SWG News

A Sense of History: Straight Road

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For the past year as part of our column A Sense of History, Simon J. Cook has been looking at how Tolkien's writings on Beowulf, namely the lecture-turned-essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," informs and is informed by his work on the legendarium that he was undertaking at the same time. Last month, he considered the crossing of ships from and back to the West. A familiar journey to fans of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, a ship journey from and to the West also appears in Beowulf.

A ship-burial suggests that beyond the Shoreless Sea is hell, the realm of mortal shades in ancient English mythology. Tolkien reads the first ship of the exordium to Beowulf as ancient myth, the ship-burial as Anglo-Saxon art. The art breathes meaning into the myth, yet raises the uncomfortable thought that the good king came to his people out of death. Early in 1936, Tolkien penned an "Elvish myth" that told of a king who sailed the Straight Road, out of a mythical flat world and into the round world of history, and then died side by side with his Elvish friend, fighting Sauron in Mordor. This legendary appendage to The Fall of Númenor spells out Tolkien’s reading of the exordium, a connection that Simon explores in this month's A Sense of History article.

You can read Simon's article "Straight Road" here.

Fandom Voices: Comments and Feedback

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If you read, view, or create fanworks, you have likely thought about feedback. Creators often wonder how to encourage their readers and viewers to speak up, and worry over the silences when they don't, and readers and viewers often struggle to provide the feedback that they know is so wanted by those making the fanworks they love.

For the next few months, our Cultus Dispatches column will be tackling the tough topic of feedback by looking at it through various approaches. This month, we present the responses to our latest Fandom Voices project about comments and feedback. Fandom Voices is an occasional and short survey that gathers fan perspectives on topics relevant to the Tolkien fandom. This month's article explores some trends and takeaways from the responses, or you can check out the full response collection as well.

You can read the article "Fandom Voices: Comments and Feedback" here.

Also, Fandom Voices surveys never close! If you didn't get a chance to respond yet and want to, you can share your perspectives on feedback here. While we will not edit the article to include new responses, we will add your response to the collection.

20th Birthday Event Feedback Needed

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In one year, the SWG will turn twenty years old! We are planning to hold an event to celebrate twenty years of fanworks, community, and friendships made as part of the SWG's two decades of existence.

As we begin planning, we need an idea of how many people might be interested in this event so that we can select a venue that meets our needs. We appreciate you letting us know your thoughts on if and how you would likely attend. It's one question and will take about a minute, if you read all the stuff at the top of the page too!

You can share feedback for the initial planning of the event here.

Watch this space for more information in the weeks to come, including a call for presenters!

Call for Contributors: Themed Collections

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Are you passionate about a topic related to Tolkien or fanworks? (Of course you are! Why else would you be here?) Maybe you have been collecting bookmarks and favorites of your favorite stories, meta, art, and other fanworks?

We are excited to introduce a new column that will be featured periodically in our newsletter! Themed collections are just what they sound like: collections of fanworks around a topic, curated by people who are interested in the subject and familiar with the fanworks around it.

What are we looking for? A collection of five to ten fanworks about a topic with a brief introduction. That's all! Fanworks can be of any type and do not need to be posted with the SWG. The topic of the collection can be as broad or specific as you like. It can include only fanworks of a particular type (say, meta or music) or it can include a mix.

The full Call for Contributors has more information. If you have questions, feel free to comment here or reach out to the moderators through the usual channels.

New Challenge: Bollywood

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The world's largest film industry isn't Hollywood, with its stars and scandals and endless sequels but Bollywood, the film industry that originated in Bombay in the late 19th century, more than a decade before Hollywood got its start. This month's challenge celebrates the lively dances, glittering costumes, towering emotions, and music you can't get out of your head of Bollywood.

Prompts this month come from Bollywood films and will be assigned by a moderator. You can request your prompt on Dreamwidth, Tumblr, the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord, or by emailing the mods. You can specify whether you'd like a song, film title, trope, or color palette—or you can let us surprise you! (If you choose a song, let us know if you'd like a song with an English translation available.) As always, you can use any aspect of your prompt to inspire your fanwork.

In some cases, we provide an intentionally brief and vague synopsis of a film or definition of a concept so that creators can get started with a prompt without having to do additional research. However, creators are welcome to dig deeper into a prompt if they want to and use what they learn to inspire a fanwork. For example, you might find that the film in your prompt has a clever subplot you will write a story around, the music video for a song has costumes you will include in a drawing, or a concept has aspects not included in our definition that you wish to use to make a playlist. While this is not required, you should feel free to dig as deeply into the prompts if you want and use anything you find!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 August 2024. In addition, July is Disability Pride Month, so we have a special stamp for fanworks that include characters with disabilities. Make sure it is clear from your summary or let a moderator know if you need this stamp. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Cultus Dispatches: Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments

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Nearly every author knows the feeling: the anticipation when opening your inbox after posting a new story to see if you've received comments. The walking-on-air feeling a kind word can give. And the disappointment that comes when days pass with only silence.

This month's Cultus Dispatches column kicks off our forthcoming exploration of comments on fanworks, looking specifically at Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data to provide one perspective on how authors view comments. We know nearly every author enjoys receiving comments; that is not really at question. But why? What do authors gain from comments? What happens to authors when they don't receive comments? And how do authors feel about one-click feedback like kudos and likes on their work?

You can read this month's column, "Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments," here.

A Sense of History: Passing Ships

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The arrival and departure of ships across the Great Sea carries mythic significance for the peoples of Middle-earth. The image of ships crossing out of and back into a mysterious West appears as well in Beowulf and is alluded to in Tolkien's tower analogy in his lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," where the tower allows those who climb it to observe the passage of the ships.

For the past year, Simon J. Cook has been writing a series for our Sense of History column about towers: the tower analogy in the "Monsters and the Critics" essay (which has long fascinating critics and for which he offers a new reading) and the many towers the pepper the landscape of Middle-earth. In his latest installment, he considers the ships we view from the tops of those towers.

You can read Simon's "Passing Ships" here.

Beta-Reader List Now Available

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The beta reader list and profiles are again available on our website!

Betas, please check your profiles to ensure that they are correct. If something looks amiss, comment here or contact us.

The beta directory can be found here.

To add yourself to the beta list or edit an existing profile, check out our beta-reader FAQ here.

Original Post, June 17:

Here on the archive, we have been battling a very annoying bug for months now that occasionally shuts down pages that have /user/ in the URL. We have been able to identify two modules that trigger the bug. One module we have been able to replace entirely with core software, and Dawn has been slowly chipping away at this over the past few months.

Russandol just moved over the configurations needed for the FINAL step in this process from our test site. For the next few days, the beta-reader list and profiles will not be available. Dawn will be moving the data from the old system to the new. We will post here when everything is set and will email all active beta-readers at that time as well so that you can check that your profile is correct.

Whenever we make changes to the live site, do let us know if something seems off. You can comment on this post or email the mods. We test pretty thoroughly before rolling changes over to the live site, but nothing replaces actual use.

New Challenge: Funky '70s

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Break out the lava lamps, we’re getting groovy this month with a trip back in time to the funky 70s!

For this month's challenge, select a prompt or prompts from the '70s-themed lists below. You can use any aspect of the prompt that you want and we encourage creative interpretation of the prompts. Want to dig up a particular episode of a show from the TV list and use that? A favorite book cover for one of the titles on the literature list? A line from the theme song from one of the movies on the Movies list? Go wild, moon child! (Of course, tamer interpretations of the prompts are acceptable too!)

You can find this month's '70s-themed prompts on the Funky '70s challenge page.

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

Thank you to Grundy for this month's lovely banner and stamps!

Fandom Voices: Commenting and Feedback

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Comments and feedback provoke strong emotions throughout fanworks-centered fandoms. Creators wonder how to increase feedback from their readers/viewers and can assign a lot of meaning to feedback—especially a lack of feedback. On the other side, readers and viewers of fanworks have their own reasons for leaving—or most often, not leaving—feedback on a particular work, which can also generate strong emotions, in part due to social norms around comments and feedback that can leave what is intended as a simple act of appreciation feeling fraught.

Fandom Voices is a project that is a part of our monthly fan studies column, Cultus Dispatches, that seeks to record and collect the experiences of Tolkien fans around a variety of topics. As Cultus Dispatches prepares to dive into commenting and feedback over the next few months, we want to hear from people who create fanworks or read and view them about their experiences giving and receiving comments and feedback. If you create Tolkien-based fanworks or read/view them, you are eligible to participate! Responses will form the basis of an upcoming Cultus Dispatches column and will be collected on our site. You can receive attribution for your response or remain anonymous.

You can contribute a response to our current Fandom Voices collection on commenting and feedback here.