The deadline is approaching for 2(!) upcoming special issues CFPs! Both Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms have a January 1st submission deadline--don't miss your chance! Find more information on our front page:

Closing out #TWC46 is Fiona Katie Haborak's review of Elizabeth Affuso & @iheartfatapollo.bsky.social's edited collection, "Sartorial Fandom"! Read the full review here:

For #TWC46, @katiedidnt.bsky.social reviewed @tbaudinette.bsky.social's "Boys love media in Thailand"! Morrissey states that Baudinette "asks [us] to problematize [our] assumptions about queer media, embrace ambiguity, & resist older theoretical frameworks". Read the review here:

#TWC46 also reintroduces our Multimedia section as a space for nontextual contributions! Here, 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. Read it today:

Next, Robert S. Santucci's "Polyphemus ❤️ Acis: The conduit in Ovid's Metamorphoses" applies the conduit, a motif from fan fiction, to offer a reparative reading of Ovid's story. Read it in #TWC46:

The first Symposium piece in #TWC46 comes to us from Sidnee Lim! In "Queer time and space in genderqueering fancams #transpeterparkeredit," Lim explores how fans use fan edits and fancams to reimagine characters as genderqueer! Read here:

An incredible, must-read piece! “Whether end products created by AI hold legitimate creative value is, in our view, irrelevant here; our concern is with systems of power and their relationship to fan cultures.”

Irissa Cisternino & Rebecca Radillo do a great job of laying out the stakes for creativity, especially fan creativity, in the wake of gen AI. They ask what it means to outsource 'labors of love' to a tool, a similar question asked by @elizabethminkel.bsky.social in ellipsus.com/blog/generat...

Jing Bai's exploration of Japanese fandom otaku communities treats thinking about the incursion of gen AI into fan activities as a consideration of the information seeking and organisation practices of humans. Thought-provoking stuff!

Closing out our Fans & AI section, Jing Bai asks us to reconsider the relationships between humans and AI in "Otaku and AI: Reconsidering human, machine, and animal"! Read their Symposium piece in #TWC46 today!

In a New Currents symposium, Irissa Cisternino & Rebecca Radillo ask us to consider major questions about how generative AI problematizes existing power structures in and around fandom in #TWC46! Read their piece here:

This article examines ChatGPT's biases around queer and heteronormative representation in creative writing and fanfiction. Interesting stuff!

This article by Tara Heimberger delves further into the popular fan activity of creating, sharing and interacting with characters chat bots, and places this activity in a contimuum of creative and immersive fan practices.

@journal.transformativeworks.org published an amazing fanzine on the theme of friendships in fandoms. It's really nice to read about what is, essentially, the core and result of many fandoms ! You can read it for free on their website : www.transformativeworks.org/fandom-frien... #zine #fandom

This is such a great article by Eva Cheuk-Yin Li & Ka-Wei Pang about a specific incident in fandom in which discourse around AI deepfakes was weaponised by fans. Beyond the incident itself, it offers a thoughtful example of how to engage with fandom incidents with care and respect.

Eva Cheuk-Yin Li & Ka-Wei Pang close out the New Currents Articles with ""This is a deepfake!": Celebrity scandals, parodic deepfakes, and a critically speculative ethics of care for fandom research in the age of artificial intelligence"! Read it in #TWC46:

Tara Heimberger moves beyond static fan fiction to examine immersive character chatbots that allow fans to carry out a conversation with fan objects in "Character.AI and the quest for immersion in fan fiction practices" for #TWC46! Read it now:

Next in New Currents, @drtlwagner.bsky.social & Alison Harding use traditional analyses to examine work created using generative AI in ""Remember, love knows no boundaries and comes in many forms": The conceptualization of queerness within AI-generated fan works"! Read it in #TWC46:

oooo, you want to be edited by these two, they are wonderful! <3

Our account doesn't and will not promote AI fanworks or fanarts, as we value human made works of art. But if you want to know more the place of AI in fandoms, this editorial is a nice gateway to this subject ! #fanfic #fandom

This article by @julianeugarten.bsky.social is a fascinating glimpse into fanfiction responding to Ancient Greek mythology as well as a meditation on the suitability of specific digital methods for analysing fanfic, emphasising the importance of close reading in computational literary studies 👀📖

In #TWC46's first New Currents article, @julianeugarten.bsky.social explores the potential of a suite of natural language processing and machine learning tools to examine power and gender dynamics in fan fiction featuring characters from Greek mythology! Read it here:

Opening #TWC46's New Currents on Fans and AI, guest editors @suzannerblack.bsky.social & @ladylark.bsky.social identify potential areas of disruption to contemporary fandom & fan studies arising from AI and suggest what the consequences might be. Read the editorial here:

#TWC46 features our first ever section titled 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! Stay tuned!

Taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming to share some horror-related articles from our Archive!

#TWC46's Article section ends with @janpoi.bsky.social's "Intergenerational dynamics of children's music fandom: An enculturation perspective"! This study of intergenerational music fandom, also looks at the continuation of fannish attachments and practices over time. Read it here:

For #TWC46, James Brooks Kuykendall turns our attention to historical fan studies in his analysis of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society! Read "Fandom and the early years of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society (1924–45)" today:

In "Beyond the "fandom as religion" comparison: Measuring the sacred dimensions of Comic-Con fan devotion," Michael A. Elliott & Marissa Mowers challenge scholarship that considers fandom as a type of religious devotion via an exploration of Comic-Con attendees. Read it in #TWC46:

For #TWC46, @thekateprior.bsky.social offers a quantitative analysis of both platonic and romantic Spider-Man fan fiction in "Daddy issues/daddy kink: Remixing masculine authority in Spider-Man fan fiction"! Read it here:

In "Young women and fan fiction: Motives, reading practices, and reader types," Darina Valiakhmetova, Diana Shchelkanova, and Oxana Mikhaylova expand beyond the anglophone world with their work on Russian fan fiction readers! Read it in #TWC46:

In #TWC46, Jaime W. Roots shares her method for promoting knowledge development and critical reflection in classes through fan fiction writing! Read it here: journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/tw...

In #TWC46, Kelsey Cummings's analysis of real person fiction (#RPF) reveals the importance of cultural and political context to RPF in their Article, "Real enough: Power and politics in real person fiction"! Read it here:

Ye Jiang's article in #TWC46 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. Read "Navigating gender in censored Chinese A/B/O fiction" now:

Next in #TWC46, Caitlin Joyce's ethnographic study of a #BL community reveals how queer men use BL texts to explore their identities and desires. Read Joyce's article, ""I wish my life was like this": Queer identity work in BL fandom," here:

Clare Sears shines a light on how femslash writers view their labor and contributions to their communities in their #TWC46 Article, "Come as you are: Sex, race, and writing in f/f slash fan fiction communities"! Read it here:

In "Surviving Armageddon (aka COVID-19) through "Good Omens: Lockdown" fan fiction," Rachel Loewen demonstrates how fans created health messaging that spoke to intersectional audiences through #GoodOmens fic! Read the Article in #TWC46:

Next up in #TWC46, Taylor Drake's analyzes how fans with eating disorders negotiate anti-anorexia messaging in media in "Disordered eating, disordered reading: Wintergirls and the fannish practices of pro-ana"! Read it here:

*NOT* about the game. In the new issue of @journal.transformativeworks.org "...this discourse analysis of otaku users' experiences with Waifu Labs, an AI anime portrait generator, suggests an alternative perspective on the relationships between human and AI." doi.org/10.3983/twc....

The first Article in #TWC46, by @takakusa.bsky.social, 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. Read it here:

My first journal article has officially been published! 🎉 journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/tw...

come copyedit for @journal.transformativeworks.org !

In the opening editorial for #TWC46, coeditors @melstanfill.bsky.social and Poe Johnson focus on diversifying "the scholarly grounds upon which we do our work" and aim to "make room for the fandom killjoys (Pande 2018) & troublemakers who can unsettle those foundations"! Read more:

My lovely friend Naomi Jacobs (@ladylark.bsky.social) and I wanted to explore the repercussions of the new-found prevalence of AI on fans, fandom and fan studies. Some excellent scholars contributed articles to a special section of @journal.transformativeworks.org, which is out now! Enjoy!

Proud to see my article 'Using Riveter to map gendered power dynamics in Hades/Persephone fan fiction' in @journal.transformativeworks.org, my favorite academic journal. Want to know how fanfiction portrays power dynamics between these two? Read on! journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/tw...

📣 #TWC is excited to announce the publication of #TWC46, our annual general issue! This issue, however, holds some new and exciting features. Dig in at this link: buff.ly/EHJTStO

I'm really excited that a collection of fascinating work on fandom, fans and AI that @suzannerblack.bsky.social and I co-edited is out today in the new volume of @journal.transformativeworks.org - and as the journal's first 'New Currents' section! Read our editorial here doi.org/10.3983/twc....

In 2019, we published #TWC31, a special issue on Fan Fiction and Ancient Scribal Cultures guest-edited by Frauke Uhlenbruch and Sonja Ammann! This special issue explores the potential of fan fiction as an interpretative model to study ancient religious texts. Explore it here:

NEW CFP ALERT! 📣 Check out the details of our upcoming special issue on Latin American Fandoms guest edited by Yazmín Carrizales and Libertad Garzón at the following link: buff.ly/9PupLIf ! Deadline is 1/1/2026!

NEW CFP ALERT 📣 Check out the details of our upcoming special issue on Music Fandom guest edited by @jenessawilliams.bsky.social & @lucykbennett.bsky.social at the follow link: buff.ly/YDOflaI...! Deadline is 01/01/2026!