directioner, reformed

On fandom, adolescence, and the transformative power of fan fiction.

I remember the first time I came across One Direction. I was sitting in the kitchen of my childhood home, scrolling through Tumblr on the shared family computer. My hands, sticky with unexplained residue, indiscriminately re-blogged photos of wannabe hipsters with exaggerated side parts and colorful ice cream cones. An over-edited, sun-bleached gif from “What Makes You Beautiful” appeared, with an unfounded amount of re-blogs and comments underneath it; the five boys walking across a beach, smiling and dramatically gesturing to the camera. I was immediately taken with the group, be it for their pouffy, keenly 2010s hairstyles, their too-tight pants, or out of the general intrigue a boyband carries. It was like a dormant neurotransmitter labeled “boyband” was suddenly switched on — I was transfixed. Giddy with excitement, I dedicated the rest of my day to finding out as much as possible about them.

This was before One Direction really took off in the US, as they were just coming off their third-place win on The X Factor UK and slowly amassing fans worldwide. The deeper I dove into their lives, carefully documented home-video style on YouTube, the more captivated I became. Even today, when I see an old photo or video of One Direction, I’m struck with an overflow of emotions that immediately takes me back to the hours upon hours spent with them online. They were such a defining moment in my life as a middle schooler, and parts of me feel like I’ve grown up with them. My close friends know that even now, seeing a video of present-day Harry Styles moves me, and images of him juxtaposed with his One Direction days nearly guarantee hysterics. As one of my very first para-social relationships, seeing how his career has blossomed leaves me simultaneously in awe of his success and saddened by our mutual loss of innocence.

Not long after my initial discovery of One Direction, they rose to fame in the US. As my Tumblr dashboard bloated with content of them, I made another life-changing discovery: WattPad. I was vaguely familiar with Tumblr fandom jargon like “ship” and “OTP (one true pairing),” but had never ventured to reading fan fiction myself, mainly out of disinterest for the subjects. I had mutuals who waxed poetic about Sherlock and Supernatural, but I could never get into either show. However, when I saw that there was fan fiction being written about this up-and-coming band, I was enthralled, and eagerly clicked on the first link with the names “Harry Styles” and “Louis Tomlinson” in the title. Ravenously, I read and re-read as many stories as I could find about the two boys, enthralled not just with vulgar fantasies presented, but with explicit, queer content I had never encountered before.

As naive as it sounds, before then I hadn’t considered that boys could like other boys, and by extension, that girls could like other girls. Conceptually, I knew that gay people existed — I’d watched Ellen with my mom — but I wasn’t used to seeing the specifics of queer sexuality laid out for me in all its glory. This revelation was arguably more exciting than my initial glimpse of the band itself. It opened up a whole new world of possibilities to me that I didn’t know existed; namely, that I wasn’t limited to compulsory crushes on boys.

As I consumed this fan fiction, I found myself most delighted by the notion of two boys together. These stories were considerably superior the litany of straight romances I had encountered thus far in my life. However, it was difficult for me to articulate what it was about these fan fictions that excited me so much. It certainly wasn’t the quality of the writing, nor the romance genre itself. Was it because it featured not one, but two boys I fancied? Was it the naughty, forbidden quality of the content I consumed? Was it because I didn’t particularly know why it was so taboo in the first place? While intrigued, I was also deeply confused by this newfound literature and the feelings it stirred inside of me.

If I thought about it for more than a moment, I realized that the female equivalent of these fictions I held so dear were also gay stories. As a seemingly natural escalation from this fan fiction, I began to explore the world of lesbian erotica as well, using my Kindle to rent cheap, only-available-online, romance e-books. I was struck by the very real possibility of two girls dating each other, and felt I finally understood what it was about the fan fiction that had captivated me so much. However, these tales always came with a considerable amount of homophobia against the main characters, a confirmation that while captivating, what these stories portrayed was taboo, dirty, and improper. Because of this stigma, prevalent in both men-loving-men (MLM) and women-loving-women (WLW) fictions, I came to the natural conclusion that I was bisexual. I was confident that I liked women, but since that alone wasn’t admissible, and I did enjoy the MLM stories, too, I came to a compromise. It would take me nearly a decade to realize that a love for women and a general feeling of ambivalence towards men does not a bisexual make.

After this illuminating self-discovery, I assumed that people around me would intuitively know this newfound information about myself, as they were able to accurately surmise the heterosexual preferences of my peers. The concept of “coming out” was foreign to me, and frankly, I didn’t understand why it was necessary. When none of my friends picked up on this imperceptible shift in my psyche, I realized I had to be more forthcoming about it. It was only then, when I shared my secret with a friend, and she told another friend, that I realized my folly. No matter how acceptable and seemingly prevalent it is online, in reality, it’s unwelcome.

After this unfortunate incident, I pledged to only express my desires in the comfort of my home, primarily through extensive research on blogs and forums of similarly affected youth. I found solace in steamy fan fictions and blisteringly sincere ask-me-anythings, undoubtedly written by other young people yearning for some kind of representation. As One Direction continued their rise to fame, I found that my affection for the band was much more widely accepted than my sexuality. I plunged headfirst into the kind of earnest, all-encompassing fandom that is unique to the adolescent girl. My room was plastered in photos of the boys, and I was even gifted a life-size cardboard cutout of Niall for my birthday. While on the outside, it seemed a perfectly reasonable (if a bit excessive) interest for a young girl, internally I knew it held a much greater significance.

Unable to find the kind of positive queer representation I so desperately craved in contemporary books, movies, and TV shows, I held tight to Tumblr blogs specializing in One Direction, especially those focused on the gay ships. As an adult, I can see how the obsession and speculation about very real people’s sexuality is extremely damaging, and lament that fans took it so far as to ruin the friendship between Harry and Louis. However, as a tween, this was all fantasy. My mind didn’t have the capabilities to consider real-world consequences outside of my selfish wants and pining for a queer romance of my own. While these feelings would’ve been much better suited for a fictional ship, I began using the love affairs in infamous “Larry Stylinson” fictions as surrogates for my own desires.

Presently, it is much easier to find healthy, unproblematic representation of lesbian relationships in movies, TV, and books. However, I find that gay culture as a whole is often saturated by the culture of gay men. I find it easy, then, to revert back to old habits and use gay men’s media as a proxy for my own cravings for widespread queer representation and romance. Overall, while cringe, problematic, and arguably age-inappropriate, I am grateful that I was able to find a safe (if somewhat strange and convoluted) way to explore my sexuality at a young age. At the same time, I am deeply envious of young queer girls today who can easily find media that displays gay love in a way they can more closely identify with. In an attempt to heal my inner child, specifically my inner tween, I’ve found myself seeking out these cheesy queer romances more often, frequently overcome with emotion at how easy they make love seem.