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
Season's Greetings
Create a fanwork in which one (or several) of the holidays of Middle-earth plays a role. 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.
Atanatari: Of the Three Houses of the Edain by Himring
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Snowballs
Winter in Dor-lomin: two episodes in the childhood of Turin Turambar.
The first shows him with his little sister.
In the second, Sador, the cripple Turin befriended, tries to comfort him during the first winter after his sister's loss.
Written for Dreamflower for Fandom Stocking 2014.
Rating: Teens. Warning: reference to canonical character death
Lalaith has a brilliant idea. She makes a snowball—little more than a loose fistful of snow—and, rising up on the ball of her feet and taking careful aim, hurls it straight into the bushes. Giggling, she runs forward. Amid bare and evergreen branches, Turin stands head and shoulders spattered with powdery snow—as was the plan!
‘Snowballs, Turin! Come play snowballs!’
But her peculiar brother is staring at her with one of his peculiar expressions.
‘Turin! Turin hurt?’
He mutely shakes his head.
‘Turin sad?’
She puts her little hand in his. He grasps it, a bit too tightly, but Lalaith doesn’t protest or try to withdraw her fingers. Why didn’t he want to play? Never mind, he’s looking happier now and he’s holding her hand, so it must be all right.
***
Turin makes snowballs, a whole series of them, all perfectly round, patted down to a hard, icy surface. They sit on the ground before him in a row, lined up like artillery. Sador looks at them and shakes his head.
‘Who do you want to attack with those, son of Hurin?’
‘Lalaith… Urwen wanted to play at throwing snowballs with me. I refused…’
Sador picks up a snowball and prises it apart with his fingernails. The hard surface gives and the ball crumbles into pieces.
‘Your sister wouldn’t have held that against you. She was always ready to play and quick to come up with a new game when any of her ideas didn't take off…
Shall we make a snowman together, Turin, you and I? We could use these snowballs of yours to make a start with. Or maybe a snow deer, if you prefer?’
Chapter End Notes
A slimmer version of the scene with Lalaith (cut to 100 words) was posted to Tolkien Weekly as a drabble at Tolkien Weekly for the prompts "ball of the foot" and "snowball" under the title "The Game".
