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
Middle-earth Olympics
Complete Olympic events Middle-earth style! 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 Lost Boys by Lady MSM
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Feast of Dreams
I've put this one on here separately before, but I decided it's too little to be out on its own.
Feast of Dreams
“Food,” said Voronwe.
Tuor sighed in agreement. “Food.”
“Nothing but lembas for a whole week…”
“And you wouldn’t let me kill those orcs…”
Voronwe rolled his eyes with exasperation. “We’ve discussed what happens if you show up at the Hidden City with orcs at your heels, Tuor.” He gave another sigh. “Let me tell you, I’d trade the whole ocean for a plate of steaming hot pancakes right now, with jam on top and a mug of hot cider…”
“Barley stew with big chunks of venison on top.”
“Oysters with lemon like we used to have back in Vinyamar.”
“Potatoes all mashed up with butter and salt, when we could get it.”
“Mince pie and chocolate cake.”
“Hell, I’d even love some of that stew that Aunt Loswen kept in the pot all week and just added things to.”
“By the Valar, you survived on that? Sounds unsanitary.”
Tuor snorted. “Unsanitary? Have you looked at your reflection lately?”
“Have you?”
“Point taken.” Tuor exhaled slowly, watching his breath form in the freezing winter air. Not for the first time, he berated himself for not having left Androth just a few months earlier, so that he wouldn’t have had to struggle through this waist-deep snow and bone-freezing cold, and he’d actually be able to hunt some good game instead of having to choke down that damn awful waybread…but that was in the past, and Tuor made a point of not thinking about the past. His life was short enough.
Under these circumstances, probably even shorter.
A snort of laughter pulled him out of his morbid musings. Tuor glanced at Voronwe to see his friend unsuccessfully attempting to hold back a fit of giggles.
“King Turgon would be so disappointed if he learned we’d died of starvation out here,” Voronwe snickered. “He hates it when he’s beaten to the punch.”
“You expect he’ll be so keen to kill us?”
“Well, you are a stranger…”
“Ah, well,” said Tuor, leaning back with a grin. “He can kill me all he likes, just as long as he feeds me first.”
