This month, we celebrated twenty years of challenges on the SWG! Our challenges have undergone lots of changes through the years. They started as open-ended, broad topics to write about. Sometimes people used them; sometimes they didn't. For a while, thinking there were just too many and people needed more time to work on them, they were quarterly instead of monthly. And when that made things worse and participation in challenges had dropped to nearly zero, we tried in 2017 to reshape them one more time by making them monthly again and with a greater variety of formats, including the occasional interactive challenge. This worked, and our challenges have been a key part of our site since, with multiple fanworks created for each that we've run since 2017.
This month, in honor of twenty years of challenges, we have emptied the SWG attic of all of them, dumped them in our front yard, and let creators take a crack at them ... but with a twist. Prompts for this month's Jumble Sale are created by you, our members, using old challenges to make new prompts. There are currently over forty prompts that upcycle past challenges in inspiring, inventive, thought-provoking, and downright evil new ways. All you have to do to participate is find the prompt (or prompts ...) you want, create something Silmarillion-related for it, and post it to our archive. That's it! (And for the philatelists among us, yes, you get stamps for all challenges involved in the prompt. Pre-2017 challenges that do not have stamps receive a special "ancient history hunter" stamp.)
If you enjoy making prompts, you can still contribute Jumble Sale prompts here.
Speaking of challenges, the mods will be working on the 2026 challenge line-up soon, so if you have any ideas for challenges, feel free to click REPLY and let us know!
Also, there is just over a week left to get a print Mereth Aderthad fanzine if you want one! You can order your copy of the Mereth Aderthad 2025 fanzine here. The zine will always be available as a free digital download here.
SWG News
New Challenge: Allusive
Literature and art constantly refer back to each other using allusions, and this month's prompts are inspired by allusions to literature, myth, art, and history.
Cultus Dispatches: "The Rings of Power" Is a Ripple (So Far)
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data for 2025 shows that "The Rings of Power" TV series has not had the same impact on the fandom as the film trilogies did ... so far.
New Challenge: Building Middle-earth
Let global architecture be your inspiration in this challenge, where you will work with a prompts that are architectural styles, locations in Arda, or both.
Instadrabbling Sessions for July, August, and September
Instadrabbling continues on the first Saturday of each month on our Discord server.
New Fanworks
Explain This by Elrond's Library [Writing]
Melkor demands an account of Mairon’s failures.
Read more ...Message in a Bottle by StarSpray [Writing]
Over the course of his very long life he had found a handful of messages in bottles, but it had been a very long time. So when he found the glass bottle on his little stretch of pebbly beach, he picked it up with the intention of tossing it into his recycling. But it wasn’t, he found, just another beer bottle.
Read more ...Nerdanel/Nienna moodboard by Independence1776 [Artwork]
A Nerdanel/Nienna moodboard.
Read more ...Updated Fanworks
The Stars of Home by Idrils Scribe [Writing]
Elrohir has been found after his long abduction by the Black Númenóreans of Umbar. He comes home to Rivendell, but all is not well: the Elf-child that was taken is now a Man grown. War and darkness have left Elrohir deeply scarred, and even at home there is danger...
An alternate universe for the Under Strange Stars series, in which Elrohir goes with Glorfindel instead of running away from him after the events of Under Strange Stars. This story can be enjoyed without having read the original.
Many thanks to Grundy and Marchwriter for their excellent beta-reading and brainstorming.
Read more ...A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray [Writing]
When uneasy dreams bring him back into Beleriand, Daeron finds a pair of twins who have lost their home, and an enemy who has lost himself. The Shadow's reach is growing ever longer, and if they are to survive, they must do it together.
Read more ...From That Rubble by StarSpray [Writing]
Fëanor shrugged, studying the contents of his wine glass. “Something must be done about that house. It will fall down eventually.”
“It does not follow that it must be you that tears it down single-handedly. Are you sure you do not want help?”
“It’s not as though I have much else to do. I need to build something new there,” he said after a few moments. “To do that, I must first clear away the old and broken things.”
Decades out of Mandos, too many things in Fëanor's life remain broken. He can't do anything except wait for his sons to come to him, but he can do something about the old and crumbling house where they once lived.
Read more ...Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael [Writing]
This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously thought on the matter who the Ainur are, who Eru is, how he matches our own religious pantheon, and this has been conducted after serious research of many esoteric teachings of our own planet's heritage.
Read more ...Around the World and Web
Finwean Sibblings Prompt Fest 2026
A prompt-based fandom event aiming to focus on celebrating Finwë's children: Fëanor, Findis, Fingolfin, Lalwen, & Finarfin - ships, gen relationships, or character-centric
Gigolas Week 2026
Gigolas Week is a tumblr event focusing on the relationship between Legolas and Gimli
Innumerable Stars 2026
A character-based Tolkien fandom gift exchange is returning for another year of gifting.
Tolkien Sapphic September
Tolkien Sapphic September is a month long event focusing on Sapphic relationships and characters in Tolkien and adjacent materials.