On 15 February, the Organization for Transformative Works celebrates International Fanworks Day, "a recognition of fanworks in all their forms—fics, art, vids, zines, and more—and of their awesomeness and importance for fans across the world." This year's theme is "When Fandom Collide" and focuses on crossover fanworks.

The SWG accepts crossover fanworks, so we certainly welcome takes on this year's IFD theme on our archive if they involve significant Silmarillion content. However, even if crossovers aren't your fandom jam, we want to use IFD as an opportunity to celebrate what each of you do as part of fandom, the Tolkien fandom, and the SWG specifically.

The Tolkien fandom began with the publication of The Hobbit—after all, The Lord of the Rings was written at least partly in response to fan demand for more of the world they glimpsed in The Hobbit. The first documented Tolkien-based fan writing appeared in the late 1950s, and the fandom has been writing stories, meta, and poems; making art; and creating other fanworks nonstop ever since, leaving the Tolkien fandom as one of the oldest fanworks-producing fandoms in existence.

Of course, the richness of Tolkien's worldbuilding accounts for the almost seven decades of fanworks (not to mention other fandom activity) that exist. But none of it would exist without us either: the fans who have cared not just about Middle-earth but about each other and the creative works that we make that keep the legendarium alive.

So this week, whether a creating a crossover fanwork tempts you or not, we encourage you to honor International Fanworks Day in whatever way feels most meaningful to you: create a fanwork, comment on someone else's work, join a discussion, share a resource, or check in on a fandom friend you haven't connected with recently—or whatever else inspires you! We wish you all another year of creativity and connection!

SWG News

A Sense of History: Straight Road
The next in a series of articles about ships passing to and from the West, Simon uses "The Fall of Númenor" to attempt to arrive at Tolkien's reading of the exordium to "Beowulf."

Fandom Voices: Comments and Feedback
Our Fandom Voices project tackles the fraught questions of feedback: what it is like to leave and receive feedback in the world of Tolkien fanworks.

20th Birthday Event Feedback Needed
Answer one small question to help us plan an even to celebrate our 20th birthday next year!

Call for Contributors: Themed Collections
Are you passionate about a topic related to Tolkien or fanworks? Do you have an impressive collection of bookmarks and favorites? We are looking for contributors who want to put together themed collections on the topic of their choice.

New Challenge: Bollywood
This month's challenge offers songs, films, and tropes from Bollywood, the world's largest film industry based out of India, as prompts for fanworks.

New Archive Formatting Options

It recently came to our attention that center- and right-aligned formatting were not available on text fields on the archive. We have fixed this issue, so left-, center-, and right-aligned text should all be available. (Note that the <center> HTML tag, which has been deprecated since the Years of the Trees but has tended to continue to work, finally does not work. For those of you writing old-school HTML, we did try to keep it for you. Alas, the internet Ainur refused to hear our prayer. If you want to center-align text, please use the button on the rich-text editor or add a "text-align-center" class to your paragraph tag.) We've also added subscripts and a Paste from Word button.

For fun, we've also given everyone Font Awesome access, so you will be able to use Font Awesome icons in fanworks. (Why would you need subscripts or Font Awesome icons?? We don't know, but we know our community well enough to be sure someone will come up with a good use for them!) To use Font Awesome, click the flag icon in the toolbar and type the name of the icon you want.

Please let us know if you try to use these new features and they don't behave as you think they should.

New Fanworks

Meeting the In-Laws by by awwyeah107 [Writing]

Caranthir is nervous about meeting Haleth’s father and brother for the first time. Haleth is sure everything will go well.

Read more ...

Morgoth's prisoner by by elennalore [Artwork]

Maedhros in Angband

Read more ...

Tumult by by StarSpray [Writing]

After the chaos of the War of Wrath, Uinen smooths the way for the ships of the Edain to sail to their new home.

Later, she does what she can at its fall.

Read more ...

Coincidences of Fate by by cílil [Writing]

Sometimes Eönwë wonders if his life is just like Manwë's romance novels. Sometimes he even thinks the One may be laughing at him from above.

A story told in exactly 4 1/3 drabbles.

Read more ...

Updated Fanworks

Tengwar Drabbles by by cílil [Writing]

A collection of Silmarillion-centric drabbles written for the Tengwar Challenge. Short and sweet!

Read more ...

Around the World and Web

Teitho August/September Contest: Do you remember ...?
For the contest theme for August and September, characters will look back to the past.

August challenge at tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth
The August challenge has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth. The thematic challenge is: magic trees. The formal challenge is: call and response. New participants welcome.

Tolkien Pinup Calendar 2025 Sign-Ups Open
The Tolkien Pinup Calendar is an 18+ event for creating a calendar of risque fan art of your favorite Tolkien characters! Sign-ups are open for main commissioners, artists, and pinch hitters.

August 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Calls for papers and proposals for conferences and publications that are open during the month of August 2024.

Innumerable Stars 2024
Innumerable Stars is a Tolkien fandom gift exchange for all works by Tolkien or associated with Middle-earth.

Forgotten Ground Regained: Call for Submissions
Forgotten Ground Regained is looking for alliterative poetry on the themes of love, devotion, and desire for their upcoming fall issue.

Eönwë Week 2024
Eönwë Week is a Tumblr event for creating fanworks about Eönwë.

Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (TRSB) 2024
Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang is an annual event where authors create a story of at least 5,000 words in response to an artwork created for the event.

Acorns and Oak Leaves: A Year of Bagginshield
Throughout 2024, the Bagginshield community Acorns and Oak Leaves offers monthly prompts to encourage new creations of all kinds.