Every month, the OTW hosts guest posts on our OTW News accounts to share outside perspectives on the OTW or aspects of fandom. These posts reflect the personal views of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the OTW.
Maya Wei Yan Linsley (she/any) is an English MA student at the University of Victoria, BC. She is interested in fandom, archives, popular media, and the discount produce section at her local market. Today, Maya talks about her journey from being a fanfiction enthusiast to becoming a fan studies researcher, sharing the joys and challenges of exploring the intersections of fandom and academia.
How did you first find out about fandom and fanworks?
Oh boy… well, I was maybe 11 or 12 when I got onto the Internet, and somehow right away I found Harry Potter fanfiction on FF.net. I don’t remember what search rabbit hole led me there, but it was a quick pipeline to Wattpad, where I proceeded to spend all my free time during middle school, reading and writing fanfiction for both Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. I migrated to AO3 around the same time everyone else did, and I’ve been reading and writing on there ever since (for different fandoms!).
How did your honours thesis, Life After Canon, come about?
In my second year of undergrad—so this would have been 2021—I was taking an Honours seminar where I found that I kept bringing fanfiction up in discussions. My professor, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Leighton, noted my interest and nudged me to look into fan studies. I was mind-blown to discover that what I had always thought of as a guilty pleasure was in fact a legitimate field of academic inquiry. When it came time to start writing my Honours graduating essay in 2023, Dr. Leighton agreed to be my supervisor. After listening to me rant on various aspects of fanfiction that interested me, she picked up on my continuous mention of Dramione (Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger) and suggested that as a thesis topic. I’m grateful that she did, as the Dramione fanfiction community is, I think, uniquely rich in its textual life. I honestly think a whole book could be written on the subject.
Can you share a little bit about the “fan/study contradiction”? As a fan yourself, what has been challenging for you about doing academic research on fanfiction? What has been rewarding?
The problem with studying fanfiction as a cultural artifact is that literary methodology is fundamentally divorced from the principles of transformative creation. Or to put it more simply, the fanfiction writer is writing for free, out of love, and to produce joy; whereas the academic is writing for work, to make a critical assessment of function, aesthetic/cultural value, and “meaning” (whatever that really means). However, as someone who does both kinds of writing, I feel strongly that joy and criticism are intertwined, because they certainly are for me. I actually see fanfiction as a kind of literary criticism in its own right. As you can probably imagine, that idea doesn’t go down well in certain academic circles.
Balancing two very different approaches to reading and writing has been my chief difficulty so far. However, it’s also been the most rewarding, and has completely changed the way I write and think about writing. Embracing the tension opens doors to experimental writing approaches, which I love having the freedom to explore.
What are you most excited about as you continue with fan studies in your Master’s in English?
Since my attempts to analyze Dramione fanfiction using traditional methods, I’m no longer so certain that literary analysis of specific fan texts should be a priority for the field. Again, the act is essentially divorced from what the point of fanfiction is, and as a fan writer myself I’m wary of losing sight of that point, especially in academic spaces where people tend to lack fandom context. My goal with my Master’s is to shift focus from the texts to the places they live. I’m very interested in AO3 as a paratextual space, especially with the way tagging is so often used as an extension of the story. I’m stoked to see what happens when I put AO3 and archival theory side-by-side.
How did you hear about the OTW and what do you see its role as?
Being on AO3 led me to discover what the OTW is. I think I first clarified the whole structure for myself back in high school, and since then I’ve been donating and following along casually. I think the OTW performs a unique cultural service and that its continued existence is very necessary, not just for fandom but for art and culture much more broadly. I’m always trying to figure out how to articulate the depth of this necessity to the academics around me.
What fandom things have inspired you the most?
Academically, I’m drawn to longform fandom discussions in places like Reddit and Tumblr, because some of the analysis and debate that goes down is, like I mentioned before, essentially literary criticism. Yet it gets ten times the engagement that academic papers do. I think it says something about writing that maybe the powers that be are not quite ready to hear!
On a personal/fan level, I’ve spent the last eight-ish years being deeply immersed (by turns) in the RWBY and Genshin Impact fandoms. Especially Genshin Impact, which, I’m unashamed to admit, I wrote over 100k words of fanfic for last year alone. :’) For that and other minor reasons I try to stay far away from these franchises in my academic work! It’s just a bit too personal of an obsession. However, Genshin is definitely a unique case when it comes to fandom (in that the game devs have essentially figured out how to make fanwork equal capital) so, academically, it’s definitely been on my mind… who knows what could happen down that rabbit hole.
Speaking of Genshin, I want to shout out Castle of Glass by wordlessimpact, Oh, Prodigal Son by iandari, and the springtimes you never saw by windsgrandode for being some of my all-time favourite works of Genshin fanfic. As a storyteller, they have really changed the way I think about things.
We encourage suggestions from fans for future guest posts, so contact us if you have someone in mind! Or you can visit our Pinboard account to catch up on earlier guest posts.