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.
Emotions-- A series of vignettes by MisbehavingMaiar
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Vicarious Joy, Paranoia
Simple, animal joys versus compounding, spiraling mania; two emotions in two different fortresses.
VICARIOUS JOY:
He bares his teeth so they may lick his fangs and bearded chin. They show their respect, but they also wag their tails.
The pack hunts and plays and fights and marks the forest. There is fur and scat and bones; there are pups to feed and rivals to kill. They are more clever than wolves, less convoluted than humans. Their paws are long and finger-like, their legs bend like a man’s when squatting. They have few words in their language, but it is nuanced in scent and sign. Love runs deep in their blood, familial, hierarchal.
There are nights when throne and tower feel like prison, when he must fly and run and raise his hackles under the moon. He is honored when they carefully bite his jaw, when they move aside for him at a kill. They know he is not a true wolf even when he wears their shape, but he is still one of the pack.
And when they howl together, the whole of Beleriand shivers, and Thû’s heart races.
PARANOIA:
Trust no one who does not fear or love you. Trust them only as far as you can verify their actions when they do not think you are looking.
All kindness is a veil behind which lies a knifepoint. All pity is condescending. All gifts are gifts to the giver first. All generosity is suspect.
Second-chances serve the judge not the criminal.
Redemption is a poisonous dream.
All hearts are selfish.
Anything worth having must be taken by force. No one gives anything good away freely.
Given the chance, everyone would steal from you. Given the chance, anyone would stab you in the back. Stab first. Save yourself. Win at all costs. Give nothing back. Don’t let them in. Don’t swallow their honeyed venom. They’ll kill you. They’ll take everything from you. They’re coming. They will never understand and they will never forgive and you will always, always be different.
Trust nothing. Trust no one. Without power you have nothing. They will hollow you out and leave you to dry in the sun. They will break you and chain you and hide you away and all the love in the world won’t save you.
Run. Run. Keep running. Hide, fight, flee, keep fighting. Kill them first. Take what you need. Give nothing back.
Keep running.
