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
Kings & Kink
Throughout history, wherever there is writing, there is erotica. This challenge pulls its prompts from "vintage" works of romance and erotica. (Nonromantic and nonsexual options are also available.) 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.
Bombarded by Luxa
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Chapter 1
"Why are you so sad?"
Maedhros was shaken out of his reverie by a timid voice coming from around his knees. He looked down and found his legs bombarded by two wide-eyed, dark-haired boys with unbearably cute twin expressions of wonder.
Maedhros looked back up. Why did they have to look so Noldor? Ah, well, at least they weren't redheads; one must be thankful for the simple things.
He only stared at the twins instead of replying, so one of them, Valar knew which, repeated the question.
"Why are you so sad?"
"I am not sad," he said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest.
"But you never smile," said the other twin.
Eyes that wide and innocent (but not really innocent, for those eyes had witnessed more slaughter and mayhem than a child had any right to see) should not be allowed.
"I smile," said Maedhros. "Just not often."
The eyes stared at him uncomprehendingly.
He sighed.
"I am not sad," he repeated. "I am always like this."
"You are always sad?"
"No," said Maedhros, beginning to remember what it was like to be around children, around inquisitive boys who never stopped asking questions.
"But...you never smile."
This conversation was going in circles.
"I was tortured," said Maedhros shortly. "And my brothers died."
"That's why you're sad?"
To hell with it.
"Yes."
The eyes lifted their unbearable gaze off of him and stared at each other for a moment. Then they returned to focus on his face.
"What's torture?" asked a twin.
Maedhros did not know how to answer that.
"The Enemy hurt me," he said finally. "Like when you trip and fall and skin your knee, only much worse."
"They skinned all of you?" asked a twin.
Maedhros suppressed the urge to shudder, if only because what the child said was not so far from the truth.
"Something like that," he said. "Combine all the hurts you've ever had and make even more painful."
The twins' eyes filled with tears. Listen to him; no wonder these boys didn't like him, he did stupid things like tell them what torture was.
"Poor Maedhros," said one of the twins.
"That must have really hurt," said the other one.
"No wonder you're so sad," said the first one.
And without any warning at all, the twins simultaneously hugged his knees tightly, so hard it seemed they would never let go. Maedhros was at a loss for what to do.
"We won't let the meanies have you again," said one of the twins, the one Maedhros thought may have been Elros.
That was when Maglor returned from gathering firewood and found his stoic, distant, I-refuse-to-get-too-close-to-them brother being hugged to death by twin bastions of sympathy.
Maedhros was at a complete loss to explain himself.
