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.
The Unforgettable Fire by Ithilwen
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Prologue - The Maiden
The Unforgettable Fire
Prologue – The Maiden
Somewhere east of the Ered Luin...
The wise-woman sighed when she heard the faint tapping on the door of her hut. She had been hoping for a quiet evening to herself, but as was not uncommon, one of her people apparently needed her help. A woman in labor, perhaps, or a child with the coughing sickness. Quickly gathering her things together, she prepared to go out into the night.
She was briefly dismayed when she opened the door and saw the young girl standing there, clasping her woolen shawl across her body with shivering hands. “Well, don’t just stand there – come on in, girl” she said, and quickly closed the door behind them as the girl stepped inside the small hut.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, truly I am,” the girl stammered, “but I need your help. I –”
“How long has it been?” the wise woman asked, cutting the girl off in mid sentence. The girl, startled, simply stared at her; she sighed again and repeated her question. “How long has it been?”
“I don’t understand,” the girl whispered, and the wise woman shook her head in faint exasperation.
“Since your last flow, child. How long?” When no answer was forthcoming, she added, more gently, “That is why you came to me, is it not?”
The girl nodded miserably, then looking down at the floor, replied softly, “Two moons.”
“Well, it’s not too late to end it, then,” the wise woman replied, “ if that’s what you wish. Are you sure you don’t want to marry him?”
“He said he wouldn’t have me,” the girl replied, remembering her lover’s scornful laugh when she had gone to him with the news of her pregnancy. His stinging reply still echoed in her mind. Did you really think I would marry someone as ugly as you are? Oh, you were good enough to sport with, but I’ll have a comely wench for a wife. Her face burned in shame. How stupid she had been, to think he loved her!
“What he says counts for little, now that he’s gotten you with child. Haleth, you’re from a good family, and everyone has seen the way young Sagroth has favored you. If you go to your father with this news, he can force Sagroth to take you to wife, if that is what you wish.”
Haleth paused briefly, imagining marriage to her lover. Sagroth had been so attentive and kind, and so fervent in his proclamations of his love for her, that in the end she had permitted his advances, although she felt no pleasure herself in their coupling – but now she knew the truth. She tried to picture herself lying beneath him as he thrust himself inside her, knowing that he only took her because he could, and to slake his own needs, not because he truly desired her. She imagined herself cooking and cleaning for him, bearing his children, pleasuring him – and all the while knowing that her husband did not love her, and had married her only because he was forced to. She shuddered in sudden disgust.
“No,” she replied, very firmly. “I don’t want him.”
The wise-woman saw the determined expression that passed over the young girl’s face, and smiled inwardly. She’s more sensible than most girls her age – no foolish sentimentality here. Perhaps she’ll make a wise-woman herself one day, once she’s grown. “A good decision, in my opinion. If he doesn’t want you now, he certainly won’t want you later, for marriage cools most men’s hearts rather than heating them. And frankly, Haleth, you deserve better.” She began to rummage around her collection of flasks until she found the one she was looking for. “Here it is,” she said in satisfaction; turning to Haleth, she pressed a small vial into the girl’s hand.
“Drink one sip of this every morning until it’s gone. If you haven’t started to bleed by the end of the week, come back to me, and I will give you something stronger. Don’t be surprised by the cramping – it’s normal. And don’t worry, Haleth – no one will ever know.”
As Haleth walked back to her homestead in the frosty evening air, she turned the vial over and over in her hand, watching the oily liquid slosh back and forth. No one will ever know, the wise-woman had said, but Haleth realized the truth – any man who would lie with her now would know she was no maiden, and no respectable man would want such a one, another man’s leavings. She would bring such shame to her family if she were to wed, once her husband learned she was not a virgin! Not that many had wanted her anyway, with her plain looks and unfeminine ways. I will never marry now, she thought sadly, and soon this potion will end the life of the only child I will ever conceive. And knowing that, she wept softly.
When her tears finally slowed, she looked up at the sky, the bright stars and the pale Hunter’s moon that hung high overhead. I have always been strong, she thought. I will be strong enough to bear this. For the sake of my parents and brother, and for the sake of my own honor, I will find a way to live without love.
