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.
Pages from the Archives of Cîr Imladris by Lferion
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Cîr.Im.IL-Misc:59443-cf | Negative Equation
Written for the Fan Flashworks challenge JE NE REGRETTE RIEN "I Regret Nothing" first posted here.
Also written for the SWG March 2023 Challenge Middle-Earth is Multitudes, the prompts Easterlings and Neurodiverse Characters, posted here on AO3.
Three drabble sequence text, triple drabble commentary/notes, not counting headers.
Thanks go to Zhie & Runa for encouragement & sanity-checking.
I see Caranthir as definitely not neurotypical. In fact, I am pretty sure all of Feanor's family (himself, Nerdanel, his sons, his grandson, and most likely any law-children, Fingon definitely included) are neurodiverse in various ways.
Text of Cîr.Im.IL-Misc:59443-cf | Negative Equation
Is it bravado, to be without regret? Thoughtlessness? Ignorance? Or is it that hearing the statement only is the smallest part of the equation. I understand equations, better than nearly everyone. The so-called answer is — as I have tried to explain on many occasions — the least interesting part. So what is the context, the framework, the parameters. What indeed are the questions being asked? The problem being addressed? Who is it disclaiming regret? Is that disclaimer a hope, a threat, a statement of fact, a veneer of falsehood or fantasy over a worm-eaten core of self-loathing? Is there a point?
To look at it another way, what is regret, singular or systematic? A feeling? An assessment (logical or emotional) of deeds or thoughts or something more nebulous? Something to flog oneself with? I have seen Nelyo revisiting his plans for the Fifth Battle, trying to find a way it could have gone other than it did. Was that an assessment? A punishment? Both at once? It is not an exercise he has done (that I know of) since Fingon returned. Is it regret to be unhappy, even terribly unhappy, at a plan's catastrophic failure? I think it reason, not regret.
I have been told I should regret many things, and certainly there are deeds I would do differently now, things I am not proud of, things based on incomplete or erroneous information, things I should have thought through more carefully, but I do not feel regret for them. What would be the point? I have apologized where called for, taken responsibility likewise, made note of better ways. I do not regret engaging Bor and his people, however angry and disappointed I may be — still am! &mdashe; at Uldor and his. But I see no reason for pointless and useless performative regret.
Archivist's Note
This is one of the newer pieces in the Archive, not only catalogued since the greater Household arrived in Aman and settled in Cîr Imladris, but written no earlier than TA240[AR^], that being the date Findékano-called-Fingon [HM-E, HE, etc^^] Returned, after Caranthir and Maedhros both.
^AR: Amanyar Reckoning. Before the seas were bent in SA3319, the count of years was the same in all parts of Arda. Since the changing of the world, time does not quite run congruently in Aman and Ennor. See Standards of Weights, Measures, and Intervals, Volume 4, Timekeeping, 3rd edition, Valmar Royal Press.
^^Titles and abbreviations of those who reigned variously in Ennor are an on-going point of discussion (contention) in Tirion. Generally, the children and grandchildren of Finwë are accounted royal, and entitled to the formal style of Prince or Princess, addressed as Excellency. Those who reigned as Kings are often styled Highness, occasionally as Highness-Emeritus; those who reigned as High King of the Noldor in Exile are often styled Majesty or Majesty-Emeritus. Lord/Lady are always appropriate. For a full discussion, see the Compendium of Noldorin Heraldry: History, Philosophy, and Practice, 12th edition, volume 7. Note Iron-Stave Herald's article in particular.
^^^House of Learning, Independent Scholarship program. More commonly known as Ennor University, Starlight School, Hollin-style education, and (in certain circles) "Damned Feanorian Avari-Exilic Nonsense". Nominally overseen by the Amanyar Federation of Houses of Learning, in practice a thriving cooperative with roots and branches reaching back to Cuivienen.
