You know the popular kids' party game, Telephone? One person whispers a sentence to the next person, and over time, the force of small mishearings of single words or single letters distorts the original sentence into something totally different. This month's challenge, Unquote, builds on that concept.

None of our prompts this month are things that Tolkien said or wrote. Instead, we've taken passages from The Silmarillion and changed a letter, a word, or a phrase to end up with a completely different passage than you will find in the book. The results are sometimes hilarious, sometimes eyebrow-raising, and sometimes accidentally insightful.

For those who wish to give the challenge a try this month, you will select at least one prompt from our collection of over fifty "unquotes" and create a fanwork using it. You do not have to include unquote in your response. As always, we welcome creative and offbeat interpretations of challenges and prompts! (Our challenge team, after all, managed to get twerking and furries into The Silmarillion for this challenge. We are not apt to be uptight.)

If you want to join the mayhem this month, you can find the Unquote challenge prompts here, and if you're new to our challenges, see the Challenges page on our website for complete guidelines.

I am proud to be a fandom old. I can go all "I was there Gandalf" about the early online fandom fights over Balrog wings, LiveJournal's Strikethrough debacle, and the planning phases of AO3. I remember when you might get dozens of emails in a day from a Yahoo! mailing list. I've used the <marquee> HTML tag unironically. The SWG is rapidly approaching "old as dust" territory as far as fanfiction archives go, and I'm right along with it.

In a lot of ways, this makes doing fandom history easier. I often know where to look and what to look for because I experienced and remember it. Yet there is a layer of fandom history that has remained tantalizingly out of reach for the decade or so that I've identified myself as a "fandom history": pre-internet fandom and specifically fanzines. I am a fandom old-but-not-that-old it seems.

Well, researchers from Marquette University—which holds a large special collection of Tolkien fanzines—handed researchers like me a huge gift last month: They published a dataset of the fanzines in their collection, detailing their contents in my favorite of all document formats: a spreadsheet. Until I can make it out to the university in person, this dataset gives a glimpse at what the zines contain and lets us draw some tentative theories about what Tolkien fandom—and fanworks—were like when fans shared their work with each other using pencils and typewriters and mimeograph machines.

This month's Cultus Dispatches column focuses on some basic analyses that I conducted on the dataset. If you held a fanzine from the '60s or 70s, what would you likely find in its pages? Was there fanfiction? What character groups were popular then compared to now? I tackled all of these questions in my first forays into the data.

Of course, we are a "Silmarillion" group, and the years the dataset mostly covers—1969 through 1979—includes 1977, the year The Silmarillion was published. The impact of The Silmarillion can be seen in the number of zines produced and, yes, an uptick in fanfiction. Likely few people reading this are surprised.

I've always wondered the extent to which in-person fandom groups and fanzines shaped the cultures of early online Tolkien fan communities. I've always suspected that they did, but lacking access to the documents of pre-internet communities, could never find evidence to make that more than a hunch. With this research, some tenuous continuities begin to emerge, attesting to the longevity and cultural richness of the Tolkien fandom and its fanworks tradition.

You can read my article "Fandom before the Time of the Trees: Revelations from Marquette's Fanzine Dataset" here.

And I want to end this week's newsletter with a massive thank you to the researchers, supervisors, and project backers who made the dataset possible: Robinson Ensz, Gabriel Marotto, Aidan Oakey, Ivy Stanich, and Ethan Thomas; Dr. Gerry Canavan and Dr. William Fliss; and Jason and Shannon Swiatek and Judy Mitchell.

I will admit that, until a couple of weeks ago when NelyafinweFeanorion shared a fresh biography of Eönwë with me, I had not thought much about him. Clearly no one else had either, as he was one of the only major characters unwritten in our Character of the Month biography series. He stands forth in a rather bold way and then fades again into the background. He does much and little at the same time. He is both trusted and hamstrung by the authorities above him in the organizational chart choirs of the Ainur.

Eönwë is a middle manager.

He is expected to both lead and defer. He gets to deliver bad news that he had no part in deciding. He is a commanding warrior, standing at the head of the army of the Valar, but then he lacks the authority to pardon Sauron after the War of Wrath, which proves a lost opportunity, as Sauron slinks back to evil. In other words, Eönwë has been set on view-only and cannot edit the critical document in the critical moment of the legendarium, perhaps rewriting ages of history to follow. Instead, we get the Second and Third Ages and Sauron's repeated resurrections.

Eönwë's feels a relatable and modern plight, perhaps best suited to comedic treatment, but he handles it with grace, administering justice and maintaining equanimity while not overstepping his bounds. As NelyafinweFeanorion writes, "Eönwë is not putting himself forward to mete out justice. He offers an avenue of repentance and possible rapprochement, but he does not punish or subjugate the free will of these individuals. It is a contrast to the immediate and ruthless subjugation of Morgoth." Middle manager versus CEO.

All the same, I think most of us will agree that Eönwë deserves a promotion.

Read NelyafinweFeanorion's biography of Eönwë here.

And before you go, don't forget that instadrabbling is this weekend on our Discord server: Saturday, October 3, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone).

The title question probably seems obvious, and doubtlessly some of you answered it in your head with things like, "a Tolkien book published posthumously in 1977" or "the early history of Tolkien's legendarium." Because we are a "Silmarillion" archive (and yes, the use of quotes and not italics is intentional!¹), this question also becomes a matter of policy for us. In the early years of our archive, we called it our MFAQ—most frequently asked question—because we were asked it more often than any other: "Is this story 'Silmarillion' enough for your site?" or "What counts as the 'Silmarillion' anyway?"

This has reduced somewhat as the fandom has come to better understand what The Silmarillion actually is (a compiled, edited, posthumous book) versus the decades of work (and reams of drafts and notes) Tolkien put into a text he never managed to see to fruition. Most fans are very comfortable letting all that fall under "Silmarillion" material. Tolkien fandom has become more comfortable with fuzziness, whether in defining what counts as "canon" or in the boundaries that exist between the texts in the legendarium.

Once upon a time, there was a common misconception that "Silmarillion" meant First Age and earlier. Our annual Akallabêth in August challenge and the 2009 Akallabêth in August compilation was intended to push back against this misunderstanding and spotlight the creators making incredible Second Age fanworks, who often felt marginalized in their own fandom. But of course the "Silmarillion" includes a substantial amount of the Third Age as well. Our MFAQ defines this as "any Third Age that is not covered in detail in The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings," which leaves a lot of ground to be covered. Furthermore, fanworks that include materials from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings certainly aren't verboten—they just need "a significant basis in or connection to The Silmarillion."

Our MFAQ includes a checklist that helps you determine what that means. (Spoiler alert: It is not a hard bar to clear for us.) If you have Third Age or other "borderline" fanworks that you've thought about posting with us, check it out! Chances are that we'd welcome your work. You can read the full FAQ on how we define "Silmarillion fanworks" here.

As with just about everything we do, we aim to include rather than exclude, to expand rather than limit. While we are a "Silmarillion" site, our purpose has never been to draw hard lines between "Silmarillion" and "everything else," and for us, a "maybe" is almost guaranteed to be a "go for it." If you ever have questions about whether a work is appropriate for our site, start with our MFAQ and then reach out to the mods if you need further guidance.

1. First newsletter with footnotes! In Tolkien scholarship, the convention has become to refer to the published text as The Silmarillion and the body of work comprising the early legendarium as the "Silmarillion." Since we aim for inclusivity and expansiveness whenever we can, we opt for the "Silmarillion," as that sweeps in a whole range of posthumous works, appendix materials, etc. (although usage across the site is likely inconsistent on this point. The inclusivity stands.)

The stars are the crux of Tolkien's mythology. Varda painted the sky with them. The Elves gazed upon them with their first sight. They were guides, gave hope, and provided warnings. Eärendil soared among their multitude, casting light upon Middle-earth that would later aid Frodo and Sam in the overthrow of Sauron.

This month's challenge focuses on stars, using bingo cards to add an extra layer of challenge for those who choose to accept it. Each card contains celestial prompts, some with images of the astronomical phenomenon. Many also contain links to more information about the constellation, star, or other celestial body in Tolkien's legendarium.

As always, you can use any part of the prompt to inspire your fanwork! We encourage creative interpretations of prompts, and fanworks do not have to be about, involve, or even mention stars. Our bingo challenges do not call numbers, so you can "play" any square you want, but if you'd like to combine prompts for a row, column, diagonal, or even a full-card blackout, you can feel free to do so! Let us know if you do—there are special stamps available for each of those achievements.

You can find more about the Stars challenge, including three beautiful prompt cards, here.

Also: mark your calendars because instadrabbling, hosted by Anna (IdleLeaves), will be returning for another three months on our Discord server! Join us on the first Saturday of the month in the #instadrabbling channel, on October 3, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone), November 7, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone), and December 5, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone). If you're not a member of our Discord, you should be! Come join us here!

Working with data from the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey is like panning for gold. It is mostly grit and gravel—rows of numbers in a spreadsheet ground down into sums and percentages—but every now and then something flashes out of the mire. Since working with large sets of data is mostly routine (someone who didn't enjoy it might even term it drudgery!), these discoveries never fail to surprise, even thrill, coming as they often do in the midst of data for survey items I'd assume would be unremarkable.

In this month's Cultus Dispatches column, I turn to a dataset that is just that: entry year for Tolkien fanfiction authors. It should be dull, unexciting, rote numbers reported on how many authors started writing in any given year, but when I set three sets of these data from the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey side by side, they started to get interesting.

I've been using this dataset in writing and conference presentations from before the survey was even complete to show how more authors started writing during the film years, but when I put together graphs of the data for the three surveys, I started to see trends that reveal much more interesting conclusions than the rather obvious observation that the films inspired a lot of fannish activities, including fanfiction. Most notably, how a fan engaged with fanfiction around the films seems to predict how long they'll stick around in the fandom, hinting at why, among survey participants, movieverse-only authors are exceedingly rare (and showverse authors so far don't exist at all).

You can read my discoveries in "Speak Friend and Enter: Trends in Fandom Entry Year" here.

Spanning thousands of years as it does, the legendarium contains characters whose deeds echo across the ages, and it contains characters who root a family tree that grows heroes like leaves. Marach is one such character. Mentioned just seven times in the published Silmarillion, Marach might be obscure but, without him, the legendarium would unfold much differently.

This month, for our Character of the Month columm, NelyafinweFeanorion details the life and times of Marach. While his deeds in the book are few, his notable scions are many. "These familial relationships," NelyafinweFeanorion writes, "tie Marach into the larger history of Men in the First Age," going on to list Marach's famed descendants. Furthermore, while we lack details about battle heroics from Marach, he forged critical alliances in the First Age.

Marach, then, is a character in the legendarium who works toward the defeat of Morgoth through subtle notes in the Music: a family line renowned for its honor and allegiances that held strong in the fight against Morgoth.

You can read NelyafinweFeanorion's biography of Marach here.

Remember too that we instadrabble today, Saturday, September 5, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone)! You can learn more about instadrabbling here and join our Discord server to create and enjoy fanworks with your fellow SWG members!

Just about twenty-one years ago, the SWG posted its first challenge, Strong Women. Back in 2005, we were just bumbling through the first months of starting a new Tolkien fanfiction group—one among many—and certainly didn't intend our first challenge to be A Statement, although it certainly did reflect the leanings of the SWG's small membership at the time toward a more inclusive reading of the texts. More than two decades later, the Strong Women challenge has been held up as the first example of many where the SWG used challenges, events, and our platform as a whole to broaden who was included in Middle-earth.

Recently, I found a proto-challenge that existed before Strong Women. Enthusiastically titled The "Ask A Character" Challenge!, it is a proto-challenge because it was in fact a reposting a LiveJournal meme and not an original challenge created for the group:

Chose one question you want to ask a character from The Silmarillion.

Post the name of the character in the subject line and the question as the content of the email and submit it to the group.

All writers are challenged to write a response, taking on the character in question and answering it from their point-of-view.

The challenge is to write a character that you may not always chose by your own accord and to bring them to life through the answer they are giving.

What I found interesting is that almost the exact same meme/challenge/exercise still circulates, now on platforms like Tumblr. Finarfin Appreciation Month similarly anticipates the appreciation weeks/months that fill the fandom calendar today. It leads one to wonder if, somewhere in a trove of fanzines collecting dust on a shelf somewhere, similar activities brought fan communities together in the fandom eras before the internet. There is nothing new under the Lamps.

What also comes forth in the proto-challenge was the intention that challenges be member-created. Ford_of_bruinen recommended this one, and digdigil would create the Strong Women challenge a month later. Believe it or not, we are quickly approaching the point where the challenge moderators will begin drafting the 2027 challenge schedule, so if you have an idea for one of our monthly challenges, hit REPLY and let us know!

Finally, a week from today, Anna (IdleLeaves) will host the next instadrabbling session on our Discord server on September 5, 2026 at 6PM/18:00 UTC (find this in my timezone). Instadrabbling is a long-standing community activity in the Tolkien fanfiction fandom where a group gets together on chat, someone throws out a prompt or four, and everyone writes a drabble (or whatever comes to mind) then shares their creations in the chat. It is a low-pressure, casual activity, and all Tolkien-based fanworks are welcome. If you're not a member of our Discord server, you can join here. We hope you can come make fanworks with us!

P.S.—Instadrabbling has also existed since at least the time of the Lamps.

According to Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data, about one in three authors uses a beta reader at least some of the time. If you think about all of the Tolkien-based stories posted across not just our archive but sites like AO3 and FanFiction.net, that's a lot of hours of reading, providing feedback, discussing, and editing. For many writers in the fandom, betas are the reason they feel empowered to post in a non-native language or about a new area of the canon or to try a new literary technique.

Because beta readers are so important to so many of us, we like to shout out to our beta readers each year and remind our members that our site has a Beta Reader Directory! Any SWG member can be listed in the directory, where you will state your preferences as a beta so that authors can find a beta who meets their needs.

If you are already listed in the directory, we appreciate if you take a moment to make sure that your profile is up-to-date. Use the Beta Reader Directory link and click on your name. If you need to update your profile or if you'd like to sign up as a beta, go to My Account, click Edit, and choose the Beta tab.

Listing yourself in the Beta Reader Directory doesn't obligate you to be available from now until the end of time. If you'd like to go on hiatus and remove your name from the list temporarily, follow the steps above to edit your profile and uncheck the "Activate this profile" box at the top, then save your profile. When you're ready to reappear on the list, just check the box and save, and you're back on!

Authors, if you're looking for a beta, you can search for a person who focuses on what you need, both in terms of where you most need feedback as a writer and canon expertise.

Finally, a huge thank you to the betas who volunteer their time helping to bring us more stories to read!

These tales are ‘new’, they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear. 
~ Letter 131 to Milton Waldman

Tolkien's legendarium weaves back through the stories and myths of the past, and our fanworks carry forward that weft and warp into the present day. This month's challenge draws on the interconnectedness of millennia of history, art, and story that call back to history and arts that mark profound moments in the human experience.

The Allusive challenge presents more than fifty prompts that are inspired by allusions to art, history, literature, and myth. While the inspiration for this challenge is deep (literally and figuratively!), this challenge provides an excellent opportunity to reiterate that we mean it when we say that you can use challenge prompts however you see fit. Challenges have been a part of the SWG for twenty-one years now, and never once in that twenty-one years have the moderators checked a fanwork for "compliance" or questioned a creator about whether a fanwork fits the challenge it was created for.

So your approaches to this challenge as as limitless as your imagination! You can certainly dive deep and, if you recognize the allusion in the prompt, craft a fanwork that draws on the historical event or creative work alluded to. But it's also okay to simply take the prompt at face value and create something using it that does not reference the allusion that inspired it. You can use prompts literally, symbolically, thematically, or even just include a word or phrase from the prompt in your work. You can use the prompts in ways the mods never imagined when they devised this challenge. And of course if you're feeling extra adventurous, you can combine prompts as well.

You will choose your own prompt this month and can find the Allusive challenge prompts here.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 September 2026. Today being the August 15, we are in the one day overlap where the new challenge is open but we are still accepting responses to last month's Building Middle-earth challenge. (Yes, you can combine the two challenges into one fanwork and collect both stamps!) If you're new to our challenges, complete challenge guidelines can be found on the Challenges page on our website, and if you have questions, hit REPLY here and ask away!