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.

As we enter a season when gift-giving is on many people's minds, here at the SWG, we want to recognize those volunteers who give their time and talents to our organization. The SWG is run entirely by volunteers. The reason we have been able to remain an active and relevant fandom group for going on eighteen years now is because of the energy and effort so many people have been willing to give.

If you enjoy the SWG and want to become more deeply involved, we are always seeking volunteers willing to commit various amounts of time and with different skillsets. This week, for the first time ever, we posted a call for challenge stamp creators. In the past, the challenge mods have handled making the stamps that are awarded to creators and commenters for our monthly challenges. This year, in recognition of our growing art community, we wanted to offer the chance to see more diverse offerings. If you are a photographer, traditional artist, or graphic artist interested in making a set of challenge stamps, see the linked post above for how to get involved.

Our volunteer page includes other volunteer positions that remain open. If you are active in Tolkien fandom on social media, why not become a scout and share the announcements, interesting discussions, and resources that you find? If you're on our Discord, a low-key way to help out is to scout for the Discord, crossposting from the #signal-boosts channel to the site.

We have two ongoing committees that meet on our Discord. Our inclusivity committee includes fans from groups marginalized in the Tolkien fandom and acts in a consultant role on inclusivity issues within the SWG. This role requires a very low time commitment but makes a huge impact, as this group helps us ensure we are meeting our expectations for ourselves on issues of inclusivity. Our newsletter team is the group of people called upon to help brainstorm and write the regular content for our newsletter. Reply to this email if you are interested in either.

If you'd like to get involved but can't commit to regular involvement, why not host an event? You can host a book club, a live reading, an instadrabbling session, or a reading of one of Tolkien's books (or a book related to Tolkien), or maybe you have an idea that we've never even tried before. Contact the mods to set up an event.

And of course there are many everyday actions that keep our group alive. Every time you participate in a discussion, challenge, or event; post a fanwork with us; or comment on someone's work, you do your part to sustain the SWG. Thank you all!

Tolkien's legendarium presents a challenging landscape for fanworks about women. The lack of women characters, the missing names and details, and the sexist leanings of some of his writings can all act as barriers to creating women-centric fanworks.

This month's Cultus Dispatches column is one of our Fandom Voices columns, where we present a question or two to the community in an attempt to capture a range of fan experiences with a topic. For this round, we focused on the experience of creating (and reading/viewing) fanworks about women. What is it like to make fanworks about women in the Tolkien fandom, we wondered, and how has this changed (or not) in the decades of the fandom's existence?

We received twenty-two responses by the time we compiled the article, which highlights some of those responses with light analysis (and includes the entire collection so that you can draw your own conclusions). Participants highlighted the challenges of writing about women in the fandom, a major part of which was the fandom itself. While not a universal experience, many observed that the Tolkien fanworks fandom was overtly hostile to writing about women in the first decade of the 2000s, a status quo that fans have worked to change, resulting in a climate that is more openminded today. However, the lingering effects of that hostile history continues to impact some creators, and many respondents see ample work that still needs to be done.

You can read "Fandom Voices: Women in Fanworks" here.

Remember too that our Novelettes Book Club is running as we speak! See below for more information on how to join in this event.

Tolkien was a World War I veteran and nurtured a lifelong interest in ancient and medieval history. As such, the battle scenes in his books are some of his most powerful writing, as well as some of the most fertile ground for historical comparison.

In multiple places, the legendarium depicts siege warfare: a martial tactic that seeks to wear down an opponent by hemming in a population and leaving them subject to the slow diminishment of provisions. There are, of course, well-known sieges such as the Siege of Angband and the War of the Last Alliance, as well as several lesser-known sieges. In this month's A Sense of History column, S.R. Westvik looks at the historical analogues for the sieges seen in Tolkien's works. Drawing from ancient history through the present-day War in Ukraine, they consider the strategy behind successful siege warfare, the resistance tactics of a besieged opponent, and the humanitarian issues that arise whenever a civilian population becomes an integral part of a military strategy.

You can read S.R. Westvik's Sieges in the First and Second Ages here.

Because November and December are typically busy months for people—in addition to the array of seasonal holidays, there are numerous fandom events at this time—we usually offer one challenge that spans both months, ideally with various points of entry to satisfy both the creator who wants a full challenge and the time-stretched creator who wants something quick that can be completed in an afternoon.

This year's November/December challenge, Manwë's Mailbag, was constructed with this goal in mind. Prompts for this challenge will be postcards including both an image and text. The twist, however, is that the intrepid participant is invited to help us create these postcards. You can take whatever approach you want to your postcard. (And based on the chatter on the #monthly-challenges channel on our Discord, those of you flush with ideas for the image but coming up short on what to write for the text can rest assured that the mods will ensure that no postcard goes out without text! Just send the image along and we'll come up with suitable text for it.)

And yes, participants who request a postcard prompt will have the option to have the postcard mailed to them, so your creation could cross the world to inspire the work of another fan.

Because of the extra work involved with mailing prompts, we've opened this challenge early for postcards, so if you'd like to create a postcard, the first round will be going out on the 15th of November. We very much appreciate those who have turned in postcards early so that we have a ready supply for the challenge's opening date! The deadline for postcards is December 1 (postcards received after that point will be used in the digital-only collection for the January amnesty).

Some FAQs we've been seeing:

• No, you do not need to create a postcard to participate. This is a two-part challenge; you can participate in one part (create a postcard or respond to one) or both—your choice!
• The part of the challenge where you request a prompt (a postcard) will open 15 November, per the usual schedule.
• Everyone will get their postcard digitally right away. If you want your postcard mailed, we'll get it out as soon as we can, at which point it will be in the hands of various international postal authorities.

For complete information on the challenge, see the Manwë's Mailbag challenge page.