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.
Slowly Separating Ways by chrissystriped
| | |
Slowly Separating Ways
Melkor burned with shame.
“… nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.” [1]
The words felt like prickly things inside him, sliding through him, tearing him open. He’d fled after the vision had vanished, hiding at the edges of the Void, away from the Timeless Halls. How could Father do this to him? Why had he scolded him in front of everyone? Why had he needed to humiliate him so? He had only done, what he’d made him to do. Why had he given him the talent to have his own thoughts and ideas, if he then forbade him to use them?
“Brother?”
“Leave me be!”
Melkor turned away from Manwe. He shouldn’t have found him!
“Brother”, Manwe moved close to him, touching him gently. “Why are you so angry?”
“I’m not angry”, Melkor snapped, but as he said it, he realised he was.
He was hurt and he was angry that Father made him hurt. He hated that feeling of helplessness and shame that was tearing through him. Father should know better. Father shouldn’t make him feel that way.
“He could have told me in private that I overstepped”, Melkor whispered. “He didn’t have to do it in front of all of you.”
“You are very proud, Melkor”, Manwe said gently. “Maybe he wanted to teach you something.”
Melkor could hear the chastisement in his voice and recoiled angrily. “If he didn’t wish me proud, he shouldn’t have given me pride. If he didn’t wish me to use them, he shouldn’t have given me all the powers I have!”
“You know it doesn’t work that way”, Manwe answered. “Father made us, but he gave us freedom also, we are not his puppets. That does not mean he cannot try to lead us in a direction he would wish us to take.”
“I don’t want to go the way he has laid out for me”, Melkor said firmly.
He’d felt free when he was exploring the Void. Yes, there was nothing there. Yes, he hadn’t found what he was looking for. But he had found himself out there.
“Where would you go then?” Manwe sounded worried now and Melkor felt sorry for that. They rarely were in accord anymore, Manwe was too intent on doing Father’s will for that, but he still loved his brother. He did not wish to give him pain.
“My own way”, answered Melkor. “One I chose myself. But that’s impossible, if Father is telling the truth. And he made sure all of you heard how futile my wish is.”
“Brother…” Manwe hesitated but then continued: “What you sang was… dark. So dark and terrible. Not at first, but… I’m afraid for you. Please, don’t go that way.”
“If I am, it is because he pushed me there”, Melkor growled.
“But you fought me, too”, Manwe said, desperation creeping into his voice. “I do not want to fight you, brother.”
Melkor sighed and leaned into him. “I do not wish to fight you, either.”
Manwe smiled at him, content for now, and settled in beside him. Melkor didn’t try to send him away again. He was glad that he had found him. He kept to himself the thought that he would fight him if he needed to in order to go his own way.
Chapter End Notes
[1] Cited from the Silmarillion p. 5
