1. It takes a global village
[1.1] Last summer, the Transformative Works Cultures team got a little bigger when Tanya Zuk and Taylore Nicole Woodhouse were brought on as assistant editors. Issue 43 is the first issue that these new additions have watched come to fruition as part of the journal's editorial team. As Tanya and Taylore have learned the process of running the journal and Poe and Mel have explained all the ins and outs and places things can go off the rails, we've come to appreciate more than ever the care that everyone puts into the processes of publication—whether peer review, revision, copyediting, or formatting. Fan studies has at its roots a deep concern for the gift economies that drive so many aspects of fandom and transformative media cultures. TWC is likewise a labor of love, and we wanted to take this space to thank the more than fifty volunteers who put their time, energy, and expertise into each issue. Without them, it would be impossible to sustain this vibrant open-access venue for fan studies scholarship.
[1.2] With our expanded team, we continue to work toward fulfilling TWC's potential to represent the rich diversity of fan culture by supporting historically marginalized scholars and fans of color, nontraditional fannish objects and practices, and even new presentational modes within the journal. TWC is a pillar of fan studies research, and part of what makes being a part of this journal so exciting is the prospect of pushing the boundaries of what fan studies can be.
[1.3] We remain eager to see research about the intersection of fandom and identity—particularly historically marginalized people—flourish in the journal. Two upcoming special issues—"Centering Blackness" and "Fandom and Disability"—are continuing in this work. We're also celebrating scholars who shine a critical light on racially marginalized and/or non-Western fans through the Fans of Color Research Prize, which launched this year. The winner will be announced in the coming months. The judging process for the research prize has reminded us that the problem of whiteness in fan studies is not just a "black and white" issue—the bias toward English-speaking, Western fans is also an obstacle that fan studies must overcome. TWC has become a venue for pushing back against the Western bias in fan studies research, as we see in Yinhao Wu's piece on virtual idols, the "call to arms" from Latin American fan studies scholars, and our previous special issue, "Chinese Fandoms."
[1.4] We're also trying to expand what kinds of fandom we study. You'll find in this issue insights on sports video games and even Shakespeare. It is our hope that as we provide a place for scholars seeking out new sites of fannish activity, TWC can reimagine fan studies as a big tent, making all scholars who care about fans and fandom feel like they belong, regardless of whether their work is represented in canonical works or stems from a subfield.
2. Articles
[2.1] This issue shines a light on several underexplored fan practices, from period costuming to political fandom. Two articles explore craftsmanship as a transformative practice. Creating a distinction between cosplay and the fandom of costuming, Victoria L. Godwin's piece focuses on craftsmanship and artistry over performance and identity. Naomi Jacobs and JSA Lowe's article explores a niche fan practice—fan fiction book binding or fan binding. This practice turns digital works back into haptic experiences imbued with craft and consideration explored by the authors. We also see costuming and performance as a part of a fan's larger constellation of practices in Karis Jones and Sahara Kruidenier's article on restorying—the deliberate contradiction of authorial intent—among fans of the video game Until Dawn. They show how multiple modes of engagement with the text allow fans to rewrite aspects of the game they find problematic or unfulfilling. Costuming and performance are further explored as part of meaning-making in historical fandoms in Martine Mussies's article on historical reenactments of the English monarch King Alfred.
[2.2] Finally, this issue helps us understand the communicative resources and strategies that fans use to convey their beliefs about fannish objects and each other. Adam Nicholas Cohen deepens our understanding of political fandoms through ethnographic work on debate watch parties, showing how fans engage with electoral politics using the cultural resources of sports fandom. Caleb George Hubbard, Kyle A. Hammonds, and Lindsey Meeks examine the communicative strategies that fans use to establish status hierarchies in the Marvel fandom, with special attention given to how fans deploy identity-based arguments to legitimate or invalidate a person's fandom. Carrie D. Hill's work examines the fan fiction tagging system across fandoms in her meta-study, identifying types of relationships in tagging that are currently missing in the taxonomy.
3. Special section: Shakespeare and antifandom
[3.1] This section features six articles and two symposium pieces, along with its own introduction. The pieces explore Shakespeare antifandom in two ways: as external antifandom that challenges the perceived value of Shakespeare, and as internal antifandom that gatekeeps Shakespeare against interlopers.
4. Symposium
[4.1] The two pieces in this issue's Symposium section highlight the need for non-American, non-English speaking fandoms and fan practices to be explored in fan studies. Yinhao Wu examines how the introduction of a virtual character affects relationships between performances and fans in Chinese virtual idol fandoms. Authors Adriana Amaral, Clarice Greco, Libertad Borda, and Nadiezhda Camacho Quiroz work together to highlight the growing research in fan studies in Latin America across three distinct cultures and two languages on a single continent.
5. Reviews
[5.1] Megan Bontrager provides an extensive review of The Shakespeare Multiverse: Fandom as Literary Praxis by Valerie M. Fazel and Louise Geddes. Jack Murray breaks down Beyond the Deck: Critical Essays on Magic: The Gathering and Its Influence, edited by Shelly Jones, highlighting this resource's accessibility for nonplayer scholars.
6. Acknowledgments
[6.1] The following people worked on TWC No. 43 in an editorial capacity: Poe Johnson and Mel Stanfill (editors); Taylore Nicole Woodhouse and Tanya Zuk (assistant editors); Jennifer Duggan, Hanna Hacker, Bridget Kies, Khaliah Reed, and Adrienne Raw (Symposium); and Melanie E. S. Kohnen (Review).
[6.2] The following people worked on TWC No. 43 in a production capacity: Jillian Kovach and Christine Mains (production editors); Robin F., Beth Friedman, Amanda Hartley, Jillian Kovach, LizL, M. Lisa, Christine Mains, and A. Smith (copyeditors); Claire Baker, Kristina Busse, Karen Hellekson, M. Lisa, Christine Mains, Rebecca Sentance, and Latina Vidolova (layout); and Emily Cohen, Karalyn, Courtney Lazore, Christine Mains, Ember Phoenix, Aileen Sheedy, and Latina Vidolova (proofreaders).
[6.3] 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.
[6.4] 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. 43: Gemma Allred, Sky LaRell Anderson, Anna Blackwell, Shira Buchsbaum, Julia Bullard, Monica Flegel, Louise Geddes, Fiona Haborak, Nicolle Lamerichs, Josef Nguyen, Stephen O'Neill, Ludi Price, E. Charlotte Stevens, Catherine Tosenberger, Jennie Votava, Rachel Winter, and Neta Yodovich.