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] An exercise in music... And patience by Aprilertuile
Makalaurë was sitting at the harp in his music room. He was holding a dark blindfold in his hands and was looking at it with much scepticism.
[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…
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
New Year's Resolution
Our annual amnesty challenge allows you to complete and receive stamps for challenges you missed in the past year. 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.
B2ME Day 2 -Dreamtime by Erulisse
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Chapter 1
Dreamtime
Fëanor’s goal was to be a good father. His secondary goal was to have sons who would carry on with him in the forge, joining their skills with his love for the forming of metals and stones and wielding their hammers together in cacophonous harmony.
Each of his sons was brought to the forge when they were young, but as they aged, they left the forge behind them with the exception of short visits to make small items for gifts. With Curufin, Fëanor finally had an apprentice to follow his guidance in the forge, so that the sorrow that the other six brothers chose different interests was less intense. But it was with great surprise that he saw his least crafty son standing in front of him on that grey spring day in Formenos.
Maglor appeared uncomfortable and uneasy, standing in front of his father. Fëanor forced himself to remain calm, even though the project he had been working on would need to be reworked because of the interruption.
He thought back on this son’s short and semi-disastrous introduction to the forge. After Maglor had been brought into the forge, his first task had been to tend the bellows. He began pumping them in a rhythm that was pleasing to him, but that didn’t maintain the constant heat necessary to melt the metal. Moving him over to the hammers also didn’t work – he was adequate at hitting the target, but again heard music in the anvil and rhythm in the strikes, forgetting to anneal the metal, thus making it too brittle through the hammer strokes. Then he was assigned to sort and grade gemstones so that they were well matched for a commission piece. He began humming a tune, and finally, when Fëanor looked at his work, the gemstones had been placed in musical staves, writing the notes down in faceted light, instead of matching perfect groupings for the jewelry. Fëanor gave up and never brought Maglor into the forge again. Yet here he was.
“Atar”, a soft voice said. “Would you be willing to teach me one more time?”
“Why would you wish to be in the forge, my son? Your heart is clearly not in it, nor do I need more tools or jewels destroyed through your lack of attention.”
“I realize I am a poor smith, Atar, but…..I need to build myself a new harp.”
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Author's Notes: Normally Maglor would probably have asked Nerdanel for help, since wood would be more her specialty. But Fëanor is more than capable of assisting him in this, especially in the intricate inlay work that often ornamented such instruments. Nerdanel, of course, did not accompany the family to Formenos.
