Our Fifth Birthday Is Coming! We Need Celebration Ideas!

[dawn_felagund]

Hi, all,

The June newsletter should be out tomorrow, but there is one item of particular importance that I wanted to address separately. The SWG will turn five on the 27th of July. That was the day in 2005 when ford_of_bruinen and I started telling our fannish friends about our new group and welcomed our first members. We've accomplished a lot since then, thanks to the energy and talent of our members, so we would like to do something to commemorate our fifth birthday.

But, since our members are the reasons for the SWG's success and the reason that we have made it to this important milestone, then we wanted to do something that would be fun and meaningful for the members, not just the mods. We are hoping, then, that you will share with us some ideas for how to mark our fifth birthday!

We've done lots of special projects in the past for Back to Middle-earth Month and other "holidays" like Akallabeth in August and the anniversary of The Silmarillion. We've put together collections, sponsored contests, and held games. There are also lots of things we haven't tried yet, so if you've ever thought, "I wonder why they don't ..." then suggest away! :) If we have multiple popular ideas, then we will hold a poll in mid-June to give everyone a chance to select their favorite.

I look forward to hearing your ideas! :)

Best regards,

Dawn

P.S.--Suggestions are, as always, welcome also at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org!

Comments

[ada-kensington.livejournal.com]

Hi there. :) Thanks for the reply. You people are all really nice - such a rare thing on online communities. Seriously, there are far too many thirteen year old internet-badasses kicking about.

And I never realised there were so many canatics on ff.net. I've flitted through a fair few fandoms and I've never had trouble with canon-pickers there. I suppose it must be a feature of the Tolkien fandom. Thanks for the heads-up, though.

Loving the heretic badge-of-honour icon. ;)

[independence1776]

SWG is the nicest place online I know of. Flames and wank simply aren't tolerated.

Yup. I checked your profile page there, and I think I know why you haven't had much trouble: you began posting after the "chief" flamer in the Silm section deleted her forum. (Though I'm inactive there save for posting that I honestly don't know if the amount of flames has gone down.) But the thing is, the Silm section is nothing compared to LotR proper. I've talked to people who have been driven off the site because of the flamers. Dare to write movieverse? Be prepared to be laughed at. Write a romance featuring Legolas and an OFC? Flames are incoming. Dare to write something that's against the most common interpretation? You're lucky if you're ignored. Slash? Tolkien fandom still hasn't had the conversation that homosexuals in fanfic is a good thing. (And most sections of it won't, because Tolkien was Catholic and therefore his views trump everything, including perfectly valid reader interpretation.) Write an OFC period? She'll be called a Mary Sue no matter how well-written she is, even if she's not in a romance with any canon character. Tolkien fandom has dedicated mocking and MSTing communities. That's how bad this fandom is.

Um, sorry for the length and rantiness. I don't want to scare you off-- just letting you know the reality. As you can tell, I'm not terribly fond of ff.net. I only post there because I know there are people who don't know other archives exist. *hugs SWG*

I made the icon for a reason. :D