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.
Not Love, Perhaps by The Wavesinger
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Not Love, Perhaps
A need, at times, to be together and talk,
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark narrow places,
And meet more easily nightmare faces
—From an untitled Haladin poem (author unknown)
Evil things lurk in the dark; I can feel their eyes on me, on us. Those behind us, enmeshed in the protective circle of warriors, radiate a chilling, biting fear, a fear which I must admit I share.
“Breathe,” a familiar voice instructs.
“Yes, my lady.” A touch on my back and there is relief. This, however, is short-lived; dread grows I feel the familiar presence move away. Suddenly, I realize this is a different fear to that of lurking malice and—
“Duck, my lady!”
My warning, it appears, is in time; a huge, many-legged shape is intercepted by a silver sword. Warriors immediately ring it, but two more creatures scuttle out of the dark.
Some are shielding the civilians still, I know; I need not spare them thought. My sword moves as an extension of my hand, and I can feel the other women fighting around me. By some accident, I am fighting back-to back with my lady; we fend off pincers until an opening appears and—
“Go!”
My lady runs between the monstrous legs and attacks the soft underbelly while a group of five distracts the creature. A few slow, agonizing moments; then the creature groans, and flails, and we leap out of the way as the great body falls.
A breath, and I look around; one more has been brought down, and the last is dying. There is nothing more to do here; the evil crawls back to the shadows, waiting for another chance.
“There is nothing more to do here,” my lady says. Her voice carries. “Well done, my warriors.”
The others nod in acknowledgement and move back to the group. This is nothing out of the ordinary. We must cover as much ground as possible before the little protection the few rays of sunlight which penetrate the black clouds offer disappears.
I move towards our leader. “My lady. You did well.”
“As did you,” my lady says. Her voice is strong, and no other would catch the wavering tone, but she is my love—not physically, neither of us desire that, but in the ways of the heart—and I recognize it for what it is.
“You are wounded!”
“It is a small cut, beloved,” my lady murmurs. “I will see to it before we start moving.” Once, long ago, she would have protested the need for even this. Now, we have learned, the hard way, that pride is not worth the cost of a wound untreated.
“Let me.”
When my lady hesitates, I add, “It will take less time this way.”
“As you wish.”
That is not the whole truth; both of us know this. My lady acquiesces because it gives me comfort to do what I can to save her pain. She is ever a leader; she gives and gives for her people, and this is one more giving. And yet it is more. Her fingers brush my cheek as I kneel to dress the wound (shallow, as she said). An unspoken message: you are as much comfort to me as I am to you.
