SWG News

A Sense of History: The Easterling Hostages in Middle-earth and Their Parallels in Welsh Medieval History

Posted by SWG Moderators on . Last updated on .

Many years ago, Angelica wrote a monthly column called "A Sense of History," connecting Tolkien's legendarium with real-world history.

We are very pleased to bring this column back! To welcome it back, MirienSilowende has written an article about the parallels between medieval Welsh history and the history of the Easterlings and Gondor, focusing on hostage-taking.

The term hostage has chilling connotations in modern English. Historically, hostages were used as a means of controlling a neighboring people. The Gondorians, for a time, held Easterling hostages as a way of subduing the Easterling leaders and establishing cultural dominance. MirienSilowende finds parallels in Wales, where the history has a bloody conclusion. Even more tantalizing: What impact did Gondorian hostage-taking have on later relations between the Easterlings and Sauron? Would a softer touch from Gondor have led to a different outcome?

You can read this month's article, "The Easterling Hostages in Middle-earth and Their Parallels in Welsh Medieval History," here.

"A Sense of History" is a monthly column open to contributions that succinctly explain connections between the legendarium and history for a nonscholarly audience. If you have a historical topic you'd like to write about, find out more about contributing to this column here.

In Memory of Keiliss

Posted by Dawn Felagund on . Last updated on .

It is with great sadness that we report that longtime SWG author and the friend of so many of us, Keiliss, passed away from cancer on August 11.

In the day since, many have shared their memories of Kei. She was a leader in the Tolkien fandom, modding the Slashy exchanges for many years. She was one of the original SWG members who joined seventeen years ago, when we were still just a Yahoo! Group and an LJ community, and whose wise, kind counsel helped shape who we are now. She was a heartbreakingly talented author, whose work was a comfort and delight to so many of us. Many remember her as one of the first to welcome them and make them feel at home in the fandom. And she was a beloved friend to so many, and her loss can never be filled.

Kei's MSV comoderator Red Lasbelin will share information about charitable contributions in Kei's name as they become available. In the meantime, if you don't know Kei's work, you should, and you can find her stories here. If you're looking for a way to honor her memory and all that she gave to our community, our art editor Anérea found a 2019 post from Kei, written for the annual Fandom Snowflake challenge, that sums up well her approach to fandom:

Fandom will go on, because as long as there are tales that have gaps that ask questions like 'what then?' and 'why?', people will fill those gaps as we have since time out of mind. The shape that will take further down the road—who knows? Whatever happens, I hope we don't fragment too far because one day we'll lose touch so completely that the only place we'll occasionally connect will be in the comment threads on AO3. And that would be so sad because fandom is about the writers and artists and the magic they create and the way imagination sparks from one to the other. This is our sandpit, we need to treasure it.

Go forth and make something beautiful or offer a kind word to someone who needs it. In loving memory of Keiliss.

Archive Tech Spotlight

Posted by SWG Moderators on . Last updated on .

This year, our archive has grown quickly in offering new features and opening its doors to new types of fanworks. In the midst of this, it can be easy to forget what we already have in place that can make our site easier and more convenient to use.

  • Dark mode. Need to rest your eyes while reading? The SWG newsletter staff recently set off on a tangent about the best ways to set up dark mode on the site, and we thought we'd share the fruits of that conversation with you. While we'd love to offer a variety of different themes someday, someday is the key word there. But in the meantime, most devices and browsers can be set up for dark mode. Thanks to Independence1776 for researching this FAQ!
  • Betas. If you need a beta, you can search for someone in our beta directory. But what if you want to help out other authors by becoming a beta? You can activate and update your beta profile at any time by going to My Account and clicking the Beta Profile tab at the top. If ever you need to go on hiatus, uncheck the "Activate This Profile" checkbox at the bottom and you won't lose your profile, but your name won't show up on the beta list till you reactivate.
  • Finding Fanworks. Remember that one story you read seven years ago? The crackfic horror about Glorfindel? That you've laughed about every day since?? Our Find a Fanwork page (under Tools) is set up to help you find that fanwork you know you saw/read/loved so many years ago, or it helps you find the perfect fanwork you haven't yet read or seen to fall in love with.
  • PMs. Sometimes you want to reach out to a creator or fellow SWG member, but a comment isn't the best way to do it. Did you know you can private message (PM) fellow SWG members? (Note that not all members have switched on this feature.) Visit a person's profile and use the Contact link at the top of their profile. You can find a complete list of SWG members (or creators) here. If you want to switch PMs on (or off) on your own account, go to My Account, click the Edit tab at the top, and look for the Contact Settings section.

Character of Month: Túrin

Posted by Dawn Felagund on . Last updated on .

In his lecture-turned-essay On Fairy-stories, Tolkien coins the term eucatastrophe: that emotional thrill when catastrophe is averted and, against all odds, the story winds up with a happy ending. August's character of the month, Túrin Turambar, is the precise opposite. Firstamazon, the author of this month's biography, notes that he embodies the idea of dyscatastrophe. No matter what he does, Túrin's life ends up in the dumpster in the back alley of Doom.

Túrin's is one of what Tolkien considered the three great tales, and Tolkien spent more time on his story (of which several versions exist) than he did on many other parts of the legendarium. As such, Túrin's biography will be in three parts, with the first part focusing on his childhood sorrows, his fosterage in Doriath (and the dyscatastrophic turn that took), his fall (or Saeros's fall, if you want to be literal about it), and finally, his years of outlawry. Firstamazon untangles Túrin's story from the various versions that exist to bring forth the story of a young man beset by the worst luck ever (and—spoiler alert!—it will only get worse). Check out the first part of Túrin's biography here.

Video and Multimedia Fanworks Are Here!

Posted by Dawn Felagund on . Last updated on .

We are excited to announce the final fanwork types are now available on our archive: video and multimedia!

If you'd like to add a video or multimedia fanwork, you can find these options under your My Account menu. If you need help adding them, see our video FAQ and multimedia FAQ.

What Exactly Is a Multimedia Fanwork?

Multimedia fanworks provide the means to combine two or more of the other fanwork types into a single fanwork, presented on a single page.

Did you do a ton of research for a story, and you'd like to present your link collection alongside the fic? Maybe there's an illustration of the story too? Do you have a video that goes with a meta piece, or a podcast discussing a work of art? (Or the playlist you listened to while making the art?) Or you are participating in a big bang and would like to post the artwork and novella together?

Multimedia fanworks allow you to archive fanworks that don't fit tidily into our existing fanwork types: artwork, audio, link collection, playlist, video, and writing. You can combine as many fanwork types together in whatever order you choose. The multimedia FAQ includes more information about the various ways this fanwork type can be used to present hard-to-archive fanworks on our site.

Banner image by mohamed hassan form PxHere.

Upcoming Instadrabbling Session

Posted by Dawn Felagund on . Last updated on .

Instadrabbling is a longstanding Tolkien fanfiction tradition where creators gather, make flash fanworks, and share those fanworks based on prompts shared as part of a chat session. Our next challenge (still to be announced!) will include an instadrabbling session using challenge prompts.

We will gather on the following dates and times on the SWG Discord server:

Never instadrabbled before? We gather on the #instadrabbling channel and create and share flash fanworks in response to prompts. You can learn more about how instadrabbling works here.

To join our Discord server: If you are a logged-in member, you will see an invite link in the footer of all pages on the site. If you're not an archive member, you can contact the moderators for an invite link.

Cultus Dispatches: A Tribute to the Library of Moria

Posted by Dawn Felagund on . Last updated on .

Founded in 2002, the Library of Moria is one of the Tolkien fandom's oldest fanfiction archives. Amid numerous archive closures in recent years, it is also one of the longest-enduring.

As the Library prepares to close and move its fanworks to AO3 via the Open Doors project, we want to remember not only the site's history but its invaluable contributions to the culture of the Tolkien fanworks fandom. Known as a welcoming and fun-loving place, the Library served as a counterpoint to more exclusive and conflict-driven fandom spaces and, through the joy and love they felt for Tolkien's world, Library authors helped move the slash and femslash genres from the hidden corners of the internet to the mainstream.

You can read this month's article here:  A Tribute to the Library of Moria.

Remember, Cultus Dispatches is always looking for contributors to our column about Tolkien fandom history and culture. Find out more about writing for this column here.

In addition, "A Tribute to the Library of Moria" is an open article that is part of our ongoing efforts to preserve memories from fandom history. Was the Library of Moria important to your fandom experience? Contact Dawn to share your memories of the Library (or if you want to share but aren't sure where to begin, message Dawn for a list of questions to get you started).

Happy 17th Birthday, SWG!

Posted by Dawn Felagund on . Last updated on .

The end of July roughly marks the SWG's birthday, so we are pleased to have reached seventeen amazing years as a community and fanworks archive for the Silmarillion fandom!

We do not honor an exact date as a birthday because Dawn Felagund and ford_of_bruinen, our founding moderators, recruited members to their new group across the course of several days at the end of July. It was then that the first of many conversations, fanworks, and friendships were sparked. At the time, the website was still almost two years away, and the SWG existed on Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal.

So here's to a happy 17th birthday with much love and gratitude to the many, many volunteers, creators, fans, and readers who have made those 17 years (!!) possible.

"The Rings of Power" and the SWG

Posted by Dawn Felagund on . Last updated on .

As we approach the release date of the new Rings of Power show, the mods have been in discussion about how best to handle the show on the SWG. Because the show is based on LotR Appendix materials, we expect much more overlap with our group than the two Jackson trilogies. We know that some SWG members will be really into the show, and others will want to avoid it entirely. We have discussed how to balance these competing interests so that everyone feels welcome and valued here and can "do fandom" in the way that is best for them.

Our complete policy on The Rings of Power can be found here, but check out the highlights below.

  • RoP fans are welcome here, and we continue to welcome new Tolkien fans. We will not tolerate disparagement of fans (whether present here or not) because of their interest in the show, newness to Tolkien/fandom, or lack of knowledge about the legendarium.
  • At the same time, we ask RoP fans respect that we are predominantly a Silmarillion group and keep RoP discussions to spaces created for those discussions (currently, this is the #tv channel on our Discord server) or on fanworks for/about RoP.
  • RoP is based off the LotR Appendices and, as such, is not a related work to The Silmarillion. Therefore, strictly RoP fanworks do not meet the criteria for our site. Silmarillion-based fanworks that use elements from RoP are welcome, but we ask that they be labeled as crossovers. How we define "Silm fanworks" can be found here.
  • RoP fanworks will be eligible for our Beyond the Silmarillion archive.

As always, if you have questions, please contact our moderators!

Coming Soon: Beyond the Silmarillion Archive

Posted by SWG Moderators on . Last updated on .

We're excited to announce that the new section of the Silmarillion Writers' Guild site for non-Silmarillion Tolkien fanworks will be called Beyond the Silmarillion!

What Is the Beyond the Silmarillion Archive?

Back in December 2021, we asked SWG members to let us know what new features they'd like to see us add to the site in the coming year. One of the choices was the option for active creators to also archive their non-Silmarillion Tolkien-based fanworks with us, and this was a popular choice.

We sometimes hear from SWG members that they wish there were more archives where they could store all of their fanworks in one place. Since very few creators in the Tolkien community only create Silmarillion-based fanworks, giving space to our creators to also store their non-Silmarillion Tolkien fanworks with us seemed a small but hopefully meaningful way to help our creators preserve all of their Tolkien fanworks.

All fanworks based on all of Tolkien's books and the various adaptations of those books—such as films, games, and shows—will be eligible. Since we will very soon be able to accept all kinds of fanworks, we truly mean all fanworks: fiction, artwork, nonfiction/meta, audio/podfic, playlists, poetry, link collections, videos, and multimedia fanworks that use more than one of the listed types.

The new section will be open to SWG members who have actively posted Silmarillion-based fanworks to our archive, which we are defining as either five Silmarillion-based fanworks or 10,000 words of Silmarillion-based writing. New creators will be able to earn posting privileges in the new section when they reach one of these thresholds.

Finally, this will truly be a separate section of the site. Visitors who are here for the Silmarillion-based fanworks and not interested in other Tolkien fanworks will not see their experiences change. But visitors who want to see what some of their favorite creators are doing with fanworks that range beyond The Silmarillion will soon have the option to do so.

State of the Site Update: What to Watch for in the Weeks to Come

This year has been a busy one for building our site beyond what we have ever been able to offer before. So far this year, we have added several new fanwork types: art, playlists, and link collections. This week, we opened beta-testing on the final two fanwork types: video and multimedia.

Video is self-explanatory, but multimedia fanworks will serve those of you who create works in multiple media that you'd like to see displayed together as a single fanwork. Say you do a painting to go with a story. Or you post a work of meta with a link collection of suggested reading. Or a podfic recording of a story with a playlist of the songs you used in your soundtrack. Multimedia fanworks will let you display all of those elements together as a single fanwork. We hope video and multimedia fanworks are available on the site for everyone to use by the first week of August at the latest.

Next: the new Beyond the Silmarillion section. As this is a much easier build than multimedia fanworks, we hope we will have the new site section up and running by the end of August.

Part of why we built out all of the fanwork types first is because Beyond the Silmarillion will allow you to post fanworks of all of the types available elsewhere on the archive.

After that, the only item on the December survey that we still have to complete will be the ability for members to use the SWG archive to host events. This will take some information-gathering to see what possible event hosts would need or like to see and will likely end up being a pretty big undertaking. We'd like to see it well underway (if not complete but I'm probably being ambitious there!) by the end of the year. We also plan to create a function that allows creators to identify related works on the archive, e.g., if you remix another author's story or make a work of art, playlist, etc for a fic, those works can be associated with each other.

As always, we love to hear what Tolkien creators would like to see on our archive. Comments are open here, or we can be reached by email. The archive is for you and we serve the Tolkien fanworks community, so never hesitate to be in touch with suggestions or ideas.