Silmarillion Writers' Guild

I am continuing to make good progress on the site rebuild. Because our new software will be much more flexible than our old software, I can build several "wishlist" items that people have asked for. As I work on this, there are a few tasks with which others can be of assistance:

• We will be adding two Relationships fields: Major Relationships and Minor Relationships. These will include both romantic/sexual pairings and platonic relationships. Authors will be able to tag their fanworks with the relationships that feature and occur in the background, and readers will be able to find fanworks with those relationships. I have started a list of relationships to add to the initial list on the site. (You will be able to request a relationship that is not on the list--and through a much easier process than our current process to have new characters added!) If you'd like access to add to this list, please comment here or email us at [email protected].



• Likewise, we currently have some character groups on our Character list, e.g., the Valar or the Noldor. However, this list is far from complete. If you'd like access to this list as we continue to build it--same instructions as above.



• We have always accepted fanworks in languages other than English. However, this is not prominently expressed on our current site, and we'd like to change that. On the new site, you will be able to choose the language your fanwork is written in. If you want to post in a language not on the list, you will be able to add it. However, I'd like to start with a pre-populated list. I currently have received requests for Polish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. If there is a language you'd like to see that is not on the list, let me know by commenting here or emailing. Please note that we are looking for real-world languages, not Tolkien's languages. (There will be a separate way to identify fanworks that work with Tolkien's languages.)



• As before, we will have our Site Etiquette and Terms of Service translated into as many languages as we can. Since we just rewrote it, unfortunately, our existing translations are no more good, so we have to start from scratch. If you're interested in translating, again, comment here or email. We already have translations in the works for French, Spanish, and Portuguese but all other languages are still available.



• Finally, our inclusivity focus group is always open for new members from marginalized groups who would like to contribute to making the SWG as inclusive a place as possible. We're about to start working through our FAQs and other supporting documents on the site. Let me know if you'd like to join this work and other inclusivity discussions moving forward.