OTW Guest Post: Olivia Riley
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | OTW Guest Post: Olivia Riley |
| Interviewer: | |
| Interviewee: | Olivia Riley |
| Date(s): | January 31, 2016 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | |
| External Links: | OTW Guest Post: Olivia Riley, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
OTW Guest Post: Olivia Riley is a 2016 interview with Olivia Riley.
It was done as part of a series. See OTW Guest Post.
Introduction
Today’s post is a Q&A with University of Minnesota undergraduate Olivia Riley. Olivia’s thesis on Archive of Our Own and the Gift Culture of Fanfiction caught our attention. As she created a video for 2015’s International Fanworks Day, we ask her about looking at fanworks through an academic perspective. [1]
Excerpts
What made you think about writing your thesis on a fandom topic?
A summer ago, I discovered rather accidentally and then subsequently devoured the wonderful book Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls by Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis, and that was my first real introduction to the academic study of fandom. I was totally captivated by the idea that other people had spent time investigating and working to understand fandom, and that maybe I could do that too! So, when I embarked on my research project, there was no question that it was going to be about something fannish.
Then came the more difficult matter of deciding what angle I wanted to come at the topic from – communications, cultural studies, gender studies; a quantitative analysis or fic or a qualitative analysis of community; did I want to focus on vids or art or fic, etc. I ended up choosing to focus on fic, through the lens of the gift culture, mainly because it was an aspect of fan culture that I’d been peripherally aware of for years, but hadn’t known there was a name for.
Did your perspective on fanworks change as you worked on your thesis?
It did. I realize now that what I really fell in love with wasn’t just the fanworks, but the love that their creators put into them. I’d often fan-girled in isolation, or only with a few people that I’d met in real life, but this project really opened my eyes to the expansive and amazing communities that blossom around every imaginable aspect of fandom. I saw how these incredible fans put their blood, sweat, and tears into their works and share them freely and with great love to their fellow fans, often in opposition to and despite the machinations of male, capitalist, power structures. (To my great pleasure, the more research I did, the more the feminist tilt of fan creation became apparent!) So, before I began my project I thought fanworks were really cool, but by the time I’d finished, I had a whole new level of respect for fanworks and their talented creators.
What do fanworks mean to you today?
To me, fanworks mean love, community, and freedom. They represent social ties and caring between friends and fellow fans, and they’re a tangible representation of these relationships. And they also mean freedom and revolution to me, because they represent a female tradition of creativity that has grown and thrived and created its own space separate from male-dominated capitalism. Fanworks are beautiful and magical and I could gush about them for hours…and in fact, did gush about them for months on end in the form of writing a ninety page paper!