SWG News

New Challenge: Jumble Sale

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Twenty years of SWG challenges has seen all kinds of use of the prompts that (mostly) moderators cook up each month to tempt and torment our challenge creators. Some challenges are worn thin with love. Others lie, untouched and growing dusty, in the attic of the SWG Challenge page. This month, in honor of twenty years of challenges, we are upcycling our old challenges and dusting them off for a second chance at life.

Jumble Sale prompts are created by SWG members using past challenges and prompts. For this challenge, you can choose your prompt from the list below. Each prompt is indicated by a "For Sale" and may include multiple elements. As always, we welcome creative interpretations of prompts and use of any part of the prompt.

Make sure to tag all challenges included in the prompt if you would like the stamps for them. Challenges from before 2017 do not have stamps, but there is a special stamp for creators who venture into the deepest, dustiest recesses of the SWG attic by creating for a prompt that uses a challenge from prior to 2017!

You can find the full Jumble Sale guidelines and prompts here.

If you'd like to create prompts of your own but missed the original call, you're not too late! Submit Jumble Sale prompts here. Allow us forty-eight hours to update the website before querying.

Thank you to Varda delle Stelle for this month's stamps!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 October 2025. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Instadrabbling Sessions for October, November, and December

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Anna (IdleLeaves) will generously be continuing to host monthly instadrabbling sessions on our Discord server on the first Saturday of each month! We welcome all creators to join us for an few hours of creating, squeeing, and hanging out with fellow fans on the following dates:

What is instadrabbling? Instadrabbling is a long-standing community activity in the Tolkien fanfiction fandom. A group of friends gets together on chat, someone throws out a prompt or four, and everyone writes a drabble (or whatever comes to mind). We share our creations in the server and admire each other's work. Instadrabbling is low-pressure and casual, and all are encouraged to participate to whatever degree they are comfortable. Instadrabbling responses shared on our server can be about any aspect of Tolkien's legendarium, not just Silmworks.

When we instadrabble, we meet on the #instadrabbling channel on our Discord server. Discord invites can be requested at any time from the moderators. All are welcome to join the Discord, whether you want to instadrabble with us or not!

Mereth Aderthad Presentations Available

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The majority of the presentations from Mereth Aderthad are now available as videos with accompanying transcripts or full papers. If you missed a presentation or want to give one a second (or more!) look, we invite you to check them out! Everything Mereth Aderthad-related can be found on the interactive program, which is continuously updated as new material comes in.

Here are the videos that have been posted, alphabetical by title:

The Aromantic in Tolkien by Shadow (video and transcript)
Presented at Mereth Aderthad 2025, this paper makes the case that, although the term "aromantic" had not yet been coined in Tolkien's day, many of his characters can be read as aromantic. The paper takes a closer look at Aredhel, Bilbo, and Boromir as three examples of characters who can be read as aromantic.

By Guile Committed: Comparing Tolkien’s Thieves to Beowulf by Savannah Horrell (video, full paper, and handout)
Theft is heavily stigmatized in the Old English legal literature. This stigma carries over to fictional sources, including Beowulf. As a professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien was heavily influenced by these sources. Multiple characters in Middle-earth shy away from the label of "thief", even as they take actions which many would describe as stealing (see Bilbo, Beren, Lúthien). The balance between historical stigma and the more modern hero thief is mediated by judicious word choice and framing.

Cherished Antagonist, Despised Protagonist- a defence of Elu Thingol by Stella Getreuer-Kostrouch (video and full paper)
Elu Thingol is a complicated character in The Silmarillion. Faced with tough choices, he makes both good and bad decisions. But, as this paper argues, the Silmarillion fandom tends to file Thingol away as a convenient villain. This paper makes the case that many of his decisions are more complex than fans tend to assume and defends his place as one of the legendarium's complex characters and deserving of empathy.

Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the last High King of the Noldor by Maglor (video and transcript)
This Mereth Aderthad 2025 presentation considers what we know of Gil-galad beyond his primary role in the text as king. While we have some information about his character, such as his appearance, other facts—names and parentage, for instance—remain unsettled. In other areas, we know almost nothing about Gil-galad, especially compared to the other Noldorin kings, which "leads to him feeling unmoored in the narrative." Gil-galad does not speak, performs no actions outside of kingship, and is given no meaningful relationships. Basic facts, such as his burial, are missing. He is seen from the outside, becoming a side character despite being the longest-reigning Noldorin king. It becomes the task of fans to answer the question Merry asks in "The Lord of the Rings": Who was Gil-galad? Fan creativity plus tantalizing glimpses of his character have filled in the blanks Tolkien left.

"Kidnap Fam" and the Living Legendarium by polutropos (video and transcript)
This paper looks at the origins of the popular fanfiction "kidnap fam" trope in the editorial history of the published "Silmarillion." With much of the attack on Sirion written in 1930, prior to Tolkien writing The Lord of the Rings, Christopher Tolkien was faced with an editorial choice in how to reconcile this event with the later invention of the character of Gil-galad. Adding Gil-galad and Círdan to the tale of Sirion's destruction, however, raises questions for many readers about the motives and choices of Maglor and Maedhros in choosing to take Elwing's sons. Survey data, shows that readers tend to interpret characters' morals and motives based on what they believe those characters knew. The introduction of Gil-galad and Círdan by Christopher Tolkien, therefore, generates the moral complexity that drives the wealth of fanfiction about the "kidnap family." These many layers of intervention in the story—by Tolkien, by Christopher, by fan creators—mimics the storytelling tradition and creates a living legendarium: not a mess, as some readers despair of the multiple contradictory "Silmarillion" texts, but an opportunity.

Love, Grief, and Alliterative Verse in Tolkien's Legendarium by Paul D. Deane (video and transcript)
Presented at Mereth Aderthad 2025, this paper considers how the themes of love and grief run parallel throughout The Silmarillion and are central to Tolkien's imagination. Also central is alliterative verse, and the paper discusses Tolkien's use of alliterative verse in the legendarium, his literary and scholarly influences, and his professional interest in alliterative verse. The paper draws parallels between alliterative verse in the legendarium and in the English literary tradition, making the case that alliterative verse was used in-universe by the Elves. Finally, the paper uses this evidence to advocate for fanworks that use alliterative verse.

The Mythmakers vs. the made myths: Exploring a reader’s levels of religious alienation and connection in works about and by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis by Acha Rezak (Quente; video and full paper)
Or, a critical reading and primary source reinterpretation of documents that contributed to John Hendrix’s The Mythmakers.

Twilight, Child Of: Comparisons Between Tinúviel, Lómion, and Undómiel by Jaz (video and transcript)
This presentation for Mereth Aderthad 2025 discusses the many similarities between Tolkien's three "twilight children," Tinúviel, Lómion, and Undómiel (Luthien, Maeglin, and Arwen) in terms of appearance, plot, and cultural background. Yet these three characters play very different roles in the text.

 

Print Mereth Aderthad 2025 Fanzines Available to Order

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As part of our twentieth birthday celebration at Mereth Aderthad 2025, we put together a fanzine to honor the fannish traditions of our foremothers, who in the pre-internet days, gathered in living rooms to squee over their fandoms and assemble and mail zines by hand. Without the internet to zip our thoughts halfway around the globe in less than a blink, this is how early fan communities celebrated and debated the texts that they loved. (If you're curious about early Tolkien fanzines, check out Marquette University's online Tolkien fanzine archive.)

We have thirty print copies of the zine left that we are now making available to anyone who wants a copy! The cost of the zine is the cost of printing ($7.70 USD) plus shipping. No profit is made on the zine. (You can view the Mereth Aderthad 2025 financial information here for full details.) A free digital copy of the zine can be downloaded here.

We are using the third-party provider Shopify to handle financial transactions. If Shopify cannot ship to your country, contact us and we will try to find another way to get your zine to you.

The last day for zine sales will be September 30.

You can order your copy of the Mereth Aderthad 2025 fanzine here.

New Challenge: Kids These Days

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If there is a unifier among generations, it is complaining about the kids and teens in the generations coming up behind them. There was likely an ancient Mesopotamian complaining about the brainrot effects of that newfangled cuneiform and kids carving their names on the ziggurat walls. Likewise, there is no reason to believe our beloved Tolkien characters were immune to these timeless worries and whinges about the young people around them (or experienced the ever-helpful "advice" of their elders when they were themselves whippersnappers).

This month's challenge will offer a bingo card chock-full of perennial complaints about kids and teens. Choose one or several prompts to include in your fanwork. Numbers will not be called; you can select any prompt you want at any time. Your fanwork does not have to be about kids and teens; as always, we welcome creative interpretations of our prompts.

There are special stamps available for completing rows, columns, diagonals, or (if you are old enough to withstand the effort of going uphill both ways) a full card blackout where you manage every prompt. Note that, to complete rows and blackouts, you do not need to use all of the prompts in a single fanwork but can use them across multiple fanworks. Let the moderators know if you need one of the special stamps.

You can find the bingo card and text prompts for the Kids These Days challenge here.

Thank you to hîn_isil for this month's adorable stamps!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 September 2025. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Prompts Needed for September's Jumble Sale Challenge

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Have you ever noticed one of our challenges or prompts that would be absolutely perfect … for someone else to write? Or maybe the perfect storm of challenge and prompt combos that would be entirely delicious, intriguing, perplexing, or evil? For our September challenge, Jumble Sale, you will have your chance to offer up past challenges and prompts to other creators to work their magic!

How It Will Work

You can offer up to five items "for sale" at the jumble sale! Items should consist of a past SWG challenge or a prompt for a challenge. You can combine challenges and prompts, but all challenges and prompts should come from the SWG collection. You can find the full list of challenges here. Items will be listed as the prompts in the Jumble Sale challenge for other creators to make fanworks for.

How many challenges/prompts can you include in your item? As many as you want! Be tame, go wild, the choice is yours!

Next, you can set an optional "price" on your items. These are extra conditions that the creator must fulfill in claiming your item. Remember that the SWG is a positive-focused space; make sure your price is what you want to see, not what you want to avoid.

Some examples:

Ready to put some items in our Jumble Sale? Use the form here to send us your items!

Mereth Aderthad Thank Yous!

Posted by Dawn Felagund on . Last updated on .

To say that Mereth Aderthad 2025 was a success is an understatement! Our hybrid event featured twelve scholarly presentations, eleven stories, two poems, and one song, accompanied by thirteen works of art (twelve 2D artworks and one glass sculpture). It was attended by a total of eighty-eight people (twenty-four in-person and sixty-four virtual) that included Elves, Mortals, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Mereth Aderthad fanzine includes an additional six stories, four poems, and two works of art (in addition to Anérea's countless "embellishments" in the design!) All of this took place over three days centered on the main seven-hour event.

This event was first imagined in April 2024, at the Tolkien at UVM Conference. Grundy and I (Dawn) were attending in-person and chatting with Quente on Discord. The topic of the SWG's twentieth birthday in July 2025 came up and the possibility of doing an in-person gathering to celebrate it. That evolved into a hybrid conference-ish event involving scholarship and fanworks and good old-fashioned nerdy fun. The SWG moderators began the first steps of planning about a year ago, in July 2024, and the logistics and promotions committees began their work in September 2024. In short, this event would not have been possible without the contributions of many, many people across the past year.

The worry with putting together a list like this is that someone will be left off. If I have forgotten someone—especially if that someone is you!—please let me know, and I will fix my oversight right away.

First, to my comoderators, Grundy, Shadow, Russandol, Elleth, Saelind, and Janeways. Not only are you all often the first line of decision-making within the group (including key decisions for this event, like choosing the venue) but you are the moral support for me in times of trouble! Our moderator channel is one of the first places I go on a rough day, and I appreciate your helping hands but also willingness to listen and care and make me laugh and yell at the sky with me.

Mereth Aderthad would not have happened without Bobby, my husband. He was the first person to greenlight our April 2024 idea since, no matter what happened, he and I would be on the hook for paying for it and pulling it off, and I thought it only fair he get a say if I decided to fritter away the household finances on hosting a conference. He coordinated with local vendors (which involved a little bit of barter and a little bit of driving out to off-grid farms) and did most of the work to set up the in-person social events, then was my on-call support on the day of the event.

I already thanked Grundy as a comoderator, but she was also the tech lead, and I'm going to thank her again. Being the tech lead means you get handed fifteen pages of "stage directions" the day before the event (I also offered a clipboard but she brought her own ... this is why she was the tech lead) and then get to spend the event acting as the go-between between the folks online and the people who are at the event itself, meaning you get to enjoy very little of the event as a participant and get to hear (and deal with) what is going wrong on both sides while trying to make things right so that both sides are happy. She also brought multiple glass artworks with her to decorate the room, gave rides to those who needed a ride, and stepped in whenever tasks needed doing throughout the day. But this is Grundy, always, as a comoderator. Thank you for all you do for us, and for this event in particular!

Shadow was the "event Discord moderator," which sounds like an easy job but was kind of the iceberg on the Mereth Aderthad staff list, with most of what Shadow actually did not at all reflected in the name of the role. Shadow monitored not just Discord but the moderator email to help people who were having trouble get into the session. They monitored the Zoom chat and were the mod who oversaw the virtual "lunch" social session on Discord. All of this despite the fact that the event started midafternoon their time, which made for a very long day—and they were presenting a paper and reading two stories! Part of their role on the virtual-only side meant attending the multiple tech tests we ran in the lead-up to the event, including (again) late in the evening on Friday.

Our setup crew on Friday made quick work of testing the tech and setting up the room so that we could start on time on Saturday: Quente, Dave, Grundy, Independence1776, Gryph, and Bobby. Quente, I really appreciated that you are one of those people who sees it needs to be done and does it! There were times I turned around and the coffee pot had magicked itself full again or something had gone from chaos to order, which is not how it is supposed to work, but you made it so!

In addition to helping with setup and logistics, Independence1776 miracled event photos from our oddly proportioned and dimly lit room. They are lovely and will be treasured as we look back on this event! Thank you too for maintaining the hotel list for the event, which made it easier to attend in-person, including if you didn't have access to a car. Grundy did the research on transportation options, again to support attendance by people who needed to get here without a car.

The Mereth Aderthad logistics committee was Anérea, Elleth, Grundy, Gryph, Independence1776, Janeways, Maglor, Quente, Shadow, and Zhie. These were the people who managed the details of the event from the large (the where and when!) to the small (the color of the photography preference dots and the layout of the nametags). They handled many, many questions and proposals from me over the past ten months with resourcefulness and creativity.

The Mereth Aderthad promotions committee was Aprilertuile, Grundy, Himring, Janeways, Saelind, and Zhie with Shadow taking the lead as the social media manager and handling the various cross-posts to different sites in such a way that each received its due at the top of the page. This team not only planned how best to promote the event (walking that fine line between "Mereth what?" and annoyingly over-present) but handled the twenty-eight interviews with presenters and creators over a five-month span. Interviewers were Shadow, Anérea, Himring, Quente, Saelind, Maglor, and Grundy, with Shadow doing a record twelve interviews!

Janeways made the beautiful banners and graphics for the event. She took the basic idea of my original and ugly banner (the idea of which was to match with the site) and made a series of beautiful Canva graphics that, as event planning unfolded, were unbelievably easy for me to edit and download without a lot of fuss, saving me a ton of time on design and editing just about every week for the past six months.

This brings us to the zine! The zine was designed by Anérea, who first offered to help put it together, then came up with the idea for and created the cover, then offered to create embellishments for the pages that didn't already have art, and ended up producing a publication that is a work of art unto itself. During the proofing process, she was quick to respond and detail-oriented in making corrections that creators noticed and, when the zine went to the printer, talked me through what I needed to ask for and then made yet another set of corrections once we had print proofs in hand and I noticed everything I managed not to see on multiple proofs previously. On top of this, Anérea was always available for input on the logistics team, worked to ensure that each presentation at the event had an artist, and helped with tech testing.

Anérea and Varda delle Stelle, in their roles as the SWG's art editor and assistant art editor, also took on a significantly higher workload in sourcing art for the presenter and creator interviews. There are probably a dozen Discord messages to them that open with me saying, "I know you have so much on your plate right now so let me know if I need to take this one," and end every time with them sourcing a lovely work of art to accompany the interview.

Then there are the Mereth Aderthad presenters: Stella, Shadow, cloudyhymns, Maglor, Zara, Savannah, Quente, Paul, Zhie, Jaz, Cindy, and polutropos. I have been to a lot of Tolkien conferences. I have never seen such a slate of consistently thoughtful, engaging, polished, and overall high-quality presentations. Every single of one of your talks was interesting and fun to watch. On top of that, for many of you, this was your first time presenting at a conference! That makes the level of quality we saw on Saturday even more impressive. (And for the first-timers: raucous laughter, cheers, and fanworks inspired by presentations are not the norm at conferences and are a testament to how enjoyable your talks were!)

Because this event specifically welcomed first-time and fan presenters who wanted to try their hand at presenting their scholarship, we decided early on that, if we were going to make that work, then we needed to support our new presenters through the process. Our series So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference? was possible due to more experienced scholars who were willing to share their input, resources, and tips and tricks. Many thanks to Azh, Himring, Janeways, Zara, and Zhie, whose generosity with their materials and advice helped the next generation of Tolkien scholars gain the knowledge and confidence to take this big step.

Our fanworks creators took an unusual challenge—create a fanwork for a conference presentation—and ran with it in the most delightful way. Many of these creators also shared their work at the event: Idrils Scribe, Flora-lass (who also stepped up to read others' fanworks), chrissystriped, bunn, Shadow, cloudyhymns, Janeways, Zdenka, Azh, Maglor, and reese. The artists who created the stunning art that formed the backdrop for our event were fish, Silmalope, Varda delle Stelle, Kai Janik, Navy, bunn, Anérea, Grundy, sesame, and Tang Wen Xi. Finally, the zine creators not only contributed to our beautiful zine but went through all the editing and proofing that is part of any publication process: Idrils Scribe, Flora-lass, elennalore, fish, chrissystriped, Quente, Silmalope, bunn, Varda delle Stelle, Shadow, Kai Janik, Janeways, clovis_unleased, cloudyhymns, Zorbo_Jorks, Anérea, Azh, elfscribe, sesame, Elleth, and Independence1776. I had the delightful job of reading the fanworks as they came in, and each is a thought-provoking, carefully crafted response to the presentation it accompanied, highlighting the diverse ways that we, as a fandom, approach and engage with not just the legendarium but with each other's ideas. If you enjoyed one of the event or zine fanworks, they are all archived on the site and linked in the program, so you can let the creator know!

We also had thirty generous donors whose contributions helped to make the event possible. Because of donations, we were able to pursue publishing a print zine, ensure that each contributor receives a free copy, upgrade the Zoom account so everyone who wanted to attend virtually would be able to do so, provide breakfast and afternoon snacks for in-person attendees, and ensure that we were supporting local and ethical businesses whenever we could.

Finally, if you attended Mereth Aderthad, thank you! We put on this event for you, and your support of our presenters and creators, thoughtful questions, and positive energy were what made this event such a success. Thank you for making the SWG's twentieth birthday a memorable occasion!

Archive Software Updated

Posted by SWG Moderators on . Last updated on .

The site software has been updated. Please report any issues using the Contact link at the bottom of the page or on any of our usual social media channels.

The site will be temporarily taken offline during the morning and early afternoon UTC on Saturday, July 26, so that we can upgrade our software. There is no need to report site outages during this time. We will report here and on our Discord when our work is complete and the site back online.

Mereth Aderthad Fanzine Available!

Posted by SWG Moderators on . Last updated on .

In the early years of fandom, creators shared their stories, art, and other fanworks in handmade fanzines. Often printed on the cheap and assembled by volunteers at zine-making parties, these zines brought fans around the world in contact with each other and kept fan communities alive.

Honoring the tradition of our foremothers, when we planned Mereth Aderthad 2025, we wanted a fanzine to go with it. Works in the zine respond to the twelve presentations given at Mereth Aderthad.

We are very excited to make the Mereth Aderthad fanzine available to download for anyone who would like to check it out! The zine features thirteen stories, five poems, and nine works of art and was beautifully designed by Anérea. While some of the fanworks were heard at Mereth Aderthad, others are brand-new and available to enjoy for the first time.

You can download a copy of the Mereth Aderthad 2025 fanzine here!

Mereth Aderthad Is Happening TODAY!

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Mereth Aderthad 2025 is our twentieth-birthday celebration, featuring a dozen different speakers sharing their ideas about Tolkien, fourteen fanworks readings and performances, and work from ten featured artists. And it is not too late to join us! You can register now and the event link will be sent to you, or reach out via email or on the #mereth-aderthad channel on our Discord, and we'll send you a link. Even if you can only join us for a short while, all are welcome!

If you really can't join us (or are reading this after the event has ended), find all of the fanworks on the Mereth Aderthad page. Many of our presenters are also planning to share recordings of their presentations or their papers, so watch for updates as they come in.

Finally, we produced a fanzine for this event, containing many of the works that will be shared at the event today, as well as other fanworks based on the presentations shared today. You can download a copy of the Mereth Aderthad 2025 fanzine for free here!