If you have been writing or reading Tolkien fanfiction for any length of time, you probably remember Mary Sue. In the early-mid 2000s, she haunted the margins of our stories: the specter of a woman permitted into Tolkien's world to an extent that she changed the plot or even the characters. (Cue horror-movie scream.) Worry about Mary Sue—and whether our carefully crafted female characters were actually a Mary Sue, much like the slasher-film villain you only think is dead but is actually traipsing toward you with insidious purpose—permeated discussions of female characters and led some writers to abandon the idea of writing women at all. It just didn't seem worth it.

This month, in our Cultus Dispatches column, we begin a series on writing women in fanfiction. The first article in the series looks at data from the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey and what it shows us about the once fraught endeavor of adding a person with a uterus to your fanfiction.

Thankfully, the data shows, it is far less fraught today. Most fanfiction writers endeavor to add women to their stories, according to the data, and many use fanfiction as a vehicle to critique and repair Tolkien's depiction of women in the legendarium. But the fandom's historic distaste for seeing women in fanfiction lurks in the data as well.

You can read the article Writing Women in Tolkien Fanfiction: An Analysis of the Data here to learn more about what analysis of the survey data revealed. And if you create or read/view fanworks with women characters and wish to contribute to our latest Fandom Voices collection, you can contribute your memories of writing, creating, and reading about female characters here. Finally, don't forget that Cultus Dispatches is always open to contributions, so if you would like to contribute to our series about women characters in fanworks, reply to this email and pitch your idea!

Every year, we run a challenge that we have termed (because, as far as we know, we invented the concept) a Matryoshka challenge. Like the nesting dolls after which it is named, this challenge involves a series of prompts, each opened only after the previous prompt has been completed, meaning that the fanwork is shaped by challenge prompts even as it is being created. We typically offer the option to complete two, three, five, or seven prompts.

This month is the month for our annual Matryoshka challenge, offered with a twist. Instead of sending prompts via email, prompts this year are based around a map, which you will navigate around in order to choose your prompts. This makes the Matryoshka a bit easier by removing the element of surprise. It makes it a bit difficult because now you have to choose!

Please note that your fanwork does not have to include the locations you choose on the map, only the prompts for each location. As in the past, you can complete two, three, five, or seven prompts. Note also that some special rules may apply if you are creating fanworks about specific characters. You can find the full X Marks the Spot guidelines, the map, the prompts, and hopefully answers to your unanswered questions here. (If you still have a question we haven't answered, just hit Reply and ask!)

A very special thanks goes out to Grundy this month for her work designing this challenge and creating the map!

Also, the Novelette Book Club is coming up on our Discord server in just about a month. The book club schedule has been posted, so you can get a start on reading the fabulous novelettes that will be on offer for discussion that weekend.

We've all had the experience of plague in recent years, and going back in history, it is an experience with significant historic precedent. We've all heard of the Black Death and other plagues and pandemics, but to what extent did this history inform Tolkien's own writings on plague in the legendarium?

In the mid-Third Age, Gondor was stricken by a plague that spread northward. In this month's A Sense of History column, MirienSilowende looks at parallels between this event and real-world history of plagues, especially the Black Death. What historical elements might Tolkien have drawn from as he developed this event in Gondorian history?

Check out MirienSilowende's article "The Plague in Gondor" here.

Also, don't miss our new challenge X Marks the Spot, a twist on our annual Matryoshka challenge, and the upcoming Novelette Book Club!

We've been running challenges on the SWG since September 2005. The timing and format has varied widely across the years, but the central concept has remained the same: We want to see more people engaging creatively with The Silmarillion and its related works, and we hope that challenges will do just that by inspiring fanworks, building community, and encouraging comments. We on the moderator team always get a lot of questions about our challenges, so if you've been wanting to jump in but not quite sure where to start, here is a quick rundown of how challenges work.

Who: Anyone with an SWG account. Register here if you don't have one yet. You can, of course, post your responses to our challenges anywhere (so you don't have to have an account, really), but if you want a stamp, you need to post to the archive. (More on stamps below!)

What: Any Silmarillion-based fanwork is eligible. We accept all fanwork types on our archive. (Not sure what counts as "Silmarillion-based"? Check out our Silmworks FAQ.)

Where: All challenge fanworks must be posted to the SWG archive to receive a stamp. Beyond that ... it's your work, so you can post it wherever you please, whenever you please.

If you came up with something so wildly unique as your response that you don't think it can be posted to the archive, contact the mods and we'll help you figure out how to post it to get your stamp.

When: New challenges come out on the 15th of the month. The previous challenge also ends at the end of the day on the 15th. (If it is still the 15th somewhere in the world, you are still good, even if it is the 16th where you are.) Yes, that means that there is one day each month with two active challenges. Go wild.

Challenges are generally monthly but there are exceptions to that rule. For example, we generally do a two-month November/December challenge because stressing our creators out with One More Thing to Do at the Holidays is not on our agenda.

Note that due dates apply only to stamps for creating fanworks. You can post a fanwork for a challenge any time. We have hundreds of them by now, so if you are having a creative block, our Challenge page can be a place to start to break it down. (Don't forget we have a Random Silmfic Prompt Generator too.)

There is no due date for comment stamps, but we ask that if you've commented on a fanwork from a challenge more than two months old and want the stamp, please contact us to let us know.

So ... Stamps? Yes. Challenge participants (which includes commenters) receive a postage stamp graphic each month on their profile. We always offer stamps for creating a fanwork for the challenge or commenting on a challenge fanwork. Sometimes, we award additional stamps as well for special events or achievements.

Due Dates: Are pretty firm most of the time. (Remember, though, that they only apply to stamps!) There are some exceptions.

If you have created a fanwork for another challenge or event outside the SWG using an SWG challenge prompt, but your fanwork will not be revealed before the challenge due date, we will still award your stamp. Just let us know when the work is posted on our archive.

Of course, please contact us if you would have met the deadline but extenuating circumstances prevented it. We're not keen on penalizing people for family emergencies, sick pets, power outages, natural disasters, and so on.

We accept works in progress, so if the issue is that you can't tame the fanwork that you thought would be a ficlet but is somehow now a novella with accompanying art and a soundtrack, all you need to do is post a bit of it to get your stamp. If you really can't stand the thought of not posting the whole thing at once (or just didn't get a chance to finish/start for whatever reason), every January is an amnesty month when we award stamps for all the previous year's challenges (plus a special amnesty month stamp!) that are posted that month.

The Prompts: Vary from month to month. We try to offer a variety of formats. Yes, we are open to suggestions for challenge ideas. In fact, we love suggestions for challenge ideas.

We get asked from time to time if people can use our prompts for non-Silmarillion Tolkien stories, other fandoms, original fiction, writing groups, etc. Absolutely! Just keep in mind that the only works eligible for stamps are Silmarillion-based fanworks posted to our archive. We appreciate credit with a link back to our site if you post our prompts somewhere else online but we're also not going to hunt you down if you don't. If you're having fun and being creative, keep on keeping on.

Full challenge guidelines can always be found on the Challenges page. All the information here was rounded up from our FAQ page. We have a really unique new challenge scheduled for one week from now, so we're hoping that anyone thinking of joining us who hasn't yet might give that one a try!

Stars and starlight are one of the most common images in the legendarium, and not surprisingly, characters associated with stars get a ... well, starring role. This month's character biography stars a figure who might be overlooked in the constellation of star-kindlers and star-sailors and star-crossed lovers: Tinfang Warble.

Tinfang in fact is older than the legendarium, first appearing in poems penned before Tolkien began writing the Lost Tales. He represents an early form of the legendarium more closely tied to fairy lore and of a much more whimsical tone than it would become. In this context, Tinfang Warble tempts mortal listeners to wander out to follow him beneath the stars.

As the legendarium evolved in geography and tone, many factors made Tinfang fit less comfortably into the story. Yet his role lingered for a while and in fact may have inspired one of Tolkien's most famous tragic musician-wanderers: Daeron. For more on this forgotten star, check out this month's biography of Tinfang Warble.

In a lot of communities, you can get a sense of who is present just by looking around yourself. In online communities—especially online fan communities, where pseudonymity is a cultural norm—it can be harder to know just who you share your online spaces with.

This month's Cultus Dispatches column looks at Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data from 2015 and 2020 to answer that question: Just who is in this fandom? Who is present? Who is missing? And why are some groups of people heavily represented in the fandom while others are barely present or absent altogether?

Finally, as this newsletter attests, we are back online after an important but tricky software upgrade last weekend. We are currently repairing about a dozen small issues with the site, and please keep us posted if you find a problem not on the Known Site Issues list. (And remember you can always reply to newsletters to reach the moderators directly!)

If it feels like you shouldn't be reading this now (possibly while at work) on a Friday, you're correct. Our newsletter normally goes out on Saturday, but sending this addition is our last act before putting the site into read-only mode for the weekend.

Yes, you read that correctly: The site will be in read-only mode 16-18 September while we do a major and somewhat complex software upgrade. There may be times where we need to take the site offline altogether. We hope to be back up and running by the end of the day on Sunday (whether the upgrade was successful or not!)

While we are in read-only mode, the fanworks below are there for your enjoyment. (Maybe jot down your comments in a document to share with the creators when the site is back up again?) If you're in more of a creative spirit, we have just unveiled our new challenge, Major Arcana, which is based on tarot cards. You can use any aspect of the cards—the titles, the images, the descriptions, the readings—to inspire your fanwork.

We appreciate everyone's patience while we complete this majorly arcane software upgrade!

Think of how often oaths appear in everyday language. We swear, we promise, we invoke the names of deities whom we fear or find false.

In this month's A Sense of History column, Angelica reveals how deep the historical roots of oaths run. A component of mostly oral societies found around the world, oaths gave a sense of weight to agreements and laws that couldn't be written down. They often involved magic and contained an air of the numinous.

Tolkien was very familiar with this history (which often involved societies he researched as part of his scholarly work, such as Germanic cultures), and this familiarity reflects in the legendarium. The first oaths were uttered before the rising of the Sun, and when the dust settled after the Ring War, characters were still using oaths to show they were serious.

You can read this month's column, "On Oaths," here.

And before you go, please note the announcement below that we will be putting the site into read-only mode (and perhaps taking it offline entirely) next weekend, 16-18 September 2022, to complete several important upgrades.

The SWG's very first creative challenge was Strong Women, first featured seventeen years ago this month in September 2005. This was a very intentional and not-at-all-neutral choice, given that writing about women in Tolkien fanfic in 2005 felt often like a nature walk through Nan Dungortheb. The SWG moderators at the time very much wanted to send the message that, on the SWG, we viewed writing about women to be a good thing.

The last seventeen years have seen evolution in how women characters are seen in fanworks, thanks to the work of fans who were willing to encourage and celebrate fanworks about women and challenge the sexist assumptions underlying the undue criticism those works and authors often received. This month, we open a new Fandom Voices project about women in fanworks. We are looking for both creators and readers/viewers to respond, so if you'd like to share your experiences with Tolkien-based fanworks that include women characters, you can do so here.

Also, our Reference library has several pieces related to women and fanworks:

The Textual Ghosts Project by Elleth
Women Find a Room of Their Own in Tolkien Fanfiction by oshun
And the dozens of character biographies about women

Earlier this week, we were thrilled to open our Beyond the Silmarillion section. This section is open to creators who already post with us and exists to provide a means to share non-Silmarillion fanworks based on Tolkien's books and their adaptations. If you want to learn more about the new section, our Beyond FAQ has all the details.

The debut of our Beyond section also marks the conclusion of an eight-month stretch of work expanding the site to more readily welcome a greater variety of fanworks on the SWG. In 2022, we have created the tools needed to post artwork, link collections, playlists, videos, and multimedia fanworks, and we've included all of those in our new Beyond the Silmarillion section.

All of this seems timely given that, by the time we send our next newsletter in a week, the Amazon Rings of Power series will have premiered. While our organization has officially chosen not to become involved with the new series, we absolutely welcome the fans who will come our way, curious about The Silmarillion because of the show, and we hope some of them will join our community and post their work with us, just like the Hobbit film fans who came before them.

On that note, 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. 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.

Because we are a relatively specialized archive for this day and age, this week we look outward, to the bigger Tolkien fandom world of which we are part.