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.
Left Behind by alquawende
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Chapter 1
Left Behind
By Alquawende
Findaráto, do you not see what this rebellion has cost you? The price is too high. You have left me. Left for those wild lands of Endor. I agonize over your departure, for tidings have come of the Prophecy of the North: you are forever barred from the Blessed Realm. I wonder why I didn't try to persuade you to remain with me. Maybe it was because of the light in your eyes when you spoke of Endor. Already innocent lives have been slaughtered. This makes me wonder if red is now the color of your hands? If blood is on your hands, I know, it is more likely to be the blood of the Noldor. You always defended those who were weaker, even if you knew they didn't stand a chance.
Your father is now King of the Noldor or what remains of them. I dare not ask him of your whereabouts and why you did not return. He has never known of your courtship to me because we kept our love secret, on your advice. I remember the day clearly. We were beneath the light of shining Laurëlin. You had taken me aside when I arrived at your home, ready to accompany Artanis to a play, but she had slept in so I had to wait for her to get ready.
"Amárië!" you said, your eyes lit with delight, like the light of the Silmarils, when you saw me in the empty entrance of your father's home, "I am glad you came. I have something to ask of you."
"What?" I asked gaily. I was so unaware of what you were going to ask. Back then you were just like a friend, to me, who I spoke to if Artanis was ever bored of my thoughts on Eldarin government.
"Well... You may not know this, but I have admired you from afar, as my sister's friend, ever since I saw you at that book signing Elemmirë had given here, in Tirion; and I think the time is ripe for me to ask permission to court you?" you declared swiftly.
I was dumbstruck. I was your junior, by sixty-five years, and your sister's best friend. "What would Artanis think of this? She would not want to share me with you, her brother, though you are the best beloved of them all."
You scowled. "Pay no heed to what Artanis thinks! A person can make new friends but they cannot make new love."
I thought about what you said for awhile and knew that the next sound out of my lips would change my life. "I... I will be yours, but when Artanis finds out she will still be furious and your parents will be too, I am sure," I replied hesitantly. Though your parents were friendlier to the common people, I was sure, they had hoped their eldest son would wed someone of exception, not his sister's playmate.
"Ari, I have the solution to that problem," you said with that confident tone of yours.
I smiled guiltily, but couldn't hide the ecstatic emotions inside of me when you called me 'Ari.'. "And what might be that solution?"
"It is that neither of us will tell anyone of this until you are sure you want to wed me," you said seriously.
"Why?"
"Why?" you asked. I thought I almost heard a mocking tone in your voice when you asked. "Well, because you will lose a friend. I also don't want you to be in the public eye..." Our thoughts then, I knew, both turned to the courtship between the Prince Turukáno and the Lady Elenwë, and how much stress and pressure they had been under.
We both then vowed to never tell a living soul until we were sure we would wed. Ever since that day when you asked me to be your lover, I looked up to you and believed in what you said was for the best. It was easy not to tell anyone of our courtship when you were here, under the same vow as I was, but without you I don't know if I have the strength. Our love for each other could not withstand your wanderlust; and I feel that I am no longer bound to the vow.
All this makes me wonder if I should wait for you or not. You broke our vow of love, yet it is partly my fault. I never tried to persuade you to remain. Life for us will continue until the end of Arda, but I do not want to waste a part of my life waiting for someone who left me behind so he could feed his wanderlust. You, unlike me, are one who can not remain in the same place for long. Not even Endor, I bet, with her vast forests, lofty mountains, and mighty seas, can feed you of all the wonders you want to see. It is a difficult choice, but how am I to know that you are not going to bestow your love upon a maiden born on that distant shore? Namarië! Maybe we will meet again, but I do not look forward to it.
Chapter End Notes
Namarië- farewell in Quenya
When I refer to the years, it is automatically referring to Years of the Trees.
Artanis=Galadriel
Findarato=Finrod
