Today is spooky instadrabbling on our Discord server. (It's not too late to join!) Right now, at this juncture of the SWG's history, our Discord server is one of the thriving corners of our community, along with our archive. But given that the SWG is a decade older than Discord, this was clearly not always the case.
The SWG didn't originate as an archive but as a fandom community, hosted on Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal. Yahoo! Groups, which closed in 2020, was a semipublic email list and formed the cornerstone of many early Tolkien fanfiction groups. During the heyday of the Lord of the Rings films, some Yahoo! Groups received dozens of messages a day and allowed fans to talk Tolkien using their email. LiveJournal was an early blogging platform; again, active LJs would sometimes have posts with comments numbering in the hundreds. Pre-dating Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, these early social media platforms tended to require you to opt-in to a community (versus seeing content from communities shared by others you follow or content recommended by an algorithm).
From these social communities, fanfiction archives arose. The fan scholar and archive expert Abigail De Kosnik calls them community archives because they become the more public, formal face of fan communities that were often highly informal. The SWG followed the exact trajectory De Kosnik described (as did many 2000s-era Tolkien fanfic archives): our Yahoo! Group and LiveJournal were active spaces for discussion, the foundation of the SWG, and the archive grew from there.
Fan-unfriendly decisions by the leadership of both Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal eventually led us to move away from those platforms, and neither are officially in use any longer (although the LJ community is still open for historical purposes and any SWG member who wants to use it). There was a time in the 2010s when there was no active community space for interaction and discussion on the SWG. On my endless list of fandom data projects is to trace how archive activity aligns with the moments in our history where community was vibrant and when it was essentially nonexistent.
Right now, the pendulum has swung back toward community spaces with the use of our Discord as a central meeting place for SWG members. Just like the Yahoo! Group email and LJ comments of old, discussions range from silly and irreverent to serious discussion of the texts and their implications ... and from all of this, fanworks continue to grow.
SWG News
New Challenge: Epic 80s
This month's challenge features hundreds of fresh prompts from the bodacious decade of the 1980s.
Cultus Dispatches: Communities Do Comment
Comment data from the SWG underscores community as an essential component to a robust commenting culture.
Instadrabbling Sessions for July, August, and September
Instadrabbling continues on the first Saturday of each month on our Discord server.
New Fanworks
Is it raining with you? by AdmirableMonster [Writing]
In the last days of Númenor, two very different men meet in Umbar and fall in love.
(Please note that while this work is heavily inspired by Disco Elysium, no knowledge of the game is necessary to read the fic!)
Read more ...Wrensong and Roses by Isilme_among_the_stars [Writing]
Concerned by his responses to the paraphernalia of healing, Fingon steals Maedhros from his room for an impromptu garden excursion. Maedhros battles with dark thoughts.
Read more ...Bon(e)fire by Fuin [Writing]
On the night before the battle, Caranthir and his ally share thoughts about their peoples' traditions:
Burning bones ward off evil.
Read more ...McShady by Babblecat [Writing]
Melkor has himself a bad time in the Void.
Read more ...
Updated Fanworks
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 ...Nasyalossë by Lovimmy3365 [Writing]
Erestor lay up against a tree, brown washed to black in the wet of the snow. The black disc of the new moon sailed across the dark sky. Erestor wished it were gone. He had no need to look into dark eyes any longer.
He was dying.
(AKA Erestor unwittingly travels back in time to the days between the Dagor Bragollach and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, meets the sons of Feanor, Thingol and his ilk, many Laiquendi, many Dwarves, and Men besides, and THEN decides to solve the drowning of Beleriand himself. This has nothing to do with his personal problems. Nope. Not at all. Erestor is having regular feelings.)
Read more ...Until the Stars are All Alight by Dagstjarna [Writing]
Reembodied in Aman, Celebrimbor decides to return to Middle earth to help heal the darkness and hurt wrought by the ring.
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 ...The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster [Writing]
Rescued from a brutal Angband hunt, an ex-thrall with a strange and powerful artifact embedded in his spine is brought to Himring, for it is one of the only places in Beleriand which welcomes such folk. Though he has no memories of his life before, Anniavas slowly becomes accustomed to his new life and finds he has a queer connection with Maedhros, Himring's lord. As their intimacy grows, however, so do the dangers surrounding them, both without and within. What secrets are hidden inside the depths of Anniavas's lost memories--and how will those with whom he is forging and deepening bonds react, when those secrets are at last revealed?
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
Scribbles and Drabbles 2026
Scribbles & Drabbles is a fic and art exchange with a minimum word count of 100 words.
Tolkien Disability Pride 2026
This Tumblr event focuses on ALL creative works focusing on disability in Tolkien's universe.
Tolkien Gen Week 2026
Tolkien Gen Week will run from July 6-12, 2026 to appreciate all of the incredible characters and relationships within Tolkien’s legendarium that fall under the broad category of “gen.”