When I was a kid, the only thing better than a new book was a new book with a map inside. Even to this day, if I receive a new book, and it has a map inside? I will usually spend five or ten minutes looking at the map before even thinking about reading even a word of the text, and I will return to the map nearly every time I open the book, curious what mysteries it holds that have been further revealed by reading the text it precedes.

Maps occupy a magical space between story and art. Traditionally, they are visual representations of information, yet they contain questions and, yes, stories within their lines and labels. They are visual but are often anchored and oriented with the addition of text. Not surprisingly, many Tolkien fans love maps. In this, they take after Tolkien himself, who put great care into his maps and into the geography of Arda more generally. Many Tolkien books contain maps, and many of us remember poring over them—or, better yet, getting our hands on one of those special copies with an enlarged, fold-out copy of the map. Some Tolkien fans go even further, making their own copies of maps, either to clarify geography for their own fanworks or to build on Tolkien's work with their own fan art.

With this love of cartography in mind, our art editor Anérea has embarked on a four-part series as part of her Tolkien Fanartics column, looking at fan-made maps across the ages of Arda. In the first article, she goes back to the beginnings of the universe, looking at artists who have crafted maps about the shaping of the world and Aman. These are often blanks among the maps Tolkien left us, calling on fan artists to extrapolate from what details he did leave, fill in the missing pieces from their own imaginations, and then overlay it all with their own style and artistry. Just like all maps do, their work invites contemplation and questions and ultimately opens new ways  of seeing Tolkien's world.

You can read Anérea's "Mapping Arda, Part I: Terraforming" here.

Music is central to the legendarium. At its foundation is a creation myth where the world is sung into being. Throughout, we have songs and poems, duels of song, and musicians who are elevated to the same status as great warriors.

Probably not surprisingly, given this, the SWG moderator team (who are nerdy enough about Tolkien to make working for this website a volunteer part-time job) love challenges with music prompts. We generally offer several challenges each year with music as some or all of the prompts. If you asked us why, we would likely have a good answer about how music prompts offer a rich array of options—you can use the whole song, a single line (or word!), the title, the band name, the music video, the music itself, the mood it creates, its theme ... anything!—with a high level of accessibility. Part of it too is that these prompts are really fun to make and the fanworks they inspire really fun to read and view.

In this spirit, this month's challenge is Turgon's Rock Opera. The prompts are rock songs, and you can request one by clicking Reply on this message. If you want to see the full challenge or challenge guidelines, you can find those here.

Keep on rocking, Tolkien fans!

Fandom is a dialogue. What we do, as fans, around our beloved source texts is largely centered on conversing with other fans. Through discussions and, of course, fanworks, we share and respond to each others' ideas. If you create fanworks, you are doubtlessly familiar with the experience of making a creative choice to cosign a particular fanon, theory, or idea that you like, or making a choice that pushes back against those that you don't.

Tolkien looms so large in our popular imagination that it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that he, too, was a fan, and much of his work was fannish in nature. As one of the preeminent scholars of Anglo-Saxon philology, his interest in the landmark Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf" was more than professional; it was fannish too. He loved "Beowulf," and his scholarly work advocated for it to be taken seriously as art and for others to appreciate what he saw, and loved, about the poem.

And just like, as fans, we respond to each other through our fanworks, Tolkien too used writing to respond to other scholars of "Beowulf." In this month's "A Sense of History" column, Simon J. Cook continues his investigation of Tolkien's lecture-turned-essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" by making the case that the famous tower analogy in the essay should very much be seen as a response to actual people whom Tolkien knew and interacted with, both professionally and socially. By using an early draft of the lecture, which features a simplified version of the analogy, Simon shows how the various figures in the tower analogy match up to the other "Beowulf" scholars who were writing in Tolkien's day. Without this context, Simon makes the case that understanding the tower analogy often goes astray. Instead, we must understand the tower analogy as responding to specific people and their specific claims about the poem ... indeed, much as fans often direct their fanworks very directly at specific fans, fanworks, and theories.

You can read Simon's essay "The Rock Garden" here: https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/node/7014

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Our newsletter continues to look a mucky plain-text mess because we continue to have issues with our email. We are working with escalated support from our webhost at this point to resolve the issue, but it is a lot of slow back-and-forth with all the challenges that customer service in the modern era bring. Currently, our moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org address is not receiving email. Fortunately, notifications from the site appear to all be sending. We are hoping an end is in sight for this issue. In the meantime, current site issues are documented here: https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/site-issues

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.)