If you’re a Halsey fan, yesterday was far from the first time you’ve heard reference to Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, The Kingdom, or HFK. She’s been teasing this since before Badlands, and most notably ended her sold out Madison Square Garden show with “you can find me in the kingdom”.
Last night, Halsey officially announced that Hopeless Fountain Kingdom would be the name of her sophomore album, expected for release in June 2017. However, there’s a lot more that she didn’t say. A lot that we know because we love Halsey to death and track her mysterious actions with the skill of a private investigator (or anyone who’s accidentally found themselves 40 weeks deep in the Instagram account of their boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend’s sister).
We’re going to try and make as much sense of this as we can, but there’s… well, there’s a lot here. And she’s explained approximately none of it, so we’ve had to connect the dots Charlie Kelly style.
Let’s do this. Welcome to the Kingdom.
So first off, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom is a real place.
We’re starting somewhere simple because it’s going to get complicated really quickly. HFK refers to a fountain by the same name, which resides just off the Halsey Street L train stop in Brooklyn, NY.
But where is HFK in the Halsey universe?
Halsey has previously stated that Room 93 was in the Badlands. Could HFK be in the Badlands too? Or could the Badlands be in HFK?
And how exactly do the albums tie into each other?
Alright. So. Halsey talked about how there was one song on the album where she escaped the Badlands. That was Young God. She talks about the light at the end being the sun in your eyes. She’s been posting an excess of yellow and bees (but more on those in a minute) so…yellow = sunlight = Kingdom? She’s also mentioned that this album started off feeling silver but has now transitioned to gold. Related?
There’s been a lot of Twitter debate around if HFK happened before or after Badlands (if you look at it like a timeline). Is the Kingdom where she escapes to? Or is the Kingdom what Badlands was like before everything turned all post-apocalyptic?
ALSO, side note: if you’ve been here a minute, you know that Halsey wrote Room 93 about Zach. Zach Merritt was her boyfriend when she was 17. He was 24, he lived in Brooklyn on Halsey Street, he was the boy who lived behind bricks. Oh, and he owns HopelessFountainKingdom.com. This was on his Tumblr and it seems to tie in to a LOT of things: hurricane, lilac (sky), Rose (from new HFK things), young god, her Serendipity tattoo. All of this, plus his references to his heroin binge going too far, seem to tie together with the song “Young God”. You can see (if you’re trying to connect the dots and get too emotionally invested like me) how in the song, he thinks he’s potentially going to die and she keeps reminding him that he’s “human tonight” and that the light at the end of the tunnel that he’s seeing is just the sun. Or the kingdom?
But my main point is that he’s HFK. Check the Badlands thank yous.
(This thread on Twitter provides a lot more information on Zach and how he ties in to HFK if you’re interested. I’m not going to put the info here because this person clearly worked hard to share this and I’m not gonna paraphrase and steal their thunder. But it’s eye opening.)
Then there are the bees…
We’d love to make an obligatory Arrested Development joke, but there’s no time for fun and games here. This is serious business. Halsey has tweeted about bees, changed her Tumblr layout to include bees, send out mail with a bee wax seal, she’s gone full bee. How that will tie in to the new era is still uncertain but… bees you guys. Save the bees.
And just to make everything more mysterious, the Twitter accounts.
A bunch of Twitter accounts popped up. Like a literal BUNCH. There are accounts for two fictional people (Luna and White Nite) and two fictional houses (House of Aureum and House of Angelus).
Let’s start with the information that pertains to all four accounts. They had photos up from Halsey’s HFK photoshoot before her announcement last night, so we know it’s legitimate. Also, one of the accounts was used to invite fans to her London listening party.
It looks like we’ve got a Romeo And Juliet situation unfolding here. Oh hey, wait, did I mention that a bunch of fans have been receiving handwritten R+J quotes from Halsey in the mail? That might… y’know, be relevant.
So back to the info. Luna is a member of the House of Aureum. White Nite is part of the House of Angelus. Luna and White Nite follow each other on Twitter, plus their respective houses. The Houses only follow the person in their house. This seems to reflect the R+J dynamic where the two were in love despite their families being sworn enemies. The fact that the houses don’t follow each other suggests they’re not close. What does it MEAN, HALSEY WE WANT ANSWERS.
The account for Luna has one tweet so far, and it’s a quote from a poem Halsey posted on Tumblr many years ago. The quote ends on Tumblr with “hands so bloody, tastes like honey” which is aNOTHER REFERENCE TO BEES. Luna’s house tweeted to stop sending letters (message from White Nite: @ me next time) with this photo. BEES.
The location on each of the accounts is set to “anorev”, which is Verona backwards. Like where R+J was set. Except it’s backwards. So is that saying it’s like R+J but…backwards? Upside down? Halsey has also been quoted saying “art is not what I create, I create chaos” so perhaps this is a world of chaos? Am I trying to tie more things into this than can possibly relate back to HFK? I HONESTLY DO NOT KNOW.
And how long has Halsey been teasing us with this info?
YEARS. LITERALLY YEARS. If the bees are supposed to just be an HFK thing, then that’s been going on since at least 2014. She’s been posting “HFK” since at least the Badlands thank yous, and has been talking about the Kingdom since before the album was even released. She changed her Twitter icon a while back to one where you could see a tattoo on her butt that said “hopeless”, and she just sold a very limited necklace on her store with the same word. There was a napkin that said “Fountain Drive” in the Colors video. I can no longer look at a single thing she says/does without wondering what it means. Did she sneeze? Is the next album gonna be about the common cold? I DON’T KNOWWWWW.
So here is my theory:
Halsey (Luna) dated Zach (White Nite). She wrote Room 93 about a specific part of their love spent in hotel rooms. She wrote Badlands about the darker parts of their relationship, the parts she wanted to escape and be free from. The mind space she did not want to be in. Hopeless Fountain Kingdom is about the good parts. The parts that made them work, the poetic romance and the wild adventures. It’s about the kingdom she found within their relationship, where she lived with him and not for him. It felt like a story of forbidden love or a love where “these violent delights have violent ends”. Let’s not forget her R+J tattoo. Maybe this violent love had a violent end, and maybe that’s Badlands. Or maybe that’s to come in HFK. Maybe she ends up wanting to leave the Kingdom too. And maybe the kingdom was a beehive. Only time will tell. Until then, I’m gonna turn on notifications for Halsey’s accounts so I can continue my obsessive theorizing.
