#rainbow direction

About the rainbow flags at his show, I think the anon might be referring to this tweet that unfortunately have gotten A LOT of likes 🤬

https://x.com/tpwkk1994/status/2038621810690769320?s=46&t=KM1Y22XQBNGo6oNfvMQrQQ

Well, first of all, that person is 21 and that account was started in 2019, so I’ll take a leap and assume they weren’t a fan back when Rainbow Direction started. They probably don’t even know what Rainbow Direction is. They clearly thing flags began as a Larry thing. I think a person that age is going to have a tough time understanding how homophobic the fandom was back in 2013 when it was started.

The idea of bringing flags to One Direction shows had absolutely nothing to do with Larry and everything to do with wanting to create a safe space for queer fans.

The reason the flags continue at Harry’s and Louis’ solo shows is because of the five of them, they’ve shown the most support to the community. They both have a ton of queer fans. Not all those fans are larries. But the reason so many queer fans are larries is because we see so much of ourselves in them and in their music. They make us feel seen. They make us feel safe. The fact that many of us also believe they’re in a relationship is a separate issue.

That person on Twitter is making an enormous assumption that every person with a flag is a larrie and that every larrie bringing a flag is doing it to support Harry and Louis as a couple, or are doing it because we think Louis (or Harry) is queer. And reading through the thread just proves the point I made the other day that people hate larries more than the idea of Larry. They absolutely refuse to listen to a person making good points if they’re also a larrie.

x

They repeatedly say the flags “started with larries,” which is just factually incorrect. And they seem to have decided that it’s “not normal” to bring flags if you’re not doing it for reasons they agree with.

The problem is that what happens with rhetoric like this is that it ends up being copied by homophobic fans, then queer people feel unsafe at shows because they think, “if I bring my flag with people think I’m a larrie and will they attack me?” I literally got an anon about it yesterday.

In policing how people show their support, you’re actually making the space less safe for queer people as a whole.

If you can get to a Liam memorial, please go. It will be so healing. The 1D community is like nothing else. Find one here

The stories about what Liam and 1D mean to each person, the respectful listening and space for everyone, kindness, tears, joy and absolute delight in talking for hours about every little detail.

The 1D Rainbow Direction spirit is more present than I thought. Sometimes when you look at social media it seems like that couldn't be possible.

I can't even explain it other than this experience made me the most hopeful I've felt about the future of the fandom in a long while.

Got to meet @lilacliam and @youmakemestrong!

Exactly 10 years ago a girl named Danny printed out this rainbow poster and took it to the first concert of One Direction's Where We Are tour:

Anniversaries are always a bit arbitrary, and Rainbow Direction's was always a hard one to pin down.

This blog is just a day or two short of celebrating 11 years and without it Rainbow Direction would have never existed, because the people who were at the start of it would never have met, but its purpose and setup were entirely different and RD was still far from being developed.

The suggestions that eventually took form in "Project Rainbow Direction" were first submitted to the blog in late 2013. The first brainstorm between Kat, Li and Ellis about it, and further strategy talks with Ed and Molly took place in the early months of 2014. The project was announced in February. Haven and Red submitted their winning poster designs in March. Amy developed a logo and opened a merch store for us in early April.

While we've often referred to that midnight brainstorm on a cold January day as the origin of rainbow direction, that was only its conception. We don't even have a record of which date it was. We could also have chosen any of the more pin-downable dates: announcing the project, announcing the poster contest winners, opening the store. But really, all that Rainbow Direction was at those moments, was an idea, a plan, the hope that we had that it was within our, the fandom's power, to change something for the better for the LGBTQIA+ fans in it.

For months all of us, and especially Li, had worked tirelessly to encourage people to sign up and commit to bringing a rainbow poster to a show.

And then the big moment was there. First day of tour. The moment of truth. Would the people we'd encouraged actually have the courage to take a rainbow to a show, and stick it up in the air? Would it matter to people? Would it actually change something?

10 years on, we know that it did. So much more than we could ever have imagined.

But that was was anything but self-evident at the time. We had no idea. We nervously monitored the wwa tag and the blogs of those who had signed up, and then, after a few days, finally this report appeared. Danny from Bogota shared the first Rainbow Direction fan report.

I think if you'd ask any of us who were here at the time, they'd remember fondly how knowing that someone had actually done it, something happened in the real world, and if one person had done it, more would, how that sparked a fire in our hearts. A ball of warm feelings, not quite the same feeling as before. Before, there had been buzz and excitement and drive, but this, this felt different. Hope. A sense of the personal strength, and collective power, that could come from this if we could make it grow. It took a lot of hard work from a lot of people who committed themselves tirelessly to the campaign, but grow it did.

Thanks to Danny. Thanks to all of you who at some point or other, crafted something rainbow at home, took a rainbow to a show, put a rainbow on your blog, showed that you believed in your own power to change something, and showed the LGBTQI+ people in the fandom that they mattered, and that you cared.

It has been quite the roller coaster ride. As the coordinating group, we've had many ups and downs, and by now, for most of us, our attention has been drawn away from the fandom by our real lives and new pursuits. But regularly, when one of us checks in and sees the rainbows at one of the boys' shows, we share, revel, and sit amazed at how this thing, that once took so much effort on our part to get one, two, three people per show signed up, has grown into a regular staple, with people spontaneously taking it upon themselves to organize for entire venues to light up in a coordinated rainbow pattern, to design new posters and rainbow outfits, or to hand out hundreds of mini rainbow flags in the audience. This community has taken it up as its collective responsibility - let's get those rainbows out. How beautiful is that?! You are all so so amazing.

Thank you, you beautiful people, for becoming a part of this, for making it your own, for making it better, for carrying it forward, into the future.