SWG News

Mereth Aderthad Interview: Interview with Paul D. Deane by Himring

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When we think of poetry, we often think first of the "roses are red, violets are blue" rhymed poetry or, if we're feeling avant garde, free verse. However, before rhymed poetry came with French culture after the Norman Invasion, poetry was alliterative: structured around complex metrical rules and cohered through alliteration: multiple words starting with the same sound.

Tolkien loved alliterative poetry, translated several important alliterative poems, and wrote his own original verse. At Mereth Aderthad 2025, Paul D. Deane will be sharing a paper titled "Love, Grief, and Alliterative Verse in Tolkien’s Legendarium" about how Tolkien and his fans have used alliterative versus to convey some of the works' most important themes surrounding love and grief. Himring had a chance to speak to Paul about his upcoming presentation, as well as his considerable body of research and original work on alliterative verse.

You can read Himring's interview with Paul D. Deane here.

New Challenge: Musicals

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The curtain rises, the lights come up, and for the next few hours, you are transported to a world where people sing through their problems. Musicals tell stories ranging from the petty to the profound through song and, as they belt out from the stage, saturate the culture, moving from theater to film to radio, inspiring uninhibited shower-singing and getting unapologetically stuck in your head. This month's challenge draws its prompts from musicals. Select the prompt you want from the list and, as always, you can use any part of the prompt—including delving deeper into the lyrics and performance of the selected songs—in crafting your fanwork.

You can find the prompts for the Musicals challenge here.

Thank you to silmalope for this month's gorgeous banner and stamps!

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 May 2025. Note that the Birthday Bash challenge will continue to run through April 25. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference? Putting Together the Presentation

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You've written your proposal and been accepted to present at your first Tolkien conference—now what? This session explored how to write a paper and turn it into a presentation for a Tolkien conference. Topics in this session included:

  • How to structure your paper, including considerations unique to writing a paper that will become a presentation
  • What to include in each section of your paper, including how to prioritize and balance these sections for a presentation
  • Different ways to present a paper at a conference and how to build a presentation from your paper
  • Using universal design concepts to ensure that your presentation is accessible to everyone
  • Tools for adding interactive elements to your presentation

You can find a recording of the session, plus resources/links discussed in the session, here: So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference? Putting Together the Presentation

Archive Software Upgrade and Downtime Postponed

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We will be performing a major software update on the SWG site/archive on Saturday, April 19, beginning in the morning Eastern Time, and members and visitors should anticipate site downtime on that date.

This update has been postponed! We will share the new date as soon as we have it.

Mereth Aderthad Interview: Interview with cloudyhymns by Shadow

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Tolkien popularized many elements of the modern fantasy genre and perhaps none more so than dragons. You don't even have to love a good fantasy novel to appreciate the mystery, aesthetic, and mythic roots of these beasts. But, in Tolkien, we know relatively little about dragons. As part of our ongoing interview series of presenters at Mereth Aderthad 2025, Shadow interviewed cloudyhymns about his paper "The Design of Dragons and the Doom of the Dwarves," where he draws on Norse myth and evidence from the legendarium to explore the nature of dragons in Tolkien's work and their connection to the Dwarves.

You can read Shadow's interview with cloudyhymns here.

Instadrabbling Sessions for April, May, and June

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Anna (IdleLeaves) has kindly offered to host regular instadrabbling sessions on our Discord server on the first Saturday of each month! We welcome all creators to join us for an few hours of creating, squeeing, and hanging out with fellow fans on the following dates:

What is instadrabbling? Instadrabbling is a long-standing community activity in the Tolkien fanfiction fandom. A group of friends gets together on chat, someone throws out a prompt or four, and everyone writes a drabble (or whatever comes to mind). We share our creations in the server and admire each other's work. Instadrabbling is low-pressure and casual, and all are encouraged to participate to whatever degree they are comfortable. Instadrabbling responses shared on our server can be about any aspect of Tolkien's legendarium, not just Silmworks.

When we instadrabble, we meet on the #instadrabbling channel on our Discord server. Discord invites can be requested at any time from the moderators. All are welcome to join the Discord, whether you want to instadrabble with us or not!

Mereth Aderthad Interview: Interview with polutropos by Dawn

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Kidnap fam, the Tolkien fandom term for the Silmarillion plot point where Maedhros and Maglor raise Elrond and Elros after the third kinslaying, fascinates many Tolkien fanworks creators. In the next in our series of interviews of Mereth Aderthad 2025 presenters, polutropos spoke with Dawn about her presentation "'Kidnap Fam' and the Living Legendarium," which explores why this plot point attracts so much interest in the fandom.

You can read Dawn's interview with polutropos here.

Mereth Aderthad Interview: Interview with Maglor by Shadow

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Who was Gil-galad? One need not have even read The Silmarillion to begin reciting the answer to that, in the style of Samwise Gamgee. But who really was Gil-galad? Who was the person beyond the king we are presented in the texts?

In our latest in a series of interviews of Mereth Aderthad 2025 presenters, Shadow spoke with Maglor about his upcoming presentation on "Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the Last High King of the Noldor." Maglor spoke about what draws him to Tolkien, his theories on Gil-galad as a character, and what makes fanworks so essential to unlocking the secrets of the last High King of the Noldor.

You can read Shadow's interview with Maglor here.

Mereth Aderthad Registration Is Open!

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Mereth Aderthad 2025 is open to both in-person and virtual attendees, and registration for both is free. Registration will remain open through the day of the event, so there is no deadline to register!

Some key points:

  • You will be asked for a name and an email address at registration. Pseudonyms are fine!
  • We will use your email to contact you about event updates only.
  • Please do not register if you cannot attend, and cancel your registration if circumstances change and you are no longer able to attend. In-person seating is limited, and we pay costs per person and cannot afford to pay for empty seats. Contact a moderator if you need help canceling a registration. We are leaving registration open through the day of the event, so if you decide you can join us last-minute, please do!
  • There is an OPTIONAL donation to help us cover costs of the event. It really is optional! We want you there more than we want an extra few bucks! If you want more information on how donations will be used, see our Donation Policy.

Ready to register? You can register for Mereth Aderthad 2025 here!

New Challenge: Birthday Bash

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On March 14, 2005, the SWG arrived in the small hours of the morning. It was still in very embryonic form, actualized only as a Yahoo! Group with no members and a series of very cringey posts on Dawn's LiveJournal (she had no idea how LiveJournal worked, having joined just that day to post these cringey posts in her insomnia-fueled effort to launch the SWG).

Twenty years later, this challenge debuted in recognition of two full decades of existence of the SWG. Each day, we will post an event that is an important hashmark on the timeline of the SWG's history along with three prompts that (at least in the challenge mods' mind) are associated with that event: a single word, a snippet of poetry (with a link to the full poem), and a public domain image. As always, you can use any aspect of the prompt to inspire your fanwork, including fragments of prompts or parts of the poem not included on the challenge page. The history snippets are fair game as prompts. You do not have to create or share your response on the day a prompt is posted. You can go back to past prompts, and you can stitch prompts from different days together into fanworks in cool and bizarre ways.

You can find challenge prompts for Birthday Bash here.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 25 April 2025. (Note that this extends the challenge past the usual deadline of the 15th so that those who wish to create for the later prompts in the challenge have the opportunity to do so!) For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.