Admin Post: Fandom Voices: Fanon in Fanworks

[dawn_felagund]

For the past several months on our Cultus Dispatches column about Tolkien fan studies, we have been looking at canon and authority. This has begun to shade into fanon and fan authority. Historically, these have been complicated topics in the Tolkien fandom, generating disdain from some even as others gleefully embrace fan-created elements in the fanworks they read, write, and view.

We are looking to hear from you about your perspectives on fanon and other fan-generated elements in fanworks! Fandom Voices is a periodic project that is a part of Cultus Dispatches and seeks fan perspectives on topics related to the fandom. If you read, view, or create fanworks, you are eligible to participate. Note that the question is very open-ended and intentionally so! We welcome anything you wish to share about fanon in Tolkien-based fanworks.

You can learn more and share your thoughts on fanon here.

Admin Post: We Are Looking for Volunteers!

[dawn_felagund]

If you enjoy the SWG and want to help keep the site alive and thriving, we are looking for volunteers to help with a few minor but important roles running the site. You can always find open volunteer positions on our volunteer page with complete up-to-date details on each role. The following new roles have been added:

Social media manager: works with the moderator team to ensure that announcements posted to the site make it onto our social media accounts on Discord, Tumblr, and Dreamwidth.

Around the World and Web editor: ensures that that section of the site is updated at least weekly.

Both roles require about 30 minutes to an hour of time commitment per week. SWG moderators and volunteers always work together to ensure that we cover time off for each other when needed.

We are also sunsetting our Character of the Month column for the simple reason that most of the major characters have now been covered! We have a few characters we want to make absolutely sure we include: Elendil, Gothmog, Yavanna, Eönwë, Manwë, Hador, Nienor, Melkor, Curufin, Marach, and Olwë. If you'd like to take on one of these characters, writers of all ability levels are welcome, and we are happy to provide support to writers new to nonfiction and research writing.

Interested in helping us out? Contact the mods with questions or if you'd like to volunteer!

Admin Post: A Sense of History: Fawlty Towers

[dawn_felagund]

When we look at our own creative work, we are often conscious of the historical context that produced it. Fanworks explored sexuality, gender, race, and disability in Tolkien's legendarium are often linked to events and discussions happening in our particular historical moment. But this same sense is sometimes lost in Tolkien. In this month's "A Sense of History" column, Simon J. Cook continues his series on Tolkien's extended metaphor of the tower in his lecture-turned-essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" by looking at the characters who populate that metaphor.

Tolkien scholars have often taken these characters as neutral components of the metaphor. Simon makes the case that they were real people, and viewing them as scholars who were part of Tolkien's orbit, driving the debates that informed his academic work, transforms how the metaphor is read. The loss of this historical context, Simon argues, impacts how the metaphor is read within the larger trajectory of Tolkien's work and leads to some ... strange ... conclusions from popular Tolkien scholars.

You can read Simon's article "Fawlty Towers" here.