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.
The gifted one by Harnatano - Lithenna
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Chapter 1
“Come over here, Curvo”.
The young Ñoldo carefully put down the thongs, checked on the fire which was burning peacefully in the stove and obeyed silently.
Fëanáro wouldn’t usually disturb his son, or any of his disciples, while they were busy with their work, if only for the sake of their concentration. And when he did call them out, it could only mean something was going wrong.
Curufinwë shuddered.
He could read nothing on his father’s face : neither disapproval nor appreciation. A blank mask which he tried to mimic.
“Is it you, my son, who finished the crafting of this vessel?” Fëanáro asked, raising a questioning eyebrow.
Curufinwë swallowed with much difficulty. In his father’s hands, the large bowl looked oddly misplaced with its wrought-iron frame and the reddish tints of its glass. As for the slivery incrustations, Curufinwë could now see how gross they look.
“I –“, he hesitated, but he wouldn’t lie. Not to his father. Never. “You seemed to have forgotten about it, father…. The frame had been barely outlined and the patterns of the incrustations just put on paper when you put it aside, never to touch it again. I believed you would not mind me carrying on with your work…”
Shame began to swirl in his stomach like an acid wave of bile.
It had not only been a question of practice, for Curufinwë had truly thought, at first, that his father would have appreciated the gesture : finishing a work for which he had lost interest, and making it as graceful as possible. He hadn’t expected to reach the quality his father would have reached, but he had thought himself capable of producing something good enough for his father to enjoy. A mistake obviously, for he was not good enough. His pride had deluded him. He had probably altered a project his father had planned to continue. How arrogant and foolish of him!
He looked down, waiting for the well-deserved sermon.
Fëanáro took his time, staring closely at the bowl in silence.
“I see…”, he said thoughtfully, still focusing on the object. “Well, it is still too heavy, the glass could have been made lighter but that is something I still have to teach you. This thickness, that is why we have those little imperfections around the incrustations… nothing you cannot fix with a little patience and some elbow grease. But overall, you did a fantastic work, Curvo.”
His heart was pounding so fast that he could hear it in his chest. He pinched his lips to keep a large grin from spreading on his face as he looked up at his father, eyes shining with pride and release. “Really?” was the only thing he managed to stammer.
Fëanáro gave a quiet laugh and put the bowl into his son’s hands. “Really.” He said. “I can see you have used techniques I have barely taught you yet, and you excelled in those you already master. You outdid yourself, my son.”
Curufinwë was holding onto the bowl, as if it would keep himself from falling down. His legs were indeed shaking.
“I had completely forgotten about this piece… which happens to be a chance”, Fëanáro asserted. “Or you would not have had the opportunity to accomplish such a feast. “Keep it, improve it or recycle it, I do not mind. It is yours now.”
The young Elda had finally caught his breath and calmed the pace of his heart. He was delighted, and so very grateful. Not only his work and skills were being rewarded, but his boldness too. He should have known his father would never blame him for practicing.
He stepped toward Fëanáro, holding the bowl closely against his chest. “I will make it better, so much better.” He promised with a smile. “And if it is good enough for you, I will make it yours. I can engrave your name here, you see?”
As he talked, Curufinwë placed his finger on the inside of the bowl, where the engraving could be done. He could already see the tengwar that would honour his father. “That is… if you allow me to do so, father.”
Another grin on Fëanáro’s lips, and something else in his eyes, a glimmer Curufinwë couldn’t decipher but which was, in fact, an echo of his father’s pride and gratitude.
“Nothing would make me happier, Curufinwë.”
