New Challenge: Bollywood
This month's challenge offers songs, films, and tropes from Bollywood, the world's largest film industry based out of India, as prompts for fanworks.
SWG News
Cultus Dispatches: Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data provides insight into how comments benefit authors and which authors are most impacted by a lack of comments, with a digression on authors' perspectives one-click feedback like kudos.
A Sense of History: Passing Ships
As Tolkien's characters in various texts gaze out to the sea, what do they see? What is brought by the ships coming out of the West?
Beta-Reader List Now Available
The beta-reader list and profiles have been moved into our new system and are available again.
New & Updated Fanworks
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] I called it Fate that I should fail by AdmirableMonster
Nimruzimir, a natural philosopher recently out of his apprenticeship, hardly considers himself very important to anyone, least of all his colleagues. When his strange, prophetic fits bring him to the attention of the High Priest, however, he may find that his existence is less superfluous than…
[Writing] All of you by chrissystriped
Elrond and Celebrían celebrate their anniversary with their family.
[Writing] Lament for the Singer by daughterofshadows
A short thing about Maglor, death and grieving.
[Writing] Cosmological Poems of Arda by AaronAzrael
I would like to share my revelations of Tolkien's Universe in the form of narrative and emotional poems.
[Writing] Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael
This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously…
[Artwork] Map of Valinor by Aprilertuile
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Holiday Party
No matter if you're in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it's a time of year to think about holidays. Whether you're bundling up in blankets or slipping a swimsuit into your suitcase, we invite you to an SWG holiday party! Read more ...
New in References
Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that authors view comments as driving their motivation to create fanfiction. However, perception of comments by authors is part of a larger shift in fandom around how and how often fans interact with each other.
Passing Ships by Simon J. Cook
[]The arrival and departure of ships across the Great Sea carries mythic significance for the peoples of Middle-earth. The image of ships crossing out of and back into a mysterious West appears as well in Beowulf and is alluded to in Tolkien's tower analogy in his lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," where the tower allows those who climb it to observe the passage of the ships.
Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that while most authors self-identify as taking their craft seriously, a growing subset of authors may be pushing that norm.
Beyond the Silmarillion
[Writing] Staging a Battle by StarSpray
[]He and Diamond were visiting, though Pippin had been disappearing every afternoon, and taking Frodo and Elanor and most other lads and lasses in the neighborhood with him—though why they couldn’t use Pippin’s own pony, Sam couldn’t imagine.
[Writing] From whose bourn no traveller returns by losselen
[]So gathered they were to Bree, what lieutenants who could be spared, from their scattered watches west and east, for their chieftain had returned from his long sojourn in lands godless and mountains strange.
Aragorn returns from the South to tells his tales. Halbarad listens.
[Writing] Sand Sorcery by StarSpray
[]It is well known that Psamathos does not leave his cove. He does not like to get his feet wet, and prefers to spend his days dozing under the sun.
Around the World and Web
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
Elrond Week 2024
Elrond Week is a fandom event dedicated to Elrond Peredhel that will run from July 10th to July 16th on Tumblr.
July challenge at tolkienshortfanworks posted
The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for July has been posted to the Dreamwidth community. The thematic challenge is: original character or unnamed canon character; the formal challenge: fixed length of multiple of 50 words. New participants welcome.
July 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Conferences and publications that have open calls for papers and proposals in July 2024.
Teitho June/July Challenge: Mentor
The June/July prompt for the Teitho challenge is "mentor" and invites fanworks about this relationship in Tolkien's works.
Leithian by Himring
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Chapter 1
THE LAY OF LEITHIAN, THAT IS, RELEASE FROM BONDAGE
It could be physical escape, like Luthien doing her Rapunzel act and sliding off the beech tree on her own hair. There are plenty of places in the tale to want to escape from: Dorthonion, Nan Dungortheb, Doriath, Tol Sirion, Nargothrond, Angband, even the whole of Beleriand. All of them were beautiful places once, before things went sour as they do—even Angband, the ancient outpost of the Fortress of Hell. And people... Who would you need to escape from more urgently, Thingol or Sauron?
Easy to answer: whichever of the two was holding you captive at the moment...
It could be mental escape, like Beren who forgot all about having lost Barahir and the rest of them to death and betrayal and most of his sanity to the subsequent isolation, when he dashed out of the bushes and tried to gambol after Luthien. Am I the only one who doesn’t entirely credit this, in any of the versions of the tale? Sublimely ridiculous, it is an inner moment turned outside, almost crudely, a metaphor made too concrete, yet none the less haunting and powerful for that.
Maybe you’re just envious....
Probably I am...
It could be death, which in this story acts much like a revolving door. Return fare to Namo’s halls, anyone? It swings open to let Finrod to escape the dungeons and the werewolves and deposits him beside his father in Aman. It swings open and takes Luthien and Beren from Doriath and sends them into Ossiriand. Why? Not a clue, but strange things happen in Ossiriand...
Haven’t you skipped something there?
So I have, but never mind.
Who says it’s just First-Born and Followers that need release? It could be Huan the hound, slipping the leash of his silence three times, one after the other... It could be the future evening star released from the iron by the cut of the knife...
Getting fanciful there...
Yes, of course!
But do we know that the title refers to what is in the Lay at all? Maybe it’s not the content, maybe it’s what it’s meant to do. Release Aragorn from being just another chieftain of the Rangers dying unnoticed in the North, release Frodo from the burden of being the Ring-bearer, at least for a while...
Are you sure you’ve got the chronology right?
I’m sure I haven’t and I’m sure it doesn’t matter...
...release John Ronald from the trenches, free John and Edith to marry each other...
Isn’t this rather personal and biographical?
So what? Didn’t he invite it?
Even more so—maybe it’s me and you, kneeling among the hemlocks, waiting for spring to thaw the bitter winter of our blood...
Really?
There’s nothing real about any of this!
Then what is it we are waiting for?
Leithian. The sob of the nightingale. Release from bondage.
Chapter End Notes
My memory of the wording of Christopher Tolkien's note was not quite right: see the etymological note quoted in her notes on her Leithian story by Russandol. However, as far as the point of this story goes, it still applies.
