SWG News

New Challenge: Dip the Ladle

Posted by SWG Moderators on 14 July 2023 . Last updated on 19 August 2023 .

But if we speak of a Cauldron, we must not wholly forget the Cooks. There are many things in the Cauldron, but the Cooks do not dip in the ladle quite blindly. Their selection is important. The gods are after all gods, and it is a matter of some moment what stories are told of them. … Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men.

~ Tolkien, On Fairy-stories

Tolkien is often credited with establishing the modern fantasy genre as it is known today. Certainly, his work has inspired authors, artists, filmmakers, and other creatives for decades. However, as his 1938 lecture On Fairy-stories attests, he saw his own work as a "cauldron of story," drawing with skill from centuries of myth, legend, and tales to come before him.

This month's challenge considers Tolkien's many inspirations, from the books and poems he read, to the illustrations they contained, to the places important in his life. If you wish to participate this month, you will be assigned a prompt by a moderator that you can use to create a fanwork. As always, you can interpret your prompt however you want and use any part or parts you want—we encourage creative uses of our prompts! If a prompt doesn't speak to you, let one of our moderators know, and we'll dip the ladle again.

To receive a prompt, comment on our Dreamwidth, send us an ask on Tumblr, post in the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord, or message us through the SWG site. If you have a preference for the type of prompt we send you, please specify if you would like an image of a location, an image of a book cover/illustration, or a quote.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 August 2023. As July is Disability Pride Month, we also offer a stamp for any fanworks featuring a character with a disability. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Many thanks to Oxbridge for this month's stamps!

Read & Review: "Tolkien and Diversity"

Posted by SWG Moderators on 8 July 2023 . Last updated on 8 September 2023 .

Diversity in the works and fandom of J.R.R. Tolkien has been a topic of much discussion in recent years as recognition grows that Tolkien's "mythology for England" is read by far more than the English ... or English speakers even. The Tolkien fan community is an international one, with fans from every inhabited continent on the globe bringing their perspectives to bear on the legendarium. Within this international community, Tolkien fans belong to myriad identity groups, some of them marginalized in both Tolkien's and the real world. Significant media coverage devoted to the diverse casting of Amazon's Rings of Power series rocketed these discussions—once limited to some fannish and scholarly enclaves—into the realm of popular discourse.

The 2021 Tolkien Society Seminar on the theme "Tolkien and Diversity" was therefore timely. The best-attended seminar to date, Tolkien and Diversity has now been published as a book containing some of the papers delivered at the seminar. In our latest Read & Review column, Shadow takes a look at the proceedings and what they have to offer to the Tolkien fan who is interested in the topic. They conclude that the proceedings balance discussion of the international fan community with papers about marginalized identities and provide a summary of each paper before offering advice to potential buyers about whether the book is a good addition to their Tolkien collection.

You can read Shadow's review of Tolkien and Diversity here.

Character of the Month: Draugluin

Posted by SWG Moderators on 1 July 2023 . Last updated on 19 August 2023 .

Wolves populate the shadows of much of Western folklore, and Tolkien's legendarium—ladling as it does from that Cauldron of Story—is no exception. Draugluin is one of several wolves or wolfish beings who appear in Tolkien's stories: the lord of the werewolves. Although only briefly appearing, his presence in the story is a memorable one, as he challenges (and is slain by) Huan, and his skin is used by Beren to sneak into Angband.

In this month's biography of Draugluin, Narya explores not only the evolution of his character in the legendarium (hint: he was early-appearing but in very different form) but the folkloric roots that Tolkien may have drawn from ... and those he definitely did not. As is often the case with Tolkien, Narya finds deep roots in language and lore that helped inform the character of Draugluin.

You can read the biography of Draugluin here.

Read & Review: "The Battle of Maldon"

Posted by SWG Moderators on 23 June 2023 . Last updated on 29 July 2023 .

Although we know Tolkien as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, the progenitor of the modern fantasy genre, he would have likely defined himself by his academic work, as a professor and scholar of Old English. The recent posthumous volume The Battle of Maldon includes his prose translation of that text, a fanfiction (yes, really!) based on it, and a lecture on Old English poetry.

In the latest article in our occasional Read & Review column, Narya reviews The Battle of Maldon. What can you expect to find in its pages? And as a non-Middle-earth book by Tolkien, is it a book you should consider adding to your collection?

You can read Narya's review of "The Battle of Maldon" here.

Cultus Dispatches: Affirmational Fandom, Transformational Fandom, and Two Old Tolkien Fanfics

Posted by SWG Moderators on 17 June 2023 . Last updated on 19 August 2023 .

Although Star Trek and media fandom are often credited as the beginning of fanfiction, the first fanfiction texts are much older than that and oriented in book fandoms. (The first fanfics are older even than the term fanfiction!) The first two known Tolkien fanfics appeared in the 1960 fanzine I Palantir, and they couldn't be more different.

This month's Cultus Dispatches column analyzes these two old fics, in particular how they illustrate the fan studies concept of affirmational and transformational fandom. Transformational fandom is often depicted as the fertile field where fanworks grow, but Tolkien fanworks (and probably many other fandoms' fanworks as well) defy this, drawing on affirmational elements oriented in mastery of canon and consideration of Tolkien's authority. The earliest Tolkien fanfics not only show how both "types of fandom" can give rise to fanworks but how, even in fanworks that clearly belong to one or the other, elements of the other fandom approach are essential to making a particular story work.

You can read the article "Affirmational Fandom, Transformational Fandom, and Two Old Tolkien Fanfics" here.

New Challenge: The Secret Gate

Posted by SWG Moderators on 17 June 2023 . Last updated on 14 July 2023 .

Sherlock Holmes. Miss Marple. Lieutenant Columbo. Kurt Wallander. Benoit Blanc. Your preferred sleuth may vary, but there’s nothing like a good whodunnit. From the most arcane puzzle to the easiest open and shut case, all mystery novels require certain basic elements. This month’s challenge is a Matryoshka that presents you with the building blocks of a mystery novel. When requesting your prompts, make sure to specify the difficulty level you would like: Beginner (2 prompts), Easy (3 prompts), Medium (5 prompts), or Difficult (7 prompts). Contact the mods to request a prompt set or sets.

While the prompts are elements of a mystery, your fanwork does not need to be a mystery—use the prompts as you see fit. As June is Pride month, we have a special stamp for fanworks featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 July 2023. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

Many thanks to Varda delle Stelle for this month's lovely set of stamps!

Character of Month: Húrin, Part One

Posted by SWG Moderators on 3 June 2023 . Last updated on 1 July 2023 .

Throughout the legendarium, characters are called to bear up under extreme pressures exerted by forces of evil. We see, mostly in the Third Age Lord of the Rings, characters like Aragorn and Éowyn and Samwise whose steadfastness, loyalty, and courage approaches the superhuman, as well as tragic antiheroes (mostly in the First and Second Ages) like Fëanor and Maeglin whose life circumstances seem to funnel them into an inevitable fall to ruin.

In this month's character biography, Melesta makes the case that Húrin serves as a precursor to those valiant Third Age heroes while retaining "the tragic elements that define the major tales of the First Age." After all, Húrin's story is far from eucatastrophic.

But this month's biography, the first of two parts, focuses on the earlier events of Húrin's life, when he was a hope-filled hero in whom we see glimmers of the character of Aragorn. In addition to reviewing what we know of the canon of Húrin's early life (which is complex, as Húrin is one of Tolkien's earliest characters and therefore manifests from a labyrinthine collection of texts and drafts), Melesta discusses some of the connections between Húrin and the Edain with ancient and medieval history and what these can reveal of culture and theme.

You can read Part One of Melesta's biography of Húrin Thalion here.

AI Policy and New FAQs

Posted by SWG Moderators on 28 May 2023 . Last updated on 1 July 2023 .

For the past several weeks, our draft artificial intelligence (AI) policy has been open for comment and discussion over email and in the #town-hall channel of our Discord. Many thanks to those who contributed to the discussion; much of the feedback we received has been incorporated into the final policy, and the various perspectives and expertise you all were willing to share with us was appreciated as we navigated this complex issue. (The drafts of and documentation of changes to the policy can be found on the Wayback Machine here, under May 14, 21, and 28.)

You can read our finalized AI policy here.

We've also added two new FAQs to our site:

• I want to make artwork, record a podfic, or create something based on another fan's fanwork. Am I allowed to do that? We realized recently that we never actually address this on our site, so now we do. The tl;dr: absolutely, if you have permission from the other creator(s).
• My challenge response was created for another fandom event. Is it still eligible? In short, yes! In fact, if you cannot post with us before the stamp deadline due to the other event's schedule and rules, we will extend the stamp deadline for you.

As always, contact the mods with any questions!

Cultus Dispatches: Fandom Voices - Using Canon in Fanworks

Posted by SWG Moderators on 27 May 2023 . Last updated on 17 June 2023 .

The SWG is a group that was built for fanworks creators, so if you are reading this, you've probably had the experience of sitting down to work on a Tolkien-based fanwork and being confronted with the issue of canon. What even is canon, in a corpus that includes dozens of volumes, works in various states of completion, and uncounted contradictions? How do you choose which canon to use? How can canon be used (and defied) as a creative choice? When is it okay to leave canon aside?

Fandom Voices is a project that is part of the monthly fandom studies column Cultus Dispatches in which Tolkien fans get to share their experiences and perspectives on a topic related to the fandom and its history. For the past two months, we've considered the question of canon through the responses of fans who participated in our survey on defining and using canon. Last month's column considered how Tolkien fans define canon. This month's looks at the use of canon to make fanworks.

You can read the second part of "Fandom Voices: Defining Canon and Using Canon in Fanworks" here.

Also note that our Fandom Voices surveys never close. If you didn't get a chance to share your views and want to, it is not too late! We will continue to add new responses to the collection as they come in (including pulling from new responses for the second part of the article. You can respond to the "Defining Canon" survey here.

Finally, we are in the midst of a series of Cultus Dispatches articles focusing on canon in the Tolkien fandom. Cultus Dispatches is always open to contributions from all members of the fandom, so if you know of a creator or fanwork that takes an interesting approach to canon, or if you have another idea related to canon and fandom, contact our moderators and pitch your idea! Our reference editors will support new researchers and writers through the process, so don't let unfamiliarity with research writing dissuade you from sharing your ideas with us.

New Challenge: Bestiary of Arda

Posted by SWG Moderators on 15 May 2023 . Last updated on 17 June 2023 .

Beasts and animals are a central part of the legendarium. They are faithful companions, frightening foes, or the alter-egos of shape-shifters. They are heroes, villains, and literally overhead and underfoot, contributing to the sights, sounds, and smells of Arda.

For this challenge, we consider the many animals that appear in Tolkien's works (or would have likely existed in Arda). We've put together a "bestiary" full of image and music prompts related to animals. You can select whichever prompt(s) you want for this month's challenge, and as always, any part of the prompt is fair game. (The song's title? That weird-looking thing in the background? The artist's intriguing signature??) Your fanwork does not need to include the animal featured in your prompt or any animal at all.

Find challenge prompts on the "Bestiary of Arda" challenge page.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 June 2023. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

This month's banner and stamps were made by Anérea.