As of March 14, the SWG has existed for twenty years. It's sometimes overwhelming to think of all those twenty years have brought! Of course there are the fanworks: over 5,000 on our archive, plus those that landed on our various social platforms as parts of events and gatherings. There are the resources we host that are used far and wide, well beyond the fanfiction fandom. But most importantly are the friendships that have been forged: People who might never have met otherwise if not for the SWG.

On the occasion of our twentieth, we look both backward and forward. Looking back is our Birthday Bash challenge, which will feature a daily prompt that includes a historical snippet about the SWG along with a word, poetry excerpt, and public domain artwork that in some vague and tenuous way reminded the mods of that event. As is usual for our challenges, you can use any piece of the prompt and combine prompts. (If you're new to our challenges, find the challenge guidelines here.)

Looking forward is Mereth Aderthad 2025, our upcoming event on July 19. Registration for Mereth Aderthad opens today! We have both in-person and virtual options, and Mereth Aderthad is free for everyone! The event will feature twelve presentations on Tolkien-related topics with stories, poems, art, and performances to go along with each.

As we mark twenty years of existence, thank you to each of you who, through your creativity and fellowship, have made that happen!

One of our motivations for featuring presentations of meta/scholarship by fans at Mereth Aderthad 2025 was the recognition that fans are often doing research and thinking about Tolkien in ways that Tolkien scholars are not. Shadow's presentation, "The Aromantic in Tolkien," is a perfect example of that.

In our ongoing series of interviews of Mereth Aderthad presenters and creators, Himring chatted with Shadow about their presentation and aromanticism in Tolkien. "I have seen quite a few works engaging with asexuality in Tolkien, both in fannish and scholarly ways," Shadow told Himring. "Aromanticism on the other hand? Not so much."

In their interview, Shadow discusses their personal and fannish journeys, first to becoming a Tolkien fan, and then to reading aromanticism in how Tolkien depicts many of his characters. "Regardless of whether Tolkien was aware or not, his legendarium is full of characters that can easily be reframed as aromantic," they told Himring, and their presentation will focus on just three of a much longer list: Aredhel, Bilbo, and Boromir.

You can read Himring's interview with Shadow here.

Finally, we will be offering our next session in the series "So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference?" on April 12 at 1:00PM Eastern Time on Zoom. (Find this in my timezone.) The second session will focus on how to put together the paper and presentation for a Tolkien conference, including various approaches to conference presentations, how to structure a presentation to maintain audience interest and not exceed time limits, and tools/strategies for using multimedia. If you'd like to receive an invite in your email and a reminder shortly before the event begins, RSVP here. (An RSVP is not an obligation to attend!) If you missed the first session, you can view Session 1 on writing the proposal here.

Stella Getreuer-Kostrouch knows most people reading this don't like Elu Thingol. And she's really not here to convince you differently.

"I’m not aiming to make anyone like Elu Thingol," Stella explained in a recent interview with Quente about her upcoming Mereth Aderthad presentation "Cherished antagonist, despised protagonist – a defence of Elu Thingol." Stella goes on to say, "I just find that fandom really treats him unfairly."

Stella gets why people think Thingol is a jerk. "He is not the most likeable character, I don’t deny that he did much wrong," she says, "but so did most characters in The Silmarillion we get into contact with." In her presentation, Stella is hoping to make the case for reading Thingol with more nuance—nuance that is often granted freely by fans to other characters who are often jerks and worse—and like a real person in all his human complexity.

Stella's interview is part of an ongoing series we are doing in the lead-up to Mereth Aderthad, to let attendees get to know presenters and creators and a little about their work before the event. You can read Quente's full interview with Stella here and find her fanworks on our site under the penname LadySternchen.

In other news, Anna (IdleLeaves) has kindly offered to host monthly instadrabbling sessions on the SWG Discord! The first is this Saturday, March 1, at 18:00/6PM UTC. (You can find that in your timezone here.) If you're not a member of our Discord, you can join here. This month's theme for prompts is song lyrics.

Tolkien famously wrote that The Lord of the Rings was a "fundamentally religious and Catholic work." Of course, he was writing to a Catholic priest when he said this (and when it was less expedient to emphasize possible religious connections, he wrote that a weakness of the Arthurian tradition was that it "explicitly contains the Christian religion").

Over the next few months, we will be featuring interviews by presenters and fanworks creators who will be sharing their work at Mereth Aderthad. "[Tolkien] accidentally made a mythology that is so inclusive, and draws upon so many sources of diverse history and his own invention, that his audience became all of us," said Acha Rezak in a recent interview with Shadow about her forthcoming Mereth Aderthad presentation "Mythmakers vs. the made myths: Exploring a reader’s levels of religious alienation and connection in works about and by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis." Acha goes on to say, "By 'us' I mean—myself and all the other non-English—a half-Asian kid growing up in Bangkok, stumbling across The Silmarillion in the British Council Library."

Religion has often been use to exclude and gatekeep in Tolkien fandom, including today, when Tolkien has been co-opted by some Christian nationalists. But Acha argues that Tolkien's work had the opposite effect on her, describing Tolkien as opening doors that she only perceived as shut when she encountered critics who read his work as essentially Christian. Acha's presentation will explore that sense of alienation, as a reader raised in a Buddhist country who found deep spiritual meaning in Tolkien.

"Nature as written by Tolkien does call to the spiritualist in me," Acha explains. "It's the clear manifestation of the growing and creative nature of existence, and I honor how he wrote it."

You can read Shadow's full interview with Acha about her paper here.

If you want to participate in Mereth Aderthad 2025, it is not to late! While we have set our program of twelve intriguing research presentations, we are still looking for fanworks to accompany those presentations. Interested? Check out our call for fanworks here!

After a very busy Jubilee challenge—which resulted in more than sixty fanworks and hundreds of comments—we're introducing a new challenge for the next month that is an anti-challenge.

Dark Matter, just like the substance in the universe that it is named after, involves creating a fanwork around an absence, using an anti-prompt. If that sounds as mysterious as the concept of dark matter itself, it's actually quite straightforward: don't include the prompt or prompts you choose in your fanwork.

The Dark Matter challenge uses a random prompt generator to choose a prompt or prompts across three possible categories: motifs and tropes, literary techniques, and words and letters. You can pick one prompt. You can pick three. You can walk the middle road and pick two. You can reroll the prompt generator as many times as you want, and if you want to try multiple prompts, cherrypick prompts you like as they come up and roll the other categories until you find something you like there too. If you want to take the full Agent of Chaos approach, you can just take what you get and make a fanwork without it.

Because this challenge is a different, unfamiliar approach, we've included a range of difficulty levels in the prompts. After the hubbub of Jubilee, taking low-hanging fruit is fine, but if you are up for creating a fanwork without the letter E, that diabolical anti-prompt is in the mix too (in the Words & Letters category). As always, we never judge what "counts" for a challenge and embrace our challenges' purpose in increasing the number of Silmarillion fanworks out there in the world!

In other news, Mereth Aderthad continues to proceed apace and we have a few updates to share!

First, our program of meta and scholarship presentations has been posted on the Mereth Aderthad 2025 page. We have twelve tantalizing presentations on deck for the event. Watch this space for fanworks to be added too in the weeks to come!

Speaking of fanworks, if you want to create a fanwork for Mereth Aderthdad (the live event, the event's zine, or both!), fanwork sign-ups opened today.

Registration for the even will open on March 15, for both in-person and virtual attendees.

Finally, we will feature interviews with the presenters and creators of Mereth Aderthad in the weeks to come so that we can celebrate their work and let attendees get to know them a little before the event. We're looking for volunteers to help with these interviews. We provide the questions to get you started and you direct the conversation from there. Interviews will be over email or another text-based format unless you and your interviewee prefer differently. We'll handle the rest! If you'd like to help out, reply to this email and we'll be in touch!

In just over a week, we will be opening sign-ups for fanworks for our Mereth Aderthad event, coming July 19, 2025. Mereth Aderthad is a bit of a different approach to a Tolkien event: not quite a conference, not quite a ficswap. Fanworks creators will write stories and poems, make art, and create other fanworks in response to a presentation about Tolkien's world. If you think you might want to sign up and want access to the form when it goes live, make sure we have a contact email for you here. (If this is the first time you're hearing of it, the full call for fanworks is here.)

What we hope this will accomplish is show how easily the scholarly and creative wings of the Tolkien fandom blend into each other, which is what we have been about for twenty years now. Will it work? Who knows! If someone has done an event like this before, we don't know of it. But we have twelve fascinating presentations scheduled (the schedule will be coming soon!) that are looking for creative works to go with them, and we hope fanworks creators out there might consider giving it a go.

In the more immediate future, we are holding an impromptu instadrabbling session today (Saturday, February 8) at 6PM/18:00 UTC on our Discord server. (Find this in your timezone.) Prompts will be traditional four-word prompts either taken from a random page in The Silmarillion or from Elleth's Tolkien Femslash February prompts. If you've never instadrabbled before, it is a low-key, collaborative, supportive, and very fun way to spend a few hours making and enjoying Tolkien fanworks! Check out the instadrabbling FAQ here for more details. Next Saturday, we will again host instadrabbling on our Discord server using prompts for Maedhros & Maglor Week. (The SWG is not affiliated with this event, but we have our share of M&M fans!) Find more about the February 15 instadrabbling event here.

We're at the time of the year where big fandom events like Back to Middle-earth Month and Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang begin to appear on the calendar. And we've welcomed lots of new members in the past several months. Put those together, and there are probably a few people wondering, "I've written something; now where do I find someone to beta-read my story?"

Beta-reading is a fandom practice that involves a reader giving feedback on a story before it is posted publicly. "Giving feedback" is intentionally vague because beta-reading looks different for every author and reader. Some dig deep into the workings of a story, others focus on a specific area like dialogue or characterization, and still others copyedit and catch all those there/their/they're-type mistakes.

If you're looking for a beta, we can help. We have a beta directory on our site where writers can search for betas who specialize in what they most need for a story, whether that's someone to help with pacing and plot or someone who knows a ton about the Second Age. If you belong to our Discord server, we also have a #beta-finder channel there, which is especially useful when you end up pinch-hitting for an exchange and need someone fast.

If you want to help writers get their stories into shape, consider adding yourself to our beta directory! Anyone with an SWG membership can do so. Go to your profile and click the Beta Profile tab at the top. Note the checkbox "Activate This Profile" at the bottom; if you need to go on hiatus and don't want people to contact you, just uncheck this box, and you will be removed from the list without losing your profile data. When you're ready to be put back on, just recheck the box.

Finally, as the News below shows, we have some upcoming dates and events! First, the "abstract gallery" of Mereth Aderthad presentations will be made available in a week for people considering creating a fanwork for the event. If you want to know when the abstract gallery opens and have not added your name to our interest form, make sure you do! Fanworks sign-ups will open February 15.

We also have an instadrabbling session coming up on February 15 at 18:00/6PM UTC (find this in my timezone). The session will focus on Maedhros and Maglor's relationship, timed just before Maedhros & Maglor Week that begins the next day. (We are not affiliated with Maedhros & Maglor Week.) You can learn more about the instadrabbling session here and join our Discord here.

Last week, we held two instadrabbling sessions on our Discord server that, togther, totalled about ten hours of creating and sharing fanworks together. (Check the New Fanworks list below to find many of them!) Live events are always really fun, and last week was no exception.

If you enjoy live events on our Discord server, we want to encourage you to consider hosting one! The quote in this week's newsletter title comes from the Ainulindalë and speaks to the power of many minds and hands building something together. The SWG moderators host live events a couple of times per year, but these are typically oriented toward SWG events. However, we welcome events hosted by members and, if you have an idea for an event, are here to support you in making it happen!

What types of events do we host on our server? Of course, there is instadrabbling. While instadrabbling has a traditional format, we welcome hosts to completely abandon it if they want. If you'd like to organize an impromptu micro-fanworks creation session, whether open-ended or themed, consider hosting an instadrabbling session! Also note that the #instadrabbling channel on our Discord server is always open for impromptu sessions as well.

We've also hosted fanfiction book clubs in the past where we gather and discuss fanworks written about a specific topic, character, pairing, genre, or theme. Book clubs are positive-focused discussion groups that read fanfiction as literary (or literary criticism) and offer the chance to take a deep-dive into what makes a story tick.

Finally, we also host live readings of fanworks in our stage channel. Again, these sessions can be built around a theme, can be open-ended, or take an open-mic approach (or a mix of the aforementioned). In all cases, we hope to both encourage the creation of more Tolkien-based fanworks and showcase the beautiful, thought-provoking, an entertaining work our members create.

In all instances, the SWG moderators support hosts as needed with promotions and logistics. While you will primarily plan and host your event, we're always available behind the scenes to offer assistance when and where needed. We are also happy to help first-time hosts with the questions and worries that always arise when trying something like this for the first time!

Most events are held on our Discord server, but the SWG also has a Zoom account. And if you have an idea for an event that doesn't fit any of the above, let us know what you're thinking, and we'll help if we can to make it happen. If you're interested in hosting an event, reply to this email or reach out using any of our usual contacts!

Mereth Aderthad is coming on July 19, 2025! In celebration of our twentieth birthday, we are gathering in-person in Burlington, Vermont, USA, and online to share presentations of meta and fanworks based on the works of Tolkien.

This week, we opened our interest form for creators who would like to share a fanwork as part of Mereth Aderthad. There will be two options for fanworks, which will accompany the research and meta presentations that are also part of the event. Fanworks of all types are welcome! Mereth Aderthad is a live event, so we will have time set aside for sharing fanworks as part of the event. If you'd rather not present your fanwork live, we will also produce a fanzine as part of the event.

As we build the schedule for Mereth Aderthad, we cannot overemphasize that our priority is that people who want to share their work as part of Mereth Aderthad be able to share their work as part of Mereth Aderthad. We know that speaking at an event is not for everyone. Pre-recorded presentations are welcome. Having someone else read your fanwork is welcome. If you want to participate but need accommodations, you can reach out to the SWG mods at any time, and we will do our best to make that happen.

Right now, we are asking creators who might be interested in sharing a fanwork as part of Mereth Aderthad to complete our interest form. If you fill out the form, we will contact you twice. On February 7, we will send out the presentations for Mereth Aderthad that we need fanworks for. On February 15, we will email you the sign-up form. Filling out the interest form does not obligate you to sign up for Mereth Aderthad.

If you want to know more about what we're looking for, the full call for fanworks is available on our website. If you have questions, hit REPLY on this email or contact the mods through the website or any of our social media.

This weekend, we will be instadrabbling on our Discord server! Instadrabbling is a Tolkien fanworks tradition that has been going on for more than twenty years. Creators gather on a chat together, someone tosses a prompt out out to the group, and everyone creates a small fanwork in response and shares it in the chat. While traditionally, fanworks are drabbles, we put less stock in tradition than we do in welcoming as many creators as we can, so all Tolkien-based fanworks are welcome, regardless of length or format. This round, any prompts are welcome, though the mods promise prompts aimed at earning stamps for the Jubilee challenge. Likewise, if you want to come hang out and enjoy the fanworks being created, you are also welcome! You can join our Discord server here.

One of the most beloved themes of The Lord of the Rings is the ability of the humble and small to succeed where the powerful cannot and do not. It's unlikely that Tolkien had this notion in mind when he wrote so many minor characters and let them carry powerful ideas, but Vidumavi of the Northmen is one such character. Relegated to the appendices, Vidumavi is not only a catalyst in the histories of Rohan and Gondor but advances some of Tolkien's most important themes in the story of her love and marriage to the Gondorian prince Valacar.

In our newest article in Character of the Month, Secondborn discusses the life of Vidumavi and her importance to the legendarium. No one familiar with Character of the Month will be surprised to learn that, with just two mentions in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, Vidumavi carries a lot, thematically, on her shoulders. Secondborn explores ideas ranging from the division of various peoples throughout Tolkien's works based on bloodline—an idea with troubling echoes in our own world—to the conflicting meanings of fellowship to the role of characters like Vidumavi in illustrating a world from which the faerie-element is fading.

Furthermore, Vidumavi offers multiple inroads for creating fanworks. There is the love story. Secondborn writes of Vidumavi that "her marriage strikes me as one of the best and most genuine in Tolkien’s works, a truly moving example of love for love’s sake that endured harsh tests without failure." There is the hardship she experienced as one of the Northmen in a city that did not fully approve of her or her marriage, a trial that she bore with honor and courage, ultimately illustrating the fallacy of declaring one group of people superior to the other. Her story is entangled with the Kinstrife, with Castamir's coup, and with the eventual installment of the Stewards of Gondor. All this from a woman relegated to the appendices.

You can read Secondborn's biography of Vidumavi here.

Vidumavi's biography is a good time, too, to remind those of you who create fanworks that Third Age works are allowed on our site. This is a frequent point of confusion, but any works except those set during The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings are eligible for the SWG. The full FAQ on "Silmworks" is here.

And a final reminder of upcoming dates:

• Proposals for meta presentations for Mereth Aderthad are due on January 15, which is Wednesday. Check out our session on proposal-writing here and remember that this is an event that is specifically seeking contributions from fans! We want to feature your work at our event and are happy to support potential presenters in doing so! Reply to this email or contact us for help or with questions. We're happy to bounce ideas, look over drafts, or whatever you need. Find the call for proposals here.
• Next weekend, January 18 and 19, we are instadrabbling on our Discord server. Find more about how to participate here.