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 6 : The natives
It was well past midnight when King Turgon jumped out his four-poster bed to knock on the closest door.
"Penlodh! Wake up!"
He had to wait several minutes before Penlodh came to the door wearing a night shirt and night cap and holding a candle.
"What happened, my King?"
"Excuse me, my good Elf, but if I take liberties in waking you at this unholy hour, it's because the Sindar have started singing again just below the tower! It's impossible to ignore!"
The two elves went out to the balcony. Ten floors below, a group of blond musicians were in the middle of playing and singing, interspersed with laughter.
"Can't they sing somewhere else?! Also what even is that instrument?"
"I believe it might be a violin, my Lord."
"Argh, and that language... I'll never get used to it!"
* * *
300 years before in Mithrim
"Here are the indigenous people of this country, the grey Elves of Beleriand, also called the Sindar," Turgon noted before the aboriginal ambassador.
"Demat!" Responded the Sindar.
"What a strange language," Turgon wondered aloud. "Penlodh, you're an Elf of science... In your opinion, what are they trying to tell us?"
"Sindarin is a Celtic language," explained the Noldo, "if I'm right about the roots from the language of the Teleri in Valinor, I think we can reasonably conclude that it meant something like 'salutations' or 'hello'."
"Very well. But what does Celtic mean? " Asked Turgon.
"I don't know, it's a term I remember from books we were given by the Valar. But I'm not sure of the exact definition. I think it might be a generic term someone came up with randomly. That said, I've never been able to trace the etymology."
"Another divine mystery. Sometimes I get the impression they hide certain things from us on purpose."
* * *
"Like when they said that Quenya is a Finno-Ugric language," grumbled the smith Rog, head of the House of the Hammer of Wrath.
"But then what does Finno-Ugric mean?" asked Glorfindel.
Dressed all in white from head to toe, he shone in Rog's somber red forge like a great daisy.
"I don't know. I asked Penlodh, however.
"You are a curious Elf."
"But he said he didn't know. That's what it's called, that's all. It's what the Valar said."
"Have you ever noticed that when scholars don't know something, or they don't want anyone to contradict them, they always say it came from the Valar?"
"If you want my opinion, it's a very good excuse."
"But practical, for the most part."
* * *
"And that there, the flute with some kind of large pocket?" asked Turgon from his balcony.
"Bagpipes, Majesty," replied Penlodh.
Telerin Song
'Tis not the Elf takes to the sea
'Tis the sea takes to the Elf
I heed the ocean's call
A Tuesday I recall
I traded out my boots
And my old winter coat
For shoes fit for a boat
And cape of ocean blue
I left behind the drips
Who told me to take care
The sea is full of shit
From the fish living there
When the wind starts to blow
So too must I go
Once the wind changes course
We really must be off
'Tis not the Elf takes to the sea
'Tis the sea takes to the Elf
I heed the ocean's call
And she's screaming
Screw it all
I'm seasick all the time
Upon the angry waves
I threw up after nine
And also after eight
I've been bruised all over
And slept amidst the damp
It costs to be a rover
But there's pleasure to be had
When the wind starts to blow
So too must I go
Once the wind changes course
We really must be off
Ohohohohoh hisséo!
'Tis not the Elf takes to the sea
'Tis the sea takes to the Elf
I heed the ocean's call
I'm telerin after all
I'd sail around the world
Just to see each port
If only all the world
Would let me have my sport
I'd fly to the four winds
And fuck the harbor whores
And the oceans would sing
My name forevermore
My name forevermore
When the wind starts to blow
So too must I go
Once the wind changes course
We really must be off
Ohohohohoh hisséo!
'Tis not the Elf takes to the sea
'Tis the sea takes to the Elf
I heed the ocean's call
My boat is in its thrall
My noble ship is proud
Such beauty and such might
The three most famous masts
Look like a bird in flight
Olwë, Annaël
Cirdan et Riguidel
Adorn no piece of junk
Or aught that's not made well
When the wind starts to blow
So too must I go
Once the wind changes course
We really must be off
'Tis not the Elf takes to the sea
'Tis the sea takes to the Elf
I heed the ocean's call
A Friday I recall
Mother don't you cry
Your son's not a failure
Father don't you cry
Your son is a sailor
See your little child
He sails the seven seas
It's naught to make you smile
But it's my destiny
Chapter End Notes
1 - ""Demat" is a breton word meaning "Hello". Breton language is a Celtic language that has strong resemblance with Welsh - and therefore Sindarin. Bretagne/Brittany is a maritime country in France, and Bretons are said to like drinking (like Thranduil). So the Sindar/Teleri being like Bretons is a private joke to French readers. Bagpipes are a typical Breton musical instrument.
2 - Originally the song is by the french singer Renaud :
