October 15, 2005 - Shanghai, China Source: PETER PARKS/AFP via Getty Images

How do you feel about the fanwars between Directioners and Armys?

Hi,

So my take on fan wars is always a bit random since I find them pretty dumb, but I know what they are based on. For BTS vs. One Direction, fanwars tend to discuss the idea of who the bigger boyband is. They are very different and very much the same, so I can understand their thoughts.

One Direction was created on a reality show meant to find the next greatest acts sponsored by Syco and Sony, while BTS was created by the record label BigHit, which is now consolidated under the umbrella of HYBE, which is just a bigger BigHit. They both spent the first year of their group hustling in a way way more BTS than One Direction, but it did occur.

While One Direction was able to spring forward in their careers pretty early on, they both have accomplished very similar things. In 2013, One Direction's Best Song Ever MV became the video with the most views in 24 hours. At the time, it was nuts. We got over 10 million views in 24 hours (I was a part of this). Seven years later, in 2020, BTS actually surpassed the same record with the Dynamite MV, which got 100 million views (something I also did).

Similar occurred with the American Music Awards. In 2014, One Direction won both the Best Duo/Group Award and the Artist of the Year Award. In 2021, BTS did the same thing, winning both awards on the same night.

There are differences, however, with the rises in fame since One Direction had a fanbase from XFactor, while BTS' fame grew over time with their real entrance into the global market in 2017. Also, it is important to note that BTS is still a group, while One Direction has been on hiatus since 2015. However, One Direction has almost been a blueprint for BTS on how to exist in the global market since One Direction has gone so vastly far in the world. One Direction is the first group to have all five members have successful solo careers following their group activities. Even in Kpop, that's a rare thing, so BTS had to look to One Direction to see how all their members could attempt successful solo careers.

I know your original question was how I feel about fan wars, Overall I think they are dumb, even as someone who voted for One Direction and BTS in fan awards. I think everyone should enjoy their favorites as they can, especially when BTS loves parts of One Direction as all of them have gone to at least one Harry Styles concert during Love On Tour.

Also to me, they are very similar people and would love to see them all interact. Look up both groups with chaos or funny moments in the tag line, you will see how both One Direction and BTS are similar.

So I've heard that apparently the majority of the fandom is unanimous in their decision that tif is one of the most loved fics of all time, however, I actually don't see a lot of people hyping it up nowadays (I'm assuming most of the raving was done back in the day when it came out), except for you. You seem to harbour a profound love for tif, so I thought you'd be the best person for this. Give me a little spiel, sell it to me. Why do you love it so much? Why must I read this pronto?

It was the first Larry fic ever recommended to me and I was very new to the fandom at the time (even though the fic was a couple years old by then) so I think it being the first fic about them I ever read, and the fact that it’s an AU instead of canon compliant, intrigued me a lot because their characters are just regular guys with regular jobs. I was like, oh, how will this go? I didn’t know what that would read like. And it just set the bar. I didn’t feel like I was reading about boyband members and I still don’t when I reread it every year. I was no stranger to fic before, but I wasn’t an avid reader of it until after I read TIF because it made me feel SO much and made me realize that the possibilities of worlds to put them in was endless. No other fandom’s writing excited me quite the same way before. The characterizations in TIF are still my favorite to this day and I would argue that a couple of them, as well as tropes, themes, etc. ended up being a blueprint for people’s work later on, intentionally or not. Like it kickstarted a certain inspiration in the fandom’s authors. The conversational, almost dry writing style is unique enough that I’ve never seen it emulated in any other fic the same way since, the flow never breaks between the TWO authors (which is incredibly impressive), and it’s full of hilarious dialogue and moments I never could have come up with, nor dreamt up. Every detail of that fic is very specific. It has the perfect amount of angst and the climax of the story is still one of the most gut wrenching scenes. There are quotes of narration that still rattle me. I get jealous thinking about how two people sat down and typed out certain strings of words I would have never been able to craft up myself. It taught me exactly what slow burn means and how to do it right, how to create characters that were flawed and nuanced and might make stupid decisions, but at least they had a valid reason even if it takes a while to figure it out. I just find it to be the perfect outline of how a fic should play out. Some of the tropes in TIF are overused now, but at the time, they weren’t. I don’t think if TIF was written today it would have the same effect. I also believe the element of mystery around TIF is what still makes it so appealing. It was written by two anonymous people and posted on livejournal, of all places. They were clearly experienced writers and I always got the impression they were in their late 20s, maybe older, when it was written. Just by the way they seemed to have lived life a little bit more than most younger fans and they poured it into the characters. There is definitely some personal experiences sprinkled in that story, no doubt in my mind. But they dropped this remarkable work and were practically never heard from again. It’s not like you can send them messages on a blog and get answers about their fic, so it allows people to come up with their own headcanons about the characters. I completely get that some people either don’t find TIF that interesting, or they get tired of hearing about it all these years later, but it holds a special place in a lot of hearts and for a fic to remain in such high regard for so long is a really powerful thing. It’s not just my favorite fan fic I’ve ever read, it’s my favorite piece of fiction I’ve ever read...at all.

So this drifted across my twitter last night: a music philosopher I like enough to follow, being weird and dismissive about the “your favourite band member” mode of fandom. And this makes me grumble, because on one level - yeah, sure, boybands are, in many ways designed as training wheels practice runs at hetero romance narratives.

But it also pisses me off, because it ignore the myriad ways in which female-coded fans (both hetero women and queers) completely twist and re-tool and completely subvert the hetero romance model of Your Favourite Band Member.

I’ve long insisted, in this space, and multiple fandom spaces in the decades before Tumblr, ‘you do not choose Your Favourite Band Member; Your Favourite Band Member chooses you.’ Kind of like a guru chooses you. Kind of like your sexuality and your gender identity choose you.

The Heteronormative Model presupposes that boyband members (and in my day, it wasn’t NKOTB, it was Duran Duran) are kind of training wheels whereby heterosexual woman try on the kind of boyfriend they would ultimately like to have - bad boy or sweet one, jock or what-passes-for-smart in a teenage boy. But what if that’s not *ALL* that happens? What if the Favourite Band Member functions more as a way of trying on what life the fan would like to have? For many, many fans - and not just us queer ones, but hetero-ish women, too - the Favourite Band Member was a blueprint to the kind of person we wanted to be.

I already knew, aged 13, that I wanted to be John Taylor more than I ever wanted to fuck him. I can’t even call him a ‘trans root’ because that concept did not even exist in 1983. But I certainly knew that my longing for a bass, leather trousers, and a pink streak in my hair was about waaaaay more than the first stirrings of heteronormativity.

But, you know, even the heterosexual women I knew in the Duran Duran fandom, for them, trying on whether they wanted to be with Simon LeBon (sporty, outgoing, life of adventure) or Nick Rhodes (arty, sophisticated, life of high culture) was about who THEY wanted to be when they grew up, more than it ever was about who they wanted to sleep with. These guys were daydreams, unattainable fantasy dudes - but deciding whether you wanted to be the kind of girl who hung out on yachts or at Andy Warhol openings was a form of self exploration.

So I think this is the crossed wires that made that dude so angry about my “favourite member of Neubauten” thread. He doesn’t understand - or maybe he understands too well - that it’s not actually about who the favourite member is or isn’t. It’s about what the favourite member says about the fan. (And boy, did he not like that!)