@silmarillionwritersguild / silmarillionwritersguild.tumblr.com
History: Amidst many changes in the fandom, in March 2014, the moderators considered whether to end the SWG's challenges, which were an original part of the group, older even than the archive, as participation in the challenges ground down to zero.
Word: deathbed
Poem:
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The sound is forc'd, the notes are few!
To the Muses by William Blake
I just realized that i registered for the mereth aderthad fanworks under my tumblr email but used my personal email for the ticket - should i cancel it and re-register under the tumblr email or is it okay? thanks!
Registration under any email you want to use is fine! I’m not going to be doing any cross-checks between fanworks sign-ups and registrations because I don’t want to be able to match up people with identities that they’d rather not share in fannish spaces. (Even if it’s only me that has this knowledge! I want to respect people’s privacy as much as I possibly can.) I will be checking in with presenters and creators on April 15, as planned, and I will ask then who is registered, just so I know to follow up closer to the event with those who aren’t (which is fine, as I know there are people still deciding whether they can do the live event or will need to be virtual). So just let me know then that you’re registered and that’s good enough for me!
Dawn
History: In 2014, Lyra and Independence1776 led a year-long rereading and discussion of The Silmarillion. Located at just about the halfway point in our history, it now reminds us of the book that brought us all together, of the power of words.
Word: caldera
Poem:
But when a mind climbs down
from its high craggy lookout
we know it is truly a stubborn thing,
& has to leaf through pages of dust
& light, through pre-memory & folklore,
remembering fires roared down there
till they pushed up through the seafloor
& plumes of ash covered the dead
shaken awake worlds away, & silence
filled up with centuries of waiting.
Islands by Yusef Komunyakaa
History: As the 2010s brought more fandom platform shifts, the SWG opened a blog on Tumblr in late 2013. "Tumbled" might describe how many veteran Tolkien fans, accustomed to semipublic and private communities, felt when acclimating to Tumblr's very fast and very public format.
Word: tumbled
Poem:
For Tomorrow, he knew, all the Who girls and boys,
Would wake bright and early. They'd rush for their toys!
And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the Noise!
Noise! Noise! Noise!
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
History: The SWG signed on as a group participating in the International Day of Femslash in July 2013 in hopes of promoting and expressing support for a genre ignored and even maligned in fandom.
Word: horizons
Poem:
And it's easy to make this understood by
everyone, for she who surpassed all human
kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her
husband—that best of
men—went sailing off to the shores of Troy and
never spent a thought on her child or loving
parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and
left her to wander
The Anactoria Poem by Sappho
Kidnap fam, the Tolkien fandom term for the Silmarillion plot point where Maedhros and Maglor raise Elrond and Elros after the third kinslaying, fascinates many Tolkien fanworks creators. In the next in our series of interviews of Mereth Aderthad 2025 presenters, polutropos spoke with Dawn about her presentation "'Kidnap Fam' and the Living Legendarium," which explores why this plot point attracts so much interest in the fandom.
Tribute day to Keiliss
History: Keiliss was one of the early members of the SWG, joining when we were still just a Yahoo! Group with aspirations of an archive. Throughout her years with us, she offered wise counsel and stories that would make your heart soar.
Word: memory
Poem:
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
History: Although they could not figure out the art gallery, in November 2012, the site mods were able add a feature for sharing podfic and other audio on the archive. This expanded to include a monthly podfic featured in the newsletter to promote the format.
Word: listen
Poem:
The stars know everything,
So we try to read their minds.
As distant as they are,
We choose to whisper in their presence.
Autumn Sky by Charles Simic
History: In 2011, the site moderators began working to develop an art gallery, an achievement they wouldn't reach while using eFiction software but would become one of the first new features added after migrating the software to Drupal. Although unsuccessful, this aspiration would mark the moderators' growing commitment to opening the group to more fanworks than just writing.
Word: endeavor
Poem:
Or were I in the wildest waste,
Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,
The desert were a Paradise,
If thou wert there, if thou wert there.
O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast by Robert Burns
History: The growing senescence of Tolkien fandom brought the realization that the people and works we assumed would always be there might in fact disappear. The SWG began its first fandom preservation effort, The Library of Tirion, which sought to archive Silmarillion fanworks that were important to SWG members and were posted before the SWG archive opened.
Word: heritage
Poem:
As soon as he had said, such change grew in my breast
That neither night nor day I could take any rest.
Wherefore I did repent that I had said before:
Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more.
When I Was Fair and Young by Queen Elizabeth
History: In April 2011, the SWG opened its Dreamwidth community, the first new social media platform it would adopt, due to increased denial of service attacks on LiveJournal. This first small migratory foray would typify the 2010s, which were marked by multiple fandom platform upheavals, closures, and migrations.
Word: displaced
Poem:
Yesterday I lost a country.
I was in a hurry,
and didn't notice when it fell from me
like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.
I Was in a Hurry by Dunya Mikhail, translated by Elizabeth Winslow
History: The late 2000s brought a decrescendo in the Tolkien fandom. The Lord of the Rings films felt long past, archives and groups were fading, fanworks were fewer and fewer. This era reminds us that most of our history (and all history) is not accomplishment, not newness, but simply sustaining a place in the world for those who want it.
Word: everyday/every day
Poem:
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.
The Abnormal Is Not Courage by Jack Gilbert
History: Back to Middle-earth Month 2010 was also the first done in collaboration with another archive, Many Paths to Tread. The art group Arda Inspired would join as a co-host in subsequent years as well. This collaboration actualized a goal we'd had since our existence: that fan groups and archives should not compete but should support each other.
Word: bridge
Poem:
I’m not crossing
To cross back. I’m set
On something vast. It reaches
Long as the sea. I’m more than a conqueror, bigger
Than bravery. I don’t march. I’m the one who leaps.
Crossing by Jericho Brown
History: Back to Middle-earth Month 2010 involved an interactive game, the first of several times that we would run a challenge with a collaborative gaming component.
Word: plot
Poem:
Every turn, every sacrificial
move—all the decoys, the castling,
the deflections—these will be both
riotous and unruly, the exact opposite
of what she thought she ever wanted
in the endgame of her days.Chess by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Who was Gil-galad? One need not have even read The Silmarillion to begin reciting the answer to that, in the style of Samwise Gamgee. But who really was Gil-galad? Who was the person beyond the king we are presented in the texts?
In our latest in a series of interviews of Mereth Aderthad 2025 presenters, Shadow spoke with Maglor about his upcoming presentation on "Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the Last High King of the Noldor." Maglor spoke about what draws him to Tolkien, his theories on Gil-galad as a character, and what makes fanworks so essential to unlocking the secrets of the last High King of the Noldor.
History: Akallabêth in August was held for the first time in 2008 with a retelling of the Second Age in fanworks in 2009 because we perceived that Second Age fanworks were being overwhelmed by a great wave of First Age works. Akallabêth in August continues today with a special stamp each year for the August challenge.
Word: undercurrents
Poem:
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
