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
Arda Underground
Take the dark back streets of one of Arda's cities, explore an unsigned tavern or hovel, and meet the people too insignificant or unsavory to make it into the history books. 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.
Surrender after the War of Wrath by Uvatha the Horseman
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Hunted
Sauron tries to evade the Hunters of Orome after Melkor meet his end.
Hunted
Near Angband, FA 1000
He flattened his face against the ground and held his breath. In the distance, he heard the horns of Oromë, the baying of the dogs. They were hunting down the stragglers. They were hunting him.
If they found him, he was finished.
A group of them thundered past, pursuing a terrified Balrog. He tripped, and before he got up, the horsemen closed the distance between them. The first horseman to reach him raised his spear, drew back his arm, took aim.
“No, please! I yield!” he begged.
Mairon realized the Balrog was someone he knew. He remembered him from the Battle of Gondolin. He’d belonged to the squad of Balrogs that attacked the hidden city. Mairon was their Captain, after Gothmog was killed.
Balrogs were simple creatures. None of them were clever, but this one was hardworking and reliable, and Mairon liked him.
He rammed the spear through his body. There was a sickening crunch. Mairon heard a scream, and then a few whimpers, but they didn’t last long. He heard Oromë’s hunters laughing.
They were so close. He could hear them talking among themselves.
“We chased him into the deepest dungeons of Angband. I wasn’t close enough to see what happened, but I heard a little of it. He begged for his life. He was sobbing, ‘I surrender, I surrender!’ They didn’t stop. It was like watching a pack of dogs tear a rabbit to pieces.
“The pleas gave way to screams. I heard him cry out in fear and anger. Then it changed in tone, to a scream of unbearable pain. And then silence. That was the worst. I listened for a long time, but heard nothing more. The pack surrounding him broke up, relaxed now. It was over.”
Melkor. They got him. Mairon didn’t make a sound. If he had, they would have found him. He waited until they were well away, then let grief roll over him in waves.
He realized he had been lying to himself. Until now, he thought Melkor would endure trial and a return to his old cell, from which he would never emerge. There would be no trial. Melkor was gone.
Angband was in ruins, Melkor was defeated.
He hated being hunted, hated the suspense of waiting to be caught. He knew he was a target. He knew they won’t let him escape.
He was tired. He wanted to go home.
He longed for his old life before the Rebellion, for familiar faces, his own bed. He would beg Aulë to take him back. So much had happened since he’d left the Mansions of Aulë. Would Aulë even recognize him?
