1d bigbang

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Challenge
Name: One Direction Big Bang
Date(s): 2012 - 2018
Moderator(s): el_em_en_oh_pee, eachtoeach, ?
Founder: el_em_en_oh_pee, eachtoeach
Type: Big Bang
Fandom: One Direction
Associated Community: 1d_bigbang at Livejournal
1dbigbang at Tumblr
URL: Round One on AO3
Round Two on AO3
Round Three on AO3
Round Four on AO3
Round Five on AO3
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The One Direction Big Bang is an annual Big Bang challenge. It allows "mixers, vidders, and any other kind of traditional art medium (drawing, painting, manips, you name it!)" to pair with each writer.[1] The fics are allowed to be multifandom, any pairing, and any rating, as long as at least one member of One Direction is featured. You could also sign up to be a cheerleader, a beta, or a britpicker.

The challenge ran successfully for 5 years before dying mid-round 6. It was superseded by a larrie-friendly big bang: New One Direction Big Bang.

A Note on Names

At least three challenges in the 1D fandom were called simply One Direction Big Bang. This challenge was run from the 1d_bigbang LiveJournal community, so the Fanlore page name reflects this. An earlier, smaller big bang was run from the community 1directionbang in the first half of 2012. A third big bang was started in 2017; the AO3 collection is titled "New One Direction Big Bang", but the tumblr account is called "One Direction Big Bang".

Challenge History

Originally the challenge was organized on LiveJournal. Its LJ community, 1d_bigbang, was created on 12 September 2012, and the mods posted the rules and author signups soon after. Fans commented to sign up as authors; the first author signup post had 119 comments.[2]

As of January 2022, the community has 286 posts; 4,702 comments; and 473 members.[3] The most recent post was a mod post for round 5.

AO3 collections were also created for the challenge, but not every fic was posted there. As of 2022, 310 works (of which 290 are visible, were the others added to hidden collections?) are in the collection for all years. Overall the most popular ships were Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson (139), Liam Payne/Louis Tomlinson (46), Zayn Malik/Liam Payne (44), Niall Horan/Zayn Malik (33), and Niall Horan/Harry Styles (29).[4]

  • Round One: The minimum word count for this round was 15,000. There were over 100 sign-ups for Round One, and 30 stories were scheduled to be posted between February–March 2013[5] (only 27 entries are visible on LiveJournal as of 2022, but it's possible at least one of the other three could have been deleted at some point). 15 out of 27 stories listed Harry/Louis as a major or minor pairing, with all other pairings falling far behind. Six stories included a threesome, and two included a foursome. 22 included multiple pairings.[6]
  • Round Two: The second round nearly doubled its participants (the author signup post had 224 comments[7]), with 61 stories scheduled to be posted between January–March 2014.[8] As of 2022 56 fic/art entries are visible on LiveJournal, plus one orphan art entry: 23 include Harry/Louis as a pairing, 28 include multiple ships, 4 include threesomes, 3 are OT5, and 1 is gen.[9] At the time of the second round the mods created a tumblr for the challenge, but required everyone who participated to have a LiveJournal account.[10] The challenge post was put on tumblr on August 14, 2013.
  • On June 26, 2014, the tumblr account posted a survey for feedback on Rounds One and Two and what they could improve on for the next round.
  • Round Three: The announcement for the start of this fest was posted on August 20, 2014 on tumblr and livejournal.[11][12] An LJ account was still required at this time. Round Three raised the minimum word count to 20,000 words. Still, participation went up; the author signup post had 293 comments,[13] 84 fics were listed on the LiveJournal posting schedule for February–April 2015,[14] and 63 entries are visible on LiveJournal as of 2022. In the middle of round 3 posting, Zayn Malik left the band, and the mods allowed authors and artists to change their posting date or even to refrain from posting entirely.[15] It is unclear if the discrepancy between the schedule and the number of completed entries posted is due to fics being deleted or withheld in response to Zayn's departure. Harry/Louis continued to be the most popular pairing, though Zayn/Liam and Louis/Liam had a respectable showing. Of the 62 works posted in the AO3 collection, Harry/Louis was tagged in 28, Zayn/Liam was tagged in 15, Liam/Louis was tagged in 12, Niall/Harry was tagged in 10, and Niall/Zayn was tagged in 7. 10 stories contained a threesome or moresome, 4 of which featured OT5.[16]
  • Round Four: The announcement was posted August 13, 2015 on livejournal and tumblr.[17][18] The author signup post had 597 comments,[19] 108 fics were on the schedule to be posted between February–April 2016,[20] and as of 2022 74 entries are visible on LJ and 88 are in the AO3 collection. Harry/Louis was the most popular pairing by more than double the next most popular ship (Liam/Louis). In the AO3 collection the top five ships were Harry/Louis (41), Liam/Louis (18), Zayn/Liam (11), Liam/Harry (8), and Niall/Harry (8). 4 stories included a threesome, but there were no OT5s or OT4s.[21] The changing popularity of several of the ships may be due in part to Zayn's departure and the band's breakup.
  • Round Five: The announcement for round five was posted on livejournal and tumblr on October 18, 2016,[22][23] but the mods decided to stop using livejournal. The minimum word count requirement was raised to 25,000. 62 fics were scheduled to be posted April - June 2017,[24] and as of 2022 57 are available in the AO3 collection. 61% are Larry. The top four ships in the collection were Harry/Louis (35), Niall/Zayn (7), Zayn/Liam (6), and Liam/Harry (5). 5 included a threesome or moresome, 2 of which were OT5.[25]
  • Round Six: Signups for Round Six were advertised in late 2017 for posting in April 2018. A Twitter account was created: @1dbigbangmods. The last tumblr post about the challenge was a call for more artists on January 28, 2018.[26] No completed fic or art was officially posted.

During round six, two rival big bangs were created by different groups of fans dissatisfied with 1d_bigbang: New One Direction Big Bang, started by larries, and The 1D Collab, started by anti-larries. The presence of these alternatives may have contributed to the downfall of 1d_bigbang.

After round six fizzled out, some participants started asking on tumblr if anyone had heard from the mods, and the New One Direction Big Bang offered to let writers post their fic through their challenge instead.[27]

Prevalence of Larry

Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson has always been the most popular ship in 1D fandom, so it's not unexpected that half of the big bang stories for each round featured this pairing. However, the mods received several anonymous complaints about the prevalence of Larry fic in 2014-2015:

  • "is this a larry big bang?" - September 2014[28]
  • "80% of the fics seem to be that of Louis pair, and 80% of those seem to be Larry. Is there a reason for that? I'm wondering if other parts of the 1D fandom didn't participate for some reasons? Thank you." - January 2015[29]
  • "why is it all larry" - February 2015[30]
  • "gonna call it right now -- gonna be just another year of majority larry fics." - August 2015[31]

The mods reiterated that genfic or any pairing involving a member of 1D was allowed and speculated that in the latest round Harry/Louis fans had promoted the big bang more than other shippers, or perhaps the signups merely reflected the interests of the fandom. They also noted that the balance of ships often changed from signups to the completed fics. In response to the last message, the mods said they would make an effort to advertise the challenge in more spaces.

We here on the One Direction Big Bang mod team want to be clear that we absolutely do not believe in limiting a fandom-wide event that is going into its fourth year of operation to any specific ships, one way or another. That’s just not our style, and there are alternate challenges, fests, and exchanges open for individuals who prefer to see just one specific ship or central character in the works they produce and consume. Our challenge is open for everyone who has an interest in challenging themselves to produce a 20k+ work of fiction over the course of several months, and we celebrate each and every one of our participants.

1dbigbang[31]

Larries

The Livejournal community lists the community maintainers, but one of the accounts was a generic bigbang mod account that could have been shared by new mods. On tumblr the mods said that they deliberately withheld information about the mods' identities both because they wanted the focus to be on the participants and also because the known mods had been followed on their personal accounts for challenge updates, which they felt was inappropriate.[32] The mods' anonymity became a problem later.

In October 2017, when round six was starting, would-be participants tried to find out the current challenge mods' attitude toward tinhatting. The mods had described 1D Reverse Bang as their "sister Challenge", and the reverse bang was modded by larries (fans who believe that Harry and Louis are in a romantic relationship in real life), which might have made other people suspicious. The topic of larries running so many 1D challenges had also just been discussed on the Shit Larries Say blog (see Anti-larrie#Boycotts and Challenge Rules). Some parts of 1D fandom wished to avoid interacting with larries, so knowing the views of the mods was important for deciding whether or not to sign up.

In response to the question "are you conspiracy theorists," the mods joked about 9/11 and other political conspiracy theories, leading some to suspect that the mods were larries.[33] Someone else then asked, "do any of the mods think larry is real?" The challenge's tumblr account noted that many people had asked this question and,

of the three of us, one prefers other ships, one likes larry a lot as a ship but doesn’t tinhat it, and one insists that i write that they claim to make a point of cycling through tinhatting every 1d-related ship one day at a time because it’s more fun that way.... our ideal challenge is one where no one feels like they cannot participate due to what they ship/feel/believe (EVEN if it’s that louis has ever ACTUALLY been honest about his ACTUAL REAL height, louis-always-overstates-his-height is an official 1dbb mod team stance/belief), and where everyone creates what makes their heart happiest, even/especially if it’s something that one or more of us mods don’t particularly care for or about.[34]

Anti-larries criticized the mods' failure to take a stand against larries:

The disingenuous use of examples like “we don’t care if you think Louis lies about his height” when you KNOW the problem is people who think Louis lies about his ENTIRE life is, honestly, disgusting.

mildlymaddy

implying that larrie tinhats are just another cooky part of this fandom when they shouldnt be allowed in spaces due to their harassing of the boys & families and the harm they cause is disgusting. these people arent equivalent to ppl who ship ‘out there’ pairings. theyre not just some eccentric shippers. pandering to them and enabling their involvement in this community is horrible.

afairfight

Why do people continue to insist that we carve spaces in our fandom for the abusers of the very men we are fans of? Stop supporting and enabling harassers 2k17.

louistomlinsonmusicdotcom[35]

If you genuinely care for Louis and his family, for Harry and his family, for Liam and his family, for Zayn and his family, and hell - Niall too - you won’t participate in @1dbigbang until or unless they change their position on allowing conspiracy theorists to participate.... It might be five years late, but we’re done coddling conspiracy theorists. We don’t want their art, or their fic, or their gifs, or their moodboards, or their fanmixes. That’s the line. Step over it or get out of the way. If you have a MODICUM of morality you’ll be joining us, not selling your soul for notes.

shit-larries-say[36]

However, not everyone thought larries should be banned:

If I was a mod – which I wouldn’t be, because I would never put in that much work so I could get yelled at year after year for all sorts of reasons while coordinating the delivery of large amounts of longfic to fandom – I would oppose outright banning a group of people, even a group of degenerate losers like larries. I wouldn’t wanna devise some plan where we’d go around and ask every participant what their larrie beliefs are. Nor would I really wanna comb through the harry/louis fic sign-ups to see which ones stink of larriedom and which ones are written by people who just ship harry/louis. When I wrote a fic for big bang, if someone had demanded I declare myself ideologically clean in order to participate I’d’ve bailed.

valencing[37]

The mods made a followup post:

We see that our jokes led to some serious concerns, and would like to address them.

Your mod team engages in fandom in a very specific and isolated capacity: we read fic, we write fic, we run the Big Bang Challenge, and outside of Challenge-related duties, not one of us has actively or consistently used Tumblr in over two years. As such, we have not engaged in very many recent conversations about fandom beyond making 1DBB mod decisions. To us, and the parts of fandom we remain in contact with, issues concerning the fourth wall and fan comportment were a thing of the past (and jokes about Louis’s height were just dumb jokes). We didn’t think that it needed to be outright stated that we are huge fans of maintaining the fourth wall and doing what we can on our end to keep fandom entirely separate from the band and anyone affiliated with it - we assumed that prioritizing respectful fan engagement went without saying. We were wrong, and we are sorry.

To re-answer the questions posed to us on 10/24: Yes, 2/3 of us ship H/L. No, none of us fall under the category of ‘larrie’ or ‘larry tinhat.’[38]

The mods mentioned that a number of people had told them they didn't want to participate in the challenge if larries were allowed. The mods then said that they weren't interested in vetting participants' beliefs, only in whether the participants could follow the rules of the challenge. They wanted to create an environment where "everyone is welcome to participate".

Anti-larries were unsatisfied with this response and pointed to Babygate and post-hiatus larrie harassment as reasons that it was past time for larries to be shunned.[39]

Larries weren't happy with the mod posts either, interpreting them as disapproving of or rejecting larries.[40] In particular larries were offended by the use of the word "tinhat".[41][42]

Nothing quite like being called a tin hatter! Why can’t people just fucking be nice? Fuck y’all. All you had to say was “we’re not larries” but nooooo you have to throw in the insult. So one more time: fuck y’all. I’ll be dropping out of Big Bang asap.

kingsofeverything [43]

Some larries felt that the big bang mods had made a grave mistake in alienating them:

The thing is that the majority of the B.B. writers are larries. Way to alienate people jfc.

kingsofeverything[44]

No the truth is that without the ‘tinhat larries’ you’d have a lot less fics and a lot less popularity and you’d be reduced to a group fetishist people

shinesobrightsometimes[45]

The "fetishist" comment appears to reflect a larrie belief that fans who ship Harry/Louis without believing the relationship is real are "fetishizers".[46][47] (Similar opinions about m/m shipping are present in other fandoms: see Slash vs. Gay and Fujoshi.)

‘How to fuck up and lose your best writers’ a novel written by the 1D Big Bang account

theystudyrainbows[48]

It's unclear whether theystudyrainbows had specific writers in mind or whether, like the other larries quoted above, they were assuming that most or all Harry/Louis fic was written by larries. This is in contrast to valencing's post, in which she commented that larrie fic was bad and non-larries didn't read it: "Let whoever wants to sign up sign up and then when larries post their fic, the rest of us can ignore it like we always do."[37]

The pushback from non-larries may have bothered larries more than the mod posts. A tumblr for a new, larrie-friendly big bang challenge was set up less than a week later, though the challenge itself was started a few weeks after that. The mods of New One Direction Big Bang (tumblr account: onedirectionbigbang) explained the reason for starting a new big bang:

This Big Bang was created because the original Big Bang creators (and a lot of its participants) said that Larries weren’t welcome and were quite insulting towards that section of the fandom. In this Big Bang, nobody’s left behind. The only premise is to be respectful.

onedirectionbigbang[49]

When asked about who said insulting things towards Larries, onedirectionbigbang responded:

The mods of the other project replied to a question about Larries in a very unfortunate way, but the remarks made in tags/reblogs of that post were what drove us to create this project, because there was clear animosity there.

You can try to find those comments in the original post, but we won’t be responding to any more questions about this because we’re not in favour of a witch hunt or creating more rifts. As far as we’re concerned, it’s all finished. We’re doing this project; they’re doing theirs.

Thank you for your interest, though! xx

onedirectionbigbang[50]

Meanwhile, non-larries created their own offshoot big bang challenge, The 1D Collab, with no tinhats allowed to participate. The 1D Collab ran for one round in 2018.

References

  1. ^ 1d-bigbang, Round Four Rules, Archived version, 2015-08-13.
  2. ^ Author Sign-Ups, Archived version, 2012-09-15. Accessed 4 January 2022.
  3. ^ 1d_bigbang - Profile, Archived version, accessed 4 January 2022.
  4. ^ One Direction Big Bang - Works, Archived version, Accessed 8 January 2022.
  5. ^ Posting Schedule, Archived version, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2013-02-08.
  6. ^ February, Archived version and March, Archived version, 1d_bigbang livejournal community, Accessed 8 January 2022.
  7. ^ Author Sign-Ups, Archived version, 2013-08-14. Accessed 4 January 2022.
  8. ^ Posting Schedule, Archived version, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2014-01-13.
  9. ^ January 2014, Archived version, February 2014, Archived version, March 2014, Archived version, 1d_bigbang, Accessed 8 January 2022.
  10. ^ anon ask answered by 1dbigbang, Archived version, 22 August 2013.
  11. ^ Round Three Rules, Archived version, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 20 August 2014.
  12. ^ Round Three Rules, Archived version, 20 August 2014. As of 9 January 2022, this tumblr post has 195 notes.
  13. ^ Author Sign-Ups, Archived version, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2014-08-23.
  14. ^ Posting Schedule And Rules, Archived version, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2015-02-11.
  15. ^ 1dbigbang.tumblr.com, UPDATE: 1D Big Bang Posting Schedule, Archived version, 25 March 2015.
  16. ^ One Direction Big Bang: Round Three - Works, Archived version, AO3 collection, Accessed 9 January 2022.
  17. ^ ROUND FOUR RULES, Archived version, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2015-08-13.
  18. ^ Round Four Rules, Archived version, tumblr post by 1dbigbang, 13 August 2015.
  19. ^ author sign-ups, Archived version, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2015-08-15.
  20. ^ ONE DIRECTION BIG BANG - FINAL POSTING SCHEDULE, Archived version, 9 February 2016. As of 9 January 2022, this tumblr post has 753 notes.
  21. ^ One Direction Big Bang: Round Four - Works, Archived version, AO3 collection. Accessed 9 January 2022.
  22. ^ ROUND FIVE RULES, Archived version, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2016-10-18.
  23. ^ ONE DIRECTION BIG BANG ROUND FIVE: SCHEDULE, Archived version, tumblr post by 1dbigbang, 18 October 2016. As of 9 January 2022, this tumblr post has 118 notes.
  24. ^ calendar schedule, Archived version, tumblr post by 1dbigbang, 20 April 2017. As of 9 January 2022, this tumblr post has 178 notes.
  25. ^ One Direction Big Bang: Round Five - Works, Archived version, AO3 collection. Accessed 9 January 2022.
  26. ^ STILL LOOKING FOR ARTISTS!, Archived version, 28 January 2018.
  27. ^ tumblr thread started by neon–diamonds, reblogged by howharrymetlouis, Archived version, 22 March 2018.
  28. ^ anon ask answered by 1dbigbang, Archived version, 20 September 2014.
  29. ^ anon ask answered by 1dbigbang, Archived version, 8 January 2015.
  30. ^ anon ask answered by 1dbigbang, Archived version, 11 February 2015.
  31. ^ a b anon ask answered by 1dbigbang, Archived version, 14 August 2015.
  32. ^ ask answered by 1dbigbang, Archived version, 19 January 2016.
  33. ^ ask answered by 1dbigbang, reblogged by mildlymaddy, Archived version, 25 October 2017.
  34. ^ ask from afairfight, answered by 1dbigbang, Archived version, 25 October 2017. As of 4 January 2022, the tumblr post has 87 notes.
  35. ^ reblog by lrambling, Archived version, 25 October 2017.
  36. ^ reblog by shit-larries-say, Archived version, 25 October 2017.
  37. ^ a b tumblr post by valencing, Archived version, 25 October 2017.
  38. ^ tumblr post by 1dbigbang, Archived version, 26 October 2017.
  39. ^ anon ask answered by lrambling, Archived version, 26 October 2017.
  40. ^ "(they wrote a novel about how it's ok to ship H/L but no 'larries' or 'tinhats')" anon ask, Archived version,answered by 28nachos, reblogged by betterstllbemywindingwheel, 26 October 2017.
  41. ^ Quote from another larrie: "it's 2017 and there are larries still annoyed by the tinhat label? own it!" longer thoughts on the big bang drama, Archived version, tumblr post by persimmonlions, 26 October 2017.
  42. ^ "Big larries like iftheresnolove are making posts like this, effectively calling for a larrie boycott of 1dbigbang because the mods called them tinhats (something they are, but also something they consider to be a slur)." why a larrie boycott helps the little larries get out, Archived version, tumblr post by shit-larries-say, 27 October 2017.
  43. ^ tumblr post by kingsofeverything, Archived version, 26 October 2017.
  44. ^ anon ask answered by kingsofeverything, Archived version, 26 October 2017.
  45. ^ reblog by shinesobrightsometimes, Archived version, 26 October 2017.
  46. ^ "like.. if ur a larry shipper but don’t actually believe they’re together irl, you’re the one who’s most likely doing the fetishizing??" tumblr post by louisalbums, Archived version, 23 October 2017.
  47. ^ "And then there’s you: writing about Larry cause you fucking fetishise gay men (and fuck off with saying you don’t, what reason is there to write Larry fic if you don’t think they are together unless you think it’s hot? That they are hot? Examine your own actions)" anon ask answered by conscious--ramblings, Archived version, 6 March 2017. As of 17 January 2022, this tumblr post has 162 notes.
  48. ^ tumblr post by theystudyrainbows, Archived version, 26 October 2017. As of 5 January 2022, this tumblr post has 262 notes.
  49. ^ anon ask answered by onedirectionbigbang, Archived version, 15 November 2017.
  50. ^ anon ask answered by onedirectionbigbang, Archived version, 15 November 2017.
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