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.
Ten Counts by Ulan
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Galadriel and Celeborn
Landscape
The first time Galadriel saw Celeborn, she mistook him for a Maia like Melian; his hair shone moonlit-silver, his brows were set with wisdom, and the trees seemed to bow down to his stillness.
Loner
She noticed that Celeborn stood apart from others, but unlike Galadriel, who did so out of pride and what she thought was acceptance for being different, Celeborn did so because it suited him, and because he was simply content in the peace of his own mind.
Beautiful
Celeborn would just as often compliment Galadriel for being "beautiful" as she was "strong and skillful", which was uncanny, as people had thus far seemed divided between seeing her as only one of each thing.
Massacre
Galadriel never spoke to anyone about the things she witnessed in Alqualondë, which was why she was surprised when she found herself pouring the horrors of it all to Celeborn's patient ears, especially considering that he did not even ask.
Power
Many Elves looked up to Celeborn as a lord in Doriath because he was constant and steadfast, but he did not seem to desire more power for himself; Galadriel, who marched after Fëanor precisely for power, struggled at first to understand this.
Obey
Brother Finrod laughed the first time he saw his "stubborn Artanis" finally obey another Elf; Galadriel scoffed at him, and said that it was easy to do what Celeborn bade because Celeborn's suggestions just always made sense.
Dry
Galadriel was not one to laugh often, but Celeborn's subtle humour and dry observations seldom failed to at least make her grin behind her hand (for diplomatic reasons) or huff out a sound of amusement.
Evolution
Celeborn taught Galadriel many things: humility, the importance of patience, the wisdom to be found in stillness, the value of silence, the ability to laugh at serious things, and the realisation that even the most stubborn hearts can still thaw and fall in love.
Promise
After a lifetime of being told that her ambition and her interests were unbecoming of a lady, Celeborn's marriage vow to her that he loved and would keep loving her "for all that you are now and for all that you still want to be" served as Galadriel's reminder as to why Celeborn was the one.
Child
For all her pride and desire to leave a legacy, when she saw and felt that her beautiful daughter would take after her father more than her mother, Galadriel nonetheless felt joy and contentment the likes of which she had never known.
Chapter End Notes
I love the idea of Celeborn and Galadriel. I love that Galadriel was known to be the greater of the two, coupled by signs that theirs was a strong union. I think Celeborn became one of my favourite characters precisely because of this. :)
