1. Introduction
[1.1] Fans of boy bands anticipate public shaming of their fannish desires and behaviors: They expect to be met with "derision, criticism, and humiliation" (Asquith 2016, 86). This anticipation is the direct result of the cultural shaming of pop music, particularly boy bands, as undeserving of cultural investment (Hedrick 2020). As queer theorists building on Silvan Tomkins' psychological work have defined, "shame is an auxiliary affect whose function is to inhibit enjoyment, interest or both" (Timár 2019, 200). In other words, public/cultural shaming of certain activities is about engendering a feeling within the body, designed to prohibit or change behavior. Along these lines, fans of boy bands have perpetually been labeled as crazy, obsessive, and perverse in the cultural imagination (Asquith 2016; Bucy 2025). The fan as "fundamentally othered" (Busse and Gray 2011, 425) has long been a concern of many fandom scholars (Coppa 2014; Jenkins 1992). While the media industry now recognizes the economic potential of fan behaviors, it is only those fan behaviors that are deemed profitable (not infringing on copyright laws, not transgressing the values of the media institutions involved) that are generally socially sanctioned (Donlan 2017). For example, writing fan fiction is widely adopted among many fandoms, but the ethics of this practice is often debated, particularly within pop music fandom where celebrities—real people, not characters—become the fodder for fictional desires (Busse 2017; Bucy 2025). Here, we turn to fans of the former boy band One Direction and their engagement in fan fiction as a case study. What we find is that, surprisingly, shame, rather than being a purely stultifying force, is reworked, resisted, and indeed, often a generative force for fans of boy bands. This work has implications for how we might understand the cultural shaming of fans more broadly, in terms of what shame does.
[1.2] One Direction rose to fame in 2010 on the United Kingdom reality talent competition X Factor, quickly gaining a vast fandom that came to be known as Directioners. Though the band announced their hiatus in 2016, the One Direction fandom has endured, albeit in a liminal state, as fans were promised this hiatus was only temporary (Jameson 2021; Driessen and van Mil 2024). This uncertainty in the band's future resulted in, for many, an ongoing attachment with the band, particularly as the solo careers of each band member took off and questions of a reunion continued to be teased. This article draws on ten interviews conducted in 2021—a year after the band's ten-year anniversary, in July 2020, but prior to the death of band member Liam Payne, in 2024. Interviews were conducted with fans who engaged with One Direction fan fiction during the band's heyday (prior to the hiatus) to explore the role that shame plays in the fan experience. Fans who read or wrote fan fiction are a specific focus here given previous findings that fan fiction is often perceived as a more obsessive fan behavior compared to other activities, such as purchasing merchandise or attending concerts, and is therefore a practice located at the bottom of the fandom hierarchy (Busse 2017; Bucy 2024).
[1.3] This article explores how shame is both transformed by and is transformative within fandoms. Drawing on the interviews, we begin by considering fan awareness of negative tropes about fans of boy bands and the social devaluation of fans. Second, we consider how fandom provides a creative and generative space for fans to explore their feelings and build communities, both in spite of and, paradoxically, via shame. Third, we look at how fan fiction aids fans in working through feelings of shame surrounding desire and sex. We illustrate how shame is central to the social experience of fans of boy bands, opening creative avenues and connective formations.
2. Methods
[2.1] Interviews were conducted over Zoom in 2021, with Directioners who had previously engaged with reading or writing One Direction fan fiction between 2010 and 2016. These participants had varying levels of involvement in One Direction fandom at the time of interviewing but largely reflected on their experiences in the One Direction fandom prior to the band's hiatus. These interviews were approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Melbourne, Australia (Ethics ID: 21868). Participants were recruited via Instagram, with an advertising post promoted to Samlal's existing network of One Direction fans. A motivating factor behind this method of reaching out to Samlal's existing network was the reflection that despite her active engagement in the fandom between 2010 and 2016, she had witnessed little shared in this space over the years about fan fiction practices. In other words, Samlal suspected, and wanted to test, how prevalent these practices had been, and how and why any secrecy about fan fiction was related to a sense of shame. Each participant provided verbal consent over Zoom before the one-on-one interview commenced. Interviews were semistructured and explicitly asked about shame in the fan experience.
[2.2] Before the interview, participants were asked to send Samlal fan fiction they either read or wrote between 2010 and 2016. This fan fiction was discussed at the start of the interview, to relieve any prospective tension about the discussion of this fan practice. This aspect of the interview was inspired by the scroll back method, which involves participants looking through their social media during an interview, and is intended to center participants in presenting their own take on their digital traces in a highly consensual manner (Robards and Lincoln 2017). In a similar vein, asking people to bring their own selection of fan fiction to the interview was intended to center the participant in their own telling of their creation of and engagement with fan fiction. The interview covered issues such as how reading/producing fan fiction made participants feel, whether the participant's fan practices were something they kept private at the time, positive aspects of their experiences as fans engaging with fan fiction, and whether they received any backlash regarding their fan practices from the broader fandom or others.
[2.3] All participants were assigned a pseudonym for the study. Any identifying information disclosed during the interviews was redacted or altered in the transcription phase to assist in maintaining confidentiality. Participant demographics were also collated using terms chosen by the participants (for example, some chose to identify as "female," specifically "cis female," "woman," or "nonbinary woman") (table 1). The age of the participants at the time of interview suggests that they were all in early adolescence when they engaged with One Direction fandom.
Table 1: Overview of participants (pseudonyms used)
| Name | Age | Gender | Sexuality | Ethnicity |
| Autumn | 22 | Woman | Queer | Anglo-Celtic Australian |
| Bo | 22 | Cis Female | Bisexual | Māori |
| Laura | 22 | Female | Lesbian | White Italian |
| Marie | 22 | Female | Unlabeled | Caucasian |
| Payton | 21 | Female | Bisexual | Australian/Chinese |
| Rose | 20 | Female | Straight | Australian/Mexican |
| Sarah | 20 | Female | Heterosexual | Eurasian/Mixed |
| Tessa | 22 | Female | Undisclosed | Undisclosed |
| Valerie | 21 | Nonbinary Woman | Gay | Jewish/English |
| Zoe | 21 | Female | Asexual | Australian |
3. Shame across the fannish life course
[3.1] In the interviews, fans spoke about how shame was woven into the fabric of their fannish experience of engaging with One Direction fan fiction. While some participants still actively participated in One Direction fandom at the time of interviewing, these fans largely reflected on the shame they experienced in the past (see Jameson 2021; Driessen and van Mil 2024 for further discussion of the phenomena of fan reflections on the past). Participant shame as discussed in our article therefore relates to two distinct temporal periods: both the shame participants felt about their practices in their adolescence and the deconstruction or continuation of this shame at the time of interviewing.
[3.2] To understand these distinct temporal periods of shame reflected by the fans interviewed, it is useful first to turn to fan studies scholarship on how fannishness evolves throughout the life course of being a fan. C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby highlight how as media texts age so do their fans, emphasizing how fan objects become "touchstones or 'lifelines' as fans age" (2010, 445). Simone Driessen identifies fandom in pop music as particularly linked to teen girls, and that being a fan might evolve in different ways "across the various decades of being involved in fandom" (2022, 82). Along these lines, Neta Yodovich illustrates the "boundary work" that fans undertake to distance themselves from their childish, fannish engagement, from immature "fandom" to mature "appreciation" (2016, 290). Furthermore, the temporality of the fan experience may be affected by changes within the social/cultural framing of fandom itself—as Jenessa Williams (2024) highlights, there have been concerted efforts in the recent decade to reclaim the figure of the fangirl. Importantly, as Ysabel Gerrard (2021) suggests, despite this recent reclamatory turn, there are many fan practices—such as shipping, which is central to much fan fiction—that are not widely socially acceptable.
[3.3] Studies on fandom and the life course still generally draw from the experiences of "adult and late(r) life fandom" (Harrington and Bielby 2010, 444). For example, Tonya Anderson (2012) frames shame as only present in postfan subjectivities, a feeling that is developed after formative periods of adolescence. Similarly, Andrew Scahill ponders if nostalgia for the fan texts associated with our youth could be interpreted as "longing for a time in our lives as much as for the media object itself" (2022, 66). While the participants in our study could be defined as "post-youth" (Bennett and Hodkinson 2012, 4), or individuals who are socially and financially independent, generally, our participants did not have nostalgia for their fangirl past. Rather, they expressed shame about their fannish practices in their adolescence, as well as in their post-youth life. Any sense of nostalgia or even recent cultural reclamation of the figure of the fangirl seemed not to interrupt their communication of felt shame.
[3.4] The findings in our study echo Jennifer Duggan's autoethnographic work (2021), which highlights how shame is embedded in the fan experience, and that this is not particular to adolescence. As Duggan suggests, there are many fans "who conceal themselves from the view of the majority" (2021, 62). We found that it was through participation in the study that interview participants were able to reframe the shame experienced in their past in productive and generative ways. This was achieved through emphasizing the creativity of fandom and highlighting the connections that were garnered and maintained through participation in fandom, while they—paradoxically—also reflected on their actions of their past selves as shameful. Though the fans interviewed for our study were adolescents when they read or wrote their fan fiction, Duggan's findings suggest that the sense of perversity that attaches to fans in these spaces also sticks to adults (perhaps even more so, Duggan might suggest, since adults could be seen to threaten any children sharing the same space). Which is to say, we cannot presume that the participants in our study only felt shame about their past selves simply because these were younger, less experienced/more naive selves.
4. Shame and real person fiction
[4.1] Real person fiction (RPF) is an ambivalent practice in fandom spaces, controversial yet intensely popular, and is simultaneously derided, both within fandom and the mainstream. This contentious position of fan fiction has been made visible within media numerous times, as seen with the backlash to the After novel (2014) and film series (dir. Jenny Gage, 2019) and the depiction of Larry Stylinson fan fiction in the television series Euphoria (2019–26).
[4.2] After was a popular One Direction fan fiction, posted to Wattpad by Anna Todd and then published by Gallery Books in 2014 with the boy band characters de-identified. The series was so popular, infamous for its fan fiction roots, that it was adapted into a film series several years later. After became divisive within the One Direction fandom, as interview participant Marie repeated the popular rumor that One Direction band member Harry Styles had blacklisted Todd from his future shows. Styles has never publicly commented on After beyond knowing about the fan fiction (not the series in which his likeness is de-identified), and the claims about Styles having a restraining order or pursuing a lawsuit against Todd have never been substantiated (Florio 2019; Vargas 2020). Despite this, Marie's attitudes—which were popular within the fandom at the time—are reflective of how fan fiction practices are controversial, particularly when they are removed from their obscurity and community context.
[4.3] Similarly, the HBO series Euphoria depicted a character writing Larry Stylinson fan fiction. Larry Stylinson refers to the slash shipping between One Direction bandmates Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. Styles and Tomlinson's likeness was depicted in an anime-style cartoon, with the animated Styles performing oral sex on Tomlinson backstage at their Take Me Home tour, as the narration employed erotic phrases common in fan fiction (episode 1.3, "Made You Look"). The scene caused immense fan backlash, particularly after Tomlinson tweeted, "I can categorically say that I was not contacted nor did I approve it" (https://x.com/Louis_Tomlinson/status/1145753419447177218). Many fans' responses specifically shamed those fans who engaged in fan fiction practices that were seen to perpetuate the Larry Stylinson rumor, with one fan declaring, "euphoria really held a mirror up to 1D stans and showed them how weird it is to write larry smut" (Bate 2019). These events reveal the irresolute position of fan fiction within the One Direction fandom, which has oriented the practice as particularly shamed within fandom.
[4.4] The interviews revealed that most participants agreed with scholars who have studied One Direction fandom specifically, who acknowledge that RPF is controversial within the fandom and with the general populace alike (Roach 2018; Bucy 2024). Despite the reputation of RPF, participants still engaged with this form of fan fiction during the band's heyday, although many—in the present—linked this practice to their description of their past fan practices as obsessive. For example, Laura was apologetic about her intensity as a fan who read and wrote Larry fan fiction, suggesting that "we kind of lowkey ruined their life." Payton expressed that her discomfort with Larry fan fiction was that "it's about real people," and she felt that "shame is needed there," particularly as fans were including Tomlinson's deceased mother in their stories.
[4.5] Participants used words such as "obsessive" (Marie), "creepy" (Tessa), "crazy" (Payton), and "weird" (Sarah) to describe their own past behaviors as fans, suggesting an internalization of negative language. For example, Laura reflected, "I would try and distance myself from that hyper-feminized sort of fangirl representation…I didn't want to be perceived as crazy and weird, even though I was!"
[4.6] Participants reflected that there were different degrees of shame associated with different genres of fan fiction. For example, Payton explained that reading self-insert fan fiction—where the main character is unnamed and (y/n) (your name) is supplemented for an immersive fantasy experience—would be more embarrassing than the alternative universe (AU) fan fiction she read, explaining that self-insert fan fiction positioned the reader as "delusional enough…to think that I'd end up with Harry Styles."
[4.7] The reaction from fans like Laura and Payton, who expressed shame about their past fan practices, reveals how readily negative attitudes about fan behaviors are absorbed by fans. The interviews reflect how the hysterical fangirl trope results in an enduring sense of shame that is internalized by fans themselves (McCann and Southerton 2019). RPF is an unsanctioned fan product unable to be monetized, putting it at risk of pathologization. Moreover, the real-life aspect of RPF is understood in terms of the extreme caricature of the fan, affording a profound sense of shame that is not only imposed by others but seen as deserved by fans who engage in RPF. Ultimately this tenuous position of fan fiction as both widely adopted yet widely derided creates a deep sense of shame in fans, evident in our interviews with fans in both the past temporal period (the fans hid these behaviors from friends at school at the time) and in the present (feeling shame while reflecting on past fan practices).
5. Shame and creative communities
[5.1] Despite the reflection in the interviews that their past fannish practices were shamed, the interviews also revealed, paradoxically, how shame is utilized productively by fans. As David M. Halperin and Valerie Traub (2009) note on the subject of shame in queer communities, shame is not only individualizing in its affect, it also has potential in galvanizing community organization outside of normative institutions. Halperin and Traub (2009) argue that shame can be motivating: It can become an impetus for expressing nonnormative desires and transgressing the boundaries of societal norms.
[5.2] Against overarching narratives of shame, the interviews revealed how fan communities were and are productive spaces for participants that can be a source of pride, especially regarding the accessibility of fan fiction. Participants highlighted how fan fiction was a valuable experience in learning how to write alongside others, outside of formal institutional settings. Furthermore, participants demonstrated that even when their creative expressions were kept secret from other fans in their immediate network, these practices provided a generative way to work through feelings and to empathize with the lives of anonymous others.
[5.3] Fandom has long been theorized as a network, as a collective identity whereby fans share "common interests" and contend with "common problems" (Jenkins 1992, 23). Fan works are created for an "imagined community" (Morimoto and Chin 2017, 174), and it is through these fan works that fandom is called into existence (Stanfill 2013). In other words, the object of the fandom—the celebrity or text—does not create the community surrounding it; rather, it is the constant circulation of fan works that unites fans (Busse 2012). Laura referred to the friends made through fan accounts as "a whole little family," explaining that for her in the past, the One Direction fandom was "vibrant" and "intense," and something she was unsure that she "will experience again."
[5.4] Fan fiction was integral to many of the participants' fan identities and sense of community in the past. When asked about fans who didn't read fan fiction, Bo described RPF as a "rite of passage," explaining that "one way or another, you should've at least stepped upon fan fiction at some point." Bo explained that fans make the decision that they do not engage with fan fiction through engagement with fan fiction.
[5.5] Many of the participants reminisced about introducing their most trusted friends to fan fiction. Rose recollected traveling on the bus to and from school, discussing One Direction fan fiction with a close friend. Bo reported that she felt she was undertaking something integral to their fan experience when she introduced her newly Directioner friends to her favorite stories. For participants, fan fiction became a channel for maintaining close personal relationships but also represented a re-creation of what Rebecca Williams describes as an important "affective moment" (2015, 154) of "becoming-a-fan" (Hills 2002, 6–7). This nostalgic remembering of the function of sharing fan fiction represents a reframing of shame at the time of interviewing. The liminal state of the fandom at the time of interviewing meant that participants in this study did not necessarily express nostalgia for the object of fan fiction, but rather the role fan fiction played in their sense of community.
[5.6] Recognition of fan fiction as a conduit to personal connection with other fans represents a strategy in renegotiating the shame associated with RPF. This reflects Scahill's (2022) assertion that the function of nostalgia for fan texts associated with our adolescence is instead representative of a longing for that temporal period. This finding therefore contradicts Anderson's (2012) finding that shame is usually only present in postfan subjectivity, as fans renegotiated shame experienced in the past at the time of interviewing.
[5.7] Fan fiction also acted as a point of connection with strangers who read fan fiction online. Many similarly felt an affinity for other fans through the comment section on the story platform Wattpad. Tessa described how in the past she loved to engage in discussions in the chapter comments. Marie also explained that in the past the comments grounded her opinions about the content of the fan fiction, as well as "reinforc[ing] that sense of community."
[5.8] Even though many participants noted that fan fiction was integral to their fan identity and sense of community, some noted that in the past they kept their creative fan writing secret from others in their real and online lives. In the past, most participants only chose a select few of their friends to divulge their fan fiction practices to. Many identified they were often worried they would be exposed as a fan fiction reader/fan of One Direction, with the location of secondary school being a key focus of this concern. For example, Laura kept her successful Larry fan fiction secret from her circle of close fan friends online, explaining that her fan fiction, which had almost two hundred thousand reads on Wattpad, was a way to "ignore everything that is wrong with my life." Despite keeping her fan fiction secret from her close internet friends, Laura's case exemplifies how fan fiction can have a transformative effect that allows fans to work through their feelings via self-exploration; as she expressed, "sometimes you just need that. To put into the world, 'this is what I'm going through.'" The perceived anonymity of online platforms encourages fans to explore their feelings in a creative mode, with reduced fear of retribution or social rejection.
[5.9] The theorization of fan behavior as "enthusiastic but individual engagement" (Coppa 2014, 73) has given rise to the study of how fan behaviors also encourage the building of skill sets and outlets for individual creativity (Pattison 2025). The creativity of the fan economy was a source of pride for Zoe, who detailed the fan trades she was involved in, where another fan would create an edit, or a manip—a manipulated image depicting the fan with their favorite band member—in exchange for an imagine—a short self-insert story that is usually a vignette or snapshot of a larger narrative.
[5.10] Many participants cited the creative benefits of fan fiction, despite also noting the shame they felt for "indulging" (Autumn) in these works. Marie asserted that Wattpad was a great place for people forming or exploring a desire to become a writer, and Laura praised Wattpad as a platform where women can be successful with their writing, exclaiming, "the level of creativity is insane." Many participants referred to the value of fan fiction as a stepping stone to developing writing skills. Fan fiction provides amateur writers with an outlet outside formal institutional channels of publishing, providing opportunities for self-exploration and encouraging creativity and an appreciation of reading and writing (Roach 2018).
[5.11] Further, in fan fiction culture, the distinction between author and reader is blurred, through the collaborative development of storylines, to the culture of peer review and feedback. The participatory culture of fandom can result in a "demystification" (Jenkins 2006, 188) of the literary process. Zoe explained that she used fan fiction as "practice" for her burgeoning interest in writing. She recalled how she enlisted a friend to edit her fan fictions before she would post them. Bo, as well, would edit for a friend, reminiscing that this exchange "brought us closer—it was a very nice thing at that time…to do that within a friendship," characterizing this exchange as a "bonding moment."
6. Collectivities of the shamed
[6.1] As a way to rework and resist feelings of shame (both in the past and present), the inclusivity and accessibility of fan fiction was identified by many participants as a source of pride (both in the past and present). The accessibility of fan fiction, compared with traditional literary practices, provides a plethora of texts for fans to engage with, as well as supports writers who inherit audiences that are already invested in the object of the story (Leigh 2020). Zoe, as a fan fiction writer, expressed this sentiment, explaining, "I don't think I was ever worried about people reading [my fan fiction] and being like, 'this is shit'…if I liked it, there will be someone else out there who likes it."
[6.2] For Autumn and Bo, the accessibility of fan fiction in these stories being on a free platform, with thousands of options, was a way for fans to exert "control" (Bo) over what they read. Autumn explained that with her ADD, the layout of the platform Wattpad was accessible to her, as well as the platform's writing norms, being shorter stories that were written by people who were at the same reading level as herself, highlighting that "there was nothing that I couldn't understand." Autumn explained that she initially felt shame about this accessibility, describing that she felt the reason she could read fan fiction faster than "normal books" was that "they're not real books…good books are longer and harder to read." In the interview, Autumn ultimately recognized how literary taste hierarchies had influenced her sense of shame, and reframed her attitude toward fan fiction through highlighting its accessibility. As we saw in the interviews broadly, fans often rework feelings of fan shame via appeals to elements of fandom they are proud of.
[6.3] The fan behaviors described above, though sometimes secret and individual, can be understood to serve the whole fan network through building a fandom infrastructure. Henry Jenkins (2006) reiterates that the intertextuality of fan fiction contributes to world-building within fandom communities. This can best be seen in the case of author's notes—an "intensely" (Herzog 2012, ¶ 1.3) individual act that can forge senses of community. Author's notes refer to messages from the fan fiction author at either the beginning or end of each chapter, explaining their intentions, asking for feedback, or even just musing about their own life experiences. While Alexandra Herzog (2012) argues that author's notes act as the individual fan author's claim to authority and control as producers, the participants interviewed viewed author's notes rather differently. Autumn explained how the anonymity of platforms such as Wattpad allowed for fans to speak freely about their lives, their problems, and their desires. While she was also secretive about her fan fiction practices, she explained how author's notes represented a "sincerity" and a "want for connection," and how this particularly appealed to her as she could not "talk to my friends about what I was reading."
[6.4] Valerie, like Laura, kept her fan fiction practices a secret in the past, even from her internet friends made through the One Direction fandom. She explained how author's notes had helped her feel a sense of connection, describing that they were "lovely," allowing the reader to "see what was happening in the life of the person who was writing this story that you just wanted to keep reading." Valerie also mentioned the distinctly collaborative nature of fan fiction writing, explaining that comments at the end of each chapter would often make narrative suggestions on events that could happen—"and sometimes it would…it's really nice." This suggests that even fan behaviors enacted by individual fans and kept secret from their personal fan networks due to a sense of shame still ultimately contribute to the generative nature of fandom communities.
[6.5] Despite some participants keeping their activities completely secret from close friends, others explicitly noted how feelings of shame deepened the connection they had to their fan communities. Given the overarching sense of shame attached to their fan behaviors, revealing these behaviors to others necessitated a deep sense of trust. Many participants who told friends about their fan fiction practices in the past stated that shame had been a source for bonding. Tessa highlighted that disclosure of and sharing in fan practices represented "a cute bonding moment" with her friends at school, that was distinctly framed as not "want[ing] to tell the boys [at school]."
[6.6] Shame ultimately calls into existence "collectivities of the shamed" (Crimp 2009, 23), where "the grins and giggles and the pajama party atmosphere" (Bacon-Smith 1992, 4) of fandom brings together those fans who engage with fan fiction. While the individual creative practices of fans, as well as the sense of community experienced, are commonly referenced as positive experiences garnered through participatory culture, these are rarely considered in relation to feelings of shame experienced by fans. Participants ultimately reflected on the fan experience as a rewarding one, explaining in their interviews the importance of the community ties they gained through the One Direction fandom, and how any feelings of shame they had in the past in fact aided the bonding experience.
7. Shame and understanding desires
[7.1] Many participants mentioned parental surveillance and fear of their fan practices being "found out" (Duggan 2021, 45) as a source of shame; however, they described these feelings of shame as enhancing the experience of reading fan fiction. The stress that participants expressed around this issue reflects the importance of the parental role in teaching children about sex and morality in Western societies, as attitudes toward sex and sexuality continue to be regulated by the lingering effects of historical sex/moral panics (Irvine 2006). Participants described how feelings of shame enhanced the experience of reading fan fiction, imbuing the practice with a sense of thrill in engaging with romantic and sexual fantasy. Rose explained that the combination of fan fiction as a shameful practice, the fear of discovery, and the act of fantasizing about someone who is "so not attainable" made fan fiction more "exciting." She explained that the "little fantasies" or "little worlds" created in these stories "would obviously never happen," yet she derived "so much joy" from the act of imagining they could. Rose further explained that the romantic tropes presented in fan fiction composed her introduction into imagining her desires in future relationships.
[7.2] Marie and Rose, both coming from Catholic backgrounds, attributed their concern to the religiosity of their parents. In Western societies, Christian religious tradition provides the backbone for lessons in morality (Jakobsen and Pellegrini 2003). Autumn and Sarah did not disclose whether they come from religious backgrounds, but they both used religiously inflected language that reference the Christian sins of lust and gluttony, such as "guilty" (Sarah) or "indulgent" (Autumn). The implication of shame in sin is that they felt they were betraying both their parents' and society's expectations about sexual morality.
[7.3] Research has found that lessons about sex from parents tend to emphasize the sexual vulnerability of their daughters, and that a sexually active girl is conceptualized by parents as distracting and deviant (Elliott 2010). In this sense, girls are not viewed by parents as sexually desiring, agentic subjects, and have been subject to volatile reactions of outrage and disgust (Elliott 2010). Zoe reflected on how she feared her parents discovering her fan fiction writing, which kept her from publishing her work, explaining that "you just don't want to get in trouble." In other words, the shame felt at the time of writing fan fiction was due to outside pressures, while the shame felt about this past practice came from a space of self-reflection.
[7.4] However the interviews also revealed that fans rework feelings of shame through engaging with fan fiction as a conduit for understanding their own romantic and sexual desires. Most participants thought of their experiences in the past of reading or writing fan fiction as their "sexual awakening" (Sarah).
[7.5] Fan fiction has previously been theorized as beneficial in realizing the sexual and romantic desires of girls (Carboni and Bhana 2019). Engaging with fan fiction disrupts the pervasive idea that adolescent girls are not sexually agentic nor should they assert their own romantic and sexual desires. Fan fiction can be integral for young women and queer people in learning about sex and intimacy, without the interference of "adults, the state and commercial interests" (McLelland 2017, 240). This awareness has encouraged a type of peer-led sex education where fan fiction acts as a tool for supportive communication regarding sex (Hedrick 2020).
[7.6] In the interviews, participants positively associated reading fan fiction in the past with the genesis of understanding their own fantasies. Engaging with fan fiction aided participants' "sexual awakening" (Sarah) through the projection of identities and desires onto a "blank slate" (Tessa). Previous research has found that fan fiction can be used as a "canvas" (Busse and Gray 2011, 429) for the affirmational projection of a fan's identity, values, and desires onto the celebrity object. Participants reported that this blank slate possibility was particularly facilitated by AU fan fictions where the story fictionalizes the lives of the One Direction members as normal people rather than celebrities. Autumn and Tessa referenced how identities and desires could be envisaged through AU fan fiction, as the boy band character becomes a "cardboard cutout to project your wants" (Autumn). Laura, who identifies as a lesbian, explained that writing Larry fan fiction in the past facilitated a projection of her queer identity when she was still closeted. She deciphered her fan fiction practices as projecting onto "prominent figures in the public that I knew," as a means to "put something that I had in my head into [reality]" (Laura).
[7.7] Laura described "immersing" herself in a "fantasy world" through setting her AU fan fiction in a high school, pairing all the characters in queer relationships. Through writing her own fan fiction, Laura imagined a queer utopia in which she could relate to those around her, unlike in her reality at school where she was surrounded by heterosexually desiring fans. She explained that in her fan fiction, "not a single character was straight"—including her self-insert character. Laura laughed as she explained that her self-insert character was "bisexual, but only liked women." As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2003) argues, attaching a queer reading to an object acts as a sort of ontological security blanket, which is necessary for queer survival within heterosexual spaces (see also McCann and Southerton 2019). For Laura, writing fan fiction allowed for a queer reading of celebrity objects and the creative exploration of both her social and sexual desires.
[7.8] Interviews also revealed that participants were able to garner an understanding of their own desires through reading fan fiction. Sarah described how she was able to figure out her own attractions through reading self-insert fan fiction. Tessa described fan fiction as an "inlet" into what she found sexy. Furthermore, Bo explained that after years of engaging with fan fiction, she gained an understanding of precisely what romantic tropes she was drawn to, which informed her reading tastes more broadly in later life.
8. Shame and agency
[8.1] The use of fan fiction as a channel for understanding fantasy and exploring erotic possibilities challenges the pervasive idea that girls cannot be sexually agentic beings (Elliott 2010). Many participants ultimately reflected on fan fiction's role in their understanding of their desires, viewing fan fiction as a resource for sexual empowerment, and alleviating their sense of shame. Rose even celebrated the romantic ideals that fan fiction presented to her, connecting this to her present love life, as she explained that fan fiction "has definitely affected the way I see exciting relationships." Rose illustrated this outcome by pointing to her use of saying "this is like a fan fiction" to describe a particularly romantic circumstance—"this is something that people dream up as being the ideal scenario."
[8.2] Fan fiction also enables peer-led sex education among fans who engage with this practice. While one participant was wary of fan fiction as a source of sex education, others expressed that Wattpad was a tool that aided fans in understanding the technicalities of sex, something they believe they would not have been able to inquire about due to societal expectations. Rose admitted that "half the stuff I know about sex is from fan fiction," highlighting that she learned so much "because it was spelt out, literally."
[8.3] Viewing fan fiction as a peer-led sex education tool challenges the historical condemnation of adolescent girls' curiosity about sex and desire (Carboni and Bhana 2019). Fan fiction enables the development of sexual literacy away from prying adult interference, and a sense of figuring out sex together. Participants identified this in their interviews as an aspect that felt positive, even empowering, blunting the shame of engaging with this practice. Autumn reflected that "the beauty of fan fiction and that connection with…anonymous girls that you're assuming to be your age online, is that there is no hierarchy of information." Fan fiction represented a safe space where participants could learn together away from the "power structure" (Autumn) of learning from peer-boys or adults.
[8.4] While fan fiction ought not replace formal sex education, what fan fiction offers is a centering of feminine and queer desire that is pervasively erased in sex education curricula (McLelland 2017). As Autumn reminisced, engaging with fan fiction "is like having those giggly conversations with your sisters." Gaining sexual literacy results in decreased fear and stigma in discussing sex, and as the interviews demonstrate, blunts the shame in the exploration of romantic and sexual desire.
9. Conclusion: The dual nature of fan shame
[9.1] Drawing on interviews with fans of One Direction who read or wrote fan fiction in the past, this article has explored how fans are subject to a persistent sense of shame, but this shame was, and can still be, generative and transformative. Participants spoke to the production of shame induced by the hysterical fangirl trope, which paints a caricature of fans of boy bands as hormonally driven masses of teenage girls that are obsessive, crazy, and creepy. The shame of this trope for participants was heightened by their engagement in One Direction RPF.
[9.2] However, as we have highlighted, shame is not only an individualizing, negative experience—shame can be generative for shamed communities (Halperin and Traub 2009). The interviews reveal that creative fan practices occur despite the overarching framework of shame, and that shame deepens bonds between fans and creates feelings of kinship. Shame provides the impetus for creative expressions of self-exploration and community meaning making. Furthermore, participants recognized the benefit in engaging with fan fiction as a type of peer-led sex education, with fans helping other fans garner sexual literacy and understandings of queer identity. The contradiction between the fans' assumed childhood sexual innocence and their sexualized fan fiction, and associated feelings of shame, made the rebellious act of reading fan fiction more exciting, aiding in understanding romantic and sexual desires.
[9.3] We acknowledge that the small sample size for this study provides a limited account of the One Direction fan experience. Notably few of the fans talked about the link between their cultural background and their experience of shame; however, this present study connects with a larger body of work being conducted by Samlal that seeks to attend to this question more directly. The collection of fan narratives reflected in this article demonstrate the interesting dual effect of shame—its degrading quality and its motivational ability to push the transgression of normative bounds. Ultimately, though fans are made to feel shame about their fan behaviors, fans persist in their practices in spite of and via this shame.
10. Acknowledgment
[10.1] This research was supported by the Commonwealth through an Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship (https://doi.org/10.82133/C42F-K220).