One of the challenges posed by The Silmarillion is that, at Tolkien's death, it was still very much a work-in-progress. While we often take it as "canon," the truth is that none of us can know if the book we are reading says what Tolkien would have wanted it to say, had he lived long enough to provide input into its publication.

In this month's biography of Bór, Himring details not just a character but an entire people—the Easterlings—who emerged rather late in the construction of the legendarium yet nonetheless carry deep implications, namely for the role of free will and Tolkien's views on race.

Bór was one of the "good Easterlings": one who remained loyal to Maedhros during the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. As Himring explains, on the surface, this can seem a welcome deviation from Tolkien's usual modus operandi of dark skin = evil intentions. However, as she goes on to write, "The way this is presented narratively in the published Silmarillion text, however, qualifies that impression to some extent, making the house of Bór look more like an exception that proves a rule."

So we're left with a character-in-progress to inform some of the deepest questions in Tolkien studies. You can read Himring's biography of Bór here.

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!

Tolkien's lecture and essay On Fairy-Stories presents a theory of fantasy literature, including the idea of a Cauldron of Story. Here, Tolkien draws an analogy between a pot of soup, with all its ingredients boiling in the same broth, and the construction of a story, drawing "ingredients" from the "cauldron" in combinations unique and flavorful.

This month's Cultus Dispatches column, which focuses on Tolkien fandom history and culture, began with the question: How do fanfiction authors use Jackson's films in their stories? A previous column had shown the world of Tolkien fanfic is very much a book-based one, yet the films are undoubtedly influential. What did navigating the sometimes contradictory film and book texts look like for authors who chose to challenge themselves in this way?

The result of my research—which relied on Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data and interviews with fanfiction authors who wrote movieverse fic—brought the Cauldron of Story immediately to mind. Although the ways authors used the films were diverse—no single person I interviewed used them in quite the same way—the pattern that emerged was one of selection and critique. Authors were both selective and purposeful in their choices, which they made with a blend of story, commentary, and personal preference in mind.

And so we end up with a Cauldron of Fanfic, and just like Tolkien's cooks in the original metaphor, they do not dip their ladle blindly. To read more about what I learned from my research, check out Cauldron of Fanfic: The Use of Jackson's Films in Constructing Tolkien-Based.

When the SWG was founded in 2005, it was intended as a small social group for Silmarillion writers interested in discussing and workshopping their fanfiction. To say that it has grown beyond its original modest purpose is an understatement. In 2021, recognizing that we were outgrowing our aging software, we rebuilt the site using a more adaptable content management system. One of our goals in doing so was to expand the types of fanworks we could host on our archive.

We recently added the capacity to host artwork on the archive. This weekend, we're excited to announce two additional fanwork types are now welcome on the archive: link collections and playlists. Need a place to host your rec lists of favorite fanworks? Want to share your favorite resources and meta with others? Have you made the *perfect* Silmarillion soundtrack? Now you can share all of these fanworks, and more, on our archive.

If you want to learn more about these fanwork types, check out the FAQ on link collections and an FAQ on playlists. Ready to start sharing your work? You can add a link collection or add a playlist here.

And we're not done yet. In the months to come, we will add the ability to share video on our archive, then wrap up with multimedia fanworks: fanworks that combine two or more of the fanwork types into a single fanwork. By the end of 2022, we hope that nearly every imaginable Silmarillion-based fanwork will be able to find its home with us.

Tolkien's legendarium is full of minor characters. The Silmarillion alone contains more than two hundred named characters with many more appearing (and disappearing) in the posthumously published drafts and texts.

Elemmakil is one such character. In this month's biography, Narya says of Elemmakil: "[H]e is one of many characters who lends verisimilitude to the legendarium by implying a life and depth beyond the deeds of the great heroes—an untold story, one of the many threads of possibility that draw fans back to these tales again and again." Indeed, the SWG archives a dozen fanworks tagged with Elemmakil as a character.

What is the appeal of this barely mentioned, obscure character? Narya makes the case that, as the guardian of the Gates of Gondolin, Elemmakil both functions as an archetype, calling to mind other myths and folklore from around the world, but also connects with various characters in the legendarium who play similar roles of surveillance and call to mind symbolism to do with stars and light.

You can read Elemmakil's biography here.

Today, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild is centered on its website and archive, but when the group started seventeen years ago, it began on social media: on Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal. It took more than two years to open the website and archive, which arose only because of the thriving community that existed on Y!Groups and LJ.

The SWG continues to maintain accounts on Dreamwidth and Tumblr, mostly for posting announcements (though it's worth mentioning that fanworks are welcome in both places too!) However, by far our most active social account these days is our Discord. Initially used mostly by the gaming community, Discord allows text, voice, and video chatting. Our Discord server for the SWG ("servers" are simply what Discord calls the communities it hosts) is mostly text-based, though we do occasionally host live readings in the voice channel. Put plainly, on our Discord server, you can text chat with other Tolkien fans in real time.

We usually splash links to our site and socials everywhere, but we're a little more reserved with links to our Discord, which creates something of an aura of mystery like it's the SWG's secret clubhouse that requires a special handshake to get into. This couldn't be further from the truth. Because a troll can rampage much faster through a live chat server than through a blog, we don't tend to post public invites to our Discord unless we know we have the moderator presence to stop any shenanigans (yes, learned that one that hard way), but our Discord is open all Tolkien fans who are willing to follow the server's rules, and we welcome new members at any time with absolutely no special requirements to join.

What can you find there? We maintain multiple channels for discussing Tolkien and for different types of fanworks based on the legendarium. We have channels for asking questions, signal boosting events, and sharing links to your fanworks. There are channels always open for organizing "write ins" and "draw ins" with other writers and artists, and we regularly host events on our server too: live readings, instadrabbling, and fanfiction book clubs. In fact, we have a book club for explicit fanfiction next weekend happening on our Discord.

So how do you find this mysterious place? If you'd like to check it out now, here's an invite that's good for the next week. Feel free to share with others.

Logged-in members of the SWG archive can find a Discord invite link in the site footer. If you're not a member of our site, contact our moderators to receive an invite. Again, these links can be freely shared with other fans who might enjoy our server.

To those fans who remember the heady days of the early-mid aughts—of coming home to dozens of new emails from your Tolkien Yahoo! lists, daily updates on your favorite LJ comms, and meeting friends on AIM and YIM—our Discord server continues that legacy of gathering with other fans to discuss Tolkien and make fanworks together. Let's demystify the Discord! We welcome all to join us, no special handshakes required!

As far as fandoms go, the Tolkien fandom is like the Ents: It's been schlepping around for a very long time. In the course of those many decades of history, there have been many trends in fanworks too. Some of you may well remember lemons, Tenth Walkers, and every December's myriad versions of the filksong "Maedhros the Red-Haired Elfling."

This month's challenge celebrates vintage art, writing, and fanworks in all their many forms. We've put together four different bingo cards of vintage prompts for participants to choose from: literature, art, poetry, and of course, fanworks. You can do one or do them all. You can mix and match between cards, try for a bingo, or just pick at random which you'd like to choose.

This is always a good time, too, to offer a reminder about the spirit of our challenges. We don't run challenges to try to shoehorn participants' creativity into what the moderators want to see. We want to encourage the creation of Silmarillion-based fanworks, so if for you that means an offbeat or unexpected interpretation of one of our prompts, we're thrilled to see it!

You can find the Vintage bingo cards, along with text-only prompts, here.

Two months ago, we launched our fandom history and culture column, Cultus Dispatches. As online Tolkien fandom proceeds through its third decade (and Tolkien fandom in general approaches its diamond jubilee), it seems imperative to collect and archive those discussions, fanworks, and memories that have shaped the fandom before they are lost and forgotten.

A subproject of Cultus Dispatches, Fandom Voices aims to do just that. Periodically, we will open a new Fandom Voices question where fans can share their memories and recollections of an event or experience in Tolkien fandom. Back in March, we asked fans who were part of the fandom before either or both film trilogies to share their memories of how the fandom changed (or didn't) once the films debuted. About thirty people have responded so far, and we're pleased to share those responses in this month's Cultus column, Fandom Voices: Impact of the Films. Here, you can find a curated, organized collection of responses with minimal commentary, as well as the original response collections. Do you see a connection we missed or have an interpretation that differs from what we see in the responses? We'd love to hear from you! Comment on the article or hit reply to this message.

Respondents remembered Legomances, Tenth Walkers, vegetarian Elves, and Bagginshield as fandom phenomena arising from the films. They remembered new fan communities springing up overnight (or gaining hundreds of members in just a few days) post-LotR films, and they remember subtler but still impactful cultural shifts post-Hobbit trilogy that brought more diverse depictions of characters and a more permissive view of sexuality in fanworks. They remember mentoring new fans and fighting with them; feeling delighted and overwhelmed by all of the new and enthusiastic readers of Tolkien. They remember gatekeeping and arguments but also building connections with others that have endured, sometimes for years or even decades. More than one person described the films' impact on their fandom as life-changing.

Once a Fandom Voices survey question opens, it will remain open indefinitely, and we will periodically update the response collections with new responses. If you were a pre-film member of the Tolkien fandom, you can contribute a response here. We also have a new Fandom Voices survey up and running, collecting responses for a forthcoming article about fans who were brought to the fandom by the films. If you were a film-first fan, we'd love to hear your memories of that experience here.

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien describes the work of the Ainur as encompassing "the immeasurable vastness of the World" but also "the minute precision to which they shape all things therein." He could be describing his own legendarium, which includes events so large that the alter the shape of the world alongside the kinds of details that might be classified as obscure but on which consideration was clearly spent.

This month's character of the month, Telchar of Nogrod, illustrates where the essential and the obscure overlap. Telchar is the artificer of several objects without which the story of Middle-earth would be altered: the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin, Angrist, Narsil. Yet Telchar himself is obscure. Tolkien wrote very little about him and never fully settled on the details of his character. 

Lindariel's biography of Telchar unearths what little we do know of him but delves also into the crafts for which he is renowned and about which we know much more. She also explores the textual history of Telchar's character and how he evolved across decades during which he was present in the legendarium, serving as a somewhat mysterious person to whom Dwarven masterpieces could be attributed. "Tolkien's pattern with all three known works of Telchar," she writes, "was first to imagine the work, and only later to attribute it to Telchar." In this way, Telchar becomes an essential figure within Tolkien's own creative process: a catchall craftsman whose masterpieces usher in some of Middle-earth's most pivotal moments.

Were you a film-first fan, meaning your introduction to Tolkien or your enthusiasm for the legendarium was inspired at least in part by the films? I (Dawn) am such a fan. The Hobbit and Fellowship were assigned reading when I was in school, and neither book ever recovered from that dishonor—until I saw the films. The films inspired me to try the books again with an open mind, which led me to The Silmarillion, which led me to fandom, which brings me here.

My story isn't unique. Lots of us came to Tolkien or to Tolkien fandom at least in part thanks to the films. As we continue to explore the impact of the films on fandom in the lead up to the Rings of Power series, we'd love to hear those of you who found Tolkien or the Tolkien fandom in due entirely or in part to the films. If you want to share your experiences as a film-first fan, you can do so here.

Note that we are defining "film-first fan" very loosely. If you wonder if you'd be sitting here reading this if you hadn't seen the films, we want to hear from you!