1. Shaking the foundations
[1.1] Over the past few years, Transformative Works and Cultures's editorial team has used the space at the beginning of the annual general issue to reinforce our commitment to diversifying fan studies. We view the journal as a big tent under which the varied topics and approaches of contemporary fan studies scholarship enter into conversation, with hopes that this curatorial philosophy will invite those on the margins inside. One challenge to such an approach is the existence of a sort of canon of fan studies scholarship. Fan studies scholars are critical of canonicity as a power structure that limits what readings and reworkings are accepted in fan communities. Yet our own work often plays within (or strains against) the theoretical and methodological lines drawn in texts that show up time and time again on syllabi and in bibliographies. These lines, sometimes reinforced unintentionally through pressure to know the big names of the field, have resulted in the whiteness that the field is often criticized for. Diversifying fan studies is not just about studying more diverse fan communities but is also about diversifying the scholarly grounds upon which we do our work.
[1.2] The journal's activity in the past year has shown just what can happen when we choose to cross, critique, or even ignore canonical lines. We have centered marginalized fans in our special issue "Centering Blackness in Fan Studies" and through the awarding of our second Fans of Color Research Prize. We have also broadened the scope of what kinds of fandom count with our issue "Sports Fandom." Looking forward to next year, we will continue this work in special issues "Gaming Fandom" and "Disability and Fandom." If the foundational texts of fan studies have tended to prescribe narrow ways of understanding who fans are, what they do, and what texts they enjoy, then our goal has been to make room for the fandom killjoys (Pande 2018) and troublemakers who can unsettle those foundations.
[1.3] We are proud to present a general issue that engages in that same work. From our articles and symposium pieces, which offer new methods and frameworks for studying familiar objects, to the introduction of our special section "New Currents," this issue continues the effort to push fan studies forward and ensure that the foundations of our field remain productively unsettled.
2. Articles
[2.1] This jam-packed issue offers insights into understudied communities, new methods for fan studies work, and new perspectives on the familiar study of fan fiction. Three articles raise questions about the relationship between fandom, wellness, and discourses of mental and physical health. Ken Takakusa explores how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the fannish lives of anime song fans in Japan, highlighting the ways that in-person activities are often crucial to fans' social and mental wellbeing. Taylor Drake's article analyzes how fans with eating disorders negotiate anti-anorexia messaging in media, showing how common fannish activities like communal interpretation can result in readings that community outsiders would likely call disordered. In an opposite vein, Rachel Loewen demonstrates how fans reworked ancillary content for the TV show Good Omens that was meant to encourage adherence to COVID-19 lockdown policies. Through transformative works proposing positive aspects of lockdown, fans created health messaging that spoke to intersectional audiences.
[2.2] A second group of articles explore queer identity expression and negotiation in fandom. Clare Sears shines a light on how femslash writers view their labor and contributions to their communities. Their focus on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in this group of writers is a valuable contribution to literature on f/f fans and fandoms. Caitlin Joyce likewise centers an understudied group of fans: queer men who enjoy boys' love (BL). Her ethnographic study of a BL community reveals how queer men use BL texts, often said to be written by and for straight women, to explore their own identities and desires. Ye Jiang's article expands our understanding of the politics of Omegaverse fic by focusing on Chinese fans, whose localization of the genre's norms is complex and progressive.
[2.3] Other studies of fan fiction offer new perspectives on the political, pedagogical, and personal resonances of transformative works. Kelsey Cummings's analysis of real person fiction (RPF) reveals the importance of cultural and political context to RPF. Lines between reality and fiction, fandom and antifandom blur as fans imagine (or parody) the inner lives of celebrities and political figures. Jaime W. Roots shares her method for promoting knowledge development and critical reflection in classes through fan fiction writing. Her article on fan studies pedagogy encourages use of fan fiction assignments that may otherwise have little to do with fan studies. There are also two pieces that take a mixed methods approach to studying fan fiction. Darina Valiakhmetova, Diana Shchelkanova, and Oxana Mikhaylova expand beyond the anglophone world with their work on Russian fan fiction readers. The results of their surveys and interviews help us understand why young women engage with fan fiction outside of the Western, English-speaking context that dominates fan studies. Kate Prior's quantitative analysis of both platonic and romantic Spider-Man fan fiction demonstrates the ways that quantitative word analysis can augment critical reading of fan fiction themes.
[2.4] Finally, we have a group of pieces that introduce new objects and frameworks for thinking about fandom. Michael A. Elliot and Marissa Mowers challenge scholarship that considers fandom as a type of religious devotion. Their exploration of Comic-Con attendees raises questions about what sacredness means in a secular world. James Brooks Kuykendall turns our attention to historical fan studies in his analysis of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Archival work on this group of opera fans shows that many of the fan practices we see today, including cosplay, were present in the early twentieth century. Another piece on music fandom, Janne Poikolainen's study of intergenerational music fandom, also looks at the continuation of fannish attachments and practices over time. His interviews with Finnish children highlight the importance of parental influence on children's fandom.
3. New currents: Fans and AI
[3.1] We are excited to introduce our new special section, New Currents. This section collects articles on new topics or approaches at a smaller scale than a special issue. In this issue, New Currents focuses on how fans and fan studies scholars engage with AI as a tool for transformative engagement with fannish texts. It features four articles and two symposium pieces, along with an introduction by the section's guest editors, Suzanne R. Black and Naomi Jacobs.
4. Symposium
[4.1] This issue features two Symposium pieces. Sidnee Lim explores how fans use fan edits and fancams to reimagine characters as genderqueer. Robert S. Santucci applies the conduit, a motif from fan fiction, to offer a reparative reading of the story of Polyphemus, Acis, and Galatea in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
5. Multimedia
[5.1] This issue reintroduces our Multimedia section as a space for nontextual contributions to fan studies scholarship. While TWC has published multimedia content in the past, our new initiative seeks to emphasize this section and make nontextual formats a more common feature of the field. Kelsey Wildman Stokes presents an interview with Brannon Carty, the director of the fan documentary An Unlikely Fandom: The Impact of Thomas the Tank Engine.
6. Reviews
[6.1] Finally, the issue includes two book reviews. Katherine E. Morrissey reviews Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture by Thomas Baudinette. Fiona Katie Haborak reviews the edited collection Sartorial Fandom: Fashion, Beauty Culture, and Identity, edited by Elizabeth Affuso and Suzanne Scott.
7. Acknowledgments
[7.1] The following people worked on TWC No. 46 in an editorial capacity: Poe Johnson and Mel Stanfill (editors); Taylore Nicole Woodhouse and Tanya Zuk (assistant editors); Jennifer Duggan, Adrienne Raw, and Khaliah Reed (Symposium); and Brienne Adams and Melanie E. S. Kohnen (Review).
[7.2] The following people worked on TWC No. 46 in a production capacity: Jillian Kovach (production editor); Robin F., Beth Friedman, Karen Hellekson, Jillian Kovach, M. Lisa, Christine Mains, and A. Smith (copyeditors); Claire P. Baker, Kristina Busse, Karen Hellekson, Jillian Kovach, M. Lisa, Christine Mains, Rebecca Sentance, and Latina Vidolova (layout); and Jillian Kovach, Courtney Lazore, Christine Mains, Ember Phoenix, Aileen Sheedy, and Latina Vidolova (proofreaders).
[7.3] TWC thanks the board of the Organization for Transformative Works. OTW provides financial support and server space to TWC but is not involved in any way in the content of the journal, which is editorially independent.
[7.4] TWC thanks all its board members, whose names appear on TWC's masthead, as well as the additional peer reviewers who provided service for TWC No. 46: Andrea Acosta, Maria K. Alberto, Thomas Baudinette, Brandon Blackburn, Emily Coccia, Kathryn Conrad, Andrew Crome, Brianna Dym, Michael Elliot, Kelsey Entrikin, Kavita Mudan Finn, Divya Garg, Liang Ge, Maria Mihaela Grajdian, Erica Haugtvedt, Jon Heggestad, Matt Hills, Kyra Hunting, Veronica Joyner, Alice Kelly, Matt Knutson, Jionghao Liu, J. Nicole Miller, Amber Moore, Martine Mussies, Casey Patterson, Federico Pianzola, Melanie Piper, Axel-Nathaniel Rose, Rebecca Rowe, Colin Stokes, Yidong Wang, Rachel Winter, Avery Wright, and Jing (Jamie) Zhao.