Stan #6: Derya Sayın

🦸 Stan: Derya Sayın

How would you complete the sentence: “I am a fan of …” What were the universes you were a fan of during your childhood?

This question has a very long answer. I’ve always been someone who was a fan of something and made a “big deal” out of them. Growing up, my answer to something that I was a “fan of” would definitely be Harry Potter. 

To me, the Harry Potter universe had been a gateway to friendships and writing. However, I now stopped supporting the author due to some problematic political opinions she has, therefore shelving my obsession with the universe. Besides Harry Potter, I could count a couple of things that I was a fan of growing up, which had an effect on my developing personality: 

1. Group Hepsi, 
2. Tokio Hotel, 
3. My Chemical Romance, 
4. Doctor Who, 
5. Sherlock Holmes (especially the BBC production TV series), 
6. Les Misérables (the musical movie), 
7. Marvel Universe (especially the X-Men series), 
8. Robin Hobb’s The Realm of the Elderlings series.

How does what you are a fan of affect you, your life, and your creations?

My love for writing had been the biggest thing my admiration, or, “fanning” brought me. The friend who introduced me to Tokio Hotel also introduced me to a fan website which was dedicated to the band. On this website, I was taken in by fanfiction, both writing and reading fanfiction contributed to my developing a reading habit. Although my fanfiction creations started with Tokio Hotel, they skyrocketed during my fan phases for Sherlock (BBC) and Les Misérables. 

Do your creations intersect with your admirations/fanning?

Maybe not directly with what I create today, but I believe them to be the reason behind why I create what I do today. Writing fanfictions and growing up on fan websites pulled me into analysing popular culture, after all. As an art historian who has a Master’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies, I can say that popular culture (regardless of the time period) has a direct influence on art and social structures. Currently, I take great care to analyse an artwork through a feminist and diverse perspective, which I think is a habit I developed during the process of dissecting popular culture in the first place. 

Is there a universe you would like to live in? What does it look like?

I think it’ll be a trick answer but I think I would mostly want to live in the Doctor Who universe. In this way, I wouldn’t have to live in one single universe but could instead take a TARDIS and travel throughout different time periods and planets and avoid giving an actual answer to this question forever!