This week, we were very pleased to be able to host The Fëanorian Zine, a gorgeous full-color fanzine with fiction and art from thirty creators, which can be read and downloaded for free on the SWG. At over 150 pages, it promises hours of enjoyment if you're lucky to have time off during the December holidays. The SWG moderators would like to offer our congratulations to editors JoeTamy and StarsOfArda and all of the zine's contributors for their achievement! We hope you will check it out and share your appreciation if you enjoy it! (Note that you must be logged in to our site to comment. If you're not an SWG member and want to pass along your compliments, you can reply to this email too, and we will forward it to the editors.)

When JoeTamy and StarsOfArda first contacted us about hosting the zine, this nudged us to get the Special Projects section of our site back up and running. Since the first special project in 2007 (Seven in '07), special projects have taken a variety of forms and are sometimes, like The Fëanorian Zine, done in collaboration with other fandom groups. When we migrated the archive from eFiction to Drupal, the formatting broke on many of our special projects, which were sometimes housed on custom webpages. It has been easy to put off the work of getting these back up and running again, but we've begun to do so, and if you visit the Special Projects page (housed under the Extras menu), you will see The Fëanorian Zine now keeps company with Mereth Aderthad 2025 and two historical special projects, Akallabêth in August and Back to Middle-earth Month 2008, which are in the process of being restored.

Special Projects is an area of our site we hope will continue to grow, including supporting projects outside the SWG that benefit from the infrastructure we can provide through our website and archive. When the SWG was founded in 2005, we were committed to collaborating, not competing, with other fandom groups and projects, and that value remains important to us. If you're considering a special project or know someone who is, we'd love the help support your project if we can!

Finally, tomorrow (Sunday, December 28) we will host a live reading on the theme of celebrations on our Discord. It's not to late to sign up if you want to be on the program, but if you're not sure, there will be an open mic session at the end. Fanworks, excerpts, and passages from Tolkien on the theme of celebrations are all welcome! Find more information, including the program so far, here. The reading will begin at noon Eastern Time (find this in my timezone) on the #live-readings stage channel on our Discord, found under SWG Events. The channel will open a half-hour early to provide the opportunity to tech and sound checks from participants. We hope you can join to listen in or read!

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.”