1d bigbang

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.1d-bigbang, , 2015-08-13. 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 It was superseded by a larrie-friendly big bang: New One Direction Big Bang.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., 2012-09-15. Accessed 4 January 2022.
As of January 2022, the community has 286 posts; 4,702 comments; and 473 members., accessed 4 January 2022. 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)., Accessed 8 January 2022.
*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, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2013-02-08. (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. and , 1d_bigbang livejournal community, Accessed 8 January 2022.
*Round Two: The second round nearly doubled its participants (the author signup post had 224 comments, 2013-08-14. Accessed 4 January 2022.), with 61 stories scheduled to be posted between January–March 2014., mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2014-01-13. 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., , , 1d_bigbang, Accessed 8 January 2022. 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., 22 August 2013. 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., mod post in 1d_bigbang, 20 August 2014., 20 August 2014. As of 9 January 2022, this tumblr post has 195 notes. 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,, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2014-08-23. 84 fics were listed on the LiveJournal posting schedule for February–April 2015,, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2015-02-11. 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.1dbigbang.tumblr.com, , 25 March 2015. 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., AO3 collection, Accessed 9 January 2022.
*Round Four: The announcement was posted August 13, 2015 on livejournal and tumblr., mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2015-08-13., tumblr post by 1dbigbang, 13 August 2015. The author signup post had 597 comments,, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2015-08-15. 108 fics were on the schedule to be posted between February–April 2016,, 9 February 2016. As of 9 January 2022, this tumblr post has 753 notes. 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., AO3 collection. Accessed 9 January 2022. 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,, mod post in 1d_bigbang, 2016-10-18., tumblr post by 1dbigbang, 18 October 2016. As of 9 January 2022, this tumblr post has 118 notes. 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,, tumblr post by 1dbigbang, 20 April 2017. As of 9 January 2022, this tumblr post has 178 notes. 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., AO3 collection. Accessed 9 January 2022.
*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., 28 January 2018. 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., 22 March 2018.
==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, 20 September 2014.
*"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, 8 January 2015.
*"why is it all larry" - February 2015, 11 February 2015.
*"gonna call it right now -- gonna be just another year of majority larry fics." - August 2015, 14 August 2015.
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.
==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., 19 January 2016. 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., 25 October 2017. 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,
Anti-larries criticized the mods' failure to take a stand against larries:
However, not everyone thought larries should be banned:
The mods made a followup post:
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., 26 October 2017.
Larries weren't happy with the mod posts either, interpreting them as disapproving of or rejecting larries."(they wrote a novel about how it's ok to ship H/L but no 'larries' or 'tinhats')" ,answered by 28nachos, reblogged by betterstllbemywindingwheel, 26 October 2017. In particular larries were offended by the use of the word "tinhat".Quote from another larrie: "it's 2017 and there are larries still annoyed by the tinhat label? own it!" , tumblr post by persimmonlions, 26 October 2017."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)." , tumblr post by shit-larries-say, 27 October 2017.
Some larries felt that the big bang mods had made a grave mistake in alienating them:
The "fetishist" comment appears to reflect a larrie belief that fans who ship Harry/Louis without believing the relationship is real are "fetishizers"."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??" , 23 October 2017."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)" , 6 March 2017. As of 17 January 2022, this tumblr post has 162 notes. (Similar opinions about m/m shipping are present in other fandoms: see Slash vs. Gay and Fujoshi.)
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."
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:
When asked about who said insulting things towards Larries, onedirectionbigbang responded: 
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==
Category:One Direction
Category:Big Bang Challenges
Category:2012 Challenges
Category:2013 Challenges
Category:2014 Challenges
Category:2015 Challenges
Category:2016 Challenges
Category:2017 Challenges