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
Trinkets and Treasures
Create a fanwork about an object that is magical or otherwise valuable in some way, either canonical or of your own invention. 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.
Taboos Were Made To Be Broken (January 2017) by Kaylee Arafinwiel
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Forward to Neldor
Chapter three of "The Steward's Tale", Celepharn and Neldiel are Celeborn's cousin and his wife, mine and Emma's OCs. I2 - Laws
Slowly, the elves made their way through the labyrinthine passages of Menegroth. They knew them intimately, of course, and would not become lost, though intruders certainly would, Lúthien thought. She would have almost welcomed an invasion at that moment to distract her parents from this...this atrocity. They made their way from Elu's halls outside, and toward the Esgalduin. Oh, Esgalduin, please, run high, rush swiftly, anything to stop my father from his course, she thought. But the river did not oblige; in fact, its ford was almost ridiculously low. Lúthien doubted she'd so much as wet her skirt hems crossing to the other side. Naneth's doing, she told herself.
They crossed the nearly dry river, and the Esgalduin seemed to refill itself once the Elves were across, apparently confirming Lúthien's assumption. It did not take long, after that, for them to reach Neldor, and the rest of the family began arriving from various mansions and manors, as well.
Galadhon's gaze swept silently over his family as they gathered. It was clear that none of them knew why they had been summoned, though at least some of them looked grave, others worried. His niece-by-marriage, Lady Neldiel, who had always been closest to Lúthien, looked pleased to see the Princess, though her expression soon changed to one of doubt.
Elu made no move to explain. Instead he looked to Elmo, who stepped forward a pace. "It is the will of our King that Neldor be fitted with a secure house, for the keeping of a particular...prisoner, who has defied him." He faltered, and Lúthien exerted all her will not to cry, faint, scream or try to slap her father, much as she would like to do any or all those things. I will be an obedient daughter...for now, she reminded herself. Besides, Neldiel is watching.
Galadhon still had his hand on Lúthien’s back. He wasn't holding her up - she was strong, she didn't need that; but she did need to know she was supported.
Lúthien felt grateful for the support. She needed it. No one had said anything to her uncle's pronouncement, but as Melian stepped forward to face Neldor, and sent forth her power, Lúthien looked up.
Supplies had been brought, and Lúthien watched with trepidation as the wood planks fitted themselves together, forming first a sturdy platform with a railing round it, then four walls and a roof over all. There were windows and doors, but the Princess didn't think for a moment they'd be passable unless Melian willed it so. At least for now.
The process seemed to take hours to Lúthien, but in reality, it was no more than twenty minutes before the house was ready. Lúthien had been watching it be put together, and shut out the crowd of family from her mind. Now, however, she looked round to see what they were doing - particularly Neldiel.
Neldiel was standing at Celepharn's side, and like everyone else her eyes were fixed on the house. Her head was slightly tilted though, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"Daeradar didn't say who Uncle Elu wished to imprison," Celepharn murmured in Neldiel's ear.
"As long as it's not me," Neldiel murmured back.
"Have you done anything to defy him lately, minx?" Celepharn replied, for Neldiel's ears alone.
"Well, probably," Neldiel said. Nothing that would warrant being imprisoned in a treehouse, though.
Celepharn rolled his eyes. Of course.
"Call forth the prisoner, my queen," Elu said, his eyes on Melian. "It is time for her to be remanded to the custody of Neldor."
"Come, hil-nin," Melian said, her own minor defiance against Elu. She did not care what the daughters of Elmo's House thought of that. "It is time."
Lúthien's resolve was shaken a little. 'My heir', she thought. Well and so, she was. And it did not mean that Melian approved of Beren or disapproved of Elu, she supposed. All it meant was that Melian still lay claim to her, thought of her as more than just 'the prisoner'. Swallowing, she stepped forward, her blue and green gown's hem rustling in the grass.
A ripple of shock ran through the gathered Elves, and an audible gasp came from Neldiel. "This cannot be true," Galadhon heard her insisting.
"Adar, Naneth," Oropher said quietly. "Why would he imprison Lúthien? That cannot be right."
Celepharn wished he had answers, either for his beloved or his heir.
