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
Holiday Party
No matter if you're in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it's a time of year to think about holidays. Whether you're bundling up in blankets or slipping a swimsuit into your suitcase, we invite you to an SWG holiday party! 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 Supreme Artist by belegur
| | |
Chapter 1
PART ONE
THE CROOKED VISION
. . .
“I have always been certain in my father's love.”
“And I in the love of my father,” he says “yet he does things to grieve me.”
“My father does those things too.” I say and smile “I know that all these things here are toys he left to make me happy, but I am not happy. He asks me all the time why am I not happy, and I ask him: Why can't I make my own toys, father?
“And what does he say?”
“He says that he loves me and that he wants me back. He says that if I were to glace back, he would run towards me, hug me and kiss me. And then he would make a feast and the halls of Eä would be halls of merriment.”
“So why don't you?”
“Because I am certain in his love. Whatever I do he will not stop loving me, because I am his son, and even after a thousand years he would hug me and kiss me if I were to glace back.”
“Do you have to squander everything before that?”
“In the end, when I glance back, and I am naked and beaten and hurt he will throw upon me a beautiful raiment of stars, and everyone looking for me will overlook me mistaking me for the night sky.”
“That's a nice fancy.”
“Shut up. It's not a fancy. It will happen. He promised me that.”
“He didn't. You're lying.”
“My friend, I am not lying.” I lean to kiss his forehead and get my lips wet from the water. My friend blurs, then stills. “You will see, in the end, I will be...”
“In the middle of a purely vain enterprise, are we?” a voice behind me says.
My friend smiles at me, and then I send him away with my hand, and wash my face with water which held him like sunshine. With my eyes closed I smile and say: “And your reasons to be here are selfless?”
“Just don't blow your nose in the water.”
“Too late for that. I also took a piss in it.”
My brother laughs and sprinkles me with water that held my friend and that held sunshine, and which in his hand doesn't hold anything. He then kneels on the grass in his blue robe and behind him, in the same shade of blue, are his blue skys, cold and wreathed with laughter as a head of a victor.
“So, what did you think of the festival yesterday?”
“It was nice.” I say.
“And what did you think of the artist?”
“He is vain, but likeable.”
“And of his work?”
“Very clever.”
“Did you get a chance to talk to him?”
“I didn't.”
“Would you like to? I told him to stop by today. Shame we don't have a real night here. It would be something to see them in the dark.”
“Yes, they would be beautiful.”
Light as that in the dead black space where cold stars dwell - it would be like something living was put among the stars and it wouldn't fall behind them in majesty.
“I didn't want to say anything yesterday, but you seemed like you wanted to talk to him.”
“I'll talk to him today.”
“Try to make friends with him.” he says “I think that would be sweet.”
“I don't think he likes me very much.”
“Take a chance.”
. . .
Their light left the man who wore them in such a dark that at first I didn't notice him.
“He must have plucked them out of the sky” I thought and turned my eyes to the Star-Kindler expecting to see her wrathful because this one impoverished her sky. But she too was in awe and joy, in her sky-patch gown, a moment ago brilliant and pleasing to my eyes, but now blackend as charcoal. She said: “I bid you, bring them here so I can bless them.” And they came to her, carried on the head of this man as lights on a ship that was all darkness and that sailed on seas that were all darkness under the sky that was the same darkness.
“All-father” she called on the one that is all mercy, the protector of thieves and murderers and liars “don't let any foul hand touch them. Don't let them suffer the touch of the wicked. Anything that is foul and reaches for them in desire, burn.”
He wore them on his forehead at first but in time it seemed he grew jealous of our privilege and so he held them in his hands even though his hands then vanished in their brilliance.
I see now his face and it is proud and grim. He doesn't notice me so I too must be in darkness. No, he keeps his head down in adoration of his work. Now he raises his head and smiles as the King of Arda says praise.
The Judge raises from his seat and says: “The fate of Arda – earth, sea and sky – is locked within them.”
The artist is then asked: “From what are they made of?” Aulë, the Smith, names many substances. But the artist shakes his head.
“The best blacksmiths don't keep their art secret.” scolds Aulë, but smiling “It's not only the greatness of the work that makes light, but even more so that it is recognized as a thing of the world and not of oneself. The greater the work, the more it belongs to the world.”
The artist bows before the Smith, but reveals nothing all the same.
