If you think of the world of fanworks like a feature film, the fanworks creators are the names that splash across the screen before the film begins. They work hard to produce the beautiful art, stories, and other fanworks that keep us coming back (some of us for decades!) to the Tolkien fandom, and they deservedly get the red-carpet treatment. But they are not the only contributors to the project. When most people are filing from the theaters and the usher has begun sweeping away the spilled popcorn before the next showing, other contributors' names file swiftly across the screen, mostly unread but no less essential to the success of the project.

Betas are among the behind-the-scenes fan laborers, and we want to honor them this week. Whether untwisting your most bedeviled prose, acting as a sounding board when developing plot and character, or helping you catch which witch is which (and countless other ways that betas make our fanworks shine), betas are an essential part of the creative process for many writers and other creators.

New fan creators often wonder where they can find a beta. What is the secret handshake that gets you access to this seemingly magical human who genies your work into perfection? On the SWG, we have a beta directory that can help put creators in touch with other SWG members who are willing to help them improve their work. If you're on our Discord, we offer the #beta-finder channel (in the Notice Board section), which is especially invaluable when it's 8PM and your exchange fic is due at midnight and you desperately need someone to make sure you're not about to make a fool of yourself. (If you're not on our Discord and want to be, just reply to this email and we'll send you an invite. All are welcome!)

If you're an SWG member and want to sign up as a beta, you can do so from your user account by clicking the Beta Profile tab at the top. From here, you can go on hiatus with a single click if you are unavailable and want to be removed from the list without deleting your profile.

And to all of you who have beta'ed in the past: we see you and thank you! 💙

"Maglor," polutropos begins in this month's character biography, "is a character of contradictions, conflicts, and mystery. It is no wonder that this second son of Fëanor has captured the imagination of so many readers of The Silmarillion."

This is, if anything, an understatement. With 736 fanworks about him, Maglor is the second most written-about character on the SWG, exceeded only by Maedhros (with 804 fanworks). What accounts for this popularity? He's not the only musician (Daeron) or warrior (Fingolfin). He's certainly not the only tragic figure (Túrin fills an actual book).

In this month's biography, polutropos peels away the many layers that make Maglor such an intriguing character. As she notes, he is full of contradictions: one of the Noldor's consummate poets and most fearsome warriors, joining a kinslaying to only moments later take pity upon its orphans. But it's not just Maglor's character arc that makes him so intriguing to Silmarillion fans. As polutropos also illustrates, he contributes to some of the most important themes in the early legendarium: music, exile, and oaths. He is also the rare character where we receive glimpses of his inner life, showing the emotional impact of his rollercoaster life.

Beneath all of this is a textual history at least as complicated as Maglor himself. Undaunted, polutropos unfolds the evolution of Maglor's character across decades, from his first mention (and immediate demise) in the Lost Tales to his tangled history alongside Maedhros, where they frequently traded roles as the merciful and repentant.

You can read polutropos' biography of Maglor here.

I remember when Rhapsody, our late and beloved moderator and a femslash fan before it was cool to be one, was the first person to request femslash in a prominent Tolkien slash exchange. It was a big deal, not because of opposition to her request, but because ... it had just never been done. Those years of slash as a prominent (if controversial) genre, and no one had requested a F/F pairing in this exchange. Femslash truly was a genre non grata: technically permitted but just not really done.

In the past several months' Cultus Dispatches columns, we've looked at how the Tolkien fandom has typically handled writing fanfiction about women. While there are multiple events encouraging fanworks about women and such fanworks are no longer rare (as I write this, half of the fanworks on the Most Recent page include women as major characters), it wasn't always this way. Writing about women was discouraged, and writing slash was discouraged too. Caught in the crosshairs of these proscriptions, femslash didn't stand much of a chance.

Thankfully, this is changing too. This month's Cultus Dispatches column looks at Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data about femslash: interest in writing it, interest in reading it, and who is creating femslash fanworks. The article continues the overall pattern of this series about writing about women: the situation still ain't great, but it's getting better. While it is still in many ways the fandom's genre non grata, growing reader interest in particular suggests it may yet take its place along slash, het, and genfic.

You can read the article Femslash Is a Political Act (and Other Observations of Tolkien Fandom's Genre Non Grata) here.

The Second Age is lately on our minds. I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the—

Sorry. Wrong Tolkien adaptation. The Second Age, though, is indeed experiencing something of a renaissance. Though it was a pivotal era that loomed large as an all-consuming tsunami in Tolkien's mind, it has always played third or fourth fiddle in the Tolkien fandom behind LotR, the First Age and earlier, and even The Hobbit. For many years, here on the SWG, we celebrated the annual Akallabêth in August, just to wave our arms around and remind everyone that The Silmarillion didn't stop at the First Age. No matter your feelings on the Amazon Rings of Power show, at the least it has drawn the Second Age more into the forefront of the fandom's imagination.

It is timely, then, that editor Brian Sibley has compiled the volume The Fall of Númenor, a new compilation of nearly all of Tolkien's writings about the Second Age in one handy place. This month, one of our finest Second Age creators, Lyra, has reviewed this volume, concluding that, despite the lack of new material, Sibley's herculean effort in bringing Tolkien's Second Age writings together into one volume is worth adding another book to your shelf. You can read Lyra's "Review of The Fall of Númenor" here.

We also started a new challenge this week, in honor of (or in disdain of) Valentine's Day. Cheesy Corn Chips features corny pop-culture prompts that are just like junk food: not exactly edifying, sometimes embarrassing to admit you like, but oddly irresistible. And if schmaltz and corn aren't your thing, keep scrolling because Around the World and Web includes a veritable buffet of Tolkien-related events in the months to come.

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!

The sea is an abyss of contradictions. It is quite literally the source of life on Earth, and human settlements have long sought its shores, recognizing the bounty and source of connection to others that it can bring. For better or worse, it has brought people throughout the world in contact with each other, much as it does in Arda. At the same time, those who dare come near do so at the risk of some of the planet's most terrifying storms and inundations, represented in the legendarium by the shipwreck of Turgon's mariners, the inundation of Beleriand, and most dramatically, the utter destruction of Númenor.

February's Character of the Month, Ulmo, is an apt representation of these contradictions. At once benevolent and terrifying, Ulmo was crafted by Tolkien across the decades to embody the capricious element of the sea. The first part of Ulmo's biography, authored by Anérea, delves into his complexity as a character and, even more so, as a symbol that appears throughout world mythology.

This month, Anérea discusses his nature, his realm, and his relationship with the pantheon of other Ainur with whom Tolkien peopled his Secondary World. Tracing the evolution of his character across sixty years, she finds a character who manages to be haughty and aloof while also bringing the most aid to the Children of Eru who populate Middle-earth. Among the Ainur, he managed to annoy some of his brethren even while joining in deepest friendship with others.

Anérea explores the depths of this characterization, drawing from world mythology to pinpoint similarities (and possible inspirations) from other sea gods. Furthermore, she looks at the dominating role that sea took in Tolkien's own imagination and identifies biographical episodes that might help us to understand why he centered the watery element—and therefore Ulmo as well—in his legendarium in such a way that it brings both delight and terror to those who behold it.

You can read Part 1 of Anérea's biography of Ulmo here.

Tolkien considered Túrin's story one of the three Great Tales of the First Age, and as the longest of the three, its centrality to the legendarium is further cemented. We are therefore very excited to announce this month the culmination of firstamazon's impressive three-part biography of Túrin. (If you missed them, Part One and Part Two are here!)

Túrin rips through the First Age like a tornado, leaving a swath of destruction so sudden and severe to be notable even among the unrelentingly tragic events of the First Age. Yet, as firstamazon documents in her series of essays, Túrin was not ill-intentioned. Although flawed (as Tolkien's First Age characters tend to be), his sincere desire to contribute and connect to the various societies of which he found himself along the fringes radiates from the text, making his repeated disastrous failures all the sadder. Stitching together the myriad versions and drafts—which Christopher Tolkien himself identified as some of his father's most complex writings—firstamazon presents a portrait of a character who finds himself unwittingly in the middle of Morgoth's darkest designs and sees his most noble intentions turn to destruction. The final installment of his biographer covers his life from his years in Nargothrond to his death.

Yet, as firstamazon points out, Túrin marks just one person in a line of Mannish characters whose worldview required them to take action to shape the events of Middle-earth's history, rather than just watching its events unfold. And for his suffering in this endeavor, Tolkien gave Túrin a unique role in the conclusion of that history. Read Part 3 of Túrin's biography to find out what that was!

Tolkien was, of course, extremely well-read in ancient and medieval history, conversant in many of the dead languages that the rest of us read only in translation. Much of his work was, not surprisingly, grounded in this history.

The Fall of Gondolin is one such episode.

In this month's A Sense of History column, MirienSilowende looks at the Fall of Gondolin and the ancient and medieval history that may have informed Tolkien's writing of it. She uncovers numerous historical sources that detail some of the more noteworthy sacks and falls of great cities much like Gondolin, renowned for their splendor and elevated status within their worlds.

Of course, these historical inspirations are more than just an interesting aside in the legendarium but can also become building blocks for expanding on the legendarium via fanworks. For example, some of the historical sources MirienSilowende provides go into detail about what happened to the survivors once the city was overthrown by an enemy military. While Tolkien provides few details on this for Gondolin, reading historical sources that possibly informed his construction of the story generates inspiration for fanworks about these untold tales of Gondolin's people.

You can read MirienSilowende's article "The Fall of Gondolin Reflected in History" here.

One of the open secrets of the SWG challenges is that January will always be an amnesty challenge for the prior year's challenges, and we will always start the challenge early. So technically, even though this is the newsletter issue that would typically announce the new challenge (which usually begins on the 15th), it is both on time and late because the challenge opened on the first of January.

As in years past, it is an amnesty challenge—a chance to complete the challenges you may have missed during the year or finish challenge fanworks started but never completed—but this year, we've done one better. This year's amnesty challenge, Jubilee, will apply to any challenge from January 2017 onward. (If you're wondering, why January 2017? Because this is the year we started handing out stamps for completing or commenting on challenges.) Challenges never close in the sense that you can always create something for a challenge and post it on the archive, but for practical purposes, we do set deadlines for receiving stamps for creating challenge fanworks. (You can always comment on a challenge fanwork and receive the stamp.) But this month, until 15 February, we are throwing that rule completely out the window, dusting off the years-old stamps in our collection (it did take some work to track them all down), and giving them out to anyone who creates for one of the eligible challenges ... and that's more than sixty challenges, so we're confident that most creators can find something to inspire them!

The larger purpose of the annual amnesty challenge is to start each new year with creativity and community: making new fanworks and interacting with the creators who are sharing the fanworks that entertain and move us. We hope many of our creators will join us in resurrecting some of our old challenges, and we hope all of our members who enjoy fanworks on our site will take a moment to let the creators know.

If you want to try this challenge, you can find the sixty-plus eligible past challenges here. Since many of these challenge involve components that might be hard to replicate in an amnesty challenge, more details on how to collect specific stamps can be found on the Jubilee challenge page, where you can also find fifteen fanworks already created for the challenge.

Happy creating and commenting!

At the end of 2021, we asked our members what they'd like to see us build on our site in the coming years. There was significant support for all of the options, and we spent the past year expanding our archive to accept fanworks of all types. The only item on the list we haven't yet completed is the ability for members to host events on our site.

This one is a much more ambitious lift: building an entirely new feature vs. extending existing functionality. During 2023, we will be chipping away at hopefully getting this figured out, built, and up and running. To get us started, we need as much feedback as possible on what people would want to see this feature include.

So what even are "member-run events"? Basically, we'd provide you with what you need to set up an event, share information with your participants, and have participants post their fanworks, all using our site and resources. If your event would benefit from having a website or archive behind it, we would provide you with the tools to set that up. We've seen some excellent events run by members on our Discord, so we'd love it we could extend this further to offer our website and archive to those events that would benefit from it.

To get a preliminary sense of what event admins and moderators are looking for, we have set up a survey to collect feedback. All feedback is welcome, whether you already run an event, are thinking about it, or just want to share an opinion. Contacting us through the site is also welcome.

Meanwhile and speaking of events, remember that instadrabbling runs twice this weekend on our Discord server with prompts for past challenges as part of our Jubilee [six-year!!) amnesty challenge. If you're not a member of our Discord and want to be (whether for instadrabbling or something else), just hit reply and request an invite.