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.
Three Sentence Fics: Tolkien by Zdenka
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Chapter 1
prompt from ailavyn_siniyash: Silmarillion, Morgoth and Húrin, Elbereth
Aurë Entuluva
Day does come again, and night; thousands of them, passing over him on the mountain's peak, until he is weathered as the rocks.
He does not pray anymore; but at night Húrin gazes grimly upward at the host of stars and wonders if the stories told of the Star-Kindler were lies.
Morgoth laughs in his mind and taunts him: Pray to Me; I am the only Power Who hears you.
prompt from with_rainfall: The Silmarillion, Ancalimë, a new day
Ancalimë is dragged onto the steps in a cold dawn to meet the man they tell her afterwards is the King's Heir and her father.
That day marks the end of her peace; henceforth she is tossed back and forth between father and mother, Court and Emerië, like a small ship between too many winds. She lifts her chin and thinks, someday I will make them all come to me.
prompt from with_rainfall: Silmarillion, Sauron, man's greatest treasure
Precious
Númenor is his, to wear like a ring or a jewel. So afraid of death are they, these heirs of the Land of the Star, that they will give their wealth, the works of their hands, even their children to the temple fires. Sauron smiles and considers how best to let them destroy themselves.
prompt from ailavyn_siniyash: Silmarillion, Tar-Míriel, despair
Míriel is drowning, though she walks on solid land in Armenelos. The wave soaks her garments until she feels their weight pulling her down, climbs higher to choke the voice in her throat. She makes herself smile when she takes her place beside her husband the King; and each day, a little more of her is washed away.
prompt from ailavyn_siniyash: Silmarillion, Ar-Pharazôn, defeat
In the hour of his glory, Ar-Pharazôn cannot imagine defeat. Impossible, he thinks, impossible, even as the earth crashes down upon him. When the burning weariness and disgust become too great, he begs for it to end; but there is no answer.
Prompt from meridian_rose: Any, Any, stuck in the middle with you (filled as Silmarillion, Finarfin)
Caught in the middle of his brothers' quarrels, Finarfin makes peace where he can, soothing hurt pride and ruffled tempers again and again.
Yet he can feel control slipping from his grasp; bad enough if it were only the two contending princes, but their children and their followers take up the conflict, magnifying each slight out of proportion, until even the pronunciation of a word becomes a battleground.
He loves his brothers -- Fingolfin more simply, in Fëanor's case mixed with exasperation and pity -- but as the Noldor ask him more and more often, with their eyes and voices, Which side are you on? he longs to answer, I choose neither.
Prompt from wellinghall: Tolkien, Sir Orfeo meets Farmer Giles of Ham, any
Some Are of Weal, and Some of Woe
"Here now," said Giles, "what do you mean by distracting my dog?"
The harper -- disreputably dressed in rags and with a long tangled black beard -- looked up mournfully and answered,
"No more I care for hawk or hound;
in bitter sorrow I am bound,
and naught on earth may bring me bliss
without my lady Heurodis."
When the harper ceased playing in order to answer Giles, the spell of the music was broken; and Garm ran back to his master's side without the least shame, although a moment earlier he had been stretched out on the ground with his head resting upon his paws, caring for nothing but the music.
prompt from adaese: Silmarillion & What's Opera Doc (Or Bunny of Seville); Maglor & Bugs Bunny; you know it makes sense.
Well, what did you expect in a Silmarillion fic? A happy ending?
Maglor found himself chasing the rabbit through a burning town, while the rabbit, somehow contriving to stay a few steps ahead of him, twirled the Silmaril insouciantly between its fingers. He screeched to a halt at the top of a cliff which certainly had not been there a moment before; the rabbit missed its step and tumbled off, leaving Maglor feeling absurdly guilty. But wait, was the rabbit truly flapping its ears like wings -- and did it just wink at him?
