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.
Monty Python and the Athrabeth by cuarthol
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Monty Python and the Athrabeth
Finrod: Old man!
Andreth: Woman!
Finrod: Old Woman, sorry. Would you tell me of the swift passing of your people?
Andreth: I'm forty-nine.
Finrod: What?
Andreth: I'm forty-nine - I'm not old!
Finrod: Well, I can't just call you `Woman'.
Andreth: Well, you could say `Andreth'.
Finrod: Well, I didn't know you were called `Andreth.'
Andreth: Well, you didn't bother to find out, did you?
Finrod: I did say sorry about the ‘old man,' but really I meant it in terms of your race and not -
Andreth: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior!
Finrod: Well, look some Elves might, but...
Andreth: Oh Elves, eh, very high and mighty. Calling us ‘children’ and all. Lording your immortality over us, and them Valar who can’t even deign to show up -
Morwen: Andreth, there's some lovely cows down here. Oh - how d'you do?
Finrod: How do you do, good lady. I am Finrod, king of Dorthonion. Would you tell me-
Morwen: King of what?
Finrod: Dorthonion
Morwen: Where is Dorthonion?
Finrod: Well, it is here. We're all in Dorthonion and I am your king.
Morwen: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an fiefdom under the head of our houses.
Andreth: You're fooling yourself. We're living in darkness. An imposed mortality brought on by-
Morwen: Oh there you go, bringing mortality into it again.
Andreth: That's what it's all about! If only people would--
Finrod: Please, please good people. I am in haste. What can you tell me of the swift passing of your lives?
Morwen: You’ve got it wrong, we’re rather long-lived here.
Finrod: But you die within a hundred years!
Morwen: That’s ‘cause the Dark Lord.
Finrod: What?
Andreth: I told you. We were originally immortal but death was imposed upon us.
Finrod: What?!
Andreth: Back when we did what is no longer remembered in the darkness we thought we left behind us.
Finrod: No, that can’t be right.
Andreth: Our very natures marred by the Lord of this World.
Finrod: Be quiet!
Andreth: By he whom you call Morgoth.
Finrod: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Morwen: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
Finrod: I am your king!
Morwen: Well, I didn't vote for you.
Finrod: You don't vote for kings.
Morwen: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
Finrod: Ulmo, Lord of Waters, as I slept beside the fens of Sirion, sent to me in a dream a warning to build a realm to be a place of refuge for when the northern kingdoms fall and are brought to ruin. That is why I am king.
Andreth: Listen - strange demigods lying in ponds distributing dreams is no basis for a system of government. We know you derive your kingship from your immortality, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Finrod: Be quiet!
Andreth: Look, you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart gave you a wet dream!
Finrod: Shut up!
Andreth: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empress just because some water nymph got me all moist, they’d put me away!
Finrod: Shut up! Will you shut up!
Andreth: Ah, now we see the arrogance inherent in the Elves.
Finrod: Shut up!
Andreth: Oh! Come and see the arrogance inherent in the Elves! HELP! HELP! I'm being Elfsplained!
Finrod: Bloody mortal!
Andreth: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that, eh? That's what I'm on about -- did you see him Elfsplaining me?
Chapter End Notes
I make no apologies.
