I teach geography (among other things), and I often present my students with maps that center a region of the world other than Europe, present the world "upside down," or allow them to see the true size of countries with Mercator-induced distortions. The hope is that this will help offset students' perceptions of the world enough that they can center the perspectives of peoples whose voices often are not heard.

In the Tolkien fanworks world, there are many creators devoted to doing the exact same thing. Mirra Kan is one such artist. A self-described orientalist, she seeks to recalibrate our understanding of Middle-earth to center the cultures and perspectives of characters from the south and east. As many fans have observed over the years, characters from the Middle-earth equivalent of the Global South are not just marginalized but demonized, reduced to convenient villains.

"Tolkien is so much more than that," Mirra tells Anérea in this month's interview for Tolkien Fanartics, "and I felt that creative fire burning inside—the urge to tell, to share, and to spotlight some things people tend to ignore: colonial past, slavery, dark cults, necromancy, and people staying faithful with no Elves to guide them." Mirra's work amplifies the canon that shows that the people of the south and east of Middle-earth were not inherently evil but striving for the same hopes, dreams, and sense of safety as any human, and her vibrant, realistic artwork brings to life to people who live in the margins of the stories.

You can read Anérea's interview with Mirra Kan here.

When the SWG began in 2005, the year 2023 was firmly located in the realm of futuristic science fiction. And indeed, from our humble beginnings as a Yahoo! Group, LiveJournal community, and website built using a text editor and a web browser, when the idea of interacting online was very new to most of us, where we are now would have been almost impossible to imagine back then.

Every year at the New Year, I experience gratitude (and, not gonna lie, a bit of awe) for the continued existence of the SWG. And not even just a continued existence, frozen in time, where we preserve the fanworks of the past, but an ongoing thriving community that continues to make fanworks about Tolkien's world and build community among Tolkien fans.

So far for 2023 (because it's not over yet!), we've had 548 fanworks added to or updated on our archive. 139 of those fanworks were created for our 2023 challenges. We welcomed 74 new members to the archive.

Importantly, this occurs within a larger fandom context that has, for many years now, tilted toward consolidation onto large multifandom archives and social sites, which means that our own success as a small, independent archive and fan site is not accidental: It is created through the hard work of our volunteers and the dedication of our members, who continue to create, post, read, view, and discuss fanworks with us in a time when most small archives have gone inactive—or gone offline altogether. When I've occasionally mentored archive and event admins over the years, I've told them that the Field of Dreams mentality does not apply in today's fandom world. In this 1989 film, the saying goes, "If you build it, they will come," and maybe that was true of archives in the early 2000s, but it certainly is not today. A lot of effort and commitment go into fandom archives that remain active, and I am so grateful to each of you who choose to share your creativity, wisdom, and fellowship with us.

I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year and looking forward to an excellent 2024!

When I was a relatively new site owner in Tolkien fandom, I remember grousing with another site owner about how difficult it was to get Tolkien fans interested in new platforms. We (as tech as well as Tolkien nerds) wanted our friends to play on the same new toys we did, and we found they were mostly just not interested. Tolkien fans are, in other words, the Galadriels of the fandom world: They find their Lothlórien, find their people, and make magic rings to stay forever.

This was just one way—keeping a foot in Tolkien fandom and also the "acafan" community—that I found most Tolkien fans differed from fandom as a whole. As a Tolkien fan studies researcher, I have always been fascinated by how the two differed but struggled to document this as more than just a vague feeling (including, as a general rule, the complete lack of any discussion of Tolkien fandom and fans, despite the longevity of the former and number of the latter, in the fan studies scholarship).

So when the OTW 16th Annual Survey results were released and I saw there were some overlaps with my own Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, I couldn't wait to check out the results side by side. It's perilous work, comparing two different survey datasets, and I caution that this month's Cultus Dispatches should be read with a huge grain of salt. However, I there are some interesting overlaps, namely that we are Galadriels: When you look at the platform data between the two surveys, we Tolkien people show a preference for sites that aren't necessarily older but have an early-internet vibe.

You can read this month's article, "Duel of Surveys: Comparing Tolkien Fanfiction and OTW Survey Data," here.

Take a look down the page at our Around the World and Web listings, and you'll see we're entering a busy season of Tolkien fandom events. It's always been important to us to help promote events and work being done by other Tolkien groups—it's even in our mission!—which includes welcoming fanworks created for other events on our archive.

This brings up what we term our MFAQ: Most Frequently Asked Question. If the SWG is for Silmarillion-based fanworks, what makes a fanwork count as adequately Silmarillion-based for our site? The long answer is at the link in the preceding sentence. The short answer is that we are almost always more liberal in our definition of "Silmarillion fanwork" than people think we are. If it involves Lord of the Rings or Hobbit characters in ages outside of the main plots of those books—characters like Aragorn, Tom Bombadil, or Thorin Oakenshield who clearly had important stories before their appearances in those books—then those works are welcome with us. If it is a multi-age work, it is welcome with us, as long as a significant portion of the work counts as a "Silmarillion fanwork" under our definition.

If you have Tolkien fanworks that are not Silmarillion-based but that you'd like to archive with us, we also offer the Beyond the Silmarillion section, which accepts all Tolkien-based fanworks and is available to use by creators who have posted at least five fanworks or 10,000 words of writing on our archive. Anyone can read and view Beyond fanworks!

If you ever have questions about which of your fanworks are eligible for our site, never hesitate to reach out to our moderators. It is helpful to provide a summary of the fanwork or a link to the fanwork archived elsewhere on the web.

Compiling this newsletter each week and numbering the issues becomes a sort of sandglass of the year. Here we are on Week 48, almost through another year and starting over with Issue 1 (and approaching the SWG closing in on two decades of existence!)

First, this month's article is Never Mind the Dwarves by Simon J. Cook. If you've been following Simon's work over the past few months, you know he has been interrogating the tower analogy in Tolkien's lecture/essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," in many cases pushing back on the work of established scholars (who have not all reacted well to his series), as part of our A Sense of History column. This month's column is a much lighter approach, itself an analogy that blends scholarship, fiction, and fandom. I asked Simon how he would introduce his own piece:

We all know that feeling of hearing a scholar speak about Tolkien's stories and wondering how a human being could so utterly fail to notice the actual art. Words drop from their lips like acid rain falling on virgin snow. Yet one brave band of scholars has broken out of this mould. While spurning imagination, as all scholars must, they nevertheless have seen with their own eyes the profound architecture of the stories that the rest of us love. What is the secret of those very few who take this left-path of scholarship? What allows them and nobody else direct and unmediated vision of the Truth? Simon's research has long grappled with this question and, after many many weary hours rummaging in the archives of the Lore section of the 'Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza', he now reveals the story of the Boffin Stone, which even today may be touched by those who know how to access the hidden chamber in the highest tower of the Fanatics Plaza.

This is also the time of year when the SWG moderators begin to plan the next year on our community, specifically the challenges. One of our favorite parts of our challenges are the stamp collections: the chance to receive a small postage stamp graphic on your profile to commemorate the various ways to participate in challenges. If you are an artist and would like to help make stamps for next year's challenges, you can learn more here. Reply to this email for questions or to gain access to the sign-up document!

As we look forward to the next year, we'd also love to hear from you if you have ideas of how the SWG can continue to grow and serve Tolkien fanworks creators. You can always reply to these newsletters to reach our moderator team.

"[O]ne cannot make a map for the narrative, but must first make a map and make the narrative agree."

In 1943, Tolkien wrote the line above to his publisher. He was speaking of The Lord of the Rings, but the belief described applies equally across all of his works and reflects in the kinds of stories he would write, stories where people sprawl across the map, out on quests and migrating and marching into battle. Tolkien's stories depend heavily on geography, so it probably comes as no surprise that the earliest known Silmarillion map was drawn as early as 1926 and was contemporaneous with Tolkien's first writings of the texts that would become The Silmarillion.

In this month's Tolkien Fanartics column, Anérea continues her series on fan-created maps, focusing this month on the maps of Beleriand. Beleriand (as is true of many Silmarillion locations) is an interesting place, being gone from Arda by the time the narrator writes of it, giving it a lost, legendary feel even in the Silmarillion itself. Coupled with the sometimes scanty and contradictory details that comprise the "Silmarillion" texts, making maps of Beleriand serves various functions for the artists who undertake them. Featuring the work of seven mapmakers, Anérea's article shows that maps can visualize the canon anew, offer new perspectives on place, serve as research and inspiration for fanworks, and bring to life locations that receive only cursory attention in the texts.

You can read Anérea's "Mapping Arda, Part II: Travels through Beleriand here.

And speaking of art and artists, we are again seeking artists who would like to see their work featured on our 2024 challenge stamps. Reply to this email to gain access to the sign-up list!

For the first part of Celegorm's biography, I described Tolkien's work as "checking all the boxes" of a villain. This mostly came about through the introduction and development of what Christopher Tolkien terms the Nargothrond Element: the public betrayal of Finrod, the contemplated coup in Nargothrond, and the attempt to force a marriage with Lúthien. After a confused beginning for Celegorm's character, the Nargothrond Element—in place relatively early—seems to have cemented his identity as a character.

But Tolkien wasn't done. In a collection of 1930s texts written just prior to beginning The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien develops Celegorm's character both in line with this established villainy and somewhat contrary to it. After LotR is published, Tolkien resumes work on the "Silmarillion" and makes some final refinements to Celegorm's character (including the introduction of his storyline with Aredhel). Furthermore, we have rare examples of Tolkien showing his thinking around characterization, and there seems little question that he didn't want Celegorm (and Curufin) to simply slide into the role of unmitigated villains. Many of the additions to Celegorm's story undertaken after the Nargothrond Element was in place—and discussed in the second part of Celegorm's biography—seem at least partially motivated by complicating Celegorm's character.

One of the most interesting parts of working on this biography (which I began researching in early August and so have been living with for some time now) is what we can see of how Tolkien worked—and sometimes even how he thought—as an author. Even though Celegorm is only mentioned fifty-two times in the published text, his character is documented in more detail than most in the texts that formed the published Silmarillion. Tolkien isn't often credited with writing complex characters. Critical attention has tended to focus on his skill with language and worldbuilding, not with writing emotionally realistic characters. Celegorm provides evidence that he did think about how to present his characters as complex people.

You can read Celegorm's biography here (and jump to Part 2 here).

In his lecture "On Fairy-stories," Tolkien wrote of the Tree of Tales, an image that resonates with many fanworks creators. Our works are part of a living tradition, drawing from Tolkien's legendarium and other works to come before them, yet constantly growing and branching from each other, creating an ever-more-elaborate web of story, art, and other creative works.

Every November and December, we feature a two-month challenge* for creators on our site. From a logistical standpoint, we do this because it is a busy season for most of our members, so we not only grant the extra time for the challenge but strive to come up with a challenge that can be completed quickly or extended across the two months, depending on a participant's availability.

* And really it can be extended to a third month, since January's challenge is always an amnesty challenge to complete any challenges you missed in the prior year.

This year's two-month challenge is Understory and extends Tolkien's arboreal metaphor of the Tree of Tales to consider that tree as part of a whole forest. Within our forest of fanworks are the understories: the characters, plots, and details that receive glancing mention and function similarly to the small trees and plants of of the forest understory. These have the potential to grow and join in the forest, if only given the nurturance they need.

Creators who choose to participate in this month's challenge will choose a character, plot point, or other small detail from another creator's fanwork. With that creator's permission, they will develop that detail into its own fanwork.

Because this is a two-month challenge, we have set aside the first week-and-a-half of the challenge to invite creators to complete our Understory permission form to state if and how you would like your fanworks used by other creators. We will post the list of creators who have opted in and out of the challenge on 23 November on the challenge page. Participants can contact and ask permission from creators who aren't on the list, of course, but having a list of creators to start with makes the challenge more accessible to creators who are shy, don't speak English comfortably, or might have other reasons for feeling nervous about contacting a creator directly. If you create fanworks and haven't yet completed the form, we really appreciate taking a moment to do so!

If you plan on participating in the challenge, make sure to review the full Understory challenge guidelines before you begin your fanwork, as there rules around permissions for the fanwork(s) you use as your inspiration. Have questions? Click Reply on this email and let us know!

It can be difficult to perceive that we are in history in the present moment and shaped by the context in which we presently exist, perhaps even more difficult that gaining clarity on the past. Tolkien studies have of course been influenced by the context in which some of the foundational writings (as well as current scholarship) were produced, but in a field where new tidbits of Tolkien's works are still being steadily released to the public and shaping our understanding of the legendarium, there's not been much consideration of how Tolkien studies and Tolkien scholars fit into the picture.

In his ongoing series in our column A Sense of History, Simon J. Cook has been exploring the analogy of the tower in Tolkien's lecture-turned-essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Last month and this month, he has turned to scholarship on the lecture and the "sense of history" around it. "I am myself a product of the English academic world," Simon writes, and "have dedicated a few decades to studying its history." Simon brings this perspective to bear, not just on Tolkien but on the founding scholars of Tolkien studies.

Jane Chance was one of those founding scholars. In this month's column, he looks at her analysis of the tower analogy and how it is situated within the academic context of its time—and where that context sending her reading astray. In Chance's reading, the critics become the monsters, and the pursuit of learning—and specifically historical learning—is denigrated.

You can read Simon's "First Brick in the Wall" here.

When you consider what it takes to be considered a cookie-cutter villain, Celegorm checks all the boxes. Attacks relatively unarmed civilians: check. Plots the murder of a beloved king: check. Kidnaps a princess: check. Hangs out with the kinds of people who think abandoning children to starve is a valid political tactic: check.

Hell, even his dog rejects him.

But while writing the first part of Celegorm's biography for this month's Character of the Month column, I made some surprising discoveries. It's always interesting to see how Tolkien's characters emerge from the welter of early stories and myths that he wrote about the world he'd eventually call Middle-earth. Most of the character biographies I've written have been about Ainur, and they change relatively little across the texts. Celegorm was the exact opposite.

It's hard to know exactly how Tolkien first came to think of Celegorm—as a son of Fëanor? an ignoble kinslayer? or just a name he wanted to use for someone?—but his early and busy years working on the "Silmarillion" leave a lot of tantalizing clues and strange digressions. (Did you know, for instance, that Celegorm was very briefly placed in Thingol's role?)

Ultimately, I found so much about him—a character mentioned only fifty-two times in the published book—that his biography will appear in two parts, this month and next. What emerged from my research was the sense that, even as Tolkien ultimately decided Celegorm should be a villain—and not just any villain but one who checks all the boxes—but also never fully relinquished his sense of Celegorm's one-time benevolence, which shaped his character in interesting and complex ways.

You can read Part 1 of Celegorm's biography here.