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] An exercise in music... And patience by Aprilertuile
Makalaurë was sitting at the harp in his music room. He was holding a dark blindfold in his hands and was looking at it with much scepticism.
[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…
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
New Year's Resolution
Our annual amnesty challenge allows you to complete and receive stamps for challenges you missed in the past year. 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.
But Not Always Sweet by Grundy
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Over The Years
4 true drabbles for the Literature prompts N1: Parody, N2: Whodunnit, N4: Sketch Comedy, and N5: Dream within a dream
No warnings on this chapter.
Elrond found his children laughing. Little Arwen’s infectious mirth had spread to her brothers and he suspected all three would be hard put to settle.
“What is so amusing?” he asked curiously. After hours trying to keep Celeborn and Erestor from glaring holes in each other, he could do with a chuckle!
“Elladan has made up the best song, Ada,” Arwen burbled. “It is after the Noldolantë but funny instead of sad. He calls it Am In Gelydh!”
The expression on his son’s face suggested he was unaware Maglor had also been skilled at humor and parody, not just tragedy.
---
Fëanáro gave all seven sons and assorted nephews his sternest look.
“You might save yourselves considerable trouble and confess now,” he suggested.
He was unsurprised that no one stepped forward. He wouldn’t have in their places. Nevertheless…
“I will find out who was responsible for this,” he warned them silkily. “And there will be consequences.”
Not even Curufinwë was willing to meet his eyes.
Any mirth the young ones had expected to feel had been outweighed by him discovering so quickly just why everyone was giving him such looks.
“I will restore my hair to its proper color first, however.”
---
Gil-galad blinked in bemusement.
“What under the stars are you children doing?” he asked.
Elros had many talents. Though drawing wasn’t one that stood out particularly, he was surely capable of producing something better than… whatever the thing that looked like someone had crossed a rabbit with a dragon was meant to be.
“It’s a mannish game,” the boy explained blithely. “You have to illustrate words or phrases well enough for your teammates to guess them. And osanwë is unfair, so we’re practicing.”
“And your phrase is…?”
“Likely as a fire-breathing bunny,” Elrond filled in. “It’s something the Haladin say.”
---
“It doesn’t seem real,” Amarië whispered.
Finrod knew what she meant. Being alive – again – and back home after so many years of wishing for that very thing (without the detour through the Halls) occasionally led him to question if he were still alive, somewhere in Beleriand, and merely dreaming.
That tomorrow was to be their wedding day felt like even more fanciful, to the point he almost feared he might wake up. It was too much.
“But it is,” Amarië added softly. “One more sleep and then…”
He laughed quietly, but privately he wondered.
Could one dream within a dream?
