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.
Memory of joy by Aprilertuile
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Chapter 1
Nerdanel looked downcast, as she walked along the house's silent rooms to get to what had been Feanor's office.
She had wrecked the office in a fit of anger after the tragedy of Alqualondë and she left the house, swearing high and low she would never come back to this place... And later on, she had eaten her words.
They may have done terrible things... but Feanor was still her husband, and Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin, Amrod and Amras were still her children... And she missed them so much...
She had refused to rebuild Feanor's office. She had however converted it into a sort of memorial. She stored there belongings that her children and husband had left behind. Portraits, beloved objects left behind for some reason... Craft they made.
Things that, some days, she couldn’t bear to look at, or use. Maybe someday those things would be back at their original place…
She wouldn't see any of them in so long if ever before the breaking of the world... She knew it. And that room was her way to grieve for them and honor them.
The house was so silent it was eerie, though she started to get used to it now.
Not that she lacked of occupation. They had had so many things to do since the exile, and more so, since the exiled started to come back... Smoothing fractured relationships wasn't that easy, as she well knew.
As soon as she entered the room, her attention was taken by an instrument placed carefully under a glass panel, under a window.
One of Makalaurë's instruments. The first string instrument he ever played.
It was a child size instrument, able to fit on one's laps. The base of it was wood. Wood, silk and pearl. Crafted by Feanor, of course. That elf could be infuriating when he wished to or more to the point when he refused to listen to reason, but he'd have given anything to his family. How many instruments had he crafted for Makalaurë all those years ago... ?
Nerdanel remembered perfectly the first time she ever saw that instrument.
* * *Memory* * *
Maglor had always been a bright child. And much to his brother's amusement, he kept singing and humming wordless tunes whenever he was free of lessons.
And Feanor had picked up on this early on and gifted the child all kind of little child size instrument. And to her joy, the child always took to them like a duck to water.
It was cute to see his eternal enthusiasm every time Feanor gave his son a new instrument to play with.
And that day made no exception.
Little Maglor was 8 at the time, when he came running to his mother, a new instrument in hands, his brother following him at a more sedate pace, smiling, his eyes showing bright enjoyment of the situation.
"Mother, Mother ! Look what father gave me !
-I see, Little Bird, I see." Nerdanel answered with a smile.
And the little one had sat down at her feet and placed the dark wooden instrument on his laps.
The bottom of the instrument was a thick dark wood sounding box, on one side the 7 strings were attached to a crossbar, and on the other side, the strings were secured to a tail piece.
And little Maglor ran his fingers along the strings, picking a somewhat disjointed melody, before settling into an easy rhythm that seemed to delight him.
"It's beautiful, Little Bird, but I am busy. Can you stay with your brother and show him what you can do ?" Asked Nerdanel gently.
Her youngest son looked sad a moment, but her eldest kneeled next to his brother and murmured something into his ear that brightened the child's face immediately... And picked him up, instrument included, receiving giggles as he lifted his younger brother.
"We'll see you at meal time, mother." Smiled Nelyo, kissing her cheek before waltzing out of the room with an enthusiastic child giggling and murmuring in his brother's ears.
* * *Memory* * *
That instrument had, of course, been perfected over the years and has been replaced by Feanor as his son grew.
She had many memories of peaceful evening spent listening to Malgor playing that instrument, nimble fingers flying from string to string. Creating a particular atmosphere out of every note. Often joyous, sometimes melancholic, sometimes sad.
And how many times did he put his brothers to sleep with this very instrument ?
This instrument... This instrument has been at the heart of the family for many years... As much as the harps that Maglor had later favored.
And to say that the same hands that had played on this instrument for the delight of others now wrecked havoc and brought pain and tears to others...
To say that her baby boy had now destroyed so many lives...
How could life have turned so badly ? How ?
Annoyed at herself, she slapped her tears away and ran from the room, taking refuge in her workshop instead. Carving stones would serve well to spend her anguish at what her sons have become and would at least be able to pass for constructive.
