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
[Series] The Light and the Sea (Steampunk Númenor) by AdmirableMonster
Largely focused on Númenor, its fall, and the aftermath, as seen from the perspective of two Mannish scientists, bit players in some ways, but who nonetheless cast their shadows across the history of Middle Earth.
[Writing] Reflections by AdmirableMonster
A story of three friends in Númenor, one of whom attracts the attention of the High Priest. What does friendship mean in the shadow of the Black Temple?
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] An exercise in music... And patience by Aprilertuile
Makalaurë was sitting at the harp in his music room. He was holding a dark blindfold in his hands and was looking at it with much scepticism.
[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.
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Another Place in Time
Move beyond the places and times of familiar events to consider what was going on elsewhere in Arda at the same time as a major event covered in The Silmarillion. How--if at all--did the event impact what was transpiring elsewhere at the same time? 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.
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.
Scribbles & Drabbles 2024
A chill Tolkien event, where artists make art, and authors write little stories in response. Begins in June and ends in November.
Food For Thought: A Meta Feast by Grundy
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Dessert II - Sweet Speculation
Random headcanon that may or may not be in any way defensible:
- Elves, being immortal and having far more time to devote to mastering intricate forms of cookery, are more likely to come up with things like sugar glass and spun sugar. The fanciest pastries and cakes are elven made. (The first time he has dessert in Rivendell, Sam is torn between admiring the finely sculpted cakes complete with spun sugar flourishes and artfully drizzled fruit syrup accents and thinking it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for something that’s only going to take a few minutes to eat.)
- Dwarves take to candy-making like ducks to water. While they’ve got a vast range of candies, rock candy is a classic favorite– and dwarven candy makers take particular delight in making ones that resemble fancy varieties of rock, such as jasper or agate. The best rock candies may be presented as carefully as any jewel. (The dwarves of Moria blow their elven friends’ minds when they come up with what look like edible opals.) They also have a great fondness for fried desserts like doughnuts, funnel cake, or jalebi.
- If it involves fruit, hobbits are there for it. Fruit cakes, pies, tarts, cobblers, custards, ices – you name it, they’ll be happy to try it. Jams, marmalade, and preserves are also greatly beloved in the Shire. But they also believe that fresh fruit picked at just the right time can be amazing all on its own.
- Men are the most prone to fads and politics affecting their dessert menus. (At war with Harad? No cane sugar – adapt all the recipes to deal with substitutes. Just made peace with Harad? Cane sugar is on everyone’s shopping list. The current King/Steward can’t stand blackberries? Blackberries are out of fashion.) Will put sugar on just about anything, occasionally producing novel desserts that make the others look askance at them, like candied grasshoppers. (Dwarven reaction: ‘This is what you call a dare, right?’) They also like to do shaped marzipan, in a wide variety of forms. (The hobbits are rather bemused by marzipan fruit. The dwarves want to know what the hangup with eating bugs is after they see marzipan ladybugs.)
