Confessions of a Larry Shipper (Who Writes Het Fics)
by walkstar

Disclaimer: before you roll your eyes and stop reading because "ugh Larry isn't real," this piece of writing isn't meant to persuade you that it is. At all. I will never claim to know someone's sexuality unless they've personally told me, and I would never dream of outing anyone. I am a Larry shipper in the way other people ship Hermione with Draco. Or Snape with Sirius (that's some hot shit right there). It's purely in the realm of fantasy. That being said, LARRY IS REAL!! lol I'm just kidding. Calm down.

Hi, my name is Walkstar (hiiiiiiiiii walkstar). Oops, this is a self-help meeting, isn't it? No? It's a confessional? Okay then... I'm a 39-year-old high school English teacher who is stalker-level obsessed (🏡🌳👀) with One Direction, and more specifically, the fantastical (b)romance between two of the boys, known as Larry Stylinson. At the same time, I'm entirely enamored with Harry Styles. He's a beautiful man. Who isn't in love with him? (Cue anti-larries: LOUIS).

So how does this happen? How did I fall into this bottomless pit that is the 1D fandom? How did I fall for a boy almost half my age (and what will my husband say if he ever reads my fanfic)? How did I fall "ankles over arse," to borrow one of my character's expressions, in love with their love?

It would be easy to blame my students for the One Direction obsession. Just look at all the cool shit they've given me.

(The shrine...cough I mean...shelf in my classroom devoted to 1D)

(Rainbow 1D socks, Larry sticker.)

They bring me pages out of magazines with Harry in little yellow shorts, samples of the various 1D perfumes, stickers, cups, original drawings. One kid made me a skateboard with One Direction's faces on it (the same kid who painted that pic of Harry on the shrine. I mean... shelf.) Hell, a set of twin directioners brought me a stress banana 🍌 (yeah, like a stress ball, but it's a banana. The texture is...uncomfortable, disconcerting, floppy.). Ya know, because Harry likes to eat bananas. He's really good at eating bananas...

(Don't worry...the students' grades were in no way affected by these gifts. But like, rainbow 1D knee socks. Come on. That deserves extra credit. Nope. I am unbribable (<--- apparently not a word). Unless you bring me the actual Harry Styles, and then shit, I'll convince all your teachers to give you an A. If you bring Louis too, I'll hack into the computer system and change last year's grades too.)

Cough. I mean. What? As if I know how to hack. (I'm an English teacher not a...whatever kind of teacher would be good at hacking)

But the truth is that I was a closet 1D fan before I ever started talking to the kids about them--I nearly went to see This Is Us alone. How sad. I think I became a fan like so many others; I heard a song I liked then googled them. This is the kiss of death for all of us directioners, am I right? It's like falling into a wormhole, a vortex. Time stops while you watch video after video, giggling like an idiot at their ridiculous antics. And then you sort of snap out of it and realize that time hasn't stopped, you've just stopped attending to your responsibilities. There are dishes to do and papers to grade and cats to feed.

Just two cats before you start labeling me in your mind as some sad old cat lady mumbling about gay boybanders and surrounded by a clowder of mangy felines picking the fleas off one another. I only have TWO. Harry and Louis.

I kid. I'm kidding. Their names are Larry and Houis. No. Not really. They're called Molly and Milton, okay. I'm not quite that obsessed. Although... I did tell my husband that the next pet would be called Larry regardless of its sex. So...maybe I am that obsessed.

Back to those videos. Any self-respecting 1D fan has watched the xfactor video diaries. And for some of us in the fandom, those fetus videos offer just a little more. A tender touch, a longing glance. There seemed to be something between Louis and Harry in those early days, something more than just friends. (I mean, the chocolate coin video alone...)

When I started writing THE OTHER ONE, my first het Harry fic, I repeatedly referred to the intense eye contact that Harry makes with my female lead. But really, what I was picturing, what I was remembering, was the way Harry looked at Louis. That loving gaze that just couldn't be broken. The smirk and stare. I wanted Harry to look at me the way he looked at Louis.

So I dove in and wrote. Two hundred thousand+ words over 71 chapters of love and loss, grief and growth, forgiveness and fortitude. THE OTHER ONE is largely based on my childhood, and aside from the fact that she's famous and I'm not, the main character Maddie is basically me. I had a pretty shitty childhood, darker maybe than most, but I'm still here. And I want Harry. He is the personification of my sexual orientation. I'm not straight; I'm Styles. So naturally the book contains lots and lots of sex. It's pretty steamy.

(Me. Not my cardboard cutout of Liam, but I'd visit his snake habitat...)

But while I wrote my Hetero/Styles masterpiece (lol), I fostered this secret love for the imagined romance between these two men. It may sound odd, but I never really read any Larry fics early on in my obsession, partly because I had read some really bad het fics and had shied away from reading fanfiction in general for a long time. I watched a lot of videos, though, things like the iconic freddieismyqueen's three editions of the 30 Iconic Larry Moments (so 90 moments 😂) and some VERY steamy lookalike videos.

(I watch Larry videos when I should be doing almost anything else, including grading essays.)

God don't get me started on the tattoos. Louis got the dagger, and we'll just leave it at that. I cry. And the songs written by Haz and Lou... (remember, I'm an English teacher. Interpreting poetry is, like, what I do. Reading between the lines--as much as antis hate larries for doing it--is literally what I studied in college. I have a degree in figuring out what the fuck other people meant and a credential to teach others how to do it, too). So along with those videos, and the fucking tattoos, the songs written by these boys made me fall in love with the idea of their love.

I don't care what people say when we're together. I don't care I'm not scared of love. They don't know about the I love yous. I'll never leave if you keep holding me this way. Nobody loves you baby the way I do. I can't contain it anymore; I'm all yours. Baby, we're perfect. What a feeling to be a king beside you somehow; I wish I could be there now. I love you, that's all I do.

I know. Those songs could be about anyone. Taylor, Eleanor, fuck, they could even be about Zayn. We honestly don't know. As Harry said, "is Olivia even a person? Is Olivia an emotion? Is she a place? We don't know." But for people who ship Larry, those words hold a deeper meaning; we hope each one is their love defined and declared through rhyme and meter, an ode to one another, set to music. In the same way you might wish the songs were about you, for you, Larry shippers believe, imagine, wish that Harry and Louis wrote them for each other. (Side note, when Made in the AM came out, I listened to What a Feeling and Long Way Down back to back and cried in my car on the way to work. It's a heartbreaking combination that would make even the stoutest larrie wonder whether they've broken up.)

But in general, I'm a pretty chill larrie. I love the idea of it, and part of me hopes it's real, but I don't harbor any illusions that I know what is going on in their private lives.

In the last couple of years, I created fan accounts on social media to promote my writing, and I was sort of surprised by the difference in tone I found. Tumblr is a dark hole of larrie. Like. When I first learned how to tumble, I didn't come up for air for three days. I was deep in a labyrinth of Larry smut. On Instagram, nobody cared if I said I was Larry AF but wrote het fic. They didn't even blink. Hardcore Larry shippers were like, cool. Ima read it. Here's a good Larry fic. Hardcore Harry girls were like, okay cool, your smutty captions are hilarious. But on Twitter I found a very different atmosphere. The anti vs larrie battle raged (and still rages) almost daily, and the few times I've ventured into the mix, I've been attacked from both sides.

Not one for conflict, I've pretty much kept my views to myself on Twitter, but sometimes I can't help it. Like when JeddieJay posts a new chapter of Confessions of a Gay Disney Prince, and I can't contain my excitement. I will tweet about it, and I don't care if you hate Larry/larries. Fuck off, it's a good book. Or when Always in My Heart hit 2 million retweets on Valentine's Day, and it was just the most romantic fucking thing ever. I was happier about that than my own fic hitting 100 thousand reads the SAME DAY. (Other people were not so happy, telling Larry shippers to cut their veins and drink bleach...but I suspect those people aren't happy about much, really).

I wish we could all just live and let live. You want to ship Larry? Cool. But maybe don't send shit to their families. You don't ship Larry? Cool. Don't seek out the people who do and give them shit for it.

Someone asked me if I really think they had anything going on. I don't know. Sometimes I do. But sometimes I think that Harry just looks at everyone that adoringly, and everyone looks at him that adoringly too. But ultimately it doesn't matter. For me, shipping Larry has never been about whether it's real or not. It's about the idea of a love so profound that millions of people embrace it. Does that love need to be real? No. Because the idea of love is powerful enough.

Any confessions to share about your OTP?