SWG News

A Sense of History: Doom and Ascent

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In July 2023, we published the first in a series of posts by Simon J. Cook as part of our A Sense of History column that considered Tolkien's lecture-turned-essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," looking especially at the well-known tower allegory that Tolkien used to describe the state of Beowulf criticism in 1936, when the lecture was first given.

Since that time, Simon has looked at individual elements in that allegory, considered critical reception of them, and ultimately connected them back to Tolkien's work on the legendarium. This month's essay is the final in the series and brings all of the smaller pieces together into a coherent interpretation of the tower allegory, one that pushes against long-established readings by scholars of both Beowulf and Tolkien. By using Tolkien's allegories of the tower and the rock garden, Simon creates a metaphorical map for how the various elements of both Beowulf and the legendarium are both physically and symbolically situated.

You can read Simon's final essay in this series, "Doom and Ascent: The Argument of ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics’," here.

Themed Collection: Orcs Are People

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Tolkien's legendarium is sometimes criticized for a too-tidy binary of Good and Evil. While this is less true of The Silmarillion than the better-known Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, the criticism can ring true there as well, perhaps best exemplified by the Orcs, who are depicted in the book as uncomplicated pawns for pure evil with few humanizing traits that invite empathy or even for readers to consider them as human beings.

In the newest addition to our Themed Collection series, Cuarthol has assembled ten stories, essays, and works of art that challenge the idea of Orcs as purely evil or unthinking, unfeeling pawns of Melkor. Introducing the collection, titled with the plainspoken and (in some circles) radical title Orcs Are People, Cuarthol writes:

Whatever Tolkien’s final thoughts, his works depict Orcs with an undeniable humanity—they sing songs, chafe against Big Bosses, and even seek vengeance for deaths of family or comrades. Whether by intent or no, they were people beyond being mere pawns driven by a Dark Lord’s will.

Fanworks, of course, provide one powerful means to transcend the depictions of Orcs that we see in Tolkien's published works, considering what the lives of Orcish people were like and what the dismissal of those lives in works told from the points of view of Elves and Men show us about the insidious power of dehumanization in our own world.

You can find Cuarthol's collection "Orcs Are People" here. Our themed collections are viewed as a starting point for exploring fanworks centered around a topic, so we encourage adding your own favorite fanworks that seek to (re)humanize Orcs as a comment on the collection. And remember we are always looking for new themed collections; find out more about how to share a collection of fanworks on your favorite character, pairing, genre, or topic here!

Themed Collection: Alliterative Verse for Arda

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If you've ever read Beowulf or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you have read an alliterative poem. These poems are not the light love poems that often come to mind when we think of English poetry but capture what Tolkien called the Northern imagination: sometimes bitter, sometimes harsh, steeped in courage, calling to mind an austere beauty.

This month, as part of our Themed Collection series, Rhunedhel has assembled a collection of alliterative poems about Tolkien's world. Rhundhel is the editor of Forgotten Ground Regained, the definitive source of Modern English alliterative poetry online, which publishes a quarterly journal of alliterative verse. Alliterative verse, which is the traditional format of many early Germanic poetic traditions, was beloved by Tolkien, who centered his scholarly and creative efforts upon it. Today, his fans continue working in this ancient form as they craft poems about the legendarium. Rhunedhel was kind enough to select ten legendarium-inspired poems to introduce readers to alliterative verse based on Tolkien. As always, we want to hear your favorites as a comment on the collection.

You can check out Rhundhel's collection, "Alliterative Verse for Arda," here.

Mark Your Calendars! Mereth Aderthad 2025

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We are excited to announce that we will be hosting an event on July 19, 2025 in celebration of our twentieth birthday! The event will be hybrid, with both virtual and in-person options, with the in-person event taking place at the South Burlington Library in Burlington, Vermont. For those able to attend in-person, we will also host community meals and other outings the weekend of the event.

In the spirit of the SWG's (almost) twenty-year history, the event will involve both research/scholarship and fanworks components, as we seek to showcase and celebrate the variety of ways that Tolkien fans engage with and illuminate his work through fiction, artwork, poetry, research, scholarship and meta, music, and other forms. If you'd like to present research, create a fanwork for the event, or attend either in-person or online, we encourage you to follow us on at least one of our social platforms so that you receive updates as they come in:

In the next few weeks, we will open the call for presenters for research, meta, and scholarship.

Right now, we are looking for volunteers to help with the various tasks we will be faced with over the next ten months. You do not need to be able to attend in-person to volunteer, and there is no minimum time commitment. Anything helps! If you'd like to volunteer, comment on this post, email the mods, contact us on any of our social media platforms, or post to the #town-hall on our Discord. Let us know if you'd like to be on the logistics committee (scheduling, tech setup and testing, weekend outings, etc.) or the promotions committee (graphics design, social media, presenter interviews, etc.) or both!

Click here to see the full information that's available for the Mereth Aderthad 2025 event.

Cultus Dispatches: Why People Don't Comment

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It is one thing to document that, yes, the vast majority of creators love comments on their work. But the big question that hangs over any discussion of commenting remains: What about the dozens upon dozens of readers who read a story but do not comment?

Authors have been angsting over the disparity between their click and comment counts since those data became available to them. In this month's Cultus Dispatches column, Dawn dusts off a 2018 article that she wrote for the Project Long Live Feedback, which dug into the 2015 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data and what it showed about comments ... or why people don't comment. Using data from the 2020 survey, she's updated the article this month, but the takeaways remain the same: Commenting is a skill and its own unique type of writing. A lack of confidence as writers can hold people back from commenting. And feeling part of a community is an essential component of easing the way from becoming readers to commenters. In the Tolkien fanfiction fandom, which has been around a lot long (both online and offline) than most fic fandoms, platform shifts at least partly account for the rise and fall of comment counts.

You can read this month's article, "Why People Don't Comment: Data and History from the Tolkienfic Fandom," here.

A Sense of History: Spiral Staircase

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This month's A Sense of History article, written by Simon J. Cook, continues to engage the question of how Tolkien's work on his legendariun informed his scholarship on Beowulf and vice versa. Simon extends the metaphor of the tower found in Tolkien's lecture-turned-essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"—and of course towers bristle across the landscapes of Arda—to consider what it reveals of the Anglo-Saxon imagination.

This month's column considers what it means to climb the tower, descend it again, and peer through its windows at each landing. The spiral shape of the staircase, Simon argues, is essential to understanding the meaning of the tower.

You can read Simon's article "Spiral Staircase" here.

New Challenge: Idiomatic

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Raining cats and dogs. A short fuse. Up a creek without a paddle. A piece of cake. Sometimes colorful, sometimes puzzling without backstory or explanation, these delightful turns of phrase enrich our language—whichever one it happens to be.

This month we celebrate idioms from languages around the world. We will assign you a random idiom. (Some may not be originally English—for the non-English idioms, we will give a translation along with the original.) How you use this idiom to create a fanwork is entirely up to you. You can request your prompt by commenting on this news post, Dreamwidth, Tumblr, the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord, or by emailing the mods.

Many thanks to Zdenka for her clever work on this month's banner and stamps!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 October 2024. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

In Memory of Oshun

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We are deeply saddened to inform our members and friends that Oshun passed away on September 6 after a long illness.

There are few people who shaped the SWG—indeed, the Silmarillion fandom—the way that Oshun did. As well as being one of our earliest members, her work on the Character of the Month series actualized our hopes of making the site not just a home for fanworks but for resources for Tolkien fans both experienced with and new to The Silmarillion. After taking on the project, within a few months, Oshun had transformed it from "a few paragraphs about a character" to monthly, scholarship-level essays, many of which won awards and all of which have guided Silmarillion readers and fanworks creators through to a better understanding of the characters of that text.

Equally brilliant were her stories, which were romantic, funny, and political and helped cement Maedhros/Fingon as one of the fandom's flagship pairings. Oshun unabashedly wrote slash at a time when it was unpopular (even dangerous) to do so in some fandom circles. She was one of many courageous writers who helped pull acceptance of LGBTQ+ folks into the mainstream in the Tolkien fandom.

But most of all, Oshun was a friend to so many of us. As people remember her, what keeps emerging is how kind, welcoming, and generous she was. Because of her prolific and impactful work as a writer, many people describe being star-struck by her but quickly discovering how warm and humble she was, eager to share fanworks and life with fellow fans. Her love for her family, her adventures as a journalist in Mexico City, and her vivid photographs of life in New York City were beloved by many, right alongside her fanworks.

For anyone who wishes to help her family with funeral and other expenses, we have set up a GoFundMe here. If you want to help spread the word, there is a Tumblr post here.

Oshun's obituary can be read here.

Themed Collection: The Ruling Queens of Númenor

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Almost since the SWG's beginning, we have run a mostly unofficial event each year called Akallabêth in August. This event started at a time when Second Age fanworks were relatively uncommon and sought to encourage not only their creation but support of the authors writing, drawing, and making them.

This year, for our very first Themed Collection, Himring has put together a collection of fanfiction and fanart for Akallabêth in August that focuses on the three ruling queens of Númenor: Tar-Ancalimë, Tar-Telperiën, and Tar-Vanimeldë. As Himring points out, the bar to writing about the ruling queens is set somewhat high, as most of the information about them is in Unfinished Tales. However, she points out, they offer fertile territory for writing about women who hold power—who are not exactly common in Tolkien's books—while the dearth of information about them allows fans to increase the diversity of Arda by representing the queens as people of color or LGBTQ+.

Our themed collections are not intended to be definitive in any way but to offer a jumping-off point for fanworks about a specific topic. Himring has shared links to eleven brilliant stories and works of art about the ruling queens, but we hope you will also share your favorites as a comment on the collection!

You can check out the fanworks in "The Ruling Queens of Númenor" (and add your own!) here.

Note that this is a new column in the newsletter, and we hope that Himring taking the brave first step to share a collection will inspire others to put together some of their favorite fanworks about a beloved topic. Check out our call for contributors if you'd like to put together a collection of your own!

New Challenge: Kings & Queens

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Tolkien's legendarium, with its roots in medieval Europe, displays all the royal drama of history: arguments over succession, regicide, kidnapping, and secret kings dashing back at the heroic last minute to rise to greatness. (Yeah you, Aragorn!) Amidst this royal rumble are kings and queens simply doing the job they were born to do. The annals of Middle-earth are filled with rulers who improved (even saved!) their people's lives, turned their realms into a disaster zone, or—most commonly—simply disappeared into the pages of history.

This month, we challenge you to create a fanwork about a king or queen in the legendarium, whether dramatic or dull, brilliant or disastrous, renowned or forgotten. Below, you will find a list of kings and queens listed in the indices of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. Note that this list is not exhaustive, and you are welcome to create fanworks about kings and queens not listed. In some cases, it may be questionable whether a character counts as a king or queen, and if you decide they do, we trust your judgment. Fanworks about kings and queens who are textual ghosts or original characters are welcome as well. Finally, remember that the "Silmarillion" is much more than just the First Age. If you're not sure if a Third Age idea would fit on our site, our FAQ on "Silmworks" is here.

Because this challenge falls during Akallabêth in August, there will be a special stamp for anyone who creates a fanwork set during the Second Age.

Thanks go to Zdenka for this month's lovely banner and stamps!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 September 2024. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

You can find the list of kings and queens for this challenge and fanworks created for the Kings & Queens challenge here.