Alternate universe (or AU) fanworks have a long history. They provide the vast umbrella under which anything is allowed. We can bend seemingly unbendable details of the plot and watch what happens. We can foist our unsuspecting and beloved characters into space or high school or any strange setting. We can have them speak only in riddles while hosting a tea party in a bouncy castle. The bizarre, improbable, and absurd—and seeing how the fanwork unfolds once these noncanonical elements are added—is the very point of AU.

This month's challenge, Also Appearing, offers AU settings and genres as prompts—sixty of each. You can choose one or you can choose several. Note that the fanwork itself does not have to be AU.

This is a good time to offer a reminder of the purpose of our challenges: We want to encourage the creation of Silmarillion fanworks, hopefully in a way that encourages creators and their audience to interact with each other. For this challenge, we've gotten more questions than usual about what is "allowed." The simple answer to that is that anything is allowed, as long as it is a fanwork that can be posted to our site. (If you create a Silmarillion fanwork for a challenge that can't be accommodated on our site for whatever reason, please contact the mods so that we can discuss options.) We trust creators who list a challenge on a fanwork have in fact used that challenge. Being creators ourselves, we also know very well that prompts can inspire fanworks that end off going in unexpected directions where the connection to the prompt isn't necessarily apparent at all. Again, we trust our creators absolutely.

This month as well, to celebrate the addition of playlists and link collections to the fanworks we can accept on our archive, we will also offer special stamps for anyone who posts a playlist or a link collection prior to the challenge due date of July 15. Note that playlists and link collections do not have to be AU to count for this stamp!