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 Master of Mirecourt by The Wavesinger
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The Master of Mirecourt
The Master has been a Mirecourt luthier as long as Élinda can remember. The Master—that’s what everyone calls him, even those who look decades older than him—came, occasionally, to drop pearls of wisdom upon aspiring luthiers when Élinda was a student in École Nationale de Lutherie, working for her DMA, and, before that, her CAP and BT. But the first memories come from earlier; even when Élinda was a child toddling after her father (whose life’s work is luthiere as well), the whispers about the Master and the rare glimpses of him were a part of her life.
There are stories, among the luthiers, that, long ago, the Master had been a famous musician; that, if not for the scars on his hands (which did not, however, prevent him from crafting instruments in a way no other could imitate) he would have won fame and renown all over the world.
He is old, everyone says. He’s been a luthier past living memory, and that brings its own stories, more fanciful, now; tales of families passing down traditions to sons who look eerily like their fathers, of strange spells and witchcraft.
And then there are the whispers, the folktales reserved for children; that he was there when Mirecourt’s proud traditions began with the legendary old master Tywersus, that he is an immortal (“Like those in Le Seigneur des anneaux,” one of her playmates had explained wisely), that he is a banished god wandering the world creating music.
These rumors, Élinda knows, are utter fabrication, but now, standing in front of the door of the Master’s workshop, she can’t help but remember them as she knocks softly.
“Come in,” a voice calls, more melodious than she remembers it to be.
She does, slowly.
The workshop is like all workshops; well-organized, tools hanging on the walls, neat racks of equipment, current projects laid out carefully on clean surfaces.
She takes in these details, then turns to the Master.
He looks young, maybe ten or fifteen years older than herself, and his long black hair covers his ears. There is a look of another world about him—
But no; her mind is being too fanciful. Élinda endeavors to push these thoughts away as she bows her head. “Master.”
The Master laughs. “No need to be so formal, child. After all, you will be apprenticed to me for the next few years.”
Apprenticed to the Master. Élinda still can’t believe that he chose her, of all people, that he saw the violin she made and considered it good enough to take her on as apprentice. “I...”
“Names, then,” the Master says. “I don’t intend to call you ‘child’ forever, and though the fact that everyone calls me ‘The Master’ is flattering, if not exactly a truthful epithet, it’s a name that won’t last daily wear and tear.”
“I...” Élinda swallows, and somehow find her voice. “I’m Élinda.”
“Élinda?” The Master smiles, but his eyes grow opaque for a moment (or is it simply the light?). “I knew someone whose name was very like yours, once, a long time ago.” He’s silent, for a moment. Then he appears to shake himself out of his reverie. “You may call me Mae.”
“Mae?”
“It’s not a traditional male name, I know.” The Master—Élinda might, one day, be able to call him Mae, but she’ll never think of him as that, she knows—grins wryly. “And it’s not my birth name, but it reminds me, again, of someone I used to know. Besides which, I love the connotations.”
“I, uh.” Fool, Élinda screams at herself. He’ll think you’re useless and send you away. Say something! But her voice seems to be stuck to her throat, again.
The Master, mercifully, doesn’t laugh. Instead, he says, “Don’t be nervous, please. I don’t bite, whatever they’ve told you.”
Élinda manages a shaky laugh. This is silly. She’s seen him, heard him talk before. Why would she get suddenly star-struck?
“I know!” The Master’s eyes brighten. “How about we go and get something to eat? It’ll help—food always does.”
Élinda finds herself nodding. The Master moves towards the door, and beckons her to follow.
