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.
Tales of Middle-Earth by tinni
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The day the sun didn't rise
A re-interpretation of the story of the Japanese Sun goddess Amaterasu
“Tilion was wayward and uncertain in speed, and held not to his appointed path; and he sought to come near to Arien, being drawn by her splendour, though the flame of Anar scorched him, and the island of the Moon was darkened.” - Of the sun and the moon, Silmarillion
“Come my love, yield to me,
Share with me thy splendour”
So said the moon to the sun
As they traversed the paths of heaven
“A naked flame may not yield,
Only burn or be smothered”
Replied the sun to the moon
Drawing away from yonder
“Leave me not daughter of flames
Alone to hunt the darkness
Let silver rays mingle with gold
As once it did in fair Aman”
“Great hunter leave me be,
I do not wish to blacken thy face,
Together in Aman we shall never rest
Till each of us falter in our steps”
“Stay, golden maiden but a little while
Silver light I love and adore
But thy splendour draws me ever more”
“Nay! Come not near!
Lest thou be burnt to cinder
Stay thy distance, silver hunter!
Draw no closer to my fire!”
“Yet thee I cannot resist
Burnt though I might be.”
So the moon chased the sun
And the sun fled from the moon
In the end the sun hid her glory
In a dark cavern that was dark no more
Hiding her light from all the world
afraid to do more harm than good
So the world mourned, the moon most of all
The loss of light bright and golden
Darkness spread to every corner
All too much for the moon’s silver bow
Many came from north and south
East and west and beyond the sea
But none could lure Arien
Out of the cavern she had made her own
Darkness ruled, despair reigned
Than came a wanderer upon the scene
With a mighty voice that reach across seas
And a golden harp that never tarnished
Of old he was a great prince
But against the gods he went in sin
thus he lost all that he had
Save his voice, mighty as
Maglor was his name
And the gods called to him
Begging him to sing a song
that the sun could not resist
To this he agreed
With all his heart
Eager to please the gods
And make amends for sins long past
Thus he sang a mighty song
That shook the vaults of very heaven
His song carried to the ears of Arien
Who could not resist the music’s spell
Than she saw the folk be glad
Rejoicing at the return of light
The long night had ended at last
Arien’s glory was back on earth
Than the sun ascended to the heavens
The Moon agreeing to keep his distance
So the world had two lights again
And Maglor’s wandering was brought to an end
Chapter End Notes
Author’s note: This is a re-interpretation of the story of the Japanese Sun Goddess Amaterasu. The story goes that she hid in a cave when the Thunder god frightened her. She refused to come out till the other gods held a great party, making lots of noises. The noises drew her out and after looking at herself in a mirror she remember who she was: the queen of the gods. So she returned and the world had light once again.
