^ that's interesting, why do you think that is?
And yay Emily!
okay, I guess this is a good question to tie into what Steph is talking about.
At the moment, what do you feel is the most popular genre in the BSB fandom and do you think it's always been that way?
I would say when I first started reading BSB fic about ten years or so ago, I think slash was one of the biggies for this fandom as well.
I am going to guess it's a mixture of there always being slash fans, with the added subject that so many 1D fans actually believe that some of them are in a relationship..
. which stems from the boys themselves being incredibly flirtatious and sexual with each other on stage and in interviews.
I would have guessed romance as the most popular genre in BSB fandom, and judging by Julie's statistics, it seems I'm right! I'd say it was probably like that ten years ago as well, there was just more of it, along with everything else. There was definitely a lot more slash in BSB fandom back then - but I also think it depends on the archive. Over here, there's not a lot of it. Scrolling through the BSB section of Archive of Our Own (which doesn't appear to be overly active) the bulk of it seems to be slash.
Along this line of thought, what made you decide to write in the genre you did when you wrote your very first fanfic and have you managed to branch out or do you still stick to the same style you started with?
My very first fanfic was a best friends fall in love type thing where Nick ends up with me, and I wrote it because (as my friend described it when we were twelve) it was the closest we were ever going to get to any of our fantasies. LOL.
Aside from that we also wrote stories about the boys just going about their daily lives and having (what we thought were) hilarious shenanigans. I suppose in that regard I haven't branched out a lot - I still write romance (though I'm no longer a character in the stories) and I still write about the boys day to day shenanigans.
Obviously where I've branched out a bit more is writing slash in another fandom. Also, my writing's a lot darker and more angsty now than it was back then! I suppose that makes sense, since I wouldn't have written that way when I was twelve haha.