Our monthly fan studies and history column, Cultus Dispatches, has been on double hiatus, first while we prepared for last year's Mereth Aderthad event and then while awaiting data from the third installment of the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, which closed at the end of 2025. We are glad to be back, with a reminder that Cultus Dispatches is a column open to anyone with a story to tell related to Tolkien fandom history and cultures. Reply to this email if you have an idea for a future column!

This month's column was researched and written by Dawn and Grundy, two of the SWG site moderators, initially for a presentation at a roundtable on Tolkien fandom and AI. We had agreed to present about how our moderators and members developed the SWG's AI policy in May 2023. The tale—or the presentation—grew in the telling, as these kinds of simple-seeming tasks often do, inviting questions that ranged beyond our original purpose.

First, we wondered about how other small communities and events were responding to AI-generated fanworks. So we made a spreadsheet and collected data on fifty-eight Tolkien fandom events and their AI policies. From this effort, one conclusion was very clear: Tolkien fandom communities don't want AI-generated fanworks in their spaces.

That this boundary was drawn so firmly was noteworthy. Fanworks fandom does not draw a lot of boundaries. By definition, fanworks are transgressive, working as we do with texts to which we do not own the rights. Fanworks fandom is also a space where you can engage in interests that you wouldn't share at lunch with coworkers or on your weekly call to Grandma and generally expect to be left alone and not judged. When fanworks creators place something unequivocally on the side of NOPE, there is something significant going on.

So next we wondered about big multifandom archives. What were they doing with genAI? What were they seeing? And we wondered too if genAI was really that unique in earning the fandom's ire, or were fandom events using their rules to take a stance on approaches to fanworks that they found objectionable?

You can read what we found in Fandom Draws the Line: Fanworks, AI, and Resistance.

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Instadrabbling Sessions for July, August, and September
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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. 

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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 ...

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