stepping back to wrap an arm around his wife.

“Thank you, Robin,” she said and then was distracted from the conversation when Gemma jogged across the room towards her.

“Thank you for coming to cheer him up,” Gemma whispered in Aurora’s ear. “I saw the videos online and hated how miserable he’s been.”

“Of course Gem,” Aurora replied. “I couldn’t stand it either.”

Harry joined them after a few minutes more of conversation, pulling Aurora against his chest with an arm slung low around her waist and they spent the rest of the afternoon before the show chatting with everyone and catching up. There was no sadness in this being the last show, and instead everyone was simply enjoying celebrating the last 5 years of friendships.

A section had been roped off at the front of the crowd for all the family member and Steve and Rori were in amongst them for most of the show. Steve found himself smiling at how much fun Aurora was having dancing with Louis and Harry’s sisters, and they were all singing along loudly as the boys whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Towards the end of the show, just before the boys started singing Little White Lies, a security guard came to escort Aurora backstage. As the song came to an end there was a lull and while Harry stepped out towards the front of the stage to talk with the crowd, Louis went jogging off stage towards where Rori was now waiting in the wings.

“Hey love,” Louis greeted Rori with a huge smile. “You ready to do this?”

“Absolutely,” Rori grinned in response.

“Alright, we’ll let Harold finish his speech and then I’ll walk out there with you. Sound like a plan?”

Aurora nodded and ran her right hand over the white blouse she was wearing, smoothing it out. She’d taken off the sling, while her hand remained in its bulky brace and tucked against her ribs to keep her shoulder or collarbone from hurting. She took a deep breath and turned back towards the stage to watch as the crew set up 5 mic stands in front of 5 stools and Harry’s voice filled the arena.

“How’s everyone doing tonight?” Harry asked, causing the crowd to roar in response. Harry chuckled before continuing, trying to soak up the feeling of being in front of such a large crowd, knowing it would be a while before he’d get to do this again. “Well I just wanted to take a moment to thank you all for spending your Tuesday night with us, and for being so incredibly supportive of everything we’ve done over the last 5 years. I know we were all meant to be here last month, and I just wanted to take a minute to thank each and every one of you for be so understanding and letting me drop everything to fly to New York. I love you all. The lads and I were talking last night, and we thought you deserved something special to say thank you, so we thought we’d add in an extra song tonight off the new album that’s out tomorrow.” Harry had to pause his speech as the crowd screamed with excitement, having already noted the extra mic stand and stool behind him they were anticipating his next words. “We’re gonna need some extra help with it though so I want you to give a warm welcome to our special guest.”

Louis grinned excitedly and held out his hand for Auroras. She laced their fingers together and they walked out onto the stage together, the sound of the crowd overwhelming loud. They both joined Liam and Niall who had already taken their seats behind the mic stands and Harry skipped his way back towards them all. “My wonderful girlfriend, Aurora Stark!” he yelled, winking at Rori as he took his seat next to her in the middle of the 5 of them. “This one’s called If I Could Fly.”

Given that no one in the crowd knew the lyrics, they instantly fell silent as the opening notes of the piano played out through the arena and Harry began to sing.

[Harry, Liam, Niall, Louis, Aurora, All of them]

If I could fly I'd be coming right back home to you I think I might give up everything, just ask me to Pay attention, I hope that you listen Cause I let my guard down Right now I'm completely defenceless For your eyes only, I show you my heart For when you're lonely and forget who you are I'm missing half of me when we're apart Now you know me, for your eyes only For your eyes only I've got scars, even though they can't always be seen And pain gets hard, but now you're here and I don't feel a thing Pay attention, I hope that you listen cause I let my guard down Right now I'm completely defenceless For your eyes only, I show you my heart For when you're lonely and forget who you are I'm missing half of me when we're apart Now you know me, for your eyes only For your eyes only I can feel your heart inside of mine (I feel it, I feel it) I've been going out of my mind (I feel it, I feel it) Know that I'm just wasting time And I Hope that you don't run from me For your eyes only, I show you my heart For when you're lonely And forget who you are I'm missing half of me When we're apart Now you know me, for your eyes only For your eyes only, I show you my heart For when you're lonely and forget who you are I'm missing half of me when we're apart Now you know me, for your eyes only For your eyes only For your eyes only

As they sang, the large centre screen filled with footage of the 5 of them writing Made in the A.M. Aurora had already watched it through when it was tested out during sound check and she was so impressed with the production team. They’d only been notified of the change at 9am that day and had turned around an entire visual segment in only a few hours. Aurora had edited her demo of the song that she and Harry had recorded over the summer and had been waiting to post it early next year, but she sent it to the team and let them use the footage. She’d smiled sadly as she watched it back early in the day, watching herself playing the piano and laughing so easily with the boys, a bittersweet tinge to the otherwise happy memories.

As the song finished, the crowd, who had remained quiet throughout the performance erupted into cheers and screams. She smiled wide, her eyes glistening with tears as she looked out across the sea of fans, all screaming for the boys. Harry kissed her on the cheek and Louis gave her a quick hug before she left the stage and the crew quickly removed the stools. The opening bars of Perfect boomed through the speakers as she was ushered back to where the rest of the families were still standing in their roped off area.

Anne swept her into a hug immediately. “That was incredible sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Mumma,” Rori replied, blushing slightly when Anne kissed her cheek and ran her hand along her right arm. “You and Harry wrote that together?”

“We did,” Rori nodded. “Couldn’t sleep one night and we just stayed up in the studio throwing ideas around and that came out.”

“Well it’s beautiful,” Anne smiled. “You should both be very proud of it.”

Aurora smiled brightly, turning back to face the stage, Anne’s arms still wrapped around her as they stood side by side. Towards the end of the song, Harry passed by their section of the crowd and after spotting them together he blew a kiss, happy beyond words to see his mum holding onto his girl and keeping her safe.

xXx

In the end, neither Steve nor Aurora had the chance to tell Tony about her going on stage before he saw it plastered across the internet. After a couple of fans tweeted about it, every gossip site or trashy news paper like the Daily Mail was running with the story. The boys were busy all day with multiple radio interviews for the release day of Made in the A.M but they all headed out for dinner to celebrate the album and to finally be able to celebrate Harry and Aurora’s engagement now that they were both in London together again. They were halfway through the entrée when Steve’s phone rang, Tony’s name flashing across the screen.

“What part of take it easy translates to an arena performance for you?” he yelled when Steve answered the phone.

“Tony…” Steve sighed, sharing a look with his daughter. “You need to calm down and let me explain.”

Aurora cringed, mouthing an apology to her father who waved it off before standing and leaving the room, knowing that his husband would want to yell and rant for a bit first before he was ready to listen to reason.

“I better go help put out the fire,” Aurora muttered to Harry before leaving the table. She followed Steve out of the dining area and into a service corridor. He was pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as Tony yelled through the phone.

“May I?” she asked softly, holding out her hand for the phone. Steve paused, looking at her for a moment before sighing and handing the phone over. Tony continued his rant, unaware that his audience had changed until his daughter cut him off mid-sentence. “Stop!” she said firmly. “I was sitting on a bloody stool the whole time, it’s not like I did a fully choreographed routine.”

“You said you were just going there to cheer Harry up and then you were coming home,” Tony reminded her accusingly. “There was no mention of performing.”

“Because it was a last minute idea,” Rori said. “Besides, I had fun dad. For the first time in weeks I had fun, so don’t you dare ruin this for me.”

Tony fell silent, all the wind taken out of his argument.

“Now Pops and I were in the middle of a very fancy celebratory dinner with the lads so I’m going to hang up the phone now and we’re gonna go back to that. I’m sure Pops will call you back when we get back to the hotel later. I love you.”

“I love you too kiddo,” Tony sighed, wishing for the millionth time that his daughter had not inherited his stubbornness. “Enjoy your dinner, and I’ll meet you at the airport when you land tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

NEXT CHAPTER

OR CONTINUE READING ON AO3

#skyfire #skyfire fic #aurora stark #dad!tony #iron dad #step dad steve rogers #stony #stony fic #boyfriend harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #superfamily #harry styles #tony stark

[taestheticcus]

This is the first time I’m addressing anything over here. But what I am going to address is surely not something which is new to any of us and it will be really nice if you read it. I know it’s long but please, if you ever loved One Direction, read it. :)

 So one of the most popular bands in the WHOLE of known universe had its 10 year anniversary and I, as a super proud and happy directioner looked forward to that day with all my heart and eagerness. Of course we were clowning, I mean c’mon, this is the band that makes money off the hopes it gives us of reuniting, but still I will never stop loving them because the memories I have attached with them are too precious to just be forgotten about, even if the band doesn't physically exist anymore.

 The day and the week (you might say), was rather filled with a burst of energy and extreme love that we feel for them and every time a member of the band posted a picture or tweeted, we lost it. We screamed “I love you” over more than a thousand times, got extremely frustrated because the fandom that can hack through security cameras and (supposedly) find out their passport pictures, is not able to goddamn open an envelope (which turned out to be the Where We Are Tour which I’m sure all of us have at least seen once) and cried our eyes out while scrolling through the website they created, watching the same video diaries, interviews and music videos that we now know by heart. But to our  disappointment, we didn’t get anything more than a video, which barely lasted 5 minutes (and here comes the thing that stings the most) no post from Zayn.

Now I myself was extremely mad at the fact that he didn’t post anything. Not even a story or a small tweet and very honestly I called him names too. I feel nasty now for doing that because it IS a hard pill to swallow that he DOESN’T need to post anything to show us his respect for the other boys and the band. He owes it to himself and NOT us. Him posting or not posting anything doesn’t change his love and how thankful he is to us. I know that without “us” he won’t be so famous, but without us he won’t have suffered through racism and Islamophobia. Of course not all of us contributed to that but the fact that some of us did, the “fans” of the band, who did say horrible things here and there DID affect him, even when there were thousands of us believing the opposite. When you belong to a minority in a group, especially a minority that has been condemned and treated harshly over years, it’s hard to overlook the people criticizing you.

He was heavily whitewashed while he was in the band and the management went to the extent of telling him that he doesn’t need to answer anything related to his religion in any interview because they knew it would attract hate and they didn’t want such a “petty” issue to interfere in their monotonous-don’t take any musical input form the members-be the perfect band-money making strategy. But in one interview Zayn shared “I believe that your religion should be between you and whoever your belief is in. I don't think you should stick it in people’s faces.”

But being a Pakistani- British heartthrob, no one would allow him privacy. His tweets about spreading awareness about events like #FreePalestine and retweet in support of Peshwar were unnecessarily over thought and some media outlets suggested that Zayn is talking about all of this because he is somehow more involved in those incidents. As if he is not a human who could just have compassion towards them.

Being in One Direction, he wasn’t allowed to promote anything that showed his Muslim side and was asked to appeal more to white teenagers. This is ridiculous because they are already controlling the music that they sing and suppressing them in so many ways, that they decided to enforce power of looking after how they dress and look too.

 When a video of Zayn and Louis smoking marijuana leaked online, Zayn received the most backlash, regardless of the fact that Louis used a racial slur (nigger). Let’s not forget how he was coined the ‘Bradford Bad Boy’ since the beginning because he was an introverted mysterious guy.

 “The leaked promotional promotion of This Is Us put him in a box of being the “poser” and all other sorts of bad boy villian image in contrast of the positive descriptions of the other members. Curious how the only brown guy in the group gets the worst narrative.” A source states

Zayn has faced countless parody songs like “Zayn did 9/11″ by Uma Kompton, taunting tweets suggesting he’s a terrorist and joke about him leaving 1D to join ISIS.

But as we all know why he left 1D, since he developed an anxiety problem and eating disorder because of the absolute bullshit he went through, he is said to have caused disruption among the fanbase of One Direction. Some of the fans only want Zayn to be successful as long as he is a puppet of the toxic One Direction “brand.” Although fans encouraged him to speak up more about his problems while being a part of the band, they were outraged and stated his actions to be traitorous, when he left the band to cut himself off the suppression he was under and freely speak about it.

 “Strangely enough, aside from Liam, Zayn’s former bandmates have never publicly defended him from discrimination. Perhaps that’s the result of their PR team’s instructions, but it is sad to see that the issue has largely been swept under the rug. The objective for the One Direction machine has always been to make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time—not to make much of a social or political impact. But Zayn has the potential to do exactly that.” A source says.

Recently he told Vogue, “I was raised in the Islamic faith, so it will always be with me, and I identify a lot with the culture. But I’m just me. I don’t want to be defined by my religion or my cultural background.”

Surely we can say that he really believes in that and that’s why he said it openly, but a part of me can’t help but think that he is saying this and forcing himself to believe this because he has been discriminated against so much.

If we command that he posts something about how “amazing” his journey has been when he was in the band, the truth still remains the same that it wasn't an amazing journey. He loves the boys, he loved the exposure and the opportunity to some extent too and has always expressed his gratitude and gratefulness to them and the fans, but ITS OKAY if he doesn’t post about it.

You can say that without the fans he would have been a nothing, but don’t you think he already knows and acknowledges that? Don’t you think he knew that his fans might turn their back against him when he will depart from One Direction and still ended up leaving the band? Don’t you think he knew that he will practically face a different fan base now or that if worst comes to worst he will not have a lot of fans and might actually end up being a failure? People did turn against him but he doesn’t give a shit anymore because he cares about his mental health.

So, understand that he is always very grateful to all the love and support that he has been showered and will always mention it while in a concert or when he is winning an award, or tweet once or twice about it or randomly bless us with his face on Instagram, but don’t throw shade on him because it’s a day where he is “supposed” to post. He is already suffered enough, cut him some slack when he is finally happy and growing and healing and having a baby.

Let him be. Let him be free of all the hate we have held for our selfish reasons. Please.

#personal #zayn malik #harry styles #louis tomilson #niall horan #liam payne #one direction #solo 1d #solo zayn #zayn #harry #louis #liam #niall #respectforzayn #1d #10 years of one direction

[sunshine--temptress]

Your Arms Feels Like Home - Ziam (4.1k)

Here's some 4k of Ziam fluff. I am sorry for torturing Liam so much. 

°•°•°•°•°

Liam met Zayn for the first time at McDonald's, he can't remember why they started talking but he remembers the feels in his stomach when they exchanged numbers. He didn't think about this too much, he was just hungry. They never used it and Liam forgot about Zayn. He thought about texting him the first few weeks but he didn't know how to start a conversation and Zayn didn't text either. Liam forgot about him until they met again when he auditioned for The X Factor a year later. Zayn was auditioning too and Liam felt the same feeling in his stomach but it was just the stress to have to perform in from of Cheryl, she was so pretty, Liam was just nervous.

Liam auditions and it goes well he thinks, he doesn't see Zayn again until they are all on stage. They don't make it and Zayn looks devastated and Liam feels like crying and for a second he wonder if he's more sad for himself or because Zayn is crying. Liam walks briskly to Zayn and takes him in his arms and hugs him tight. Zayn hugs him back and Liam feels his warm breath hitting the side of his neck and he shivers. Zayn's tears are dampening the thin material of Liam's t-shirt but Liam couldn't care less. He don't know what it is but he just want to see Zayn smile again, he can't stand to see him like this.

They are about to leave, they promised each other to use their phone number this time and to stay in contact, when they see Simon walking toward them, looking agitated. He tells them he want to put them in a band and he lead them back inside to meet three other boys. They meet Harry, Louis and Niall. They seems nice enough but Liam stays close to Zayn. He really hit it off with Harry and Niall but he isn't too sure about Louis. Louis is loud and dramatic but he puts this aside for his dream to sing and he has Zayn with him so everything's fine.

The first few weeks at The X Factor’s house are not easy, Liam is still getting used to his new friends, his bandmates. More often than not Liam finds himself in Zayn's bed, his head pillowed on his chest. He likes to listen to Zayn's heartbeat while Zayn plays with his hair. Once Louis found them like that and he spent days teasing them. Zayn just flipped him off and he doesn't seem to care about what the others think so Liam tries to do the same and not let it get to him. He misses home a lot. He miss his mom's food and his dad and his sisters even if he finds them annoying. He never spent more than a week away from home, and when it happened he was at his grandparents house. It was different, they are family. But here he's with thirty strangers, it's weird. Zayn reminds him of home, he makes him feel safe so he tries to not think too much about what Louis said and he keeps snuggling with Zayn.  

They don't win, they end up in 3rd position but Simon signs them to Syco and Liam has absolutely no idea his life is about to change forever. Their parents wait for the, to bring them back home for a few weeks. Liam hugs Zayn, his nose pressed against his neck. Liam takes a deep breath. Zayn smells very good and for a split second he is tempted to press his lips to the soft skin. He doesn't want to let go, he knows he's gonna miss Zayn. They pull apart when Liam feels his dad's hand on his shoulder. They keep their forehead pressed together for a few more second.

“I'll text you,” says Zayn and Liam smiles.

Liam feels weird, he thinks he's probably hungry and they went through a lot of emotions today. They've been driving for about thirty minutes when Liam feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. It's Zayn telling Liam he already miss him. Nicola is poking him in the ribs asking him who's making him smile like that, she keeps bothering him until Karen tells her to stop it, Liam obviously don't want to talk about it. Liam's never been more grateful for his mom than at this moment. For some reason he don't want to talk about Zayn to his family, he wants to keep him all to himself. He doesn't understand why but he pushes the thoughts away and they text until Liam goes to bed. It's like that until they are set to go back to London. Liam can't believe this, they will really record an album, people will hear them sing, they might even play show and maybe tour if people like them. It's extremely exciting and nerve wracking but Liam knows Zayn will be by his side. He can't wait to see Zayn again. He can't wait to see the other boys too but Zayn more.

Liam was right, his life change. Everything happens so fast. They release their first single and suddenly everybody knows who they are. They are invited on tv and radio shows. Their album goes number one and then next year comes and they record another album and they go on tour and suddenly two years has passed and Liam barely remembers them. He and Zayn are still as close as ever. This is probably the only thing that haven't changed since this adventure started. Zayn is always there next to him, holding his hand when he gets too nervous or cuddling with him when he misses home. Liam knows he can count on him and Zayn knows it too, this isn't one sided. Liam is always there when Zayn feels sad or if he doesn't feel like going out with the other boys. Liam will always gladly stay with him in the bus or in their hotel room.

One thing changes, one thing that still confuses Liam. He often think about kissing Zayn. When they are laying down in one of their tiny bunks, Liam's eyes are often drawn to Zayn's lips. He hopes Zayn haven't noticed but if he did he's been nice enough to not mention it. Liam isn't sure what it means. He never had these kind of thoughts about another boy. He likes girls. He's had a crush on Cheryl for the longest time but he realise this isn't her he's thinking about when he jerks off in the shower. Slowly his thoughts went from long curly hair to short black hair. Everytime, Liam shake his head to think about something else but he always come with a sigh and Zayn's name on his lips. It's nothing, they are close, they are best mates, it doesn't mean anything he tells himself.

Tonight Niall, Harry and Louis wants to go out but Liam isn't in the mood. It's a rare hotel night and Liam would like to actually have one real night of sleep in a bed that doesn't move. The boys leave him alone, wishing him goodnight. Liam wonders for a second where is Zayn. He probably went out with them. It would be selfish of him to want Zayn to be with him, thinks Liam. He spends most of his time with him but a small part of him wish he was here to play video games. Liam starts a game of Super Mario bros, he's feeling nostalgic, when he hears a soft knock on the door. Slowly he puts the controller on the floor and gets up. Liam isn't sure if he should open the door, he hasn't ordered room service and the boys all left about thirty minutes ago. No one should be knocking on his hotel room door. He's pretty sure it can't be a fan since the hotel takes their security very seriously. The person behind the door knocks again.

“Who's there?” Liam calls through the door, he feels very silly, like he's in a bad horror movie.

“Zayn, now will you open the bloody door.”

Liam let out a sigh of relief and let Zayn in.

“What took you so long? And ‘who's there?’, really?” laugh Zayn.

“Oh shut up, I thought you had left with the others.”

“Didn't felt like it, prefered to stay with you and play video games.”

“How did you know I didn't go out?”

“Louis texted me to say you stayed here too.”

Liam nods and Zayn smiles, he follows Liam further inside the hotel room and sits next to Liam as he take back his spot on the floor. Liam takes his controller and hands another one to Zayn. Their fingers brush and Liam tries to not let it show on his face how much it affects him. Zayn's side is plastered to Liam and Liam takes a deep breath to try to stay concentrated on the game in front of him. Liam feels ridiculous to be so affected by Zayn's closeness, they slept in the same bed many times, they always cuddle but somehow this feels different. After a while Liam realise Zayn scooted even closer. His heart is in his throat beating so fast he's not sure he's not having a heart attack.

They play for a while, mostly in silence. When Liam beats Zayn, finally, he can't stop laughing and chanting “I won! I won! I won!”.

Zayn laugh and  drops his controller on the floor and before Liam realise what's going on, he's laying on the carpeted floor. Zayn is straddling him and his hands are tickling his sides. Liam can't breathe and he's not sure if it's because Zayn is sitting on him or because he's being tickled. He tries to bat Zayn's hands away but Zayn doesn't stop.

“Please stop,” laughs Liam, “stop I'm gonna piss my pants.”

Zayn chuckles and finally stops but he stays on Liam, putting his hands on each sides of Liam's head. He leans down and Liam is suddenly aware of how close their faces are. His throat and lips feels dry and he nervously lick his lips, not missing the way Zayn's eyes tracks the movement. Liam doesn't understand what is happening but Zayn's face gets even closer and his warm breath his hitting Liam's lips. Or maybe he understand perfectly because he may or may not have fantasized about this happening not that he would ever admit it. They're best mates and best mates don't fantasize about each others. But this isn't a dream or something made up in his head right now. Zayn is right there on top of him, his nose is bumping against Liam's but he's frozen in place. Half of his brain is screaming at him to kiss Zayn and the other rational part of his brain is scared. Zayn is probably just taking the piss and if Liam kisses him he will probably laugh at him and tell the other boys and…

“C'mon then, c'mon,” says Zayn and Liam is pretty sure his brain just short circuited. Zayn can't be asking what Liam think he's asking. Liam licks his lips again and Zayn does the same and before Liam has time to react, Zayn is pressing his lips against his. It's soft and warm and wet and not that different from kissing a girl except girls don't have stubble that scratch you face. Zayn starts to pull away and Liam realises he didn't kissed him back. Before Zayn can go too far Liam grabs Zayn by the back of his neck and kisses him. It stays chaste for a while, Liam is happy with this, until he feels Zayn's tongue against his lips. Asking permission. Liam timidly opens his mouth and let Zayn’s tongue invade his mouth. Zayn is still sitting on him and Liam has his hands on his hips, his thumbs tracing circles on Zayn's warm skin. Zayn sigh against his mouth and everything is perfect. They kiss until their lips are numb and Liam is disappointed when Zayn breaks the kiss. He keeps his eyes closed but he feel Zayn putting his forehead against his. They stay like that, in complete silence for a while, trying to catch their breath. Liam want to say something but he doesn't want to break the silence. He doesn't even know what he would say. He doesn't know anything and he never felt more confused. He feels Zayn moving until his lips are grazing Liam's earlobe.

“I think I'm the one who won,” Zayn whispers hotly against his ear, sending a shiver down Liam's spine. Zayn takes back his spot on the floor next to Liam.

“Wanna play another game?”

Liam nods and accept the controller Zayn is offering him.

*

They don't talk about it. Liam's not mad about it, he doesn't know what he would say if Zayn brought it up. But nothing change between them and Liam is grateful, they still play video games and cuddle and stay up late at night, squished in one of their tiny bunks, talking until they can't keep their eyes open. The only difference is now Liam knows how Zayn's lips feels against his, how soft and warm they are and how he wants to kiss him again. Liam keeps telling himself it's normal, mates kiss, and him and Zayn are best mates. Liam also starts to dream about Zayn and he wakes up hard and comes with Zayn's name on his lips. It's not weird or anything he keeps telling himself but he knows it's not normal and he needs to do something about this, whatever this is.

Liam walks into the lounge at the front of the bus, Louis is sitting on the floor, his knees up to his chest and he's typing something on his phone. He's the only one in the bus and Liam sit next to him and let his head falls on Louis’ shoulder without saying a word. Him and Louis grew closer after a few years of always being in each other's pocket. Or well, Louis didn't really gave him a choice and he kept hugging him and trying to include him in all his prank. Liam is glad he gave him a chance because Louis is the best friend he could ask for. It's not like with Zayn, there is only one Zayn and Liam knows he will never have this with anyone else. Zayn is is soulmate or something. But Louis is a good friend and Liam knows he can always count on him.

“Oi,” says Louis when he finally lift his eyes from his phone, “you okay Li?”

“Have you ever kissed Harry?” Liam asks softly.

“What the fuck are you on mate?! No I never kissed Harry. You really need to logged off from Twitter,” reply Louis and Liam laugh.

“T'was just a question.”

“A weird one yes. Why d'you wanna know that?”

“Zayn, he well, I, no, no we, we kissed”

“What? When?” Louis asks excitedly.

“Last week, when you went out and we stayed at the hotel.”

“I can't believe he finally did it, but I still don't see what's the link between you and Zayn kissing and me and Harry kissing,” asks Louis at the same moment Harry walks into the bus.

“We never kissed,” says Harry looking at Louis like he lost his mind and he continue to walk towards the bunks area.

“You'd be lucky to kiss me Hazza,” shouts Louis and laugh when Harry shouts back “Yeah keep telling yourself that Tommo, keep dreaming.”

Liam laughs too, his friends are ridiculous.

“Can you tell me the link now, because I’m confused.”

Liam tells him everything, from the start, from the first time he laid his eyes on Zayn and how he felt to how he felt when they kissed and about his dreams even if it's a bit embarrassing. Louis doesn't interrupt him, he lets him talk and talk and talk. He also doesn't judge and Liam is grateful for that because it's the last thing he needs.

“I'm so confused Lou, I've never felt like that before not even for my ex girlfriends.”

“Let's start with you might not be as straight as you thought you were.”

“But I'm not gay, I still find girls pretty,” whines Liam and Louis rolled  his eyes.

“And the thought of being bisexual never crossed your mind?”

“Maybe, but it's scary Lou, what do I do with all these feels?”

“Tell Zayn how you feel could be a good start, if you are ready.”

“I can't do that, I don't even know if he likes boys.”

Louis smacks him on the back of his head.

“OUCH! What was that for?” exclaims Liam, rubbing the back of his head with his hand.

“He kissed you dumbass, what do you think? Also, you don't see the way he looks at you when you're not looking. He looks at you like you hung the moon Li.”

Liam groans and closes his eyes. Why is everything confusing. He hates feeling like this. Why can't love be easy? Wait love? Oh!

“Lou, I think I love him.”

“No shit?!”

“Oh fuck off ok! An hour ago I was thinking maybe he was just being overly friendly.”

“You’re so dense sometimes. Okay, do you trust me?”

It's a trick question and Liam knows he should say no but he nods anyway.

*

Louis’ plan is stupid, it's never going to work and sphe should never have agreed to it. It's not gonna work. Zayn doesn't have feelings for him there is no way he will be jealous. Liam will only make a fool of himself and maybe ruin his friendship with Zayn. Oh my god this is dumb, Liam needs to find Louis to tell him the plan is not working. Liam is pacing the floor of the changing room when Zayn walks in.

“Hey babe, you okay? You look stressed,” say Zayn, opening his arms to hug Liam as he gets closer. Automatically Liam wraps his arms around Zayn's smaller frame and press his nose against Zayn's neck. Immediately he feels better and forget about Louis’ dumb plan. He takes deep breath while Zayn rub circles on his back. It feels great and Liam tighten his arms around Zayn. If Louis’ plan doesn't work it could be the last time he gets to do this and he's so scared of losing Zayn, his Zayn.

“I don't wanna lose you,” Liam says, letting his lips brushing against Zayn's skin.

Zayn pulls back and takes Liam's face between his hands and looks at him in the eyes before pressing their foreheads together.

“You're never going to lose me babe, I don't know what is going on but you will never ever lose me. You understand that?”

Liam nods and Zayn smiles.

“I love you Liam, okay I love you.”

Liam's heart his in beating so fast he feels dizzy. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a second.

“I love you too,” he replies and Zayn gives him a quick peck on the lips.

“Then we are on the same page, now time to get ready. Show starts soon.” With that Zayn is out the door before Liam has time to say anything else.

Maybe Louis’ plan isn't so stupid after all or maybe he doesn't need it. He looks at his watch and he doesn't have time to fo find Louis to tell him.

*

The show is going well, the crowd is amazing but Liam is nervous. He knows Zayn said he would never lose him but he still feel anxious about Louis’ plan about making Zayn jealous. This was his genius plan, to flirt with Liam all night. To touch him more than usual to make Zayn feel jealous to get a reaction out of him. Liam still don't know why he agreed to this. Probably because he was desperate. He doesn't feel so desperate now but he let Louis do it anyway, he knows that trying to stop him wouldn't work now and no matter what Liam says, Louis would just think he’s chickening out. He lets Louis run his fingers on his forearm or brush his lips against his ear when he talks to him. According to Louis, Zayn hasn't stop looking at Louis like he wanna murder him but Liam hasn't noticed. It's not until near the end of the show that he sees what Louis meant. Louis is on his right side and Zayn on his left. Zayn is looking at Louis with dagger in his eyes, Louis has a small smirk on his face as they both circle around Liam. Liam never saw his expression on Zayn's face before and he really hope he will never be on the receiving end of it. Louis seems unfazed and he squeeze Liam's shoulder before he runs toward Niall to poke him in the ribs.

The show ends and Zayn is the first out. When Liam finally reach the changing room Liam can’t stop smiling but Zayn isn't there. He showers quickly and Zayn is still nowhere to be found. He finally ask Paul who tell him Zayn felt knackered and he's already back to the bus. Liam suddenly feels anxious, like Louis’ plan backfired on him. He grabs his stuff and runs to the bus. He needs to talk to Zayn. He drops his stuff on the table in the lounge and calls Zayn's name but he gets no response. He gets closer to the bunks and  calls Zayn's name again. Nothing. Liam feels his stomach twist in a knot and his eyes filled with tears. He wanna be mad at Louis but he knows he only have himself to be mad at. Louis only wanted to be a good mate and help.

Liam lay down in his bunk and closes his eyes. He want to sleep and forget about all of this and hopefully tomorrow morning everything will be back to normal. He hears Louis, Niall and Harry come back to the bus, trying but failing at not making too much noises. He doesn't care. He keeps his eyes closed and try to sleep. He doesn't know for how long he tries but it's not working.

“Li?” he hears Zayn whisper and a part of him wants to ignore him but he can't, “Li, are you sleeping?”

“No.”

Zayn pushes the curtain open but he stays in the aisle between the bunks, shuffling from foot to foot.

“Can I?”

It's weird, he never asked before he always just climbed in and wrapped his arms around Liam.

“Of course you can.”

Zayn climbs on the small bed but he stays on his back, his hands crossed on his abdomen.

“I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“I acted like an ass, I uh, I heard you cry.”

Liam doesn't say anything, he just keeps looking at Zayn in the dark.

“This is all Louis’ fault,” they both say at the same time.

“What do you mean?” question Zayn.

Liam sigh. That’s it, that's the moment. He will tell Zayn how he feels and Zayn will tell him he loves him but just as a friend and he will get his heart broken but he's ready.

“Louis convinced me to let him flirt with menso you would get jealous because he got this idea that you have feelings for me, I mean like the one I have for you and that it would make you confess them. Sorry is this is weird and I knew this was a bad idea. Louis's an idiot and I should never have agreed to this.”

“Wait what? No, Louis told me he would flirt with you and to act overly jealous so you would confess your feelings for me. But I ended up hurting you and I am sorry. It's the last thing I wanted.”

“How did Louis...I'm confused.”

“I went to him for advices about my feelings for you after we kissed.”

Liam couldn't believe this and started to laugh. He would need to find a way to get back at Louis and he was sure Zayn would gladly help him.

“I did the same. God, we should just have talked together.”

“Yeah but in the end it worked.”

Zayn turns on his side to look at Liam and Liam immediately wrapped his arms around Zayn.

“Can I kiss you? Been dying to do it again for two weeks now,” admits Liam.

“You never have to ask, I love you Liam.”

“I love you too, Zayn,” Liam says before closing the gap between their mouths.

#ziam #ziam mayne #ziam fic #zayn malik #liam payne #my writing #claudia shut up

[highbuttonsports]

Calgary vs Tampa 2004 Stanley Cup Finals stanley cup finals 2004 gelinas no goal - Bing images

Unfinished Business

The date was June 5th, 2004. It’s a date that anyone affiliated with the Calgary Flames, from player to fan, knows exactly what you are talking about when it’s brought up. No preamble, hints, or description required. The mere mention of it conjures up some of the vilest language that would even make Samuel L. Jackson blush. I am not talking about “snakes on a m’n’f’n plane” either. This was the day that Calgary was robbed of winning hockey’s holy grail, the Stanley Cup. They should have been the first Canadian team to win it in 11 years. Instead, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory by the guys in the zebra print shirts. Maybe that’s why the Saddledome erupts into a chorus of boos every time the refs’ skates hit the ice. Just for ‘kicks’ though, let’s get some of those same emotions bubbling by going through it.

It was game 6 in Calgary with the Flames up 3 games to 2 over the Tampa Bay Lightning. One more victory and they would be drinking sweet nectar from Lord Stanley’s Mug. A Canadian team had not won it since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. All of Canada (except Oilers and Canucks fans probably) were participating in their own version of ‘White Ave.’ in support of them. Each team scored a goal in the 2nd period to make it 1-1 after 2 periods. Then, with under 7 minutes left in the 3rd period, winger Oleg Saprykin busted down the right side, and around center Tim Taylor towards the Lightning net. Defenceman Pavel Kubina saw this and edged towards the driving Saprykin. Pavel then went down into a slide while extending his stick to try and cut Oleg off. This caused him to lose control of the puck, but it still directed on net and bounced off goalie Nikolai Khabibulin’s left pad. The rebound went straight onto Calgary winger Martin Gelinas’ right skate at the top of the crease. The puck then went towards the net again and was kicked out by the toe of Khabibulin’s right pad. Or did it? Video review at the time was strictly reviewed in a secured room located in the arena, but the refs nor the vid room decided to review it. It was a very curious decision on a controversial play. There are a few videos out there that show different angles and, to be honest, they are inconclusive as a whole. Then there is the question of whether the puck was kicked in. The rule then was the skate had to be moving in a forward direction to qualify as a kick. There are varying opinions on the efficacy of that as well. None of that matters in Cow Town though. In the end, the goal didn’t count, the game went onto double overtime, and ex-Flame Martin St. Louis scored to win the game and tie the series at 3 games apiece. Tampa went on to win game 7 2-1 and take home the franchises first championship.

Fast forward to present day 2021. It’s been 17 years since that heart breaking moment and the wound is as fresh as it was then. Even more sad, a Canadian still hasn’t won the Cup making it a blasphemous 28 years since Lord Stanley has returned to its homeland. As for Calgary, they haven’t been to the finals since. In fact, they haven’t progressed past the 2nd round since. And given how the Flames’ season has gone this year it doesn’t appear that’s about to change. They are 11-11-2 for a .500 record that mirrors exactly how the team has played. Their play has been extremely inconsistent and lately it’s been lifeless. After the most recent debacle this past Saturday, which saw them lose at the hands of the Ottawa Senators 5-1, many were wondering what the team’s next move would be. They were heading home after a 6 game road trip where they went 2-3-1. That may not seem so bad on the surface, but it’s how they lost that was troubling. They outscored their opponents 9-3 in their wins, but in their losses, they got hammered 20-4. Was Coach Ward even going to fly back with the team? Was a trade needed to shake up a listless group? Surely something had to be done. Well, 3 days later and they were back on the ice for a rematch against the Sens team that handed them their most recent embarrassment. Players were saying all the right things. The coach was saying the right things. But nothing was coming out of the front office. I guess it was status quo and hope for the best. The Flames came out fast and angry taking a 4-1 lead after 1 period. They controlled the game from start to finish while winning 7-3. Everyone exhaled hoping this was where the season would turn around.

The lights in the arena were still warm when news finally came down from GM Brad Treliving. The Calgary Flames were making a coaching change. Out was Geoff Ward. It had become quite obvious they had tuned Ward out and he wasn’t going to be able to get the most out of them. This seemed like the inevitable ending from the get go really. He was forced into duty last season after Bill Peters was infamously relieved of his job. Then GM Treliving did the safe thing and made him the official head coach in the off season. Most of the time is the safe move isn’t the move that get’s the best results. That doesn’t mean Geoff is a bad coach though. He just wasn’t the right fit for this group and perhaps was rushed into a role he wasn’t really ready for.

In comes Darryl Sutter. Yes, that Darryl Sutter. The very same guy who was behind the bench back in 2004 when they came oh so close to winning it all. For a team that has played without enough energy, compete, and urgency, he is exactly what it needs. He demands the most out of his players and holds them all accountable no matter who they are. He is cut from the same clothe as John Tortorella (coincidently the guy who was the coach of the Lightning when they beat Calgary for the Cup). Like him or hate him, he gets results. The players that don’t buy in and can’t cut it don’t play. It’s that simple. This isn’t the safe move, and that bodes well for a team in desperate need of a kick in the butt. I don’t need to go over Darryl’s resume to explain why he is the right man for the job. The proof will come in the results he gets from this day forward. Mark my words the Calgary Flames will make the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs. After that anything can happen. And in the words of Coach Sutter during his introductory zoom conference he has “some unfinished business with the Calgary Flames”.

By: Jaymee Kitchenham

#hockey #nhl news #sports #calgary flames

[tvdas]

Banning Evil

In the Shadow of Christchurch, Quasi-Religious Myths Can Lead Us Astray

written by Michael Shermer

On March 15, a 28-year old an Australian gunman named Brenton Tarrant allegedly opened fire in two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques, killing 50 and wounding 50 more. It was the worst mass shooting in the history of that country. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who was rightly praised for her response to the murders, declared: “While the nation grapples with a form of grief and anger that we have not experienced before, we are seeking answers.”

One answer took form a week later, when Ms. Ardern announced legislation that would ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons, assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. Will such gun-control measures work to reduce gun crime? Maybe. They did in Australia following a 1996 mass shooting in Tasmania in which 35 people were murdered. A 2006 follow-up study showed that in the 18 years prior to the ban, there had been 13 mass shootings. But in the decade following, there had been none. Gun culture is different in every country. But there is at least an arguable case to be made that the newly announced controls will make New Zealand a safer country.

But banning certain tools that may be used to commit murder is one thing. Tarrant’s rampage also has led to calls to block ideas that allegedly fuel murderous extremism. In the immediate aftermath of tragedy, it is understandable that every conceivable means should be employed to prevent a recurrence. But censorship is almost invariably the wrong response to evil actions. You cannot ban evil.

Before the killings, Tarrant authored a rambling 74-page manifesto titled The Great Replacement. The document is difficult to find online, as most platforms took to blocking it as soon as its appearance was flagged. I was quick to grab a copy early on, however, because such documents inform my longstanding research into extremist groups and ideologies.

The Great Replacement was inspired by a 2012 book of the same title by the French author Renaud Camus—a right-wing conspiracy theorist who claims that white French Catholics in particular, and white Christian Europeans in general, are being systematically replaced by people of non-European descent, especially from Africa and the Middle East, through immigration and higher birth rates. The manifesto is filled with white supremacist fearmongering. “If there is one thing I want you to remember from these writings, it’s that the birthrates must change,” the author tells his audience (whom he presumes to be white). “Even if we were to deport all Non-Europeans from our lands tomorrow, the European people would still be spiraling into decay and eventual death.” The result, he concludes apocalyptically, is “white genocide.”

Like many cranks and haters of this type, Tarrant has a weakness for codes and slogans. He references the number 14 to indicate the 14-word slogan originally coined by white supremacist David Lane while imprisoned for his role in the 1984 murder of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Lane, for his part, explicitly extolled the writings of white supremacist William Pierce, who in turn inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people.

Accusations of racism and white supremacism are thrown around so casually these days that the meaning of these terms has become diluted and ambiguous. So, for clarity, I will state the obvious by emphasizing that the writings of Tarrant, Lane and Pierce all reflect attitudes that are completely racist and hateful, as such terms are properly used.

And yes, there is a connection with Nazism. The number 14 is sometimes rendered as 14/88, with the 8’s representing the eighth letter of the alphabet—H—and 88 or HH standing for Heil Hitler. Lane, who died in 2007, was inspired by Mein Kampf, in which the Nazi Party leader declared: “What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe.”

But even here, the bibliographical trail of hatred doesn’t end—because Hitler copied much of his anti-Semitic conspiracism from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a tragically popular hoaxed document purporting to record the proceedings of a secret meeting of Jews plotting global domination. Nor was the Protocols itself conceived out of thin air: It was plagiarized from Biarritz, a luridly anti-Semitic 19th-century novel; and a propaganda tract called Dialogues in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, which had been written by a French lawyer as an act of protest against Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte; both of which, in turn, drew on anti-Semitic tropes going back to Roman times. So if you’re looking to root out and ban the political ideology that produces Jew hatred, you’re going to have to purge whole library shelves. The same goes for Islamophobia, anti-black racism, and virtually every other kind of bigotry you could name.

And yet, there are those who argue that mass censorship is justified in the name of heading off hateful indoctrination. That group apparently would include leaders of the Whitcoulls bookstore chain in New Zealand. Late last week, the company announced it was banning one popular book, “in light of some extremely disturbing material being circulated prior, during and after the Christchurch attacks.” Yet the book wasn’t Mein Kampf, which you can still buy on the company’s site for $44.95—or anything of its ilk. Rather, the chain is boycotting Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, a self-help book that has no connection at all with the mosque attacks or their perpetrator.

What is the “extremely disturbing material” in Peterson’s book? Whitcoulls doesn’t say. I’ve read the entire book, along with much of the University of Toronto professor’s 1999 massive first book, Maps of Meaning. And I’ve watched many of his YouTube videos and media interviews. I have yet to find anything remotely reminiscent of white supremacy, racism, anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.

On Twitter, I suggested that those who think Peterson is the ideological culprit behind the New Zealand massacre have lost their minds. I added that I’m no toady for Jordan Peterson, inasmuch as I disagree with him on many subjects—including his theory of truth, and his largely uncritical endorsement of religious myths as an organizing principle for human cultures. But the banning of Peterson on any theory related to preventing mass murder doesn’t even rise to the level of wrong: It’s demonstrably absurd—akin to banning spoons and skateboards as a strategy to stave off prospective arsonists.

When I asked my social-media followers for examples of anything Peterson had said or done that could be construed as inviting mass murder, the only remotely relevant responses I got pointed to photos that random fans had taken with Peterson, one of which featured a guy sporting a t-shirt proclaiming himself to be an “Islamaphobe,” and another (more ambiguous) example of someone holding a Pepe the Frog banner. But this proves nothing. Peterson has taken photos with tens of thousands of people at public events in recent years. In a typical fan-photo cattle call, fans are cycled into frame with a celebrity roughly every five or six seconds—typically by handlers, not the celebrity acting in his or her personal capacity. I’ve done a number of these during book tours and can attest to the fact that it’s completely unrealistic to think that Peterson could screen the clothes worn by all these legions of photo seekers for ideological purity—even if this were something he aspired to do.

On March 23, I received an email from Change.org, the left-leaning political action group whose stated mission is to “empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see.” In this case, the change users wanted to see in response to the New Zealand massacre was… to ban PewDiePie from YouTube. “One of the largest platforms for white supremacist content is PewDiePie’s YouTube channel,” the petition informs us. “PewDiePie has on many occasions proven once and again to promote and affiliate himself with white supremacist and Nazi ideologies.” The petitioners then list the YouTuber’s alleged sins, including using the N-word, playing videos of Adolf Hitler’s speeches, and giving the Nazi heil in a video.

For those unaware, PewDiePie is a Swedish comedian and video game player named Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, whose YouTube channel has a massive following and whom Tarrant referenced in his manifesto (along with Candace Owens, Donald Trump and others). It is true that PewDiePie once used the N-word during a video game competition (and then apologized profusely for doing so). He also has used brief audio and video snippets of Nazi imagery as part of satirical responses to attacks against him that he lampooned as melodramatic. The idea that any of this betrays PewDiePie as a closet white supremicist is absurd. Even without Change.org’s urging, YouTube already has demonetized the videos of such avowedly anti-racist and anti-supremacist moderates as Dave Rubin and Gad Saad, as well as anti-anti-Semite conservatives such as Dennis Prager. YouTube is acting on an ideological hair trigger: If there were any evidence whatsoever that PewDiePie had expressed real Nazi sympathies, he would have been axed from the platform long ago.

Responding to evil by banning random controversial authors or YouTubers is completely irrational. But that doesn’t make it inexplicable. Manifestations of great evil provoke a desire to do something—anything—to reestablish moral order. Remember when millions of people tweeted #BringBackOurGirls after the terrorist organization Boko Haram kidnapped dozens of Nigerian students in 2014? Murderous rapists don’t give a fig about being mobbed on Twitter. But it made people feel useful for an instant—as if they had done something. We all entertain some version of this instinct in times of tragedy—a reflex satirized by The Onion in the days after 9/11 with the headline Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake.

Intertwined with this instinct is the idea that there is some abstract force called evil that exists in the cosmos, a force that we are all called upon to confront and defeat. As I argued in my 2003 book, The Science of Good and Evil, this belief—that pure evil exists separately from individuals—is a myth. “Evil” makes literal sense as an adjective, but not as a noun (except in a figurative sense), because there is no quantum of something called “evil” that exists in human hearts, or, indeed, anywhere else.

Thus concluded social psychologist Roy Baumeister, as reported in his 1997 book about serial killers and other career criminals, Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. Ironically, Baumeister found that the myth of evil existing as a standalone force may, itself, lead societies to become more violent: “The myth encourages people to believe that they are good and will remain good no matter what, even if they perpetrate severe harm on their opponents. Thus, the myth of pure evil confers a kind of moral immunity on people who believe in it…belief in the myth is itself one recipe for evil, because it allows people to justify violent and oppressive actions. It allows evil to masquerade as good.”

This helps explain the grimly bizarre manner by which violent criminals and terrorists find ways to justify even the most horrifying and nihilistic acts. Consider this 1994 police record of Frederick Treesh, a spree killer from the Midwest who explained, “Other than the two we killed, the two we wounded, the woman we pistol-whipped, and the light bulbs we stuck in people’s mouths, [my accomplice and I] didn’t really hurt anybody.” After killing 33 boys the serial killer John Wayne Gacy explained: “I see myself more as a victim than as a perpetrator. I was cheated out of my childhood.”

Modern campaigns aimed at shutting down this or that speaker implicitly present evil as something that may be communicated from one person to another, like bacteria. By this model, censorship is akin to quarantine. But Baumeister tells us “you do not have to give people reasons to be violent, because they already have plenty of reasons. All you have to do is take away their reasons to restrain themselves.” It is absolutely true that some extremist ideologies can encourage adherents to abandon the sense of restraint that Baumeister describes. But the campaign to ban the likes of Jordan Peterson and PewDiePie—individuals whose work bears no relationship at all to the extreme forms of hatred we should be most concerned about—suggests that censors aren’t actually thinking through such propositions. Instead, they seem to be operating on the idea of evil as a quasi-mystical force akin to Satan. In this conception, Peterson and PewDiePie are seen as carriers of evil, much like witches channeling demons from below, no matter that they never actually say or do anything evil in nature.

As Baumeister argued, this mythical idealization of evil as being an actual force in our universe, rather than a descriptor of human motivations, isn’t merely harmless ersatz spiritualism: It causes people to act worse, sometimes murderously so, by allowing them to imagine the locus of evil as lying completely outside their own intentions and actions.

Which gets to the (necessarily political) question of who should be identified, stigmatized, and even punished for being a “carrier” of evil? Who gets to define that class of people? Me? You? The majority? An evil-thought committee? The government? Social-media companies? We already have law enforcement and the military to deal with evil deeds. Controlling evil thoughts is far more problematic.

Campaigns aimed at banning evil in its own (mythical) right almost always include efforts to ban evil speech—or even, as in the aftermath of the New Zealand mass murder, speech from someone who has not said anything remotely evil, but is seen, in some vague sense, to be contaminated by evil. When western societies were religious, evil speech was tantamount to anti-Christian speech. In a secular age, we call it “hate speech,” a reformulation that does nothing to solve the always contentious issue of distinguishing between evil speech and free speech, and the problem of who gets to decide where one ends and the other begins.

It is my contention that we must protect speech no matter how hateful it may seem. The solution to hate speech is more speech. The counter to bad ideas is good ideas. The rebuttal to pseudoscience is better science. The answer to fake news is real news. The best way to refute alternative facts is with actual facts. This is just as true now as it was in the moment before 50 innocent Muslim lives were taken in New Zealand—even if our emotionally felt need to put a name and form to evil now makes this truth harder to see.

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine, a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, and the author of The Moral Arc. 

[shirtlesssammy]

Nightshifter: The Mandroid Recap

Then:

Police Department briefly considers hiring much better qualified fan artist, but then says “fuck it.”

(And shapeshifters are a thing!)

Breaking News:

Outside the City Bank in Milwaukee, WI, reporters standby as they watch a tense standoff between local police and unknown suspects.

Oh, snap. Dean Bean, what have you gotten yourself into now?

One Day Ago:

Our criminally minded Dean Bean is busy flirting (and interviewing) with a jewelry store clerk while Sam interviews another jewelry employee about a recent heist. A former employee was caught in the act of stealing merchandise. A security guard died while trying to stop her. She later killed herself. Frannie, the clerk Dean interviews, lets him know that she wouldn’t mind being interviewed in private sometime.

Dean has to think long and hard before deciding that, yep, that’s a great idea, and asks for her number.

The boys head out. Sam fills Dean in on a bank in Milwaukee getting robbed, much like the jewelry store. They reach the home of, Ronald Reznick, a security guard at the bank heist.

Ronald invites them in when they agree to hear his story of the events. Ronald instantly jumps into Fox Mulder levels of conspiracy shenanigans.

The person that Ronald let into the bank that night wasn’t who he said he was. “It had his face, but it wasn’t his face.” It’s a mandroid! Sam is skeptical, but Dean wonders about Ronald’s surety. So, Ronald pops in a copy of the security tape he keeps for backup, and shows the brothers the man with the laser eyes! Sam and Dean realize they’re dealing with a shapeshifter.

So, Sam puts on his best FBI face and tells Mr. Reznick that he’s wrong, the laser eyes is just a camera flair, and mandroids don’t exist. Dean is sympathetic, but to protect him, it has to be done. Sam gets the video surveillance before they head back to their own motel room, complete with a conspiracy board of their own. Dean is so soft towards Ronald, and wonders how Sam can impersonate an FBI agent so well. Sam makes it clear that it’s best the Ronald stay in the dark --and stay alive.

They track the shapeshifter’s underground path and discover another bank. They head out, in their best security guard service jumpers. They set up camp in the security camera room, and watch for the shapeshifter’s glowing eyes. Just as they’re losing hope, they find their monster --and Ronald Reznick.

While Ronald holds everyone at the bank hostage, Dean and Sam try to calm him down ---with little luck. He doesn’t trust them, wonders if they’re Men in Black, and makes a point to say he doesn’t like Sam. Dean tells Ronald that they believe him. And goddamnit, it’s been so long since I’ve seen this episode, but it’s a classic for a reason. This whole exchange between Dean and Ronald is so good. Ronald is so earnest in his beliefs -and he isn’t *really* wrong that something’s out there. And Dean knows exactly what to tell him to make him feel justified. Ronald agrees to take Dean to find the bank manager/shapeshifter, everyone else has to go in the vault. They don’t find the shapeshifter, just what’s left of him. “It’s so weird. Robot skin is so lifelike,” Ronald marvels. Dean lays down some truth, and locates a silver letter opener.

Meanwhile, the cops are on the case. They cut the power to the bank. Dean and Ronald are heading back to the vault when Ronald thanks Dean for helping him realize that he’s not crazy --mandroid theory aside.

Meanwhile, Sam is harassed by a fellow hostage inquiring about Dean while wearing one of his classic early season Ugly Shirts. The vault opens to reveal Dean, who lets more people into the vault--and lets Sam out. While Dean fills Sam in on the whereabouts of the shapeshifter, Sam reminds Dean that he’s wanted by the police, and the problem of escaping this situation. Dean wants to patrol the rest of the bank for others, while Sam watches Ron. Sam sees no hope for their captor, but Dean’s developed a soft spot for Ron.

Dean stalks the hallways while Sam cracks the vault door open to give the hostages air. A landline phone rings and Ron picks up the receiver and begins chatting cheerily to the cops. (He’s probably about a second away from telling them all about shapeshifter/mandroids.) Sam, aghast at Ron's stupidity, yells at him to hang up. In the vault, the guard starts having a heart attack so Sam calls back the SWAT team leader and asks for a paramedic.

Dean, meanwhile, finds a loose ceiling tile, jimmies it open, and a body falls through. Dean IDs the body as one of the hostages in the vault and heads back to Sam.

And here's when everything goes to (even more) shit.

Sam helps the guard and the shifter out of the vault, ostensibly to get the guard outside for medical attention. Sam takes the guard away while Dean tries to attack the shifter. Alas for Dean, the shifter gets the jump on him and runs off into the shadowed bank corridors. Ron, attempting to be helpful, ever so slowly trains his rifle on the retreating shifter. Unfortunately, Ron steps into view of the window and a sniper takes him out with one clean shot to the back.

The guard abandoned, Sam runs off into the depths of the bank after the shifter, scaring up sundry bank customers and employees as he goes.

Dean has a sorrowful moment with dead Ron, and tells him that he did a good job tracking the shifter. Then he escorts the guard to the doorway and sends him outside to get medical attention. He surveys the scene outside like a soldier, cataloging the swarming mess of cops, SWAT, reporters, and more. “We are so screwed,” he says, escaping back into the bank and relocking the door.

Sam finds the shifter's skin again in one of the stairwells and calls Dean with the update: the shifter’s in new a new form already. Dean starts to round up all the hostages while Sam continues his search of the back hallways.

Outside, the cops in charge find themselves supplanted by the FBI, led by Agent Victor Henriksen. They call in to the bank and Dean picks up the phone this time. Instead of being able to bluff for more time, Agent Henriksen identifies Dean by name. “It’s become my job to know about you, Dean. I’ve been looking for you for weeks now. I know about the murder in St. Louis, I know about the Houdini act you pulled in Baltimore. I know about the desecrations and the thefts. I know about your dad. Ex-marine, raised his kids on the road, cheap motels, backwood cabins. Real paramilitary survivalist type. I just can’t get a handle on what type of whacko he was. White supremacist, Timmy McVeigh...to-may-to, to-mah-to.”

“You got no right talking about my dad like that.” Dean tells him angrily, “He was a hero.” (Oh, Dean Bean. Terrible father, dedicated hunter. To-may-to, to-mah-to.)

(Side note: Jensen Ackles is so, so good in this phone conversation scene. Vulnerable, scared, and full of false bravado. UGH. JENSEN.)

Dean and Sam continue to search for the shifter when Sam finds a spot of blood in front of a door. When he opens it, the body of a bank teller falls out, her throat slit. They head back to the vault and ask bank teller Sherri to come with them. Sherri’s no dummy and asks to stay in the vault, thank you very much. Sam flashes his silver letter opener and Sherri heads out of the vault with them.

Sam and Dean bring her to the teller’s body when Sherri reacts...oddly. She completely flips out, starts screaming, and then passes out. The Winchesters look between the body and unconscious Sherri in confusion.

But hey, it’s cool. An unconscious shifter is easier to kill, right? Dean gets ready to stab her in the chest when Sam stops him. The dead body is actually breathing! Dead Sherri, a.k.a. the shifter, jumps up and starts fighting Dean while Sam gets the real Sherri away from the fight.

Meanwhile SWAT has moved into the bank. It’s a game of cat and mouse and cat now, with Dean and Sam hunting the shifter while SWAT hunts for them. The real Sherri escapes with a couple SWAT guys and will definitely have zero trauma or questions about her apparent evil twin.

Dean gets accosted by the shifter who continues to fight like a complete badass. He grabs her arm and skin peels away. (Shudder)

Finally, Dean overcomes the shifter and manages to stab her with the letter opener. She dies at last. So, problem one solved. He hears SWAT moving through the hallway nearby and crouches over the shifter’s body as one SWAT member enters the room, cornering him. (Future knowledge alert: it’s Sam! He took out a couple of SWAT guys earlier in the hallway.)

Cut to Agent Henriksen stalking the hallways as SWAT clears them one by one. We overhear two SWAT guys marveling over finding the shifter’s body. “I’m telling you, man. I just walked her out of the bank. She must have a twin sister or something.” (Somebody direct me to fan fiction where it’s just Sherri processing shit and trying to research her nonexistent twin sister. “Mom, why didn’t you tell me about our dark family secret?” “Tell you what?” “Stop lying, mom!” etcetera...)

 Anyway, SWAT opens up a small room and finds two mostly naked SWAT members tied up and unconscious on the floor. Cut to two men in black tactical gear walking up the stairs of a parking garage. They head to the Impala, which is parked in a parking garage, and peel off their helmets and masks.

“We are so screwed,” Dean says while Renegade by Styx plays over the scene.

Natasha: GOD DAMN IT THIS FINAL SCENE. It’s so good. It’s one of my all-time favorite scenes from the entire series run. It’s such an excellent use of music - the perfect balance of desperation and badass.

 I Never Knew I Had an Evil Quote:

 A mandroid?

I like him. He says “okey dokey”.

We're not working for the mandroid!

I know about Sam, too. Bonnie to your Clyde.

Crazy's in there. And I just hung up on it.  

You see, he’s got the laser eyes.

Robot skin is so lifelike.

#spn recap #spn rewatch #supernatural #spn 2x12 #nightshifter #dean winchester #sam winchester #ronald reznick #agent henriksen #supernatural season 2 #he was my ben edlund thing

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/sports/how-johan-cruyff-and-ajax-thought-outside-the-box-to-dominate-football/

How Johan Cruyff and Ajax thought 'outside the box' to dominate football

His connection to Ajax, his hometown club, is — if not unique — then certainly of rare fascination. It is an inextricable link that extends well beyond 250 goals in 318 games, well beyond three consecutive European Cups and even beyond three years as manager in the late 1980s.

Alongside the physical tangibility of Cruyff’s achievements sits an iconic untouchability that places him as an integral figure in all that Ajax represents. In today’s world, most clubs would claim to possess a philosophy of some kind, but there are few with a culture so deep-rooted and widely recognized. Cruyff is the common denominator — both at Ajax and, arguably, at Barcelona.

“If you look back, you can’t talk about his importance,” David Endt, Ajax’s general manager between 1997 and 2013, tells CNN. “It’s much more than that. He is the trademark of our club. He showed in his game, with his ability, everything which is Ajax — the daring, the offensive way of thinking about football.

“I saw him play when he was 16, 17, 18 years old. It was fantastic, it was amazing. But you had no idea how much or how big his influence would be.”

Two years after his untimely death in 2016, the club’s Amsterdam Arena was renamed the Johan Cruyff Arena in tribute.

“It is a great sign that they have honored him with that,” Endt says. “But it must be much more than honoring a man by name. They have to follow his philosophy, his thoughts on football, which sometimes were a little outside the box. Maybe [their opponents] could be stronger, but then you can always outwit them because this is football. You don’t need all these muscles. You need brains and intelligence to play. And this is maybe the major part, which he has brought.”

Ajax’s tactical system — its famed 4-3-3 formation, complete with an emphasis on possession, attacking down the wings and self-development, is entrenched in the club’s “total football” history — a method first explored by Rinus Michels, who managed a young Cruyff during the 1960s.

Endt’s perspective is shared by former Ajax goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar, who is now the club’s chief executive.

“The style of play is something that is unique — it gives us a face in the world of football,” he explains. “Every coach tries a little bit to give their own color to it, but I think the philosophy of Ajax has been clear for many, many years.”

Van der Sar’s rise through the club’s ranks from joining as a 19-year-old to becoming the off-field figurehead is indicative of Ajax’s commitment to retaining the roots first planted in the all-conquering era of Cruyff.

“There’s this aspect that you can’t really touch, that you can’t copy,” Endt stresses with the bounding passion of a man completely immersed in the globally famous culture of his club. “You can come and see that they train like this and this. But there’s more than that. It’s what I call the soil and the air that you breathe.”

In a sense, Ajax’s inherent principles may well have been best highlighted in 1995, when the club secured a fourth European title by beating AC Milan. More than two decades after Cruyff’s hat-trick of triumphs in 1971, ’72 and ’73, it was proof that Ajax’s methods still worked. Nine of the 16-man squad for the final had made their professional footballing debuts at Ajax.

The starting line-up alone featured Van der Sar, Ronald and Frank de Boer, Frank Rijkaard, Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids and Marc Overmars. Patrick Kluivert came off the bench to score the winner. It was a who’s who of Dutch footballing royalty.

Danny Blind, who would go on to lead the club’s academy and manage the first team, captained the side. For him, however, it was Jari Litmanen who made the team tick. In effect, the Finnish playmaker had replaced Dennis Bergkamp in the number 10 role pivotal to Ajax’s gameplan.

“[Litmanen] could think as a midfielder,” says Blind. “He could think at the right moment in the right situation when [he was] a midfielder and when [he was] an attacker. Sometimes you have to defend. Litmanen was more complete than Bergkamp.”

Bale marks century of Real goals in Madrid derby win

He recalls the final as a culmination of what had come before it; he looks back on a 5-2 semifinal victory over Bayern Munich as the aesthetic pinnacle.

“I always remember that game because the way that we wanted to play with that team in the ’90s, that was it,” he explains. “With the pressing, always hunting on Munich when they had the ball, they didn’t know what to do.”

The final — a tense affair against a side including Paolo Maldini, Marcel Desailly and Franco Baresi — was the third time that the two sides had met in the 1994/95 competition, with Ajax winning the previous two.

“It was not a good game. I don’t want to say it was boring because it’s a final,” adds Blind. “There’s all kind of things around, and the crowd was unbelievable. But it wasn’t a game like Munich or one of the great games.

“There was just one move from Kluivert. It was an excellent moment because of the time [of the goal]. For Milan to come back into the game was impossible. It was an incredible moment and a well-deserved cup.”

The decision to rely on a young homegrown prodigy is symptomatic of the club’s longstanding ethos.

“We missed out on signing the Brazilian Ronaldo,” Van der Sar says of the start of the historic season. “Louis van Gaal told us not to worry, and that we had Kluivert, the striker from the Under-19s.”

Even in Cruyff’s first European Cup win in 1971, he was surrounded by lifelong fans; Sjaak Swart is the club’s record appearance-maker, while left-winger Piet Keizer only ever played professionally for Ajax.

Visit CNN.com/Sport for more news, features and videos

“As a young boy, you dream of being a professional football player,” Van der Sar reminisces of his own triumph. “You dream of playing in the Champions League, playing for your country, and winning the Champions League. The way it developed was an incredible scenario for us. Eighty percent of us grew up together, so we had that feeling of developing, getting better, performing and reaching the pinnacle at a very young age. To do it at the club you supported and where we grew up is very special.”

The reaction of the Ajax faithful, perhaps, speaks to the club’s culture better than most. As Blind and Van der Sar share their memories of the aftermath, they do so in vivid fashion — as only fans themselves could do.

In Van der Sar’s office sits a photo of his 1995 Champions League-winning side celebrating on a barge. There are fans jumping into the canal to be with their heroes. It is an image that speaks immeasurably of Amsterdam and of Ajax.

Van der Sar — his photo acting as a daily reminder — recalls the celebrations in the city’s Museumplein, a huge public space surrounded by three museums.

“There were 200,000 people there,” he says. “Then we went to the boat and I thought: ‘OK, everybody’s gone, everybody is going home.’

“And then we went under the first bridge and you had to duck. You came up and the 200 meters before the next bridge was completely full with people. It was an unbelievable experience.”

#Football #How Ajax and Johan Cruyff outwitted football powerhouses - CNN #latest sports news #news sport #Sport #sportnews #sports articles #sports breaking news #sports latest news #sports news headlines #sports news in english #sports scores #today's sports news #today's sports news headlines

[newsbiteswithjennysok]

July 22, 2019

1. In a preview clip for the forthcoming season of the E! show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the tension between Kim, 38, and Kourtney, 40, was palpable as they clashed over whether they would have candy present at a joint birthday bash - with a Candyland theme - for their respective eldest daughters North, six, and Penelope, seven.

The argument was triggered as the two, along with younger sister Khloe, 35, were relaxing at Kourtney's Calabasas mansion, where Kim discovered a massive dispenser containing multiple types of candy.

Kourtney told Kim that she didn't want sugary candy at the soiree, but rather healthier options.

'There's candies that are not disgusting and filled with chemicals ... do you want me to make you a collage or posterboard?' she asked Kim, who replied, 'Make me a f***ing pinata: all that s***, and I'll hit it with your face.'

Kourtney stayed on point, telling Kim they had 'to have some healthy options' at the Candyland-themed party, adding to her sister that she was 'dated' and 'in the past' in her party-planning mentality.

But Kim felt it defeated the purpose, telling Kourtney, 'It's a Candyland-themed party! Yes, that's, like, what the party is about, Candyland - it's not f***ing gluten-free land over here!'

2. Meghan King Edmonds has given her first, emotional interview about her husband Jim’s sexting scandal and told how she is determined to hold her family together and save her marriage, especially for the sake of their brain damaged one-year-old baby boy, Hart.

The former Real Housewives of Orange County star revealed how she discovered her MLB star hubby had sent explicit pics and movies to baseball groupie Jennifer Villegas, even sending a video showing him pleasuring himself the same day Meghan was in hospital preparing to give birth to twins Hart and Hayes.

But she says the fact her 49-year-old husband did not have a physical affair with mother of one Jennifer, who she brands a 'con artist,' saved their five-year marriage and Meghan says she knew Jim hadn’t laid a finger on Jennifer the second she saw a photo of her.

Speaking from her home in St. Louis, MO, Meghan, also mom to daughter Aspen, two, said: 'We're still married, we're still together, we're not separated. I know my engagement ring is well known! I'm still wearing it. I've never stopped wearing it.

'We're in the family home, we're in the same bed. We're not having therapy, we're talking.'

'In a marriage when there’s a fight or an indiscretion, nobody wins if they leave. If I left, I wouldn’t win. I don’t win by staying. The only way to win is to work through it. It’s not about right or wrong because everyone is hurt.

'I'm a mom, that's my strength and I need it. With fame, I've discovered the highs are very high and the lows are very low. I have had support from the housewives but my main support network are my close friends and family here in Missouri.

'My family is the ultimate example of a loving, supporting family and they know how to support my husband and I as a unit without condemning his actions.

'Jim has to go away and work and at least he's on TV so I know where he is!

'I’ve just got to have faith that he’s not going to screw up. But I know he’s not going to screw up. He really wants to make this work.'

3. G-Eazy is putting his support behind A$AP Rocky. The 30-year-old musician, who was also arrested in Sweden last year, spoke out on Twitter on Saturday.

'The difference between me and Rocky’s treatment in Sweden brings to mind two concepts that disgustingly go hand in hand: white privilege and systemic racism. Let’s call it what it is. He should not be behind bars right now. My heart goes out to @asvpxrocky,' he wrote.

G-Eazy was arrested in Stockholm in May of last year for punching a club security guard and snorting coke, according to TMZ.

The My, Myself & I hitmaker was arrested for assault, possession of drugs and use of narcotics but prosecutors let him to strike a deal less than two days later.

In exchange for pleading guilty to to violent resistance, a crime of violence against an official and illegal drug possession, he was sentenced to probation and had to pay a fine of $10,000.

He also had to pay the security guard he punched $900.

In comparison, a Stockholm court on Friday ordered that Rocky, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, should be kept in custody in Sweden for another week while an investigation is completed into an alleged assault during a street brawl.

Fans and fellow artists have launched a social media campaign for the 30-year-old artist to be freed since his arrest shortly after midnight on July 3 following the street fight on June 30.

Rocky was in Stockholm to perform in a concert.

The court then gave the prosecutor until July 19 to decide whether to press charges.

But the prosecutor requested the deadline be extended a week for more time - a request the court granted.

The rapper's lawyer, Slobodan Jovicic, called the court's decision disproportionate.

He said that it was unreasonable to assume Rocky was a 'flight risk' since not returning for a potential trial could mean that the rapper would never be able to visit Europe again out of a fear of being arrested.

4. “The Chi” star Sonja Sohn was arrested for cocaine possession in North Carolina.

Sohn, 55, who also starred in HBO’s “The Wire,” was arrested early Sunday in North Carolina for cocaine possession, possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, Page Six confirmed.

Sohn, who was previously married to Adam Plack, was reportedly arrested and brought into the station at 2 a.m. local time and posted $1,500 bail shortly after. She will be arraigned Tuesday.

The actress played Detective Shakima Greggs on all five seasons of “The Wire.” Sohn portrayed Laverne on “The Chi” — a show that’s been plagued with off-camera drama. Sohn’s co-star Jason Mitchell, who played her son on the show, was fired following misconduct allegations.

5.

“The Hills” star Audrina Patridge has accused ex-husband Corey Bohan of domestic violence again.

Bohan, 37, has been ordered to stay away from their daughter, Kirra Bohan, and Patridge after an emergency hearing was launched, according to The Blast, citing court documents.

An emergency motion was filed by Patridge, 34, earlier this week seeking a temporary restraining order against Bohan.

The petition is listed as being filed on behalf of Patridge and Kirra, which listed the most recent alleged abuse as “May 2019, continuing to present.”

Bohan reportedly responded to the petition in court and a hearing was held. The judge granted a temporary restraining order until another hearing takes place later this month.

Bohan must stay 100 yards from Patridge and Kirra, including avoiding coming near their home, Kirra’s school, and other locations. He has also been denied visitation until the investigation is complete.

Patridge filed for divorce from Bohan in September 2017 after 10 months of marriage because he allegedly became menacing and emotionally abusive. They settled their divorce in November 2018.

[heartbreakweathervinyl]

Way To Recovery - Chapter 6

Summary: It’s another show for One Direction in just another town but this show will take a turn to the worst. Nobody sees the man with the gun before it’s to late and Niall has to fight for his life.

Read on Wattpad

previous chapter

It took hours for Naill to come back. Everyone knew that and because their stomachs were rumbling, they decided to go to the cafeteria and buy something to eat.

Not everyone wanted to leave the room but Niall's parents promised to tell a nurse about their whereabouts. Then, if something should happen, the hospital staff knew where Niall's family and friends were. It was a comvincing point and that's how they found themselves outside of Niall's room with a nurse, who so happened to walk by. Apparently, there was a little luck left in their lives.

"Of course. Someone will come get you if something happens. Don't worry", the nurse, a still very young woman, promised, which was a definite relief. Exactly what they wanted to hear.

"Thank you", Maura said and the six of them began walking towards the elevators. Maura walked next to Bobby, who had an arm slung around her shoulders (probably to keep her upright), Greg was walkink next to Louis and Liam was walking next to Harry. The last pair took smaller steps and Liam brought some space between them and the other four. Harry was worrying him.

"He's going to be alright, Harry. You know him." Their shoulders and arms were touching each other occasinally. "Nothing can bring him down like that."

"But it did, Liam", Harry whispered and Liam could see the tears shimmering in the green eyes. "He almost died and there is still the chance that he might. You've heard the doctor as well as I did."

Liam stopped them and went infront of the younger boy. He brought his arms up and laid them on Harry's shoulders. Thanks to the touch, he was able to feel the boy shaking and brought him into a tight embrace instead. The others noticed the absence of the other boys and stopped as well. Looking behind them, they saw the two hugging boys and understood that they needed some time alone. That's why they continued walking and thought about buying them something to eat.

"I know, Harry. I know that Niall might die but he's a transplant. You know what that means. There is a very high chance that he will survive and I, Liam Payne, am absolutely sure that we will see him again while he's dancing and singing and just like he was before all this sh*t happened. Do you understand me, Harry? I. Am. Sure!" Liam didn't say much but the words he said were the most honest things he has ever said. He was doubting it just a few hours ago, when Niall's heart stopped but the fact that there was a transplant and Niall was in the operation centre right now did nothing but wash away his worries.

He was saying the trutgh. He really did believe that Niall would survive this.

Harry was now full on crying. Big tears were rolling down his pink cheeks and his nose was running like crazy. If it wasn't Harry, Liam would probably think that it was gross but it was Harry and they knew each other so well by now, they were living with each other, they literally shared their lives, and he would never think that anything that Harry did was gross. He didn't even care that Harry's tears and snot was all over his shirt. It was the last thing he cared about.

"Please tell me what you're thinking, Harry", Liam whispered. The silence was too long for his liking and Harry was definitely too sad. He had to do something but he also knew that the only thing that could make Harry happy again was Niall. Sadly, that was nothing that Liam could influence.

"I just want Nialler back", Harry sobbed and hid his face even more in Liam's chest. "Why did this happen to him, Liam? Why not somebody else? There were so many people in the stadium but this man chose our Nialler! That's just not fair! I hate this so much, Liam. I hate it." Harry's words got quieter with every sentence he said until he was only sobbing and whimpering.

It broke Liam's heart. The worst thing was that Liam was thinking the exact same thing. Well, he was actually wondering how the man with the gun was even able to get into the stadium. Why didn't the security guards see the weapon and why could nobody stop him from shooting Niall? It didn't make sense in his mind. This wasn't supposed to happen, especially not to Niall.

Liam really wanted to explain why it happened but there was no explanation and Liam was so angry! And sad. And conused. And... He was so much right now.So, instead of saying something, he just held Harry a bit tighter, rubbed his back and shushed him. Now and then a small "Everything will be alright" left his lips.

They stayed like that for a few minutes before Harry stopped sobbing and only a few tears fell down his cheeks. Harry wasn't better but for the moment he would be okay.

Liam managed a small smile. "Do you think we should go to the cafeteria and eat something with the others?"

Harry nodded slowly but when Liam wanted to go forwards, Harry grabbed the older's hand and didn't let go. Liam just kept on smiling and together they made their way to the cafeteria.

The other four people were already seated and ate the sandwiches they bought. Harry actually managed a small smile when he sat down and Louis hugged him from the side. It was his first smile since the shooting and it somehow told Liam that everything would, indeed, end well.

---

Thankfully, the nurse or somebody else didn't look for them, which told them that nothing bad happened and Niall was still being operated. No news is good news, Liam reminded everyone.

They were back in Niall's hospital room. Just sitting and waiting. It was all they could do really. Of course, there was a TV in the room but nobody felt like turning it on or listening to some crappy show or whatever. The silence helped them to think about the important things and if somebody wanted to talk, everybody listened gratefully.

Liam was sitting on the chair to the right of the window and looked down at his phone where he opened the Twitter App. He scrolled through his feed for a few minutes when he saw the hashtag #hopeforonedirection. He, of course, clicked on it and read a few tweets. What he saw almost made him cry. Their fans were asking how they were feeling, wishing them good luck with everything, hoping for Niall to be better soon and so much more.

A few of the tweets were...

@1D_forever: @onedirection I don't know what exactly happened but if I could, I would give everything I could to help Niall

@marrylarry: saw the video of @onedirection's show. Don't give up, your fans will stay behind you

There were also tweets written by people who were at the actual show and while Liam, Louis and Harry were glad for not seeing the exact moment when Niall got shot (except for this stupid interviewer who showed them the video), there sadly were a lot of fans who saw it and it broke Liam's heart. Their fans were so important for him.

@niallslover32: was at @onedirection's show and saw it happen with my own two eyes. It was awful but I saw how much the lads care for each other and am sure everything will turn out alright

@daddyliam: the show of @onedirection was supposed to be the best night of my life. I saw them perform and it was wonderful and I know I will have this memory forever. Don't know if that's good or not though...

The last one stuck Liam in the heart. This was not how their fans should remember their shows. They always tried to leave the stage with a smile and to give the fans the best time of their life. Usually, it was exactly like that but this one show changed everything. Who knows if it will ever be like it was?

Liam decided to tweet something. The fans deserved to know what was happening.

@LiamPayne: waiting for Ni's operation to be over. Everything seems to be fine. Don't worry too much. Will keep you updated.

That had to be enough for now. Plus, Liam didn't know how much he was allowed to say and a phone call from management was nothing that he wanted to handle right now. Management got updates from Paul, who called the hospital every few hours since he's left the band and Niall's family alone.

More relaxed, Liam put his phone back into his pocket and turned around. He was now facing the window. The view was really pretty. There was a park and a playground just across the street and Liam could see little children playing there, even though they were in the sixth floor of this big building.

He sighed and leant his head against the window sill.

---

Two hours later, the door opened and two nurses rolled a bed into the room and on the bed, unsurprisingly and yet very surprisingly, lay Niall.

Every peron in the room jumped off of their chairs and a few excited 'Niall!'s could be heard. Maura and Harry actually started crying and right after the nurses placed the bed where it was supposed to be, Niall's friends and family stood around him.

The blonde boy was still unconscious but the breathing tube wasn't down his throat anymore. Instead he just had a cannula in his nose. The heart monitor had to be attached to him again though but nobody cared, they were just happy that Niall was here and it seemed that he was okay.

Thankfully, doctor Cameron came into the room and smiled while looking at everybody's happy faces. This was why he was a doctor. There were of course sad things happening but a lot of times, something great, almost like a miracle happened and that was what it was worth figthing for. Happy families, happy friends, happy...

Doctor Cameron coughed to get everybody's attention and they turned around.

Harry came up to the doctor and actually hugged him which surprised the doctor and Niall's family but not Louis and Liam. Harry was that kind of person who showed his mercy in the form of hugs and tears. Well, they were all crying right now.

"Thank you so much, doctor Cameron. Thank you for helping Nialler", Harry sobbed like there was no tomorrow and the doctor didn't really know what to do. The spluttered but thought it was very nice to see how much of an impact he had on these lives.

"Well, it's my job, I guess", he laughed and patted Harry's back, who then took a step back and smiled at the doctor.

Liam couldn't take his eyes off of Niall. The heart monitor showed a now steady rhythm, which did relieve him but other than that, Niall still lookd very ill. His skin was still as deathly pale as it was before the operation, there were still dark shadows underneath his eyes and he was still just skin and bones really. It was awful.

Doctor Cameron coughed again. He got over to Niall's bed and laid his hand down on Niall's shoulder. "I know you probably want to know what's going on and how things will go on but I'd say we wait until little Naill over here wakes up and can listen to me rambling. All you have to know from here is that the operation went very well and Niall's body accepted the lung. He's out of danger right now but we will keep an eye on him if something suddenly goes wrong. Everything else later. I hope that's okay."

Bobby nodded. "Thank you, doctor. It means so much and as long as he's okay, we can wait a bit longer. When will he wake up?"

Doctor Cameron thought about it for a few seconds, then answered Bobby and everything else in the room. "It may take some time but I'd say an hour. Maybe even less. Depends on how long it takes his body do fight off the medication. We will come back in an hour and see", he promised and then turned around and left, just like the other time but the situation was very different right now.

The remaining people in the room sat down again but this time near the bed, where their Nialler lay still unconscious. They were just so happy to have him back and maybe it will all be better now? They could only hope.

But right now, they had to wait for Niall to wake up. Hopefully, it wouldn't take him too long. They really wanted him back.

Next chapter

#one direction #fanfiction #one direction fanfiction #way to recovery #niall centric #niall-centric #niall horan #liam payne #louis tomlinson #harry styles

[junker-town]

Georgia’s building a recruiting Death Star, and 12 other interesting things from the Early Signing Period’s Day 1

Red beans and rice, ambidextrous kickers, and some bully Bulldogs on the recruiting trail.

Imagine flexing this hard on an entire sport.

#RareBreed18 http://pic.twitter.com/WUSpkYaE3v

— Coach Kirby Smart (@KirbySmartUGA) December 21, 2017

That’s what Kirby Smart did when he tweeted a GIF of himself eating popcorn with a surprised look on his face at a high school football game. He tweeted it right after securing the commitment of linebacker Channing Tindall. Tindall’s pledge got Georgia the top-ranked signing class of 2018, moving past Ohio State on Wednesday evening. This is the best class in school history, slightly better than Smart’s No. 3 overall 2017 class, the previous holder of that distinction.

The Dawgs are already the best team in the SEC East by a clear margin, and they were already the most talented. Now they’re solidifying the latter in a big way. The Dawgs are loaded, and last year was no fluke on the recruiting trail.

Clemson signed most of the the top-10 players that Georgia didn’t

The Dawgs inked three top-10 players in the 247Sports Composite, but Clemson did one better, signing four. The Tigers only signed 14 players in last year’s class. They’ve already signed 15 this year, and at virtually the same average star ranking as last season (a stellar 92.8). The Tigers have room to add to the class, and it’s a group that includes two of the nation’s three best players already.

We got a negative recruiting storyline

A tried and true recruiting tradition: one fan base getting in a huff because an opponent said something less than positive about a recruiting rival. That’s what happened here, when a recruit said this about Dabo Swinney’s recruiting tactics.

Dabo Swinney told Jackson Carman during his recruitment that Urban Meyer is on the back end of his career in terms of years left. “It wasn’t a major factor, but it was an underlying one,” Carman said.

— Ari Wasserman (@AriWasserman) December 20, 2017

Personally, I have absolutely no issue with what Swinney supposedly said. Carman is the best tackle commitment in Ohio and signed with the Tigers instead of the Buckeyes. People will cry foul, but Swinney’s playing up his school’s strengths by poking holes in an opponent. That’s the game. And it’s one Meyer’s been accused of playing in the past.

When you’re from Florida and try to commit to South Carolina

When the cameras are on and the emotions get going, slips of the tongue happen. Linebacker Rosendo Lewis said he’d sign to South Florida. The only problem was that he’s going to South Carolina instead.

VIDEO: Rosendo Louis makes his announcement for *South Carolina*. He botched it at first saying “South Florida” in a pretty comical moment at the ceremony. Did #USF get an unexpected LOI from an All-American LB?@RJ_DREAMCHASER @DB_BucksFB http://pic.twitter.com/QTPgADw99M

— David Furones (@DavidFurones_) December 20, 2017

He caught the flub pretty much right as the words were coming out of his mouth. It’s a funny memory he’ll have around his signing, and hopefully he’ll have a successful career at South Florida Carolina.

Florida got a quarterback??

A massive flip for the Gators came by way of Ohio State pledge Emory Jones signing with Dan Mullen’s Florida almost out of nowhere.

Jones had been an Ohio State commit for many months, but had also been looking around for almost as long. Jones spent much of the fall flirting with the idea of flipping to Alabama, leading to the Buckeyes offering then-Kentucky commit Jarren Williams in November and taking the commitment of Texas quarterback Matthew Baldwin earlier this month.

Transitional recruiting classes are rarely elite, but Florida’s No. 14 class is pretty good. With Jones as a crown jewel, Gators fans should be happy.

Kirk Herbstreit was somehow involved in multiple weird signing stories

The Buckeyes had to stop recruiting five-star DE Micah Parsons because he happened to take a photo with Herbstreit in Columbus, and the ABC/ESPN commentator got into a Twitter fight a few months back with Carman, the top Ohio prospect who left the state. Recruiting is strange.

Washington’s recruiting class is the best in recent school history

The Huskies inked an 11th-ranked recruiting class, including elite WR Marquis Spiker.

By the reckoning of 247 Sports, Spiker ranks as the 12th-best player to sign with the Huskies in the modern recruiting era, trailing only Budda Baker among Washington recruits during the Chris Petersen era. Spiker chose the Huskies over offers from USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington State, among others.

Watch out for Washington moving forward. We know what Petersen can do with decent talent. As this recruiting class feeds into the roster, it’ll be fun to see what Petersen can do with top-level talent.

Also landing the best class in school history: P.J. Fleck’s Minnesota.

K.J. Henry had the day’s best commitment announcement

The five-star DE literally handed the mic to Patrick Murphy, a beloved assistant coach.

Texas is well on its way back to claiming DBU

Earl Thomas, Aaron Ross, Michael Huff — to name a few — made Texas the reigning DBU a decade ago, when the program was last a title contender. But the Longhorns are making a play for that mantle again with a stellar array of DB signings.

Each of the six top-25 DBs already signed to the Longhorns is an in-state prospect. They come from all around the state: two in Houston and three in smaller towns around Central, Southeastern, and Northeastern Texas.

Only two teams (2010 Florida, 2002 Oklahoma) since 2002 have signed 5 of the country's top 25 DBs in one class. Texas has 5 committed in 2018 with a serious chance for 6. It would be arguably the greatest DB class ever signed.

— Ryan Bridges (@RyanBridgesCFB) December 16, 2017

This comes a year after Texas didn’t sign a single top-10 player in the state of Texas. Tom Herman’s transitional class wasn’t great, but it’s ok because this one is.

Did tweeting at recruits actually work, for a change?

One of the country’s top DBs happened to get a late FSU offer right after he responded to this tweet ...

in Garnett & Gold!

— FSU (@SeminoleLifer) December 12, 2017

... with this:

No because @FSUFootball was dumb enough to never offer me ‍♂️ https://t.co/Gqhx3DuJze

— ⚡️THOR ⚡️ (@JaidenWoodbey) December 12, 2017

He then signed with the Noles shortly after.

Please don’t tweet at recruits, though.

Maryland signed an ambidextrous kicker

Maryland signed an ambidextrous kicker.

60 yard field goal right foot✅ 50 yard field goal left foot✅ @BleacherReport @RecruitGeorgia http://pic.twitter.com/1l3nP7Vg3I

— Joseph Petrino (@joseph_petrino) September 5, 2017

The mother of all Ed Orgeron recruiting anecdotes

During a live show on Day 1, we got a lovely Ed Orgeron story. While he was at USC, the Cajun never really left him. Former Trojans player Marlon Favorite said Coach O walked up in his house and immediately helped himself to some red beans and rice.

“He comes over to the house, man, and Julie, he makes himself at home,” Favorite told Julie Brinks-Stewart. “He walks in, ‘hey, how y’all doing today?’ went straight to the kitchen. ‘Oh, it smell pretty good in here, man!’ my mom was like ‘well, I cooked some red beans!’ so then, ‘oh, for real?’ So he goes into the refrigerator, pulls out a pot of red beans ‘hey, y’all got some rice?’ my mom comes with a pot of rice, he scoops the rice, puts the red beans and rice together. ‘Hey, so y’all have like a cover? I’ll use a napkin.’ He takes the napkin, put it over there, put the food in the microwave, and then he started talking football. That’s making yourself at home. It really was a big, big recruiting tool that worked like a charm because I was this close to saying ‘hey, should I go to USC?’”

Whatever it takes to get the commitment, man.

And then Wednesday night’s game was weird!

Having bowls and a Signing Period at the same time was always going to be bizarre, but the first game to coincide with the period was as odd as it gets. Louisiana Tech destroyed SMU, thanks almost entirely to turnovers, all with new SMU head coach Sonny Dykes actually coaching the game, for some reason.