There's no business like show business, and our newest challenge, Musicals, plays on the energy and emotion of musical theater by putting some favorite quotes from musicals in the limelight as challenge prompts. This month's challenge allows creators to select their own prompt from the list (linked above!), though as always, we remind participants that creative interpretation of the prompts is very welcome. (Want to use the title or the name of the musical or a snippet from the song that wasn't included in the prompt but you find at the link to the full lyrics? We're not going to stop you!)

If you're new to our challenges, you can find the complete challenge guidlines on the website.

We are also in one of those rare instances where we have two challenges running at once ("running" as in "eligible for stamps" since you can create for any of our challenges whenever you want). Birthday Bash, being a daily prompt challenge, will run until April 25 so that creators have time to work with the later prompts in the challenge. (If you missed Birthday Bash, it recapped twenty years of our history with matching challenge prompts.)

We are taking a break this week from Mereth Aderthad interviews, and next week, we will be taking the site down briefly on Saturday, April 19, for a major software upgrade. We are swiftly approaching four years since we reopened the site after rebuilding it from the ground up in Drupal (and eighteen years since I built our original archive), so it seems a good weekend for a digression about some of the technical history of how the SWG came to be and continues to exist and why next week's upgrade is happening.

The SWG was not intended to be an archive. I did not have the skills for such an endeavor when the group was founded in 2005, but popular sentiment that we should be an archive (and not a writers' workshop, as I intended) pushed me to gain those skills very quickly. Our archive opened in June 2007. It was built in eFiction, an open-source fiction archive software developed by Rebecca Smallwood, who created it for her own Tolkien and other fan sites and then made it available to all.

The best way to describe eFiction compared to Drupal (our current software) is that both have the ability to make archives—fandom houses in this analogy—but eFiction is a dollhouse that you buy assembled, take out of the box, and can play with right away. You can decorate it and make small adjustments as you want, but you can't fundamentally change what it is without cracking it open and rebuilding it.

Several developers after Rebecca, eFiction stopped being actively maintained, and in 2016, our archive began to show the first signs that its aging software wasn't going to work for us forever. We began researching options and eventually settled on Drupal. If eFiction is a dollhouse, Drupal is a box of LEGO bricks. The essential shapes are there, but you put them together into the structures you want, and you are in no way required to build a house. You could also build a barn, windmill, or shopping mall ... or a house attached to a barn on top of a shopping mall with a windmill attached to the side. When we rebuilt the site in Drupal, this is what we did, first reconstructing the fiction archive more or less how it was in eFiction, then adding on lots more: the ability to archive other types of fanworks, a system for sharing news, a beta-reader directory, and lots of behind-the-scenes tools that help the mods and volunteers keep the site running with minimal fuss.

We are doing a major software upgrade on Drupal next weekend, so if you notice the site offline on Saturday morning Eastern time (afternoon in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and hopefully those west of me are still getting their morning coffee when it's back up), this is why. I'm looking forward to more effective HTML permissions (so that those of you working on pages with me don't get frozen out of edits by my admin powers!) and the ability to more seamlessly handle coauthored fanworks.

The developers of eFiction are almost never mentioned, but we owe so much to Rebecca, Tammy, Artphilia, and Sheep Control, whose work gave us our original home, where we learned and built our community so that we could one day move into the site we have today. Beyond us, so many communities and fanworks would never have existed without their generosity in sharing their skills and time.

If you want to meander more through SWG history, check out our Birthday Bash challenge, which centers on a new event from our history each day (and is almost over, so it's pretty complete as of this writing).

There are few creatures from modern fantasy more familiar even to non-fantasy fans than dragons. While certainly not his invention, Tolkien helped usher dragons from their mythic origins to their popularity today. Yet amid pages and pages of writing on the nature of his many imagined creatures, Tolkien is relatively silent on the nature of dragons.

In the latest in our interview series of Mereth Aderthad presenters Shadow spoke with cloudyhymns about his paper "The Design of Dragons and the Doom of the Dwarves," which considers the nature of these beasts that are at once familiar and mysterious. "The dragons are almost certainly corruptions," he explains, likening them to the corruption of Elves into Orcs and drawing evidence from the legendarium and the the mythic and literary sources that served as Tolkien's own inspiration that they may in fact be corruptions of Dwarves, designed to serve as a balance to the ecological destruction for which Dwarves are known.

"Since this is Mereth Aderthad, I hope you find something to squirrel away and use in your own works," cloudyhymns told Shadow, and certainly his topic is a perfect illustration of what we were hoping to achieve with this event by inviting mostly fanworks creators to delve into the research that underlies their creative pursuits.

You can read Shadow's interview with cloudyhymns, which includes more about his theories of dragons and Dwarves, here.

We also have SWG events taking place over the next two weekends! On Saturday, April 5, Anna (IdleLeaves) will be hosting her monthly instadrabbling session on our Discord server at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in your timezone) using prompts from our current Birthday Bash challenge. Never instadrabbled before? Find out more about instadrabbling here, and if you're not a member of our Discord server yet, you can join our server here.

Next Saturday, April 12, we will hold our second session in the series "So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference?" with the topic of creating the presentation itself. The session will be held at 1:00 PM Eastern Time (what is this in my timezone?). (If you miss it, no worries; it will be recorded!) If you'd like a reminder emailed to you, you can RSVP here.

"And love grew after between them."

If you have spent any time in the fanworks fandom for The Silmarillion, you likely recognize these words, which have inspired thousands of fanworks amid lively discussions about the how and why of the love that grew between Elrond and Elros and their captors/adopted parents Maedhros and Maglor. Called kidnap fam in the fandom, it is one of those brief passages in Tolkien that provokes an interest among fans that might seem surprising given the relative lack of importance that Tolkien seemed to attach to the episode.

As part of our series of interviews of presenters for Mereth Aderthad 2025, I spoke to polutropos about her presentation "'Kidnap Fam' and the Living Legendarium," which explores the popularity of this short episode in the fandom as an example of how fans use the "living legendarium" to inspire fanworks.

"[I]n terms of how many words Tolkien wrote about [kidnap fam] versus how many fans have written about it, it's entirely disproportionate," polutropos told me, but as she went on to explain, that is the point. The "thousand directions" the story can be taken makes it a perfect jumping-off point for fanworks.

But polutropos's presentation isn't just about kidnap fam but what she terms "the living legendarium." Tolkien left The Silmarillion unfinished, and it was put into publishable form by Christopher Tolkien, whose editorial choices shape how we understand the story. In particular, Christopher Tolkien's choices around Gil-galad, as polutropos explains, "makes an already complicated relationship even more complicated." The incompleteness and complexity of how The Silmarillion came into being—not only the in-universe questions about historicity, orality, and narrators but the out-of-story concerns around how Christopher selected which of his father's writings would rise in status to become The Silmarillion—is part of what leads to the appeal of The Silmarillion to fanworks creators (and increasingly scholars as well). "[T]he very aspect of The Silmarillion that at first seems like a barrier to literary study is, on the contrary, an opportunity," polutropos said. "I think fanworks creators intuitively get that, but I hope this presentation affirms the legitimacy of fanworks as modes of inquiry and worth academic study in their own right."

You can read my interview with polutropos here.

If the question, "Who is Gil-galad?" was posed at a Tolkien pub trivia night, it would be a softball question. One needn't even read The Silmarillion to know who he is. After all, I'm sure I'm not the only person who hears "Gil-galad" and automatically completes the thought as, "was an elven-king. Of him harpers sadly sing."

But that's the whole issue, according to Maglor's upcoming presentation for Mereth Aderthad 2025, "Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the last High King of the Noldor." Shadow sat down with Maglor about his presentation this week, as part of our series of interviews of Mereth Aderthad presenters about the work they plan to present. Maglor points out that we know very little about Gil-galad as a person, not just a king. They discussed Maglor's presentation, the many origin theories of Gil-galad, the appeal of Tolkien, and the importance of fanworks for characters like Gil-galad, who are key to the story as we know it but remain undeveloped by Tolkien.

Maglor's presentation highlights a key intention of Mereth Aderthad 2025: to showcase the ways that fanworks not only lead to scholarship but that research often must open back onto fanworks to truly get the answers that, as Tolkien fans, we so often crave. "If someone leaves my presentation thinking, he has a point, I should think more about this and maybe write something," Maglor told Shadow, "be that transformative or scholarly fanwork, that would be awesome! If someone thinks, what was that guy talking about, I should write a thesis explaining why he is totally wrong, that would also be great, because it still means people are thinking and writing about this character who has come to mean so much to me."

You can read Shadow's interview with Maglor about "Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the last High King of the Noldor" here.

Speaking of Mereth Aderthad, registration opened last weekend for both in-person and virtual attendees. Find out more about the event and register to attend here.

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!