Ómar-Amillo is a character who barely exists in the legendarium. He appears briefly in the earliest "Silmarillion" that Tolkien wrote down, the Book of Lost Tales, where he is a god of music, Salmar's brother, and not much else. He is, in other words, a mayfly: disappearing from the story just after he emerged, before Tolkien even gave up his work on the Lost Tales.

The Lost Tales, though, are full of mayflies. Ideas, events, and characters pop into the story, only to be replaced or just never seen again. Because most of my character biographies for the site focus on the Ainur—who were among the earliest of Tolkien's characters and thus, in many cases (though not Ómar's!), the longest enduring—it can be a tempting and fun activity to theorize about which ideas stuck around and which didn't.

But I'm a writer. Chances are, if you're reading this, you too are a writer or engage in some other type of creative pursuit, or you hang out with creatives. I believe the perspectives of writers and other creatives offer an approach to Tolkien's work that is sometimes missing in scholarship from those who don't necessarily have that perspective, who don't (in other words) necessarily appreciate how often ideas end up written down that really don't represent where we want the story to go. These whims just happen to be in mind when we can grab the rare moment to put pencil to page.

As I tackled Ómar's biography this month, I can't help theorizing about what he means: about why Tolkien included him, what he shows of the evolving legendarium, and why Tolkien so quickly decided, without fanfare, to simply stop including him in the story. But as a writer, I know the explanation could be as simple as Tolkien writing him down, including him a handful of times, and then deciding he didn't add to the story and moving on.

You can read Ómar's biography here: https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/node/7004

You might notice that this newsletter looks different, and not in a good way. (You might also have noticed that last week's newsletter never arrived at all!) We've been back and forth this week with our webhost after an upgrade broke our email system. The only way, right now, that we can send the newsletter is via plain text. Hence it look rather ... plain.

That being said, they've fixed most of the problems ... we hope. However, when using the site to send messages or make requests, do be aware that the system is a bit shaky right now. If you're messaging or making a request of the mods (like a new character tag) using the site and we don't take care of it in twenty-four hours, feel free to follow up. Just reply to this email or use our address moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. It is emails sent via the site that are impacted.

Now onto better things, namely gorgeous art and how it is made!

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Ringed by wordless faces, the portrait room in an art museum has a certain hush to it. There is the human face, many times over, a deceptively simple theme. Yet within those faces, lines hint at past pain. Eyes flash from a face defined by age or youth. The best portraits seem to capture just a moment in a story passing on either side of that brief second in time. It is possible to imagine what happened leading up to the portrait and what transpired after.

The impeccable, impressionistic paintings of Ylieke seem to belong in such a gallery. Although Ylieke describes her work as centered on storytelling, these are not complicated action scenes. Instead, it is the eyes, the hands, the faces of her characters that speak to what they are feeling and experiencing in that moment, leaving no doubt that there is a rich story happening on either side of it. In our latest Tolkien Fanartics column, firstamazon caught up with Ylieke to learn more about her technique, goals, and beliefs as a fan artist.

Interestingly, Ylieke describes her own work as, "not so good at drawing emotions," with which this viewer would strongly disagree. However, no matter what you creative form of choosing, Ylieke's careful look at her own work and approach to art might be useful advice:

"Sometimes illustrations just don’t come out as they were envisioned. The best course of action in this case is to finalize the work as well as you can and move on. The next work will be 0.001% better."

You can read firstamazon's interview with Ylieke here: https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/node/6965

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SWG News: https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/news

Around the World and Web, announcements from around the fandom: https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/atwaw

When we look at Tolkien's work today, we look at it from the vantage point of 2023. We see the trajectory of his decades of work on the legendarium. We see, within a historical context, texts that seem to respond to or even predict what would have been the breaking news of the day.

In this month's A Sense of History column, Simon J. Cook continues his series of articles on the tower analogy found in Tolkien's pivotal essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," considered even today to be the most important scholarship penned on Beowulf. Simon makes the case that the tower analogy present in the essay has connections to the legendarium: that the tower-builder climbs his tower to look upon the same sea that so seduces the characters of the legendarium, separating Middle-earth from Valinor. From the view from his tower, the man glimpses the wisdom of a lost world, but to do so requires imagination.

In 1936, when he delivered "Monsters and the Critics" (and was also in the midst of some of his most productive work on the "Silmarillion" materials), Tolkien would have been grappling with a world again on the brink of war and all of the fear and uncertainty that provoked. Much like the Beowulf-poet and the man and his tower, he turned to the past for answers and for courage.

You can read Simon's article "1936" here.

Back in June, we published the first part of Melesta's biography of Húrin. In this article, they make the case that "Húrin's story is one of the backbones of Tolkien's legendarium, whose influence is felt in the narrative ages after his passing," specifically finding connections between Húrin's character and those of Tolkien's later heroes, including Aragorn, due to the influence of estel on Húrin's early life and outlook.

But this is the First Age, and things never fail to get grim fast. If you are reading this, you know that estel is a shaky concept in The Silmarillion compared to Tolkien's later and more eucatastrophic works. In the second part of Húrin's biography, Melesta traces the next half of Húrin's life, which is marked by tragedy, suffering, and betrayal*—yet as Melesta points out, Húrin's courage and loyalty to those he loves never wavers.

* In Húrin's story, we see Tolkien prefigure Kurt Vonnegut's later exhortation to writers to "be a sadist" to even the most likable of characters.

Of course, Húrin is an apt illustration of why Vonnegut's advice is so well-known among writers. Through Húrin, Tolkien unfolds what happens to an exceptional person when put under exceptional duress. And, as Melesta notes, the ending of Húrin's story is left vague, so we can never be entirely sure what our hero was really made of. Yet through Húrin's story and what he endures and how he endures it, many of Tolkien's most important themes—among the many reasons readers have loved his work for the better part of a century—are unveiled, defining heroism in such a way that will be remembered across the ages in the legendarium.

You can read the second part of Melesta's biography of Húrin here (and make your own decision about how you interpret the ending).

I remember when the cover art for the recent Tolkien Society Seminar proceedings Tolkien and Diversity—which includes essays by several SWG members and friends—was announced and I saw Ismene's portrait A Elbereth Gilthoniel for the first time. Seeming to glance over her shoulder as though interrupted at an important task, Varda Elentári gazed out from the screen with a look of casual challenge. In that moment, I learned it was exactly the look befitting the goddess who both painted the sky with stars and scared the heck out of Melkor.

I immediately looked up more about Ismene and discovered she was a fan artist (which I'd been secretly hoping for). Shadow had already signed on to review Tolkien and Diversity, so I asked Anérea: Would she be willing to see if Ismene would talk to us for Tolkien Fanartics, as a complement to the book review? Thankfully, both Anérea and Ismene agreed, and that interview is our column this week.

In the interview, Ismene talks about her creative process, her artistic training (she's self-taught!), and what makes The Silmarillion such an appealing text to build on creatively. Ismene describes a road trip where some internet digging revealed that "Sauron apparently did not always look like that suit of armour [from the films] at all … And what was more, there was another dark lord??? ... I started digging into it to learn the lore, and I got hooked."

Ismene's story is familiar. Tolkien's world invites fannish engagement because the more you learn, the more it seems you must find out. And that deep fannish engagement creates the kinds of personal stories where looking up images of Tolkien characters online one day brings the artist, many years later, to the place where her own work stands to shift how Tolkien fans see his characters and his world.

You can read Anérea's interview with Ismene here.

Tolkien's influence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is felt throughout popular culture. Countless games, films, and books have taken Middle-earth as a prototype for the modern fantasy genre, bringing Elves and magical swords into the popular imagination (making them cool even).

Or bringing them back into the popular imagination might be more accurate. Tolkien himself was, of course, deeply inspired by some—notably not all—of the creative works that he encountered both as a scholar and in popular culture in England at the turn of the century. Our challenge this month, Dip the Ladle, offers prompts that come from Tolkien's many sources of inspiration—not just the books he read (though we have plenty of quote prompts if that's your fancy) but locations he frequented and artwork that may have been in the books on his shelf.

This challenge is a good time to remind participants (and potential participants!) about some key beliefs our group has about challenges. First of all, a challenge prompt can be used however you want. Want to use just the title? A phrase? That tiny boat in the corner? Go for it! We encourage finding loopholes: odd and creative ways to interpret challenge prompts.

But if a challenge prompt doesn't speak to you, you can request another. For this particular challenge, if you have a preference for a quote, an image associated with a place, or a book cover or illustration, you can specify that.

Finally, as Around the World and Web below shows, we are in a season that is full of various fandom events. Some of these events have reveal dates that may be past our challenge deadline. If you want to use one of our challenge prompts as part of a fanwork created for one of these events, just let us know that you need to post late, and we'll award the stamp when you do. (That's the other thing: You can always use past challenge prompts. Due dates are for receiving creator stamps only.)

Tl;dr: Our goal with our challenges is to see more people making fanworks based around The Silmarillion. If you're using one of our prompts to do that, you've got the right idea.

If this challenge appeals to you and you haven't requested a prompt yet, you can reply to this email to do so!

Although Tolkien is best known for his formative influence on the modern fantasy genre through The Lord of the Rings (though we here at the Silmarillion Writers' Guild clearly think the rest of the legendarium is pretty special too!), his impact on the field of Anglo-Saxon studies was just as noteworthy. His 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" transformed how the Old English poem Beowulf was read and understood by scholars. It is cited even today in Beowulf scholarship and included in many contemporary volumes of Beowulf criticism for its foundational role in how the field would evolve over the next eight-plus decades.

But for all its importance, "Monsters and the Critics" doesn't tend to be included in volumes of Tolkien's popular works—not entirely unexpected, given that it is an academic (though highly accessible) lecture-turned-essay. In this month's A Sense of History column, Simon J. Cook gives "Monsters" its due as a work that reveals something of how a people looks back in history and finds they have forgotten what they know.

"Monsters" includes one of my favorite passages from all of Tolkien's writing: an extended metaphor about a man who constructs a tower from old ruins and endures the scrutiny and scorn of his compatriots who wonder why he'd do such a thing—"But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea." Simon makes the case that the sea in this metaphor is the forgotten knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon people: just what lies beyond the shoreless sea alluded to in Beowulf, giving the poem its tone "both poignant and remote" and "weighted with regret."

Of course, fans of Tolkien's work—especially his First Age writings—identify this same sense of nostalgic loss for a distant, partially glimpsed past. And so we see Beleriand in Beowulf.

You can read Simon J. Cook's column "Beleriand in Beowulf" here.

(On the subject of Tolkien's inspirations, be sure to check out our new challenge Dip the Ladle, and remember that you can reply to this email to request a prompt.)

In July 2021, the Tolkien Society held a seminar on the theme "Tolkien and Diversity." The seminar emerged in the days leading up to the release of Amazon's Rings of Power series, when the series' diverse casting choices were at the forefront of discussion among Tolkien fans, leading "Tolkien and Diversity" to become the best-attended seminar to date.

But the issues raised in the seminar had existed for decades. Tolkien fans have been discussing race, gender, sexuality, and disability and Tolkien for nearly as long as there has been a fandom, and with the first translations of The Lord of the Rings appearing in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the legendarium became an international fandom very early in its publication history.

In our most recent Read & Review column, Shadow reviews the recently released proceedings of the 2021 seminar, Tolkien and Diversity. They find that the proceedings coalesce around two major themes: cultural diversity and the international fandom, and the representation of marginalized identities in the legendarium and fandom. Providing a brief synopsis of each paper included in the proceedings, Shadow's review can help you decide if Tolkien and Diversity is a worthwhile addition to your Tolkien bookshelf.

You can read Shadow's review of Tolkien and Diversity here.

They is something primordial and terrifying about creatures that howl in the night. Few of us in the modern world have the opportunity to hear wolf howls anymore, but I still remember well the creeping cold that passed over me that first time I heard coyotes hunting in the dark. The chilling sound of marauding predator's voices taps into a deep, primitive urge to hide someplace warm and preferably near a fire.

In writing this month's character, Tolkien drew from those deep wells of human memory and the folklore they gave rise to. As Narya's biography of him reveals, Draugluin is an early character in the legendarium (though in a much different and less forbidding form!) who evolved into a wolf with a brief but important role: the "lord of werewolves" who challenged Huan, was defeated, and unwittingly provided Beren's disguise when sneaking into Angband.

Although myths and folklore involving wolves loom large in Western literature—from the Norse wolf Fenrir the fairy-tale Big Bad Wolf to the naturalistic writings of authors like Jack London—nearly every continent has its wolf-stories, dating back to the Mesopotamians and Ancient Egyptians. Narya taps into some of these old stories and how connections with Draugluin can deepen our understanding of his character. At the same time, Tolkien rejected some popular wolf-lore in constructing his own wolfish characters, proving—as he would write in On Fairy-stories—that he did "not dip in the ladle blindly." And, as Narya concludes, Tolkien's construction of Draugluin ultimately supports key themes present throughout his work.

You can read the biography of Draugluin here.

In 1966, Tolkien received a letter from a fan for about a sequel to The Lord of the Rings that the fan planned to write. His response is preserved in Letter 292 to Joy Hill: "I suppose," he wrote, "that since one cannot claim property in inventing proper names, that there is no legal obstacle to this young ass publishing his sequel ...."

This quote is often held up as a counterpoint to the more famous "other minds and hands" passage from Letter 131 to Milton Waldman, which many fans have taken to presume Tolkien's support for fanworks. What always strikes me is how he assumed this "sequel" (i.e., fanfiction) was permissible—probably because he was doing that same kind of writing himself.

Tolkien was a fanfiction writer. Of course, that term would never have been applied to him; its modern use didn't come into being until Tolkien was deceased. But he did respond to the medieval texts he worked with as a scholar by writing his own versions and gapfillers in the same way that fanfiction writers respond to his work today.

The most recent posthumously published volume of Tolkien's work, The Battle of Maldon, contains an example of this. While the collection itself contains multiple texts, including Tolkien's prose translation of The Battle of Maldon and a lecture transcript about Old English poetry, it also contains The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son, a verse play that considers the aftermath of the Battle of Maldon. In other words: a fanfiction.

In our most recent Read & Review column, Narya reviews The Battle of Maldon. She provides an overview of what you can expect from each section of the book and offers advice for fans of Tolkien's Middle-earth as to whether the book is worth their investment of time and money. If you're thinking of purchasing the book (or if you're interested in Tolkien's scholarly work ... or his fanfiction), you can find Narya's "Review of The Battle of Maldon" here.