SWG News

Do You Create or Read/View Fanworks with Women Characters?

Posted by SWG Moderators on 2 September 2022. Last updated on 25 November 2022.

Do you create Tolkien-based fanworks that include women? Do you enjoy reading or viewing Tolkien-based fanworks about women characters?

Fandom Voices is a project that is part of our monthly Cultus Dispatches column where we ask fans to contribute their memories and experiences around a topic. For an upcoming column, we will be looking at how women are depicted in fanworks in the Tolkien fandom and whether this has changed over time.

Both creators and consumers of fanworks are welcome for this project. You can write as little or as much as you'd like. Responses will be published in an upcoming Cultus Dispatches column. You are of course welcome to remain anonymous if you prefer.

If you'd like to share your experiences about how women are depicted in fanworks, you can find the response form here.

Cultus Dispatches: Fandom Voices - Filmverse Fans

Posted by SWG Moderators on 27 August 2022. Last updated on 24 September 2022.

This month's Cultus Dispatches column wraps up our four-part series on the impact of the films on the Tolkien fandom. This month's article, Fandom Voices: Filmverse Fans, compiles the responses of more than thirty fans who joined the Tolkien fandom entirely or partly due to the two Jackson film trilogies. As in all Fandom Voices columns, several big takeaways are presented, but we also provide the complete responses so that you can draw your own conclusions.

How do film fans define the impact of the films on their own fandom experience? Three major effects emerged from the responses we collected. The films often led fans to seek out (or sometimes accidentally discover) the fandom. From there, they formed important friendships. And, as we've now reported through multiple Cultus columns, the films encourage new fans to read the books.

Finally, if you missed the original call for responses, you are not too late: Fandom Voices forms always remain open. If you joined the fandom because of the films and want to respond, you can do so here.

"Beyond the Silmarillion" Section Is Open!

Posted by SWG Moderators on 21 August 2022. Last updated on 24 September 2022.

We are very excited to announce the official opening of the Beyond the Silmarillion section of our archive! Here, creators who are already posting with us can archive their non-Silmarillion fanworks based on Tolkien's books and adaptations, and absolutely anyone can read and view those fanworks.

Who is eligible and how does one obtain permissions?

The Beyond the Silmarillion section is open to creators who have committed to posting their work with us, which we define as five fanworks or 10,000 words of fanworks. When you reach one of these milestones, a moderator will grant "Beyond" permissions to your account, and you will be able to post in the new section.

Permissions are monitored and assigned manually, by a human (i.e., not automatically, by a computer script). If you meet the requirements above, please allow us at least twenty-four hours to assign your permissions. After that point, feel free to query.

More than 200 of you met the requirements for the new section right away and can begin posting to the new section now!

If you think you should have permissions and do not, please contact us.

How do I know if I have permissions? How do I post to the new section?

You can check if you have permissions by opening any of the Add New Fanwork forms under the My Account menu. If you see a checkbox for "Beyond the Silmarillion Fanwork" under the Title field, you have posting access for the new section.

To post to the new section, simply check off this box and complete the form as usual. All types of fanwork (art, audio, link collections, multimedia fanworks, playlists, series, videos, and all types of written fanwork) are allowed in the Beyond the Silmarillion section. More detail instructions, with illustrations, can be found in the Beyond the Silmarillion FAQ.

While we have populated the Character tagset with the major characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, if you need a character or relationship that's not currently on the list, use the Moderator Request form as usual. Likewise, if you need a source that is not in the Source Text tagset, you can use this field to request it.

How will the new section impact reading on the site?

Beyond the Silmarillion is truly a separate section. We are still a Silmarillion fanworks archive; however, as more and more small Tolkien-specific archives close their doors, we know many of our members would like a place to archive all of their Tolkien fanworks outside of the large multifandom archives. In the recent past, we could point to a half-dozen generalist Tolkien archives where our members' work was welcome that didn't fit on our site's requirements. We can no longer do that and so feel it is an important need to meet for our creator base.

You can find the Beyond the Silmarillion section under the Fanworks menu. If you want all the fanworks, check out the Truly All Fanworks page (you can find a link on the All Fanworks page).

If you follow a creator or tag, and a Beyond fanwork is posted by that person or to that tag, you will receive a notification.

We will also include a section for Beyond the Silmarillion fanworks in our weekly newsletter.

We hope our readers/viewers and creators enjoy the new section of the site!

New Crossover Text Field

Posted by SWG Moderators on 21 August 2022. Last updated on 21 August 2022.

In our last round of updates to the site, we added a handy little field that we hope will help our crossover creators better label their work (and crossover fans better find fanworks they'll enjoy). Now, when you select "Crossover" as a genre, you will have access to a field, Crossover Text, where you can identify the text(s) you combined with Tolkien.

Currently, this tagset includes all crossover texts that are currently used in fanworks posted to the archive. If you need a crossover text that isn't in the tagset yet, please use the Moderator Request field on the fanwork submission form to request it, and we will update the tagset and your fanwork for you.

Soon, you will be able to filter the Crossover page by crossover text.

Many thanks to Independence1776 for looking through the crossovers on our archive and making the initial tagset for us!

New Challenge: Restoration and Rebuilding

Posted by SWG Moderators on 19 August 2022. Last updated on 15 September 2022.

The Silmarillion can feel like an unrelentingly tragic work. Yet at the end of every downfall comes a time of restoration that drives not just the storyline but our beloved characters of Middle-earth forward into the next chapter of their history.

In honor of Akallabêth in August, our annual celebration of fanworks set in the Second Age, this month's challenge will center on the themes of rebuilding and restoration.

You may select the prompt or prompts that speak to you. We will also be holding an instadrabbling event associated with this challenge on August 20 08:00-10:00 EDT and August 21 19:00-21:00 EDT. The prompts from the instadrabbling event will be added to the prompt list after the conclusion of the second session.

You can find this month's challenge prompts here.

A Sense of History: The Easterling Hostages in Middle-earth and Their Parallels in Welsh Medieval History

Posted by SWG Moderators on 19 August 2022. Last updated on 9 September 2022.

Many years ago, Angelica wrote a monthly column called "A Sense of History," connecting Tolkien's legendarium with real-world history.

We are very pleased to bring this column back! To welcome it back, MirienSilowende has written an article about the parallels between medieval Welsh history and the history of the Easterlings and Gondor, focusing on hostage-taking.

The term hostage has chilling connotations in modern English. Historically, hostages were used as a means of controlling a neighboring people. The Gondorians, for a time, held Easterling hostages as a way of subduing the Easterling leaders and establishing cultural dominance. MirienSilowende finds parallels in Wales, where the history has a bloody conclusion. Even more tantalizing: What impact did Gondorian hostage-taking have on later relations between the Easterlings and Sauron? Would a softer touch from Gondor have led to a different outcome?

You can read this month's article, "The Easterling Hostages in Middle-earth and Their Parallels in Welsh Medieval History," here.

"A Sense of History" is a monthly column open to contributions that succinctly explain connections between the legendarium and history for a nonscholarly audience. If you have a historical topic you'd like to write about, find out more about contributing to this column here.

In Memory of Keiliss

Posted by Dawn Felagund on 14 August 2022. Last updated on 14 August 2022.

It is with great sadness that we report that longtime SWG author and the friend of so many of us, Keiliss, passed away from cancer on August 11.

In the day since, many have shared their memories of Kei. She was a leader in the Tolkien fandom, modding the Slashy exchanges for many years. She was one of the original SWG members who joined seventeen years ago, when we were still just a Yahoo! Group and an LJ community, and whose wise, kind counsel helped shape who we are now. She was a heartbreakingly talented author, whose work was a comfort and delight to so many of us. Many remember her as one of the first to welcome them and make them feel at home in the fandom. And she was a beloved friend to so many, and her loss can never be filled.

Kei's MSV comoderator Red Lasbelin will share information about charitable contributions in Kei's name as they become available. In the meantime, if you don't know Kei's work, you should, and you can find her stories here. If you're looking for a way to honor her memory and all that she gave to our community, our art editor Anérea found a 2019 post from Kei, written for the annual Fandom Snowflake challenge, that sums up well her approach to fandom:

Fandom will go on, because as long as there are tales that have gaps that ask questions like 'what then?' and 'why?', people will fill those gaps as we have since time out of mind. The shape that will take further down the road—who knows? Whatever happens, I hope we don't fragment too far because one day we'll lose touch so completely that the only place we'll occasionally connect will be in the comment threads on AO3. And that would be so sad because fandom is about the writers and artists and the magic they create and the way imagination sparks from one to the other. This is our sandpit, we need to treasure it.

Go forth and make something beautiful or offer a kind word to someone who needs it. In loving memory of Keiliss.

Archive Tech Spotlight

Posted by SWG Moderators on 12 August 2022. Last updated on 2 September 2022.

This year, our archive has grown quickly in offering new features and opening its doors to new types of fanworks. In the midst of this, it can be easy to forget what we already have in place that can make our site easier and more convenient to use.

• Dark mode. Need to rest your eyes while reading? The SWG newsletter staff recently set off on a tangent about the best ways to set up dark mode on the site, and we thought we'd share the fruits of that conversation with you. While we'd love to offer a variety of different themes someday, someday is the key word there. But in the meantime, most devices and browsers can be set up for dark mode. Thanks to Independence1776 for researching this FAQ!
• Betas. If you need a beta, you can search for someone in our beta directory. But what if you want to help out other authors by becoming a beta? You can activate and update your beta profile at any time by going to My Account and clicking the Beta Profile tab at the top. If ever you need to go on hiatus, uncheck the "Activate This Profile" checkbox at the bottom and you won't lose your profile, but your name won't show up on the beta list till you reactivate.
• Finding Fanworks. Remember that one story you read seven years ago? The crackfic horror about Glorfindel? That you've laughed about every day since?? Our Find a Fanwork page (under Tools) is set up to help you find that fanwork you know you saw/read/loved so many years ago, or it helps you find the perfect fanwork you haven't yet read or seen to fall in love with.
• PMs. Sometimes you want to reach out to a creator or fellow SWG member, but a comment isn't the best way to do it. Did you know you can private message (PM) fellow SWG members? (Note that not all members have switched on this feature.) Visit a person's profile and use the Contact link at the top of their profile. You can find a complete list of SWG members (or creators) here. If you want to switch PMs on (or off) on your own account, go to My Account, click the Edit tab at the top, and look for the Contact Settings section.

Character of Month: Túrin

Posted by Dawn Felagund on 5 August 2022. Last updated on 30 September 2022.

In his lecture-turned-essay On Fairy-stories, Tolkien coins the term eucatastrophe: that emotional thrill when catastrophe is averted and, against all odds, the story winds up with a happy ending. August's character of the month, Túrin Turambar, is the precise opposite. Firstamazon, the author of this month's biography, notes that he embodies the idea of dyscatastrophe. No matter what he does, Túrin's life ends up in the dumpster in the back alley of Doom.

Túrin's is one of what Tolkien considered the three great tales, and Tolkien spent more time on his story (of which several versions exist) than he did on many other parts of the legendarium. As such, Túrin's biography will be in three parts, with the first part focusing on his childhood sorrows, his fosterage in Doriath (and the dyscatastrophic turn that took), his fall (or Saeros's fall, if you want to be literal about it), and finally, his years of outlawry. Firstamazon untangles Túrin's story from the various versions that exist to bring forth the story of a young man beset by the worst luck ever (and—spoiler alert!—it will only get worse). Check out the first part of Túrin's biography here.

Video and Multimedia Fanworks Are Here!

Posted by Dawn Felagund on 1 August 2022. Last updated on 19 August 2022.

We are excited to announce the final fanwork types are now available on our archive: video and multimedia!

If you'd like to add a video or multimedia fanwork, you can find these options under your My Account menu. If you need help adding them, see our video FAQ and multimedia FAQ.

What Exactly Is a Multimedia Fanwork?

Multimedia fanworks provide the means to combine two or more of the other fanwork types into a single fanwork, presented on a single page.

Did you do a ton of research for a story, and you'd like to present your link collection alongside the fic? Maybe there's an illustration of the story too? Do you have a video that goes with a meta piece, or a podcast discussing a work of art? (Or the playlist you listened to while making the art?) Or you are participating in a big bang and would like to post the artwork and novella together?

Multimedia fanworks allow you to archive fanworks that don't fit tidily into our existing fanwork types: artwork, audio, link collection, playlist, video, and writing. You can combine as many fanwork types together in whatever order you choose. The multimedia FAQ includes more information about the various ways this fanwork type can be used to present hard-to-archive fanworks on our site.

Banner image by mohamed hassan form PxHere.