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On March 14, 2005, the SWG arrived in the small hours of the morning. It was still in very embryonic form, actualized only as a Yahoo! Group with no members and a series of very cringey posts on Dawn's LiveJournal (she had no idea how LiveJournal worked, having joined just that day to post these cringey posts in her insomnia-fueled effort to launch the SWG).
Twenty years later, this challenge debuted in recognition of two full decades of existence of the SWG. Each day, we will post an event that is an important hashmark on the timeline of the SWG's history along with three prompts that (at least in the challenge mods' mind) are associated with that event: a single word, a snippet of poetry (with a link to the full poem), and a public domain image. As always, you can use any aspect of the prompt to inspire your fanwork, including fragments of prompts or parts of the poem not included on the challenge page. The history snippets are fair game as prompts. You do not have to create or share your response on the day a prompt is posted. You can go back to past prompts, and you can stitch prompts from different days together into fanworks in cool and bizarre ways.
This challenge opened in .
Choose your prompt from the collection below.
Click images to view them full-sized.
The SWG started because Dawn had insomnia on March 14. While staring into the dark and becoming increasingly unmoored from reality, she thought that there should be a writers' workshop for Silmarillion authors. The next day (well, later that day ...), she started the SWG.
Word: awake
Poem:
Wake, butterfly—
it's late, we've miles
to go together.
Wake, butterfly by Bashō, translated by Lucien Stryk
In late July of 2005, ford_of_bruinen and Dawn spread the news to their friends about the SWG. There was almost no overlap, but this seemed a symbolic first step toward a group that cared less about what genre or pairing you wrote and more about a shared love for Tolkien's world and fanworks about it.
Word: gather
Poem:
a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together
Ecclesiastes 3:5
In September 2005, the SWG ran its very first challenge, Strong Women, which was suggested by Jenni (Digdigil), who would become our second moderator. Although there were no lofty aspirations in this choice, in retrospect, it seems apt given our later expressed aim of encouraging fanworks about groups underrepresented in the legendarium and Western culture at large.
Word: spark
Poem:
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
Atop on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, —
Forget it not, nay; but got it not, for none could get it till now.
One Girl by Sappho
Sketches inspired by the 2025 Birthday Bash challenge prompts!
Cúrandil knows the stories, knows how their people first awoke in the water. How they came to walk the land and how the sea has called them back ever since.
It is their turn to follow the call now.