This week, the journal Transformative Works and Cultures released their special issue on Fandom and Platforms. The SWG features in two of the articles in this issue!

Welmoed Fenna Wagenaar in Discord as a Fandom Platform: Locating a New Playground looked at two Discord servers and used the lens of play to study how "users interact with and negotiate rule-based structures and designs" on a Discord server. It won't be hard to figure out which is the SWG, even though we are not named!

How fans play together is one of the questions considered by the author, which made me think of how we play together on the SWG. One key point that Wagenaar makes is that fans use multiple platforms and technologies simultaneously, and it is hard to separate out our Discord server and the conversations and play that happens there from the fanworks that are posted to our archive (and others). Conversations and play can be both in response to fanworks, and fanworks of course arise from fan communities on platforms like Discord. Wagenaar also looked at how our relatively high level of moderation creates "a conflict-free space [for fans] to enjoy and explore their fandom together, where play moods can be created and maintained."

The second article is my The Fading of the Elves: Techno-volunteerism and the Disappearance of Tolkien Fan Fiction Archives. This article is historical in approach, looking at the rise and fall of Tolkien fanfiction archives and how these trends match with historical events in the Tolkien fandom, wider fandom world, and internet more broadly. It also considers Francesca Coppa's idea of the "archive elf," which was too easy to align with Tolkien's legendarium to not exploit to its fullest. "Archive elves" are the volunteers who keep archives running, and it is a job that is invisible by design, leading to a decline in the role as archives have faded from the fandom landscape. I've been the SWG's archive elf for over fifteen years now, so our archive and community heavily influence my observations here.

As we sunset the Character of the Month and other newsletter columns are on hiatus, I hope that these two articles hold you over until we get our next set of columns up and running! (And if you have an idea about the newsletter or an article or a column, or if you want to get involved with the newsletter, hit REPLY and I will send you an invite to come and play with the rest of the newsletter team on our Discord!)