On 15 February, the Organization for Transformative Works celebrates International Fanworks Day, "a recognition of fanworks in all their forms—fics, art, vids, zines, and more—and of their awesomeness and importance for fans across the world." This year's theme is "When Fandom Collide" and focuses on crossover fanworks.

The SWG accepts crossover fanworks, so we certainly welcome takes on this year's IFD theme on our archive if they involve significant Silmarillion content. However, even if crossovers aren't your fandom jam, we want to use IFD as an opportunity to celebrate what each of you do as part of fandom, the Tolkien fandom, and the SWG specifically.

The Tolkien fandom began with the publication of The Hobbit—after all, The Lord of the Rings was written at least partly in response to fan demand for more of the world they glimpsed in The Hobbit. The first documented Tolkien-based fan writing appeared in the late 1950s, and the fandom has been writing stories, meta, and poems; making art; and creating other fanworks nonstop ever since, leaving the Tolkien fandom as one of the oldest fanworks-producing fandoms in existence.

Of course, the richness of Tolkien's worldbuilding accounts for the almost seven decades of fanworks (not to mention other fandom activity) that exist. But none of it would exist without us either: the fans who have cared not just about Middle-earth but about each other and the creative works that we make that keep the legendarium alive.

So this week, whether a creating a crossover fanwork tempts you or not, we encourage you to honor International Fanworks Day in whatever way feels most meaningful to you: create a fanwork, comment on someone else's work, join a discussion, share a resource, or check in on a fandom friend you haven't connected with recently—or whatever else inspires you! We wish you all another year of creativity and connection!

The sea is an abyss of contradictions. It is quite literally the source of life on Earth, and human settlements have long sought its shores, recognizing the bounty and source of connection to others that it can bring. For better or worse, it has brought people throughout the world in contact with each other, much as it does in Arda. At the same time, those who dare come near do so at the risk of some of the planet's most terrifying storms and inundations, represented in the legendarium by the shipwreck of Turgon's mariners, the inundation of Beleriand, and most dramatically, the utter destruction of Númenor.

February's Character of the Month, Ulmo, is an apt representation of these contradictions. At once benevolent and terrifying, Ulmo was crafted by Tolkien across the decades to embody the capricious element of the sea. The first part of Ulmo's biography, authored by Anérea, delves into his complexity as a character and, even more so, as a symbol that appears throughout world mythology.

This month, Anérea discusses his nature, his realm, and his relationship with the pantheon of other Ainur with whom Tolkien peopled his Secondary World. Tracing the evolution of his character across sixty years, she finds a character who manages to be haughty and aloof while also bringing the most aid to the Children of Eru who populate Middle-earth. Among the Ainur, he managed to annoy some of his brethren even while joining in deepest friendship with others.

Anérea explores the depths of this characterization, drawing from world mythology to pinpoint similarities (and possible inspirations) from other sea gods. Furthermore, she looks at the dominating role that sea took in Tolkien's own imagination and identifies biographical episodes that might help us to understand why he centered the watery element—and therefore Ulmo as well—in his legendarium in such a way that it brings both delight and terror to those who behold it.

You can read Part 1 of Anérea's biography of Ulmo here.

Tolkien considered Túrin's story one of the three Great Tales of the First Age, and as the longest of the three, its centrality to the legendarium is further cemented. We are therefore very excited to announce this month the culmination of firstamazon's impressive three-part biography of Túrin. (If you missed them, Part One and Part Two are here!)

Túrin rips through the First Age like a tornado, leaving a swath of destruction so sudden and severe to be notable even among the unrelentingly tragic events of the First Age. Yet, as firstamazon documents in her series of essays, Túrin was not ill-intentioned. Although flawed (as Tolkien's First Age characters tend to be), his sincere desire to contribute and connect to the various societies of which he found himself along the fringes radiates from the text, making his repeated disastrous failures all the sadder. Stitching together the myriad versions and drafts—which Christopher Tolkien himself identified as some of his father's most complex writings—firstamazon presents a portrait of a character who finds himself unwittingly in the middle of Morgoth's darkest designs and sees his most noble intentions turn to destruction. The final installment of his biographer covers his life from his years in Nargothrond to his death.

Yet, as firstamazon points out, Túrin marks just one person in a line of Mannish characters whose worldview required them to take action to shape the events of Middle-earth's history, rather than just watching its events unfold. And for his suffering in this endeavor, Tolkien gave Túrin a unique role in the conclusion of that history. Read Part 3 of Túrin's biography to find out what that was!

Tolkien was, of course, extremely well-read in ancient and medieval history, conversant in many of the dead languages that the rest of us read only in translation. Much of his work was, not surprisingly, grounded in this history.

The Fall of Gondolin is one such episode.

In this month's A Sense of History column, MirienSilowende looks at the Fall of Gondolin and the ancient and medieval history that may have informed Tolkien's writing of it. She uncovers numerous historical sources that detail some of the more noteworthy sacks and falls of great cities much like Gondolin, renowned for their splendor and elevated status within their worlds.

Of course, these historical inspirations are more than just an interesting aside in the legendarium but can also become building blocks for expanding on the legendarium via fanworks. For example, some of the historical sources MirienSilowende provides go into detail about what happened to the survivors once the city was overthrown by an enemy military. While Tolkien provides few details on this for Gondolin, reading historical sources that possibly informed his construction of the story generates inspiration for fanworks about these untold tales of Gondolin's people.

You can read MirienSilowende's article "The Fall of Gondolin Reflected in History" here.

One of the open secrets of the SWG challenges is that January will always be an amnesty challenge for the prior year's challenges, and we will always start the challenge early. So technically, even though this is the newsletter issue that would typically announce the new challenge (which usually begins on the 15th), it is both on time and late because the challenge opened on the first of January.

As in years past, it is an amnesty challenge—a chance to complete the challenges you may have missed during the year or finish challenge fanworks started but never completed—but this year, we've done one better. This year's amnesty challenge, Jubilee, will apply to any challenge from January 2017 onward. (If you're wondering, why January 2017? Because this is the year we started handing out stamps for completing or commenting on challenges.) Challenges never close in the sense that you can always create something for a challenge and post it on the archive, but for practical purposes, we do set deadlines for receiving stamps for creating challenge fanworks. (You can always comment on a challenge fanwork and receive the stamp.) But this month, until 15 February, we are throwing that rule completely out the window, dusting off the years-old stamps in our collection (it did take some work to track them all down), and giving them out to anyone who creates for one of the eligible challenges ... and that's more than sixty challenges, so we're confident that most creators can find something to inspire them!

The larger purpose of the annual amnesty challenge is to start each new year with creativity and community: making new fanworks and interacting with the creators who are sharing the fanworks that entertain and move us. We hope many of our creators will join us in resurrecting some of our old challenges, and we hope all of our members who enjoy fanworks on our site will take a moment to let the creators know.

If you want to try this challenge, you can find the sixty-plus eligible past challenges here. Since many of these challenge involve components that might be hard to replicate in an amnesty challenge, more details on how to collect specific stamps can be found on the Jubilee challenge page, where you can also find fifteen fanworks already created for the challenge.

Happy creating and commenting!

At the end of 2021, we asked our members what they'd like to see us build on our site in the coming years. There was significant support for all of the options, and we spent the past year expanding our archive to accept fanworks of all types. The only item on the list we haven't yet completed is the ability for members to host events on our site.

This one is a much more ambitious lift: building an entirely new feature vs. extending existing functionality. During 2023, we will be chipping away at hopefully getting this figured out, built, and up and running. To get us started, we need as much feedback as possible on what people would want to see this feature include.

So what even are "member-run events"? Basically, we'd provide you with what you need to set up an event, share information with your participants, and have participants post their fanworks, all using our site and resources. If your event would benefit from having a website or archive behind it, we would provide you with the tools to set that up. We've seen some excellent events run by members on our Discord, so we'd love it we could extend this further to offer our website and archive to those events that would benefit from it.

To get a preliminary sense of what event admins and moderators are looking for, we have set up a survey to collect feedback. All feedback is welcome, whether you already run an event, are thinking about it, or just want to share an opinion. Contacting us through the site is also welcome.

Meanwhile and speaking of events, remember that instadrabbling runs twice this weekend on our Discord server with prompts for past challenges as part of our Jubilee [six-year!!) amnesty challenge. If you're not a member of our Discord and want to be (whether for instadrabbling or something else), just hit reply and request an invite.

Dear SWG members and friends,

This year, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild will turn eighteen years old. If it was a person (and sometimes it feels like it is!), it would be a legal adult in most parts of the world. Having started humbly as just a Yahoo! Group and LiveJournal community in 2005, it represents a tremendous achievement for everyone involved that we've worked to build this group into what it is today.

The past few years have been years of progress. We were challenged by our aging software and met that challenge by migrating the site to Drupal, allowing us to continue to build and expand. The SWG now accepts all types of fanworks, and we've added new features like a beta directory and our Beyond the Silmarillion section. We've transcended our name in more ways than one: more than writing, more than just The Silmarillion. We're also pleased to host a vibrant Discord community that holds regular events, most of them run by our members.

Eighteen years, however, represents a lot of history as well. When we moved to the new site, much of that history preserved on our old site could not be easily moved. If 2021 and 2022 were years of progress, 2023 is set aside as a year for history, and over the next year, we will work to restore these historical artifacts to our site so that the SWG's history is easily available for all to enjoy.

The past few years have been rough for Tolkien-based fanworks archives. The closure of Yahoo! Groups, deprecating software, and changing internet use habits have all impacted small archives, never for the good. We've seen many sites close or become inactive. We recognize that the SWG's success amid these losses is an anomaly, and it is not an accident: it is the result of our members, who are committed to our community and archive, and your willingness to share your fanworks, time, and enthusiasm with us. We are grateful to embark on another year with all of you, in which we look forward  to continuing to grow the SWG.

Best wishes for a wonderful 2023!

Dawn, Russandol, Grundy, Lyra, Angelica, Elleth, Janeways, and Suzelle

SWG moderators

We've all been there. One of our fannish pet peeves is enjoying a moment and the urge is there like an itch that won't stop until it's scratched: to complain, to lash out, to rain on the parade with monsoon force.

Elleth experienced one of those moments. I interviewed her this month about her role in promoting women-centric and femslash fanworks, and she recalls "a promotion week that was hosted on Tumblr for a group of male characters who were and still are fandom favourites and didn't strictly need promoting." But instead of ruining others' fun, Elleth collaborated with Frilly to create Legendarium Ladies' April, an event to promote fanworks about Tolkien's female characters.

Using the philosophy (learned from another SWG member, Independence1776) of "Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate," Elleth ran many women-centric events and projects over the years. In the past few months on Cultus Dispatches, we've focused on what it is and was like to create fanworks about women in the Tolkien fandom. We've described a fandom that was openly hostile to fanworks about women and where creators feared sharing their women-centric work. But we've also detailed a change, and while the fandom is still far from perfect, creators no longer avoid creating women-centric works (even *gasp* femslash!!) because they dread the reaction. Elleth, her collaborators, and the events they used to encourage and celebrate women-centric and femslash fanworks were part of bringing about that change.

Elleth was kind enough to sit down with me to tell me about her various events, how she became interested in writing about women (spoiler alert: she wasn't always), and how she's seen the fandom change over the years. As we discuss fan history that is discouraging—even sometimes shameful—where women-focused fanworks are concerned, Elleth's work offers a bright point, and a hopeful one. You can read the interview with Elleth here.

Few characters in The Silmarillion are as embattled as Túrin. Like other hapless characters who wear disaster as easily as a pair of cozy pajamas, Túrin is loved and loathed in equal measure by Tolkien fans.

Tolkien certainly considered his story important: It is the longest of the chapters, the longest of the three Great Tales, and the first of the Great Tales to make it into its own book. It is also a particular entangled piece of writing for Christopher Tolkien to unwind, and a complicated plot for readers to unwind. Firstamazon has graciously offered to tackle this snarl of complicated texts in a three-part series of biographies about Túrin.

This month's installment covers the middle years of Túrin's life, after his salad days in Doriath but before everything went completely awry. Living among the outlaws, Túrin actually has a fairly content existence as the productive member of a community, making noble choices, and making and reunited with friends. This is, in other words, his "catastrophe, interrupted" phase. Of course, nothing ever goes well for Túrin, and next month, we will join him on his inevitable and final slide into ruin.

Read the second part of firstamazon's biography of Túrin. And if you missed it, you can find the first part here.

Note also that Himring and bunn will be hosting a reading of Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters on our Discord, 22 December through 1 January. If you'd like to participate and need to join our Discord (or want to join just to join!), reply to this email, and we will send you an invite link.

Whether you've seen one film or read every word Tolkien ever wrote, the question posed in this week's title—who is Galadriel?—seems a simple one. Yet as this month's A Sense of History article reveals, this question is deceptively simple. The roles Galadriel occupies in fanworks are myriad and diverse, from a warrior princess to a doting mother and grandmother to an enigmatic prophetess. This shouldn't be surprising: Tolkien's own writings on Galadriel are some of his most tangled and contradictory (which is truly saying something).

This month, MirienSilowende takes on one piece of the puzzle that is Galadriel by looking at possible literary and historical inspirations for her character. Again, Galadriel's complexity emerges. Is she a soothsayer whose magical gifts are a key reason for the heroes' success? Is she an outspoken rebel? Or is she a benevolent queen, whose wisdom and generosity provides for her people and serves as a bulwark against evil? MirienSilowende considers all these aspects of Galadriel's character, finding parallels in several women who feature in ancient and medieval literary and historical texts.

You can read Galadriel: Parallels among Women in History and Literature here. If you're curious what fan creators have to say about her, a formidable collection of fanworks about Galadriel can be found here.