Many years ago, when the SWG newsletter was a monthly hand-coded HTML affair, moderator Angelica started a column called "A Sense of History" that aimed to provide short, readable articles connecting the legendarium to real-world history. Angelica is a history teacher, and while the column was short-lived, it was because she went back to school for her Master's ... in history! We are pleased that, after several false starts, "A Sense of History" is back in our newsletter.

This month's article, by MirienSilowende, considers hostages. This is a term that, used in the modern sense, has a chilling connotation. Historically, it wasn't much better: a device used by a more powerful ruler to control subordinate peoples and establish cultural dominance among the children of a subordinate realm.

MirienSilowende details how medieval Welsh history parallels that of the Easterlings. Both peoples had young hostages taken and fostered by more powerful rulers: the English and the Gondorians, respectively. While there is no evidence of a violent end for any of those Easterling children, history illuminates the possibility of a bloody demise and suggests that the relationship between the realms was more than benevolent fosterage. Most tantalizing, how did these hard feelings toward Gondor possibly push the Easterlings into the clutches of Gondor's enemy, Sauron?

You can read MirienSilowende's article, illustrated by bunn, here.

And "A Sense of History" is open to contributions! Many of us have a corner of history where we see parallels with Middle-earth, and if you'd like to share your ideas in our newsletter, find out more about contributing to "A Sense of History" here.

It is with great sadness that we report that longtime SWG author and the friend of so many of us, Keiliss, passed away from cancer on August 11.

In the day since, many have shared their memories of Kei. She was a leader in the Tolkien fandom, modding the Slashy exchanges for many years. She was one of the original SWG members who joined seventeen years ago, when we were still just a Yahoo! Group and an LJ community, and whose wise, kind counsel helped shape who we are now. She was a heartbreakingly talented author, whose work was a comfort and delight to so many of us. Many remember her as one of the first to welcome them and make them feel at home in the fandom. And she was a beloved friend to so many, and her loss can never be filled.

Kei's MSV comoderator Red Lasbelin will share information about charitable contributions in Kei's name as they become available. In the meantime, if you don't know Kei's work, you should, and you can find her stories here. If you're looking for a way to honor her memory and all that she gave to our community, our art editor Anérea found a 2019 post from Kei, written for the annual Fandom Snowflake challenge, that sums up well her approach to fandom:

Fandom will go on, because as long as there are tales that have gaps that ask questions like 'what then?' and 'why?', people will fill those gaps as we have since time out of mind. The shape that will take further down the road—who knows? Whatever happens, I hope we don't fragment too far because one day we'll lose touch so completely that the only place we'll occasionally connect will be in the comment threads on AO3. And that would be so sad because fandom is about the writers and artists and the magic they create and the way imagination sparks from one to the other. This is our sandpit, we need to treasure it.

Go forth and make something beautiful or offer a kind word to someone who needs it. In loving memory of Keiliss.

In his lecture-turned-essay On Fairy-stories, Tolkien coins the term eucatastrophe: that emotional thrill when catastrophe is averted and, against all odds, the story winds up with a happy ending. August's character of the month, Túrin Turambar, is the precise opposite. Firstamazon, the author of this month's biography, notes that he embodies the idea of dyscatastrophe. No matter what he does, Túrin's life ends up in the dumpster in the back alley of Doom.

Túrin's is one of what Tolkien considered the three great tales, and Tolkien spent more time on his story (of which several versions exist) than he did on many other parts of the legendarium. As such, Túrin's biography will be in three parts, with the first part focusing on his childhood sorrows, his fosterage in Doriath (and the dyscatastrophic turn that took), his fall (or Saeros's fall, if you want to be literal about it), and finally, his years of outlawry. Firstamazon untangles Túrin's story from the various versions that exist to bring forth the story of a young man beset by the worst luck ever (and—spoiler alert!—it will only get worse). Check out the first part of Túrin's biography here.

As the SWG celebrates its seventeenth birthday this week, we think about the fans and communities who came before us who made our existence possible. The Library of Moria is one such archive.

Founded in 2002, it was already five years old when the SWG opened its website in 2007. But more importantly, the Library had done a lot of the hard and foundational work that allowed the SWG to be as open and accepting as it would become. Those who were part of early to mid-2000s fandom know that it was not always welcoming, and slashfic was a particular target. Authors on the Library of Moria not only wrote about LGBTQ+ relationships at a time when their very existence in the legendarium was a subject of strident debate, but they did it with joy, love, and a seemingly bottomless sense of humor. By the time we came into the fandom in 2005, minds were already beginning to change, thanks in part to the Library.

As the Library prepares to close its doors after twenty years—the fanworks will move to AO3 as part of the Open Doors project—we salute the archive that was a centerpiece of the fannish experience of so many. You can read this month's article here:  A Tribute to the Library of Moria.

This is also an open article, which means that we are willing to continue adding to it to include the voices of fans who want to preserve their memories of the Library of Moria. Was the Library important to you? Reply to this email to share your memories or, if you're not sure where to begin, to request a list of questions to get you started.

For the past few weeks, we've been soliciting ideas and then voting on a name for our forthcoming new site section. The vote was close but we have a name: Beyond the Silmarillion, a name that not only centers our group's ongoing purpose as a community for discussing and sharing fanworks about The Silmarillion but communicates the breadth of Tolkien's works able to be the focus of fanworks in the new site section.

In the News section below, you can learn more about what we are working on for the remainder of the year as far as adding new features to the site. Within the next several weeks, we anticipate opening the Beyond the Silmarillion section, which will allow creators who have archived five fanworks or 10,000 words of written fanworks with us to post all of their Tolkien-based fanworks on our site, regardless of whether they are Silmarillion-centric or not. (For those of you here for the Silm stuff, do not despair: This is truly a separate section of the site.)

Over the years, we've heard from a number of our creators that they wish there was a small archive that accepted all of their fanworks. As small Tolkien-centric archives continue to close, this wish is rapidly becoming a need. Large archives offer a certain degree of security, but there is also something to be said for keeping a copy of your work on a site that can be managed financially and technically by a single person. Our new site section is a way to hopefully meet the need for a small archive that can take all Tolkien fanworks while honoring the original purpose of our community as Silmarillion-centric.

The new site section originated in discussions between SWG moderators and creators about the creators' needs. We originated as and remain a site and community committed to serving the needs of Silmarillion fanworks creators. Is there something we're not doing yet that you'd like to see? Hit reply on this email and let us know.

When we think of Christopher Tolkien, it is almost always in the context of his father's work. Tolkien fans tend to regard him, conveniently, as an appendage on his father's legacy, doing much of the work to bring the legendarium to fans that Tolkien himself did not have the chance to do. It can be easy to forget that Christopher was, in fact, an accomplished scholar and creator in his own right, and that the opportunity cost that came with his work on the legendarium is a tremendous gift to Tolkien fans.

This week, we are pleased to introduce a new occasional column to our newsletter, Read & Review, which will review books and collections related to Tolkien. This week, Grundy contributes the first article to this new endeavor: a review of The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien.

The book—intended to be published while Christopher was alive—includes essays on his work on the legendarium, the challenges and triumphs of that work, and also reveals something of the person he was beyond Middle-earth. "Newcomers to the fandom and longtime travelers to Middle-earth alike will find new facts and facets to interest them," Grundy writes. You can read Grundy's full review of The Great Tales Never End here.

We will also be looking for future reviews of books and collections related to Tolkien. If you'd to contribute a review, you can find the submission guidelines for Read & Review here (and submissions guidelines for all newsletter columns here).

Back in December, we asked SWG members what new features they'd like to see us offer in 2022. One of the choices would allow active creators on our archive to also post their non-Silmarillion Tolkien fanworks with us, and this option received a lot of support.

We've begun to build this new section of our site. What does that mean for our members? Members who archive Silmarillion fanworks with us—five fanworks or 10,000 words, whichever comes first—will be able to also archive non-Silmarillion fanworks that are based on Tolkien's other writings or adaptations of those writings. This will be a completely separate section of the site, so if you're here for the Silmarillion stuff, your experience won't change. But for creators who have wanted a place to archive their other Tolkien-based work that isn't a large multifandom archive, that option will soon be available.

While we are busy building, we need your help to name this new section of the site! We are taking suggestions for names here, through midnight (UTC) this Wednesday. Bright and early on Thursday, SWG site members will be able to vote to choose the new name.

We also answer questions about the new site section here, or reply to this email to talk to us directly if you want to learn more!

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.