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.
Stand before my eyes* by Fadesintothewest
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Stand before my eyes*
She was dressed in blue. It pleased him. Oh it pleased him. Her lover, he was so different in his desires: fey, raw, unashamed, awash in old desires born at Cuiviénen, abandoned by his kin that left the shores of endor.
He was life. Findekáno.
He watched. Oh he loved to watch.
“Don’t say a word,” he whispered as she slipped the deep blue dress on, a simple thing. “Let me watch you.”
She saw the longing in his eyes, his grey blue eyes sparkled a brighter blue, the black of his eyes growing large with desire.
She was so unlike the cold Noldor. She was warm, earthen--no, not of the earth, but of the waters. Maiden of the sea, lady of the waves, she was of the Falas, belonging to the tides, the pull of the moon- his silver lover. With her he was unafraid to speak his deepest desires, to touch her in ways he could never have allowed himself to do, afraid to defile the laws of the Blessed Lands. But now? Now he was doomed, a miscreant, and yet he felt freer, finding his true self. Yet he knew he could not escape his doom.
She moved like a tree in a gentle breeze. The rise of her body, an image of her claiming him, bearing down on him, but he watched her move, the shift of the blue dress across her breasts, down her hips, hinting at what lay beneath made him catch his breath.
She smiled watching her lover’s gaze devour her. So simple, this seduction and he opened this world to her to feel how her body, her very fire could so easily render a man paralyzed in desire. But he would not touch her. He did not want to. He only wanted to watch. He had told her, “It’s a bit of secret, to know it is this simple to render a man powerless. Now that you know I shall not let you go.”
She pressed her back against the wall, facing him, stilling. Her eyes met his. It was too much. Her breath was coming harder, faster. He was burning, burning her. The excessiveness of his craving, the sheen on his skin, the dark hair tumbling wildly about him, made her want to fall before him, opening herself to him, begging him to take her, boldly.
“Stand before my eyes,” he whispered, “my lover, let me see you.” His hand was stroking his length, watching her as he pleasured himself, watching as the blue dress caught on her nipples beneath, the crease between her thighs hinting at the sweet prize that waited for him there. His passion building, his eyes shut for the briefest moment, a moan escaping his lips. His eyes open as his hands worked more feverishly contemplating the maiden before him. “Glass nín le/gen cened, It is my joy to see you, Syalmā-” his voice breaking, betraying his climbing need.
The maiden closed her eyes. She could not bear to look into his eyes. He was overwhelming her with his need, his lust. But she could not stop herself as her body slid against the wall behind her, almost writhing as if he was inside her, moving her with his body, pressed up against her, his largeness blooming inside her. Her hands found her own desire.
The sight of his lover claiming herself overcame him. He moved towards his lover, lifting her up against the wall to meet his height. Her eyes still shut.
Her legs wrapped around his and then he was in her. He was almost too much for her, his size overwhelming. She cried out, not in pain, but in absolution.
Their intimacy was wild, wild as the untamed lands of endor. Her hands pulled on his dark hair, pulling hard as he filled her with his animal desire, moving in her with a reckless and bold abandon. She felt the sharp rising and falling of his hot breath on her neck. She moaned. The sounds coming from her surprised her. They were feral and prurient.
He cried out her name, his own groans, guttural, base, breaking his very soul, tearing down any semblance of control, drowning the morality and virtues of bodily desires that had been cages.
His sound, the feeling of him swelling with his seed inside her—her release came like a river of fire, the walls that held him within her pulsated, closing tight around him.
He cried out, his release spent, feeling her desire close around him.
The two lovers clung to each other desperately, breathing heavily, all their energy spent.
Fingon gently carried Syalmā to his bed, careful not to slip out of her. They laid entangled in one another, his hands gently stroking her hair, moving to trace her soft lips, the delicate collarbone like a fine necklace.
“I have claimed you Findekáno Astaldo of the Noldor” Syalmā murmured.
Fingon sighed, he was lost to her. “My beautiful maiden of the sea, you have my life.”
Chapter End Notes
Endor-middle earth
Astaldo- Valiant
Syalmā- seashell (from the oldest tongue of the elves)
*So if someone can guess the song that inspired this, kudos to you.
