The SWG started almost twenty-one years ago on early versions of social network sites, namely Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal. Our website and archive wouldn't come for another two years, and while that has since become the center of our organization in many ways, it is not the center of community life on the SWG, and we maintain presences on several social media as a way to reach out beyond our website and foster community among our members.

Because we have new members joining us all the time, we like to periodically use the newsletter to share information that, to those of us who have been around a while, can be easy to forget that everyone doesn't know.

So if you are new or just want to get more involved on the SWG, how can you do it?

If you want to read, view, and post your own fanworks, the SWG site and archive is the place to begin. The SWG, like Archive of Our Own and many other fanworks archives, structures its site much like Rebecca Smallwood's highly influential eFiction script, so using it should be familiar if you've wandered around a fanworks archive before. Start at the Fanworks menu and explore from there. If you want to do stuff with your own account, start at the My Account menu. Our FAQs have detailed instructions on how to post and do things on the site, or you can reply here and get our mod team and ask for help—that's what we're here for!

The social center of our site is our Discord. For fandom olds who don't use Discord, it functions like the instant messaging platforms back in the day, letting you talk with other SWG members in real time. The #read-me-first channel will get you start, then each channel has a description of what it's used for. You can join our Discord here—and again, if it's a new platform for you and you need help, just reply here and ask!

The SWG maintains a presence as well on Tumblr and Dreamwidth. All announcements are posted here but both are also open to contributions from our members. (No one has ever submitted anything to our tumblr! You could be the first!) We accept Silmarillion-based fanworks, links to work you've posted elsewhere, essays and meta, and announcements for fandom events and projects.

Yahoo! Groups closed in 2019. In 2022, we stopped using LiveJournal as one of our official social media platforms, meaning that we stopped posting official SWG announcements there. The community remains open, however, and is also available for SWG members who want to use it to share their work, including event announcements.

If you look around yourself in Tolkien fandom, who do you see? Who is reading stories? Who is writing them?

Every five years, Maria K. Alberto and I run the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey. We are now on our third iteration of the survey, spanning ten years, and over the coming months, I will be sharing our findings each month in the Cultus Dispatches column, beginning this month with the demographic data from the survey.

I always have mixed feelings about working with the demographic data. On the one hand, it rarely feels revelatory, especially compared to some of the survey items still to analyze. It usually seems to describe what we all already know. (Because it involves a lot of free-response items, it's also a lot of work!)

On the other hand, as the survey traces ten years of Tolkien fanfiction history, the demographic data offers insights into how the fandom has changed in that decade. Who participates—and who doesn't—often indicates broader patterns in the Tolkien fandom, fanfiction fandom, and the world beyond.

Ten years is not a long time given the longevity of Tolkien fanfiction, which has been written for at least sixty-six years, yet that decade has seen demographic changes that quite likely parallel what we are writing about and how we engage with Tolkien's works. In other instances, the changes the survey has documented upend the "canon" of fanfiction studies.

If you want to learn more about the demographics of Tolkien fanfiction fandom, according to the 2025 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, check out Six Demographic Takeaways from the 2025 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey.

Finally, don't forget that today is our monthly instadrabbling session on Discord, led by Anna (IdleLeaves)! If you're not a member of our Discord, you can join here. The session begins on Saturday at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in your timezone).

Every now and then, I like to remind those of you who are reading our newsletter that this is truly our newsletter, and we would love to feature your work here! The SWG has always been a group for fans of Tolkien's work. We are not a scholarly journal; we are not a publisher, so we do not accept and reject work. Rather, we seek to collaborate with creators to spotlight their work that, in the case of the newsletter, will be useful to members and friends of the SWG. Work that is featured in our newsletter and special projects comes from our members—people just like you!

If you'd like to learn more about writing for the newsletter, check out our call for contributors here!

But the tl;dr is that we accept articles on a variety of topics. If your work doesn't fit one of our existing columns, we accept feature articles as well.

If you've never written nonfiction or meta and want to give it a try but feel nervous about writing for publication, don't despair—our editors will support you however much you need through the process. Our newsletter reaches more than 250 readers every Saturday, and articles become a permanent part of our Reference Library.

Perhaps our best-known column, due to Oshun's exceptional work developing this resource, is the Character of the Month biographies. We still have several major characters needed to complete the collection: Elendil, Gothmog, Yavanna, Eönwë, Marach, Hador, Manwë, Melkor, and Nienor. If you'd be interested in writing a biography of one of them, let us know! (The full call for biographies is here.)

If you have questions or want to run an idea past us, just reply to this email!

So like we do a challenge every year that focuses on the history and pop culture of a decade, and this year we're jetting back to the 1980s for a month of wicked rad fanworks based on our mondo list of '80s prompts.

Now if you can't quite dig Túrin in a Members Only jacket or Daeron grokking Maglor's latest album on his Walkman, just take a chill pill. It's no big whoop if your fanwork has nothing to do with the 1980s! You can use the prompts in whatever dope ways your imagination takes you, and you can totally use any part of the prompt or related to the prompt. So like if you wanted to use your favorite line from one of the TV or movie prompts, you can totally rock that. Or just the title if that's your speed. Now if you want to get really radical and put your characters back in the '80s, that's allowed too of course. No duh.

We're hoping for lots of tubular fanworks to veg out with at the start of summer or winter, depending on what part of the world you're reppin'. If you want to find a buttload of '80s prompts compiled by our bodacious challenge mod Grundy, you can score those here.

Mad props too go to Anérea for this month's stamps and banner, which you like for sure want to collect this month when we hightail back to the '80s. Epic!

The Scavenger Hunt challenge is winding down, but there are still over two days, as of this writing, to get a fanwork in if you want one of Grundy's beautifully crafted creator stamps! This is our annual Matryoshka challenge, which means that there are levels of difficulty to choose from, and the easiest level requires only two prompts ... and if you've been deterred by not having had the chance to solve the clues needed to find prompts, keep reading for a special prompt—then you only need to solve one more! (And the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord server is your go-to for help and hints if you get stuck! There may even be solved prompts spoilered there ...)

As far as I know, the SWG is the only group that uses this challenge format, which was inspired by the concept of nesting dolls, where each doll (or prompt) is lifted to reveal the next. Traditionally, Matryoshka challenge requires opening subsequent prompts as you create your fanwork, resulting in a fanwork that is shaped by the prompts as it unfolds. This year's challenge, given the scavenger hunt component, does allow participants to collect all prompts first rather than opening them mid-fanwork.

We may be the only group that does these challenges (we do one per year), but the Matryoshka concept originated with Back to Middle-earth Month (B2MeM), where it was developed as a possible format to use for the annual event. After it was passed over a few times, we fished it from the pile of B2MeM rejects to try here, as one of our monthly challenges, and it has hung around since.

So, given that, if you're working on the challenge and need a prompt: add an element to your fanwork involving a comeback.

Remember that we welcome offbeat interpretations for our challenges (and very often craft prompts that can be read multiple ways), and if you can find a loophole, you should absolutely duck through it! So you are not required to interpret that prompt in the context of the history of the Matryoshka format. "Comeback" can mean many things ...

Furthermore, you can collect as many prompts as you want and don't have to use them all! So even if you have a full slate of prompts you're working through, you can discard one and use this one instead if you wish. (Nor does being aware of this prompt obligate you to use it!)

In other challenge-related news, Anna (IdleLeaves) will be hosting another round of instadrabbling on our Discord server over the next three months, on the first Saturday of each month! (Join here if you're not with us already!)

• July 4, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone)
• August 1, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone)
• September 5, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone)

If you're new to instadrabbling, you can find more about (another long-running fandom challenge type not invented by the SWG!) here.

And look for the next challenge early morning European time on the 15th!

Angst over comments is the great equalizer among fanworks creators. Nearly all of us—newbies, fandom olds, BNFs, and lurkers—have opened our email the day after posting a new work, one eye shut, wondering if anyone commented. Nearly all of us have been sent on a second wind by an encouraging word or disappointed when a work we were proud of received little to no reaction.

If there has been a consistent thread among my work since beginning to dabble in fandom studies, it is figuring out why most readers don't comment and what motivates those who do. In 2018, I wrote an article in response to decreasing comment counts on AO3 called "Why People Don't Comment: Data and History From the Tolkienfic Fandom." Last year, I updated it with fresh data from AO3, intending to come back in a month with the same data from the SWG. Then planning for Mereth Aderthad intensified, followed by Cultus Dispatches going on hiatus while I awaited data from the 2025 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey. More than a year later, the SWG data is in at last!

The data underscore a key point from my original "Why People Don't Comment" article, what I term the 3C's of commenting: confidence, community, and commenting as a skill. The SWG's data emphasizes the importance especially of community. When authors and readers are members of the same community, they comment on each other's work. The other two factors—confidence and commenting as a skill—matter less for the same reason that it is easier to talk to a friend than a stranger in the street.

For more on what I learned from the SWG's data, check on the latest article in Cultus Dispatches, the SWG's fan history column, Communities Do Comment: Expanding the 3C's of Commenting with SWG Data.

'My friends are caught in the willow-tree,' cried Frodo breathlessly.

'Master Merry's being squeezed in a crack!' cried Sam.

'What?' shouted Tom Bombadil, leaping up in the air. 'Old Man Willow? Naught worse than that, eh? That can soon be mended. I know the tune for him. Old grey Willow-man!'

We are currently in the midst of a Scavenger Hunt challenge, and if you feel like Merry, stuck without hope of escape, this week's newsletter will include expanded clues on the interactive path with additional hints for the challenge! Remember, too, that the challenge can be tackled collaboratively. There have already been hints and solutions posted to the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord, and you can ask for help there if you get stuck.

If the challenge is finding time to create, don't forget that our next instadrabbling session is Saturday, June 6, 2025 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone) on our Discord! If you're new to instadrabbling, find out more about it in the instadrabbling FAQ here.

Keep reading for hints for the scavenger hunt!

• Like a magpie, Bilbo collected Elven texts and crowed his achievements in the Red Book. He worked in this location, which is also this creator and SWG Discord mod's pen name.
• This creator's name, in the ancient world, specifically ancient Greece, is sometimes read as similar to the Quenya curu and sometimes read as fitting with Gandalf's reminder that "Not all those who wander are lost."
• Writer, artist, and one of our first Discord moderators (now retired) and with a name of angelic ferocity, this creator is the only person so far on the archive to write a romance about Aragorn's parents.
• This creator's pen name is a fortress in the First Age and becomes an island after the War of Wrath.
• The home office of the SWG is located in a country that celebrates its 250th birthday this year. The pen name of this creator, who writes Silmarillion/Star Wars crossovers, references the birth year of that country.
• One of our most prolific and talented poets, this creator's name is constructed of two words that the following characters all have in common: Rose, Marigold, Meril. For Mereth Aderthad, she read a poem voiced by a treacherous jewel.
• Annatar gave many gifts and has many names. This creator uses a pen name that is one of these names, used in the Second Age, and often writes about Dwarves, including a 30-Day Character Study of Mím.
• One of our finest and most dedicated artists, this creator is also the SWG's art editor, the mastermind behind the Tolkien Fanartics column in the newsletter, and the designer of the Mereth Aderthad zine.
• One of our Discord moderators, this creator often writes fanworks that incorporate science into the legendarium but has recent fanworks involving steampunk Númenor, a space opera, and Miranda Otto.
• You might have to scroll to the bottom of the list to find her, but in addition to being a talented writer and poet, this creator is also a skilled musician and was our lone musical performer at Mereth Aderthad 2025, where she sang a Dwarvish hymn.
• This moderator still hasn't finished her Taboo challenge response years later, but is better known for enthusiastically handing out stamps and is a frequent creator of crossovers.
• This creator's pen name is an English translation of the name Elros. She is one of the most prolific creators on the archive.
• This creator is a moderator on our Discord, did the graphics design for Mereth Aderthad, and takes her pen name from a character in one of fanfiction's OG fandoms, the fandom that gave slash its name.
• This creator is possibly a distant relative of a Noldorin prince known for his cave-hewing skills and bringing too much crap with him from Valinor. Though the sunrise is in her name, she's actually quite the night owl.

... but sometimes you are hoping to find a specific thing!

The SWG archive is approaching its nineteenth birthday in just a few weeks. That means that it contains nineteen years worth of fanworks ... and 6,595 fanworks at that! The original SWG archive was built using eFiction software, and fandom olds who spent a lot of time on eFiction-powered archives will recognize the structure right away. (AO3 also appears to have been heavily inspired by how eFiction organized and presented fanworks, so fans who missed the heyday of eFiction sites likely don't feel entirely at sea on our archive in the same way they might if we had used, say, the header format popular on email lists and LiveJournals that functioned as archives.) When we rebuilt the site five years ago, we kept the basic idea of how it was organized and rebuilt many of the pages that eFiction provided.

So if you're looking for something specific amidst those nineteen years of 6,595 fanworks, how do you find it? First, there is the Find a Fanwork page (which replicates as closely as possible the Advanced Search page on the eFiction site). Here, you can put in a bunch of parameters and get a list of results closely tailored to whatever you are interested in reading or viewing in the moment.

If you want to see all of the fanworks with a specific tag, use the Fanworks menu to Browse Fanworks By creator, character, genre, or relationship. These pages replicate the Browse pages on eFiction sites.

Of course, if you're doing our Scavenger Hunt challenge, these tools may help you to solve clues and collect prompts, but anyone who likes to read Silmarillion fanworks should also find them useful for finding new works to enjoy. (And if you just like Tolkien-based fanworks, try our Truly All Fanworks page, which includes fanworks from the Beyond the Silmarillion section.) Because our archive pre-dates AO3 by several years and many of the archives contemporaneous with the SWG are now gone, we have fanworks archived that cannot be read anywhere else but are just as wonderful now as they were then!

If you are doing the Scavenger Hunt and feeling stuck on any of the clues, stop by the #monthly-challenge channel on our Discord server, where participants have been sharing hints and working together to solve clues!

Building the SWG challenge schedule each year is a kind of alchemy. Some of it is predictable ingredients: We always do a Matryoshka challenge. We throw in a challenge with a collaborative component every now and then. But some of it is just tossing out something new and seeing what happens.

Our new challenge, Scavenger Hunt, is kind of that way. It is our annual Matryoshka challenge—meaning that fanworks are crafted with more then one prompt—and it includes a collaborative component, but it's nothing we've tried before, so we're also seeing how it goes.

Here's the gist: A Matryoshka challenge involves creating a fanwork using multiple prompts, revealed progressively. Usually, the moderators provide the prompts. This time, we have turned prompt-giving over to you. We have fourteen members who are willing to hand out prompts. Who are these fourteen people? Well, this is where the scavenger hunt bit comes in: You have to solve a clue to find them.

Once you solve the clue, find one of their fanworks, read it or view it, leave a comment (a real comment please! not just asking for a prompt!), and request your prompt in the comment. They will reply with a prompt, you collect the number you want, and you create your fanwork using them.

If the thought of going out and talking to people online fills you with terror or exhaustion or any feeling that is making you think right now, "I think I'll skip this one ..." do not despair. We've also set up what we call the history path, where the clues point you to a place on the SWG site where you will find your prompt, no human interaction required.

And if you want to do a bit of both, you can mix and match interaction and history prompts to your heart's content!

Ready to start solving? The clues leading to the prompts can be found on the Scavenger Hunt challenge page! Happy hunting!

Possibly the best resource on our site is our Character Biographies. There are more than 150 of them on the site, featuring a range of characters important to The Silmarillion. Like many parts of our site, the character biographies began somewhat by happenstance and then grew into something very different from the original modest idea. The first biography, of Irmo/Lórien, was published in August 2007. To those accustomed to the later biographies, the first biographies are very short. The idea began as a featured character of the month, which would be a sort-of challenge to write about that character, and the month's newsletter would include a brief biography of the character—enough to acquaint a new Silmarillion reader with the basics of that person.

The member who volunteered to take on the task of writing the monthly biography was Oshun, an early SWG member and author of much-loved stories. Oshun quickly ran away with the project, crafting increasingly detailed and elaborately sourced biographies as time went on. Reading back through her work, the short summaries did not last for long. Furthermore, she was insistent on citing her biographies as though they were academic articles. Many fan resources at the time made claims that were difficult to support with the texts, and Oshun was committed that the SWG's reference section—where her biographies eventually came to live—would not be yet another of them.

Over the years to come, Oshun was joined by other writers who contributed biographies of their favorite characters, but her writing makes up the bulk of our biography collection. With time, the focus shifted from presenting the character of the month as a challenge and instead amassing a collection of biographies that could aid someone creating fanworks about a new character in learning the basics about the character, including which texts to read to learn more. Oshun passed away in 2024, but her more than one hundred biographies continue to aid creators who want a quick, well-sourced primer on a character.

Our character biographies now cover most Silmarillion characters, and it's no longer practical to feature a new one each month. However, we do still accept new biographies for characters we haven't written yet; in particular, we are looking for biographies for Elendil, Gothmog, Yavanna, Eönwë, Marach, Hador, Manwë, Melkor, and Nienor. If your favorite character isn't in our collection or on that list, we'd still love to feature a biography of that person! You can learn more about contributing to the character biographies here, or reply to this email.