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
Middle-earth Olympics
Complete Olympic events Middle-earth style! 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.
The Forging of the Ring by Uvatha the Horseman
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April 28 – In Hindsight
Sauron second-guesses his decision to change the design at the last minute.
April 28 In Hindsight
Mairon sat in his room in the highest floor of the gatehouse tower. A view of the plain of Gorgoroth filled one window. Lava shot high into the air and fell against the slope of the cinder cone. Orodruin was erupting hard, and had been ever since he put on the Ring.
He studied the papers spread out on the table before him: sketches, notes, drawings, calculations, and schematics. His notebook from the Forging stood open to the pages where he had drawn the new design.
Mairon couldn't stop thinking that he should have made his original design instead of the new one. The new design turned out well, but he regretted how much it had cost him.
He suspected the new design had a flaw in it which caused the near-fatal glitch. The new design looked good on paper, but he'd sketched it out in a single day. He'd barely reviewed it, and he hadn't tested it at all.
If he'd built the original design as planned, the first infusion would have taken, and he could have completed the Ring without sacrificing the greater part of his own power. He'd developed the original design over a number of years, and while it wasn't as elegant as the new design, it was well thought out.
It didn't matter now. He couldn't do anything about it, but he wanted to know where the flaw was.
Mairon found two blank sheets of paper and laid them side by side, one for each design. He listed the important features of each as methodically as he could. Diagrams, schematics, and calculations showed where the two designs were the same and where they were different.
It was as he'd thought. The original design was serviceable and workmanlike, but not particularly efficient. The new design, the one he did make, was sleek and elegant. As far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong with either one.
Finally he found the flaw. One of his assumptions was wrong, and that's what got him into trouble. But it affected both designs equally, both designs were flawed.
Then he noticed something else. The efficiency of the new design created a margin of safety the original design didn't have. And because of his bad assumption, he needed that margin.
Mairon stared at the numbers, not getting it at first. Then he did.
If he hadn't made the design change the day before the Forging, or if he'd let the coin toss decide on the original design, the third infusion wouldn't have been enough, and he would have died.
A wave of nausea swept over him. The floor fell away; he staggered and grabbed the edge of the table for support.
