SWG News

Character of Month: Olwë

Posted by SWG Moderators on 24 January 2024. Last updated on 27 April 2024.

Olwë is one of those characters about whom we know little but who looms large. When the exiled Noldor set out across the sea, Olwë disappeared in their rearview mirrors, but his life to that point is anything but drab. He makes the Great Journey, loses his brother (literally), endures separation from his Noldorin friends, becomes a king, traverses the sea via island, raises a city from the sand, stands up to Fëanor, and watches as his people endure one of the greatest crimes of Elves toward other Elves. Eventually, he sails to Middle-earth to aid in the War of Wrath, but he remains in the margins of the Noldorin history there, as indeed he wished.

In this month's biography of Olwë, LadySternchen highlights these key events in Olwë's life, bringing forth what makes him such an intriguing character.

You can read LadySternchen's biography of Olwë here.

A Sense of History: The Peaks of Taniquetil

Posted by SWG Moderators on 19 January 2024. Last updated on 10 February 2024.

For the past several months, as a part of our column A Sense of History, Simon J. Cook has been analyzing the tower analogy in Tolkien's lecture-slash-essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," including critical interpretations of the analogy. Although, on paper, most Tolkien fans know that Tolkien's professional work as a philologist and enthusiast of Northern medieval literature influenced his writings on Middle-earth, rarely do we see this emerge as clearly as in the latest installment in this series, where Simon traces the 1936 appearance of the Beowulf-tower (changed from a rock garden) to the appearance of towers looking West toward Númenor (added to earlier versions of the text). Simon draws a connection between the towers of Middle-earth and how the mysterious tower of Tolkien's "Monsters and the Critics" should be interpreted.

You can read Simon's "The Peaks of Taniquetil" here.

Issue with User Pages Fixed (We Hope!)

Posted by SWG Moderators on 13 January 2024. Last updated on 13 January 2024.

For some months now, we've been dealing with an issue where pages with /user in the URL occasionally recall what is known in the Drupal community as the White Screen of Death: a blank white screen and ominously simple black text that states, "The website encountered an unexpected error." This issue appeared to be related to one of the contributed modules we use for member profiles. Over the past few months, Russandol and Dawn have been reworking this section of the site so that member profiles no longer use the problematic module but only core software fields and functionality.

Today, we completed the migration of the rebuild and all data from the old module into the new fields. Ideally, you should not notice a change! However, if you are a registered user, it would be helpful to us to check your member profile to make sure that your preferred name, pronouns, and member biography all look as they should.*

Due to this change the way you update your member profile is now slightly different. After logging in, if you click the Edit tab on your member profile, you will see three tabs at the top of the page: General, Profile, and Volunteer. Click on the Profile tab to update or add a preferred name, pronouns, userpic, or biography. The image below shows what the new layout looks like.

We've tested the site following the changes, but members should be alert to anything that seems off, and we appreciate reports of problems. We maintain an issues tracker for known problems with the site, and this is a good place to start if you're noticing something isn't working as it should and want to know if it's been reported. We always welcome reports of problems in the comments there, in the #town-hall channel on our Discord server, or by contacting the mods.

* While working on these updates today, we noticed that images that should be displaying inline (i.e., next to each other rather than one per line) were not displaying correctly but were displaying as blocks (i.e., one per line). This is not related to the update, and we will be working on updating our stylesheet this weekend to correct this issue.

Tolkien Fanartics: Interview with Mirra Kan

Posted by SWG Moderators on 6 January 2024. Last updated on 27 April 2024.

One of the effects of Tolkien's broad-reaching world-building is that the people on the margins of the map (and the texts) invite fanworks creators to tell their stories. In this month's Tolkien Fanartics article, our art editor Anérea had the opportunity to chat with Mirra Kan, whose work embodies the concept of moving characters and peoples from the margins of Tolkien's works to center them in her own.

Self-taught and a self-described orientalist, Mirra Kan focuses on the peoples of Middle-earth who live in the south and east. She seeks to show these characters—who are often depicted simply as enemies in the text—as real people from complex cultures. Among the Easterlings and Men of the South were "heroes fighting and dying for the sake of a better future for their children," Mirra reminds us, and her art represents their cultures and tells their stories.

You can read Anérea's interview with Mirra Kan here.

New Challenge: Resolution

Posted by SWG Moderators on 5 January 2024. Last updated on 16 February 2024.

Happy New Year! To help you start 2024 off right, we’re giving you a chance to catch up on any challenges you missed in 2023. Our annual amnesty allows you to pick from any of the previous year’s challenges. Whether finishing that epic novel for the challenge that ran away or making a sketch or writing a drabble, the idea is to make something fannish with one of our challenges as inspiration!

You do not need to use a new prompt to be eligible for this challenge. Participants can choose to complete any of the previous year's challenges. Did you miss a challenge you wanted to complete? Do it now. Did you start a fanwork for a challenge but never completed it? Here is your chance to finish. If you didn't leave any unrealized or unfinished projects behind you (congratulations!) or if none of the unfinished challenges strike your fancy, choose from any of our past challenges. (For a summary of the 2023 challenges and direct links, see the Challenge Prompts section below!)

You will receive a stamp on your 2024 collection for any challenges that you complete now*, as well as a stamp for the New Year's Resolution challenge on your 2023 collection. When you post to the SWG archive, please make sure you select the 2023 challenge you're completing and the New Year's Resolution challenge.

*If you choose to complete a challenge older than 2023, we will not be giving out past stamps; you will, however, receive your January 2024 stamp.

View a list of the 2023 challenges here.

Cultus Dispatches: Duel of Surveys

Posted by SWG Moderators on 23 December 2023. Last updated on 3 February 2024.

What is better than fandom data? MORE FANDOM DATA!!! This month's Cultus Dispatches column offers a rough, taken-with-a-huge-grain-of-salt comparison between the 2020 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey and the recent OTW 16th Anniversary Survey.

The surveys offer a few points of glancing comparison: time active in fandom, attendance at fan conventions, and use of fandom platforms. The latter offers some particularly interesting conclusions, offering evidence that Tolkien fans go all Galadriel when it comes to migrating from Lothlorien to new fandom sites and adopting new technology.

You can read "Duel of Surveys" here.

A Sense of History: Never Mind the Dwarves

Posted by SWG Moderators on 16 December 2023. Last updated on 20 January 2024.

In A Sense of History this month is something a bit different: Never Mind the Dwarves by Simon J. Cook. If you've been following Simon's work over the past few months, you know he has been interrogating the tower analogy in Tolkien's lecture/essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," in many cases pushing back on the work of established scholars (who have not all reacted well to his series). This month's column is a much lighter approach, itself an analogy that blends scholarship, fiction, and fandom. I asked Simon how he would introduce his own piece:

We all know that feeling of hearing a scholar speak about Tolkien's stories and wondering how a human being could so utterly fail to notice the actual art. Words drop from their lips like acid rain falling on virgin snow. Yet one brave band of scholars has broken out of this mould. While spurning imagination, as all scholars must, they nevertheless have seen with their own eyes the profound architecture of the stories that the rest of us love. What is the secret of those very few who take this left-path of scholarship? What allows them and nobody else direct and unmediated vision of the Truth? Simon's research has long grappled with this question and, after many many weary hours rummaging in the archives of the Lore section of the 'Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza', he now reveals the story of the Boffin Stone, which even today may be touched by those who know how to access the hidden chamber in the highest tower of the Fanatics Plaza.

Comment here if you riddle out who Peregrin Boffin is in the piece! (Hint: He's from The History of Middle-earth ...)

Tolkien Fanartics: Mapping Arda, Part II

Posted by SWG Moderators on 2 December 2023. Last updated on 6 January 2024.

Many readers mention the vast expanse of time covered by The Silmarillion. Less often mentioned is the vast expanse of geography. Spanning three continents, The Silmarillion is a series of tales that, more often than not, center on migrations and battles that involve moving groups across the landscape or heroes undertaking long-distance quests across awe-inspiring terrain.

In this month's Tolkien Fanartics column, Anérea turns to the land mass at the center of most Silmarillion tales: Beleriand. From the sky-stabbing peaks of Thangorodrim down the shores of the Great Sea, Beleriand is a realm whose forests, mountains, and rivers shape the lives and journeys of the people of The Silmarillion. Selecting maps from seven fan cartographers, Anérea considers the various ways that fans use the variety of canon details left by Tolkien—maps, stories, and even data—to visualize his world anew. Their maps stand as fanworks in their own right, while their original depictions of the familiar stories can also inspire and inform new fanworks in turn.

You can read Anérea's "Mapping Arda, Part II: Travels through Beleriand here.

Call for Artists: 2024 Challenge Stamps

Posted by SWG Moderators on 2 December 2023. Last updated on 27 December 2023.

One of our traditions where challenges are concerned are our stamps. Create a fanwork for a challenge or comment on one and you will receive a "postage stamp" in your own customized collection. (If you've participated in our challenges in the past seven years, you can view your collections on your profile.)

Despite the prominent Writers in our name, we are also pleased to be able to archive a wide variety of fanworks, including art. One of the ways we hope to spotlight our artists is by featuring their work as part of our stamp collections. If you make traditional or digital art and would be interested in making stamps for one of our challenges this year, read on to learn how!

• Comment here (or otherwise contact the mods) and we will grant access to a bare-bones list of the 2023 challenges, the number of stamps needed, and the due date. Please note that if you want to remain absolutely unspoiled as to upcoming challenges, then this is probably not for you! We will send additional details on the challenge and specific stamps needed once you choose the challenge you want to work on.
• Create your set of stamps. You have a lot of creative free rein here. Stamps must meet site specifications, thematically match the challenge that month, and be appropriate for all audiences: no violence, blood/gore, nudity, or sexual content. You must use only art and images that you have permission to use, which means that you must own the copyright or have permission from the copyright holder to use the image for this project, or the image is in the public domain. We will send additional details to artists who sign up. If you have questions (or want those specifications now!), comment here or email the site moderators.
• Generally three or four stamps are needed each month. Some months have optional stamps, and artists also have the choice to design that month's banner if they want to.
• Email your completed stamps to the mods before the due date! We will send you a reminder about a month before your stamps are due.

Please note that while we can (and will) credit you as an artist on the challenge page and any announcements about the challenge, we cannot include credit on the stamps themselves or with every appearance of the stamps on our site.

All stamp creators will receive the creator stamp for that month's challenge in their collection.

In participating in this project, you are granting the SWG the right to use your stamps and banner, including any art or photography that they contain, on our website and social media, in accordance with the terms described here. This includes minor modifications, such as resizing graphics to work with the layout of our site.

If you are interested in learning more or gaining access to the sign-up page, please comment here or contact us. The last day to sign up is 31 December 2023.

Character of the Month: Celegorm, Part 2

Posted by SWG Moderators on 25 November 2023. Last updated on 24 January 2024.

The first part of Celegorm's biography introduced a character without a clear identity until Tolkien solidified his role in the betrayal of Finrod Felagund, which Christopher Tolkien termed the Nargothrond Element. This centerpiece of Celegorm's story was years in the making and established Celegorm's identity as we know it.

But Tolkien's work was done. The second part of Celegorm's biography considers how his character evolved once the Nargothrond Element was in place. Although Tolkien is not often lauded for creating complex characters, in Celegorm's character, we see numerous instances where he balanced Celegorm's role as a villain with the need to make him not-wholly-evil, his role ultimately serving the central theme of The Silmarillion. In addition to shaping new details about Celegorm's life, Tolkien also developed his relationships with other characters, showing that Celegorm—for all his flaws—was still someone who loved and was loved by others.

You can read Celegorm's biography here (and jump to Part 2 here).