Wattpad Baffles Users with Series of Cryptic Posts About Harry Styles Fanfic

Here's why the whole Wattpad world is suddenly talking about Duplicity. (And what we think is really going on.)

Over the past couple of days, Wattpad users have been seeing unusual posts that link to a new story titled with just a question mark. They started with a strange Wattpad notification that said "Consider this your first clue... We'll let you connect the dots from here."

When clicked, users were directed to "?" by happydays1d. The author, happydays1d, is better known to the Harry Styles fanfiction community as Julez, the writer of the viral hit series Duplicity.

Duplicity is an alternate universe fic that started in 2018 and was completed in 2022. It follows an original character, photographer Aven Brooks, as she joins Harry's punk band, Duplicity, on tour. This dark romance with criminal elements became a smash hit—the titular book amassing 118.5 million reads as of today. It's arguably the most popular Harry Styles fanfiction behind Anna Todd's international hit series After. Duplicity is a finished book, and writer has

Wattpad followed this announcement with another teaser pop-up. This one featured a punk-inspired graphic with the words "LOOK CLOSER. Go ahead. Start the rumors." It also had an open mouth with a red lollipop (or "sucker"), a very important symbol of the Duplicity fandom.

It seems like Wattpad is not-so-subtly acknowledging that these posts are intended to stir up discussion among the community. They want users to be talking about Wattpad and talking about Duplicity. It's safe to assume that Wattpad and Julez have some news in the works, but they're being intentionally tight-lipped on what it is. Instead, they seem to be dropping Taylor-Swift-like easter eggs intended to encourage theorizing.

Okay, So What Are the Clues?

CLUE # 1: The "Look Closer" Image

It says to "look closer", so we took that literally. But investigating this image didn't lead to much. The text in the newspaper clipping at the bottom is just Lorem Ipsum (in other words, it's fake words with no meaning).

But in the bottom just beneath the white star, there is a black letter S. But when we inspected it more, we saw an N to the left of the lollipop stick. We're skeptical here, because that could just spell "NEWS", which is just a generic newspaper graphic headline that we also see in the other graphics more clearly.

CLUE # 2: The ? Cover

The cover of the question mark titled book has the same black-and-white, punk-style graphics with pops of color. What's notable here is that you can see the letters E, N, and H scattered through the image.

E, N, H

Could it be a word?

HEN?

Could it be a straightforward letter-number cipher?

E=5 , N=14 , H=8

5, 14, 8?

Oh, and that fire burning a hole in the middle of the cover? It's getting bigger every time a chapter posts. (When it burns all the way, will there be a cover reveal underneath?)

CLUE # 3: Julez's Profile Banner

The author updated her current profile banner to a very similar graphic, but this one had numbers on it.

2, 9, 3, 4.

The 2 and the 9 are close together, so it could be read as 29, 3, 4 instead, but in the Wattpad homepage graphic, the numbers are more clearly spaced apart. (We'll get back to what that number means in a moment.)

CLUE # 4: The Homepage Graphic

On the homepage, the promo graphic says "YOU REMEMBER THIS, RIGHT? If you know, you know. If you don't, you will." To us, that seems more like marketing text trying to encourage nostalgic Wattpad vibes, rather than an actual clue.

The graphic itself slightly different, but there are some key details. The numbers 2, 9, 3, 4 appear again, this time horizontally, though noticeably in the same order. However, the 2 and 4 are at either end while the 9 and 3 are close together. To us, that implies that they are intended as four distinct numbers.

So what does 2934 mean? Well, we were able to track down a reference to "2934"being Harry's hotel room number in Duplicity. Aven enters the hotel room in Chapter 9, takes a lollipop from Harry's stash, and then realizes she’s in the wrong room. It is seen to many as a turning point in the story.

That doesn't tell us anything about what the announcement might be, other than it likely has something to do with Duplicity (which has been our assumption all along.

CLUE # 5: Julez's Instagram Posts

Aside from the in-app clues, there have also been a couple on the author's social media. On September 13th, Jules returned to Instagram after nearly a year's hiatus announcing a 5-chapter update of Complicity, the most recent book in the series. Then yesterday, she posted a strange garbled video.

What's most telling about this post to us is actually that it was liked by Wattpad Books (Wattpad's physical publishing division). This makes us think the announcement has a solid chance of being a physical publishing announcement in partnership with W by Wattpad Books (their brand for adult titles).

The video itself is 11 seconds of random colored pixels moving in an unpredictable pattern, like a video that has been severely corrupted. We're not video experts, so there is quite likely more to glean from it, but we did notice that the pixels stop moving for about 1 second between 0:03 and 0:04.

The number 3 could have many meanings.

Our best guess is that maybe 3 and 11 make up a date for possible release of the physical book. Either March 11th or November 3rd.

Another possibility would be the time of the announcement - possibly the 3rd at 11am or the 11th at 3pm? Or even 3:11 or 11:03? (But time zones are tricky, so we suspect it's not that.)

CLUE # 6: The ? Story Itself

The "?" story currently has four chapters (as of October 2nd). They're all revisits of Duplicity chapters, but with some very key details missing. Specifically, all the lines with names have been omitted. Fans of After will remember that the fanfic-to-published-book transition requires that any characters named after real people must be renamed. (For After, Harry became Hardin, Zayn became Zed, etc.) It's probably the best evidence yet that they're teasing a physical publishing deal.

It's also possible that there's an easter egg hidden in the specific scenes that were chosen. Each chapter of "?" featured a scene from a different chapter of Duplicity.

Chapter 1: From Duplicity chapter 2

Chapter 2: From Duplicity chapter 8

Chapter 3: From Duplicity chapter 9

Chapter 4: From Duplicity chapter 11

2, 8, 9, 11

As of now, those numbers don't mean anything to us. But maybe the meaning will become clear as more chapters are dropped.

What It All Means (Probably)

Based on what we've seen so far, we think this is all leading up to an announcement that Wattpad will be publishing Duplicity as a physical book series. Much like they did with After, they'll likely be changing the names and details to avoid any ethical concerns or legal liability. The timing of it all is a little harder to pin down, and we're sure we've missed clues. We also suspect more clues are coming, so stay tuned!

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Did you notice something we missed? Have you figured out another clue? Tell us the comments!