SWG News

New Challenge: Middle-earth Is Multitudes

Posted by SWG Moderators on 12 March 2023 . Last updated on 15 April 2023 .

In notes to W.H. Auden's review of Return of the King, Tolkien wrote, "The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live ..." Middle-earth, being a world much like our own, is home to a wide range of characters. In addition to fantasy peoples and creatures that populate Tolkien's imagined world, because Middle-earth is an analogue of our Earth, there would have been diversity within those groups as well, much like in our own world. This month, we’re shining a spotlight on as many character groups as we can fit in—and to be honest, we ran out of space. We hope there is something for everyone in this month’s prompts!

The Middle-earth Is Multitudes challenge will feature two new prompts every day, recognizing the diversity of the people who inhabit Middle-earth. One prompt will focus on a group within Middle-earth, while the second prompt will focus on additional identities or characteristics.

• You do not need to complete a prompt on the day it is featured.
• You can complete one prompt or both, and you can combine prompts from different days.
• Fanworks can but do not need to center on the character's identity; the bigger aim of this challenge is to include more diverse characters in our fanworks in a variety of roles, not only in fanworks that focus on that particular identity.
• We expect there will be overlap between prompts and want to encourage participants not to overthink if a particular character meets a prompt. If you think a person belongs in a particular group, that is good enough for us.

Several other Tolkien fandom events are or will be running while this challenge is active. With this in mind, we've intentionally designed this challenge so that it is easy to combine with other prompts from other events.

You can find the Middle-earth Is Multitudes prompts and prompt calendar here.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 April 2023. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website. Many thanks go to Ettelenë for creating this month's stamps!

New Column: Tolkien Fanartics

Posted by SWG Moderators on 11 March 2023 . Last updated on 18 March 2023 .

Starting next week, we are excited to introduce a new column in our newsletter: Tolkien Fanartics. This art-oriented column will take a closer look at Tolkien fan art, featuring interviews with artists, analysis of Tolkien's art, fan art studies, inspiration, tips and techniques, and more. We very much encourage guest writers and/or artists as well. Anérea is running the project, so reach out to her if you'd like to contribute, or see a particular artist or topic featured. The first feature will be an interview with the artist behind ArlenianChronicles, so watch for it in the March 18 newsletter!

If you'd like to get our weekly newsletter in your inbox with articles and news from in and beyond the SWG, you can subscribe to the newsletter here.

Character of the Month: Maglor

Posted by SWG Moderators on 2 March 2023 . Last updated on 8 April 2023 .

"Maglor," polutropos begins in this month's character biography, "is a character of contradictions, conflicts, and mystery. It is no wonder that this second son of Fëanor has captured the imagination of so many readers of The Silmarillion."

This is, if anything, an understatement. With 736 fanworks about him, Maglor is the second most written-about character on the SWG, exceeded only by Maedhros (with 804 fanworks). What accounts for this popularity? He's not the only musician (Daeron) or warrior (Fingolfin). He's certainly not the only tragic figure (Túrin fills an actual book).

In this month's biography, polutropos peels away the many layers that make Maglor such an intriguing character. As she notes, he is full of contradictions: one of the Noldor's consummate poets and most fearsome warriors, joining a kinslaying to only moments later take pity upon its orphans. But it's not just Maglor's character arc that makes him so intriguing to Silmarillion fans. As polutropos also illustrates, he contributes to some of the most important themes in the early legendarium: music, exile, and oaths. He is also the rare character where we receive glimpses of his inner life, showing the emotional impact of his rollercoaster life.

Beneath all of this is a textual history at least as complicated as Maglor himself. Undaunted, polutropos unfolds the evolution of Maglor's character across decades, from his first mention (and immediate demise) in the Lost Tales to his tangled history alongside Maedhros, where they frequently traded roles as the merciful and repentant.

You can read polutropos' biography of Maglor here.

Cultus Dispatches: Femslash Is a Political Act

Posted by SWG Moderators on 20 February 2023 . Last updated on 25 March 2023 .

Fans who have been reading and writing Tolkien-based fanfiction for more than ten years quite possibly remember a time when "femslash" wasn't even a term. While slash sites nominally accepted it, it really wasn't being written, and it's no wonder: As the last several Cultus Dispatches columns in our series on writing about women in fanfiction have detailed, the Tolkien fandom went through a pair of phases where writing about women and writing slash were controversial acts. Caught in the crosshairs of this dual intolerance (it was about ladies! and it was gay!!!), femslash really didn't stand a chance.

But, as we also detailed in last month's interview with Elleth, a concerted effort by fans to not just normalize but celebrate writing about women—and femslash in particular—has pushed back the tides of intolerance and introduced a whole new genre to the fandom. This month's column Femslash Is a Political Act (and Other Observations of Tolkien Fandom's Genre Non Grata) by Dawn Felagund looks at Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data about femslash: how many people write it, how many people read it, and who exactly are among those groups. The results show that femslash has skyrocketed in popularity among readers in recent years, portending that maybe it won't always be the new genre on the block (much less a "genre non grata"), possibly due to its use as a political expression by fans who feel marginalized based on gender, sexual orientation, or both.

Read & Review: The Fall of Númenor

Posted by SWG Moderators on 16 February 2023 . Last updated on 8 April 2023 .

Lyra opens her review of The Fall of Númenor with the observation that "Tolkien's literary legacy truly is the gift that keeps on giving. Whenever you think that your collection is finally complete, a new publication is announced." The question is, though, is The Fall of Númenor a worthwhile addition to your already groaning Tolkien bookshelf?

In our latest Read & Review column, Lyra reviews The Fall of Númenor, touching on its contents (and what it leaves out), its structure, and the artwork it contains by Alan Lee, concluding that "it is ... an immensely useful publication." You can read Lyra's complete "Review of The Fall of Númenor" here.

New Challenge: Cheesy Corn Chips

Posted by SWG Moderators on 13 February 2023 . Last updated on 18 March 2023 .

Two best friends share a first kiss, backed by a postcard-perfect sunset. A car chase twists through the streets of Paris before plunging through the Arc de Triomphe—while driving in reverse. The team of lovable and klutzy misfits pulls out a victory over the top-flight bullies, right at the buzzer. Such stories make us roll our eyes and groan but also hold the irresistible appeal of one more nacho chip or candy corn.

This month's challenge celebrates the corny and the cheesy in popular culture, the sappy and sweet and schmaltzy and saccharine. To participate, you will choose a prompt from a collection of corny, sentimental, and heartstring-rending pop-culture selections and use it to create a fanwork. As always, you can use any part of the prompt to inspire your fanwork and interpret it any way that works for you. Note that fanworks themselves do not need to be fluffy, sweet, or sentimental.

In order to receive a stamp, fanworks should be posted to the SWG archive no later than March 15, 2023. You can find Cheesy Corn Chips challenge prompts and complete challenge guidelines under the Challenge menu.

Please note that the Jubilee challenge remains open until February 15, so yes, that means that for a short while, there will be two challenges running!

New Archive Formatting Options

Posted by SWG Moderators on 11 February 2023 . Last updated on 11 February 2023 .

It recently came to our attention that center- and right-aligned formatting were not available on text fields on the archive. We have fixed this issue, so left-, center-, and right-aligned text should all be available. (Note that the <center> HTML tag, which has been deprecated since the Years of the Trees but has tended to continue to work, finally does not work. For those of you writing old-school HTML, we did try to keep it for you. Alas, the internet Ainur refused to hear our prayer. If you want to center-align text, please use the button on the rich-text editor or add a "text-align-center" class to your paragraph tag.) We've also added subscripts and a Paste from Word button.

For fun, we've also given everyone Font Awesome access, so you will be able to use Font Awesome icons in fanworks. (Why would you need subscripts or Font Awesome icons?? We don't know, but we know our community well enough to be sure someone will come up with a good use for them!) To use Font Awesome, click the flag icon in the toolbar and type the name of the icon you want.

Please let us know if you try to use these new features and they don't behave as you think they should.

Character of the Month: Ulmo

Posted by SWG Moderators on 4 February 2023 . Last updated on 3 March 2023 .

Ulmo is, in short, a complicated character. He is one of Tolkien's earliest characters, first appearing in the 1910s Book of Lost Tales. Like many of Tolkien's early Ainur, he is a tangle of contradictions: the only Vala to remain active in the lives of the people of Middle-earth after the Noldorin exile, yet delighting in scaring those upon whom he visited his blessings. He is both benevolent and terrifying (and, in some of the earliest drafts, a bit silly as well).

This month, Anérea tackles the first of a two-part biography of Ulmo, Lord of Waters, focusing on his realm and his relationships with the other Ainur (which, as his complex nature suggests, were also complicated). She also dives—pardon the pun—into some of the mythological correspondences between Ulmo and other sea deities, his special significance as a god of water in a legendarium where water places a central role, and biographical connections that possibly reveal how water—and Ulmo—came to be so central in Tolkien's imagination.

You can read Part 1 of Anérea's biography of Ulmo here.

Character of Month: Túrin, Part Three

Posted by SWG Moderators on 26 January 2023 . Last updated on 23 February 2023 .

Tolkien regarded Túrin's story as one of the most important in the legendarium, and it is one of the more complex to unwind textually. Presented by Christopher Tolkien in several forms (including its own volume), there are therefore many confluences and contradictions across what is already a long and tricky tale. For the past several months, firstamazon has been doing us the favor of further distilling Christopher's work into a highly readable three-part biography series of Tolkien's own walking disaster, Túrin Turambar.

In this third and final installment, Túrin's life picks up after Beleg's death, where he ventures next to Nargothrond. This is the moment where his already unlucky existence begins to be ruinous on a much larger scale, leaving people and entire settlements destroyed in his wake, and his own life forfeit to his tragic circumstances.

However, as firstamazon notes, mortal Men "are the game-changers in Tolkien’s legendarium," placing Túrin in a line of Men whose deeds shaped kingdoms and the entire history of Arda. Sadly, his best efforts could not overcome Morgoth's curse, but in a eucatastrophic arc typical of Tolkien, his mortal successors generally fare better (and Tolkien's writings on the Last Battle suggest that Túrin may yet get the final word against Morgoth).

Read the third part of firstamazon's biography of Túrin. And if you missed them, you can find Part One and Part Two on the site as well.

A Sense of History: The Fall of Gondolin

Posted by SWG Moderators on 21 January 2023 . Last updated on 8 April 2023 .

Tolkien was, of course, extremely well-read in ancient and medieval history, conversant in many of the dead languages that the rest of us read only in translation. Much of his work was, not surprisingly, grounded in this history.

The Fall of Gondolin is one such episode.

In this month's A Sense of History column, MirienSilowende looks at the Fall of Gondolin and the ancient and medieval history that may have informed Tolkien's writing of it. She uncovers numerous historical sources that detail some of the more noteworthy sacks and falls of great cities much like Gondolin, renowned for their splendor and elevated status within their worlds.

Of course, these historical inspirations are more than just an interesting aside in the legendarium but can also become building blocks for expanding on the legendarium via fanworks. For example, some of the historical sources MirienSilowende provides go into detail about what happened to the survivors once the city was overthrown by an enemy military. While Tolkien provides few details on this for Gondolin, reading historical sources that possibly informed his construction of the story generates inspiration for fanworks about these untold tales of Gondolin's people.

You can read MirienSilowende's article "The Fall of Gondolin Reflected in History" here.