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.
Bloody silmarils, book I by Dilly
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Chapter 1 : The miller of Gondolin
Volume I
Chapter 1 : The miller of Gondolin
Usually, the king sat on a golden throne in the highest tower of the Hidden City, wearing a magnificent nightgown-like robe and a sullen, severe expression. His eyes, bright and grey, were like curtains of rain pierced by sunlight, and his dark hair framed a face so perfect in its symmetry it almost seemed to be carved in stone. A circlet of white gold sat atop his hair, which nearly reached the belt at his waist. It was a tradition for the males of his line to let their hair grow as long as possible as a sign of virility, a fact which had long been the subject of dubious jokes among the sons of Fëanor.
But this day, Turgon, second son of Fingolfin, was in a rather good mood. He had nearly convinced his daughter to wear shoes when she went out, in the hopes of preventing some terrible injury. He had also measured a ten centimeter increase in the height of the white tree he had planted on the hill, and only once had he thought of his dead wife, when he had just awoken.
"My king," announced his chamberlain, interrupting an unhappy second time, "a human being is requesting an audience."
"A mortal? Bring him in."
A few minutes later a simply dressed man of an indeterminate age walked into the hall. His brown hair curled around his face and his chin was bearded.
"Mister... Erik requests an audience with his majesty King Turgon!" announced a herald.
The man bowed, staring at the king with a curiosity only seen in humans. He was not young by the reckoning of his people, but his eyes were a youthful shade of green like the first grass seen after a damp winter.
"Erik?" echoed the king, with growing interest. "From which House?"
Oh, humans often reminded him of cute little squirrels. Furry, with a short life expectancy.
"Fram the house b'hind the mill, sire."
Turgon raised a pointed eyebrow.
"He's the miller of Gondolin, my lord", explained the chamberlain.
"Since when can anyone just walk into this valley as if it were a mill house?" (1)
Turgon caught the unintentional wordplay, but Erik was eager to reply:
"Our fahder had lived 'ere, and the fahder of my fahder, my lor'. Our fam'ly 'ad gone with thou to thy magic valley, to grow crops."
"Huh, good. And what is the reason for your visit here, O Miller?"
"That'd be the bread my lor', 'twill make thy people sick ! Us, we saw some dark stains on the wheat, but the elves as brought it still wanted it ground, pretending elves cannot get ill, like!"
"Which is true, actually. But carry on with your account. Who consumed that wheat and what were its effects? I fear some dark invention of Morgoth."
"The elves fram the third farm before the city, my lor'. They was dancin' and laughin' and couldn't stop. Jumped right into the trees and sang some songs as sprang out o' their 'eads ! Invented some rhymes 'bout my beard and 'bout the bread, and slept with their eyes wide open!"
"No, my good Erik," concluded the king. "They're not ill, they're just normally like that."
* * *
"Whose funeral is that, Penlodh?" asked the king. "I haven't heard anything about it."
"Nobody of importance," replied the chamberlain "just a human miller. He was well appreciated in the valley, although he had a strange way of expressing himself."
"A human miller... You mean Erik the Miller?"
"Indeed, your Majesty."
"But how did he perish, he was so young?! I met him only recently, he came to talk to me about a wheat disease..."
"Young? He was more than sixty years old my king, a venerable age for a human."
"Then it must have been ten... twenty... thirty years ago," Turgon concluded. "He only took thirty years to die?!"
"One of my aquaintances offered me this interesting comparison, your Majesty : humans are like goldfish. One day you may return to your house and find them dead, without any visible explanation. All you have to do is turn away for a minute in distraction. A sudden chill or a heat wave, a bowl of food added or subracted, and BAM! They're dead."
The king's face darkened; for the sixth time that day he was thinking about the large iceberg that had killed his wife.
Chapter End Notes
(1) « To walk in somewhere like into a mill »/ « Entrer quelque part comme dans un moulin » is a french expression meaning you can just walk right into a place without any boundaries and control.
