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.
Letters to the West by daughterofshadows
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Letters to the West
Erferil is a former thrall that ends up in the House of the Hammer of Wrath. She belongs to a currently not closer specified Avarin tribe.
The first letter is written shortly after she escapes from Angband, the middle one is written shortly before they depart to Gondolin and the last one shortly after they arrive (set post Coming home).
Erferil uses a sindarinised version of her own and her correspondent's name because I felt strongly about both of them being given non-Sindarin birthnames but could not find sufficient vocabulary to make them up.
See End notes for details on their relationship
Amrûn,
I am not there anymore. Not in Angband’s mines. I freed myself.
And yet they still haunt me. You still haunt me.
I see your body before me, broken; your bowstring snapped and eyes unseeing, the voice that sang our dawn song silent. I reach out but I am dragged away by clawed hands.
I used to be alone when I woke up from these dreams. I am not anymore.
The demon welcomed me into his home. He says his name means ‘strong one’, but I know what I have seen. He may not claim the name but it is given gladly. The others agree.
You would have liked Rog I think, but you would like his love even better. They are straight-forward even in a language that needs five words for what our language needs one to say and they do not hide their thoughts behind walls of words or silence. They would have done well in our home.
Maybe you will meet them one day and we shall see if you agree.
Until then, my friend. Farewell.
Hail Amrûn!
Of all our people you were the dearest to me. Half of my heart, I called you.
How true these words ring now!
For I have left part of my heart behind with you.
Love does not come as to me it once did. Not even for those I would call siblings.
If you have it, take good care of my heart. I shall come and collect it one day.
Until then do not worry for me. As bravely as you lived once, I will live now.
I fear I must cut this letter short here, for I am called away.
Still, I remain faithfully yours.
Erferil
— it appears that we are at last moving to Gondolin. Taminalma and Celebrilmal are most pleased.
My dearest Amrûn,
I have found the elven incarnation of Chestnut1. Rog found him on the road and took him in. His name is Barhador and he, too, does not hesitate to pick fights with opponents at least twice his size.
I find it more amusing than I probably should, but the likeness is uncanny. He even takes great pleasure in hiding things around the house. Though thankfully never food, for it can take a while until one of us finds them again.
Needless to say I have become fond of him.
…
He is kin to us.
Of all the things I expected to find in this city of rock and stone, it was not this. Not another child of the forest. He knows so little of our traditions, but wants to learn so much. What do I tell him? How do I separate history from pain? He should not have to carry the mistakes of the dead.
It is times like these that I regret it most that you cannot reply to these letters. I would value your council greatly.
But alas, it cannot be, so I remain faithfully yours.
Erferil
1Amrûn's pet squirrel
Chapter End Notes
Erferil and Amrûn were incredibly close and spent their lives together dancing on the line between friendship and romance.
Post Angband, Erferil identifies as (loveless) caedromantic (someone who no longer experiences romantic attraction/love due to past trauma) and I've tried to include some hints as to how she explores the loss of that part of herself in the letters.
