SWG News

Cultus Dispatches: Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft

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Most Tolkien fanfiction writers will tell you that their craft matters. They work at their writing and try to improve. Fandom institutions like awards, writer's workshops, lists of beta-readers, and selective archives reinforce that this is a fandom that takes its writing seriously.

But this is not a universal, and while authors who approach their stories differently are in a minority, there is some evidence to suggest they are a growing group. This month's Cultus Dispatches column considers fanfiction and writer's craft according to data from the Tolkien Fanfiction Surveys of 2015 and 2020, focusing on the authors who didn't agree that they took their writing seriously. While a small group, they doubled in number between the two surveys and show some intriguing demographic and motive-related data.

To learn more, check out Dawn's article Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft.

New Challenge: Crossroads of the Fallen King

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The Nirnaeth is fought by superheroes. Elven history becomes a telenovela. Túrin rages through the five acts of a Shakespearean tragedy. Tolkien characters fall into favorite films and shows, and classic literature mixes with zombies … or Balrogs. Elves in space and Maglor in history—Tolkien crossovers that are nearly genres in their own right.

Crossover fanworks have a vibrant history in the Tolkien fandom, and the crossroads are fertile ground for new and unexpected creative endeavors. This month's challenge asks participants to create a crossover fanwork. The second text and how exactly you cross the two is entirely up to you!

Crossovers are fanworks that use elements from two or more fandoms or texts to create a fanwork. Crossovers can use characters, settings, and other elements from the second text. In the Tolkien fanfiction fandom, crossovers have also included fanworks that combine Tolkien's world with folklore, myth, and real-world history. As always, we encourage participants to get creative in how they interpret this month's challenge.

You can find a list of crossover texts already added to our site here. If you need a tag added to the Crossover Text list, you can let us know now or request it when you post your fanwork using the Moderator Request field on the fanwork submission form.

Note that, on the SWG, Silmarillion-based fanworks that use The Rings of Power show (and other media adaptations) are considered crossovers. Likewise, fanworks that cross The Silmarillion with any of Tolkien's non-Middle-earth works are counted as crossovers.

Many thanks to Independence1776 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 June 2024. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

A Sense of History: Thálatta! Thálatta!

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In this month's A Sense of History column, Simon J. Cook continues his series on towers in Tolkien's works, both Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics and his Middle-earth legendarium. Specifically, this month, we step with Frodo through a high window and into a view facilitated by Galadriel's mirror. Although Frodo's glance in Galadriel's mirror may seem anticlimactic by design—after all, Galadriel refuses the Ring and consents to fade from the story—Simon makes the case that the view Frodo sees and the actions it inspires are in fact a key turning point within the legendarium.

You can read Simon's article "Thálatta! Thálatta!" here.

Choose a Name for Our New Column!

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Note that the new column's name has been chosen: Lay of the Land, a name suggested by Anérea! Thanks to all who voted! We will have more information on the new column very soon.

In 2009, we began an unambitious project to feature a character, along with a brief biography, each month. Under the leadership of Oshun, our lead biography writer, this small project quickly burgeoned into our Character of the Month column, which is now almost complete and in its sunset phase.

The newsletter committee is in the process of developing new columns for the newsletter. In the spirit of Character of the Month is our (temporarily titled) "location bio" column. This column will focus on the places of Middle-earth, providing a one-stop compilation of information from the major canon sources, as well as analysis from a variety of approaches.

We need your help naming the column! The newsletter committee has chosen its five favorite titles. You can vote for your favorite title for the column here!

Also a friendly reminder that anyone can join the newsletter committee, and there is no minimum participation requirement to do so. If you are on our Discord, let us know your username, and we will add you.

Watch this space for a call for contributions for the new column!

New Challenge: Tengwar

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The Tengwar are one of the delights of visiting Middle-earth as a fan of Tolkien's work. Whether a serious student of the letters; dabbling with them, Appendix open, on a lazy afternoon; or simply admiring the way they flow across a title page (or the One Ring …), most Tolkien fans find them beautiful and packed with meaning beyond what it seems should be contained within a single letter.

This month (and a bit beyond!), we will feature a prompt per day taken from the Tengwar chart. The prompt will include a graphic of the tengwa and its name in Quenya and English. You can use any part of the prompt: the tengwa itself, the name, the English translation, the graphic, or some other creative interpretation we haven't even dreamed up yet! You may do as many or as few of the daily prompts as you would like. One prompt is worth as much as challenging yourself to do them all, so work at the level and pace that is comfortable for you. (However, there may be a special reward for anyone ambitious enough to try them all!) Tengwar prompts can be found here.

Prompts will be posted daily at midnight UTC on our website, Tumblr, Dreamwidth, and the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord. You do not need to do the prompt on the day it was posted; you can go back and do prompts you missed or do them out of order.

In honor of Poetry Month, we will have a special stamp for fanworks that are or include poetry. In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 June 2024. Note that the deadline is a month later than usual since the challenge runs longer than usual. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Thank you to Cuarthol and Anérea for the gorgeous banners and stamps this month!

A Sense of History: Crossroads

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For the past several months as part of our A Sense of History column, Simon J. Cook has been pursuing the question of towers in Tolkien, beginning with the mysterious tower of "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and into the towers of Tolkien's Ardaverse, currently The Lord of the Rings.

This month's column follows the "red thread" of Valarin aid to the Fellowship in The Lord of the Rings. Returning from the West-gazing palantír of Elostirion, which is said to show a glimpse of Varda in Valinor, Gildor Inglorion bestows a blessing of Varda's protection upon Frodo. Simon traces the miraculous influence of Varda, revealed via a palantír in a tower, throughout the ensuing narrative that becomes an essential element of The Lord of the Rings.

You can read Simon's article "Crossroads" here.

Cultus Dispatches: Canon Deviations, Multifandoms, and Original Content

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Fanfiction and original fiction are sometimes depicted as different, separate forms of writing. In this month's Cultus Dispatches column, using data from the 2015 and 2020 Tolkien Fanfiction Surveys, Dawn Felagund looks at the various iterations that exist between canon-compliant fanfiction and original fiction. Writers may, for example, push the boundaries of canon in original directions or invent their own original characters. They may write in other fandoms or even cross fandoms together. Do these tendencies predict whether or not a writer will also create original fiction, as well as fanfiction?

You can read "Beyond Borders: Canon Deviations, Multifandoms, and Original Content" here.

The SWG Is Featured in Two Journal Articles

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Last 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!

The second article is Dawn's 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.

New Challenge: It Comes in Threes

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Pythagoras called the number three the noblest of all digits. Certainly, language, religion, myth, history, literature, and popular culture are littered with things that come in threes. The legendarium is no exception. Three is a powerful number in Tolkien's world, and like the Primary World, there are many examples in Middle-earth that come in threes. (The word "three" is mentioned fifty-nine times in The Silmarillion!)

For this month's challenge, we gathered 130 prompts that occur in sets of three. You can select any prompt (or prompts!) from our list to inspire or incorporate in your fanwork. Note that some prompts may have multiple meanings or interpretations. When this is the case, you can choose whatever interpretation you want to use.

We also craft our March challenge to integrate with other challenges and events (traditionally Back to Middle-earth Month!), so this is a good time for a reminder that our challenges can be combined with other events.

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

Thank you to Independence1776 for this month's lovely stamps and banner!

You can find the prompts on the It Comes in Threes challenge page.

A Sense of History: Seeing Stones in Dark Towers

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In this month's A Sense of History column, Simon J. Cook continues to climb the stairs of various towers in Tolkien's works, both Middle-earth and not. This month, he focuses on the three inland "dark towers" of The Lord of the Rings and how they connect to the palantíri and other modes of seeing and imposing one's will in Middle-earth. These towers provide different insights than the tower at Elostirion, discussed last month, that looks out upon the sea. The dark towers—and later in the story, the Elf-towers as well—take on a different role that looks not outward to the numinous West but concentrates on the machinations that will come to be preserved as the history of Middle-earth.

You can read Simon's article "Seeing Stones in Dark Towers" here.