Most people, when they use a website, don't think much about the software behind it. This week marks five years since we reopened the SWG with Drupal software, so it seemed as good a time as any for a quick digression into what keeps the SWG running for the tech nerds and tech-curious among us.
Like the majority of automated Tolkien fanfiction archives (63%, according to Dawn's data), the SWG initially used eFiction. Originally coded by Rivka—herself a Tolkien fan and the founder of the website Council of Elrond—eFiction was easily installed and used but stopped being actively developed in 2015. Because the internet never stops evolving, when software doesn't keep up, eventually it breaks, and in 2019, that's what began to happen on the SWG as our webhost continued upgrading our server but eFiction stagnated.
Where to go from eFiction was a difficult call. We needed software that could be adapted to function as a fiction archive. We also needed something that was likely to be supported into the foreseeable future—in other words, so that we weren't rebuilding and migrating the site again in another twelve years. We eventually settled on Drupal, an open-source content management system, as the most likely candidate. In August 2020, with the world largely shut down due to COVID-19, Dawn began rebuilding the SWG archive with a local installation of Drupal 8.
It was not easy. None of the SWG moderators knew anything about Drupal, which utilizes core software extended using open-source contributed modules. Perhaps in a normal year, unable to resist the siren call of summer, the rebuild would have happened much slower or not at all. Obstacles arose regularly, seemingly as impassable as Caradhras. Eventually, however, the SWG archive existed in parallel form: in eFiction and in Drupal.
Russandol next had to figure out how to migrate 3,500 fanworks from eFiction to the new Drupal site. This also came with frequent snags, but by March 2021, the new site opened for beta, and five years ago, it opened officially.
eFiction certainly has a nostalgic appeal. It was a simple software, easy to run, and hard to break. Drupal is much more complicated and, therefore, finicky. Major updates feel just shy of terrifying, and the Venn diagram of Dawn-and-Russa-are-swamped and someone-reports-a-white-screen-of-death-on-the-site is nearly a circle. However, Drupal brings a lot more flexibility, and we have been able to extend and grow the site in ways we never could with eFiction. This is the fun part: building and adding features that make the site better for our community. And most importantly, Drupal is being actively developed and has a robust community behind it, meaning it should serve the SWG for some time to come.
SWG News
Sign-Up to Hand Out Scavenger Hunt Prompts
Our May challenge will be a Matryoshka built around a scavenger hunt. If you'd like to hand out prompts (and receive comments on your work for doing so!), you can sign up to do so.
New Challenge: Everyman
Create a fanwork about an ordinary character in the legendarium using a quote about an unnamed character as inspiration.
Cultus Dispatches: Fanworks, AI, and Resistance by Dawn and Grundy
The fan studies column Cultus Dispatches returns with a history of how Tolkien fanworks fandom has reacted and resisted generative AI by drawing strong boundaries in a way that is not typical for the fandom.
Instadrabbling Sessions for April, May, and June
Instadrabbling continues on the first Saturday of each month on our Discord server.
New Fanworks
A Very Fire by by Deborah Judge [Writing]
Feanor and Fingolfin, from their youth to their fall.
"I will do this gladly," Fingolfin said, whispering into Feanor's mouth, grasping for reasons and sense. "Gladly, if it will bring peace between us. If it will end the madness."
"The madness will not end," Feanor said. "There will never be peace."
Chapters 1-11 and 18 were originally posted on fanfiction.net in 2002 and slightly revised for this version. Chapters 12-17 were written in 2026.
Read more ...Add Another Stone by by StarSpray [Writing]
The thing about forgiveness, he thought, was that it was so much easier when the object of it was far away—or dead. It was so much easier to let it all go when those responsible were far away and unable to do any more harm.
Read more ...How Tolkien Presents Ordinary People in "The Silmarillion" by by Dawn Felagund [Writing]
Inspired by collecting the prompts for the Everyman challenge, this essay considers how ordinary people are subsumed and silenced in The Silmarillion, which begins a three-book arc that ends with the rise of the humble and ordinary.
Read more ...Blessed are the Leave-takers by by Isilme_among_the_stars [Writing]
As prince Curufinwë Fëanáro makes an historical speech from the high court of the King upon Túna, those at the back of the crowd strain to hear.
A silly little scene inspired by Monty Python's "Blessed are the Cheesemakers" scene from The Life of Brian, written for SWG's Everyman Challenge April 2026, using the prompt:
"A great multitude gathered swiftly, therefore, to hear what he would say; and the hill and all the stairs and streets that climbed upon it were lit with the light of many torches that each one bore in hand." ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")
a riot of shadow and shine by by Elrond's Library [Writing]
These were simply flashes, a hint of a wider, greater world. A tantalizing glimpse of more, always at the edge of awareness, never within reach. Míriel would grasp it, if something as intangible as the concept of color could overflow in bounteous wonder over her hands.
But then fire was caught, tamed and kept and cherished, and their world was suddenly awash with light. The world expanded, a pageantry of blues and greens and browns. A cacophony of color, overwhelming in its saturation.
In which Míriel falls in love with the colors in the earliest days, and Indis too.
Read more ...The Exchange by by Elrond's Library [Writing]
An exchange is made during the Great Journey
Read more ...I Sit and Think of Times There Were Before by by Erdariel [Writing]
In his old age, Isildur's former esquire Ruinamacil, known to later histories only as Ohtar, writes his own account of his escape from the ambush at Gladden Fields and journey to Imladris, and the history of his friend whom Isildur ordered to flee with him.
Read more ...The Welcome of the Alders by by AdmirableMonster [Writing]
A thrall lately escaped from Angband is turned away from Ladros and finds an unexpected welcome elsewhere.
Read more ...After the Kinslaying by by Deborah Judge [Writing]
A Teleri fishing boat captain turns to farming on abandoned Noldor lands after her ship is stolen. A Noldor farmer returns with Finarfin to find that his land belongs to the Teleri now.
Read more ...An Early Loremaster by by Himring [Writing]
Early in the history of Numenor, Elros's son Vardamir not only gathers much lore himself, but also assembles an early circle of loremasters around him. One of these is Tegilbor, who reflects about lore, Elvish and otherwise.
Read more ...Blood and Copper on the Cliffs by by Tathrin [Writing]
Trapped upon the bitter cliff, Maedhros dreams. Or hallucinates. Or endures the mental torments of the Dark Vala, Morgoth. Surely, one of those must be the case; for he cannot have been rescued from Thangorodrim's torturous peak. He cannot.
But then, why is Findekáno here?
Read more ...Maedhros finds in many ways that those visions which do not end with his own blood and breaking are the worst of all: because they end instead in waking, and the inescapable knowledge that such things will never again be aught but dreams to him. That knowledge is a tighter shackle than the one that holds him to the cliff-face, and the pain of it around his heart is much sharper than that which throbs through his arm. An arm goes numb much faster than a heart, and there is a limit to how much pain a body can bear before the sensation of agony starts to crumble beneath the onslaught.
If there is a limit to how much pain a heart can hold, Maedhros has not yet found it.
Akedah by by Zdenka [Writing]
A fragment from a Dwarvish version of their creation story. (Drabble.)
Read more ...Updated Fanworks
Until the Stars are All Alight by 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 ...Day Will Come Again by by gaydhros [Writing]
On the morning of the day Fingon was to die, the sun rose bright over a shining sea of metal.
Read more ...From That Rubble by 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 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 ...Beyond the Silmarillion Fanworks
Down the Long Years by by Isilme_among_the_stars [Writing]
Bilbo, the strange old hobbit with the wandering feet, senses something special in young Frodo the first time he sees the lad; as they become close, they find in each other a cameraderie not well understood by other hobbits. Five poignant moments between Bilbo and Frodo Baggins over the course of their long friendship, and one moment between Frodo and Sam.
Read more ...Around the World and Web
April/May Teitho Challenge
Teithio is running a prompt challenge around the theme of "heartbreak."
Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2026
The Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang is back for another summer of collaboration between artists and writers!
Aspec Arda Week 2026
This week-long event celebrates asexual and aromantic spectrum interpretations and headcanons of Tolkien’s Legendarium.
Week of Kiliel
A Tumblr event dedicated to the relationship between Kili and Tauriel.