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] 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] 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
Pride
Create a fanwork using a prompt from an LGBTQIA+ person, choosing from music, art, poetry, and quotations. 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.
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.
Scribbles & Drabbles 2024
A chill Tolkien event, where artists make art, and authors write little stories in response. Begins in June and ends in November.
The Hidden City by Lady MSM
| | |
Welcome to the Family
Christmas Eve, 1923
Chicago
“So…you know the password for this place, right?” said Tuor nervously.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” replied Voronwë with a roll of his eyes. “This club changes its password every week and I’ve been gone since 1917. The only reason they’ll set us in is because I used to work here, and you’re…well, a van Hador. I think that’s still a respected last name around here.”
Tuor’s stomach rumbled louder than was strictly polite, and he grimaced. The last time he and Voronwe had eaten a good meal had been three days ago when that old woman in Ohio had invited them in for supper—since then they’d been reduced to stealing pies off windowsills and eating the few packages of crackers in Voronwe’s bag. Turgon Gates’ speakeasy was hidden underneath a restaurant; surely the old man would be able to cough up a Christmas dinner before he shot them.
After Voronwë’s three quick knocks on what looked like a storeroom door, it seemed like an eternity before a panel slid aside and a suspicious gray eye peeked out at them.
“Password,” the person behind the door demanded.
“Elemmakil, it’s me. Voronwe Andersen. You remember me, we were at school together, I used to work here…”
“Voronwë? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I thought you died in the Navy. You sure as hell look skinny. Who’s that with you?”
“That’s my friend Tuor. He’s got business with the boss.”
“Sorry, old boy, you know we can’t let just anyone in to see the boss. He’s a busy man, no time to spare for hobos.”
“Hey, I’m not a hobo,” said Tuor indignantly. “Well, I guess I am, but I’m not just a hobo. My pa was Huor van Hador. From what I’ve heard he was a friend of the boss’.”
There was silence. Then a click, and the door opened, to reveal a flight of stairs and a dark-haired young man grinning sheepishly.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “The boss is big on privacy. But if you’re Huor van Hador’s son, well…no one’s going to keep you out.”
The flight of stairs led to another door, this one guarded by a man who introduced himself as Ecthelion Bellafonte and reacted similarly to Tuor’s last name. It was Ecthelion who led them through the crowded, glittering, noisy speakeasy to a door in the back, marked PRIVATE in large, commanding letters.
“You ready?” asked Voronwë. “If you get involved with this family, there’s no backing out.”
Tuor thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, it can’t be any worse than where I’m from.”
And he opened the door and stepped into Turgon Gates’ office.
Three pairs of dark eyes were turned upon him immediately as he entered. One belonged to a pale young man standing to the right of the huge desk. One belonged to a pretty blonde girl in a blue dress sitting on the left side of said desk. And one…one belonged to a handsome, stern-faced man in spectacles frowning at him from behind the desk.
“Turgon Gates.”
The party in question raised an eyebrow. “And you are….?”
“Tuor van Hador. You… you knew my father, back before I was born, he…”
“Saved my life.” Turgon’s face softened. “ Of course I remember him. What can I do for you, son?”
This was it. He drew a breath and clenched his fists.
“I’m looking for a job.”
-----------------------------------
“So you’re from…where, exactly?”
“Ah…West Virginia,” Tuor replied, suddenly painfully aware of his hillbilly accent in comparison with all these upper-class Brits. Then again, he already looked like a hobo, so the accent couldn’t make things much worse.
“Hmmm,” said Glorfindel Delafleur, the elegant blond fellow who’d asked him. “Can’t say I’ve ever been there.”
Tuor snorted. “Do yourself a favor and stay that way. It ain’t exactly Paris.”
“I know your father died in the war…did you live with just your mother, then?” asked the pretty girl from the office (Tuor had since discovered that her name was Idril, she was the boss’ only daughter, and that she was as businesslike and brilliant as her father).
“Actually, no. When Ma got the news that Pa had died she went a little wild and ran off, and got taken in by this coal-mining family—the Swansons. Good people. I was born in their house. But a few days after I came along, Ma…killed herself. Sleeping pills. It was the Swansons who brought me up.”
There was a chorus of sympathetic murmurs and shaking heads from around the table. Eventually Ecthelion spoke up. “So how did you wind up in Chicago?”
“Well, Uncle Annael had been in the war with my pa and he’d told me how Pa’d saved the life of a rich and famous gangster, so I always wanted to come here and track him down. Then when I was sixteen there was an explosion and the coal mine went out of operation, and we were running out of money, so I decided to set out and start providing for myself. I traveled around doing odd jobs for…let’s see, about seven years? Tryin’ to save up to come here. Then when I was in Maryland working for some old fisherman I ran into Voronwe, and since he’d worked here it seemed only right for us to come here together. So I came here, and we got in, and then it was now, and then I don’t know what happened.”
“That’s a swell story,” remarked Glorfindel. “They ought to make a moving picture from it. Maybe with Valentino and Keaton. Idril, love, go fetch me a martini, would you?”
“Do I look like a waitress, Delafleur?” snapped Idril. “Get your own damned martini.” She ran her fingers through her sleek bob and sighed. “So. New boy. I take it you’ve never been in a speakeasy before?”
“No, ma’am. To be honest, I always thought swanky places like this only existed in the pictures.”
Idril made a noise that in a less attractive girl Tuor would have called a snort. “If this was a moving picture then I doubt I’d have so much work to do.”
“Ah, come off it, Gates, you know you wouldn’t stop working even if you married the Shah of Persia,” laughed Ecthelion. “This girl may look sweet and pretty, van Hador, but I’m of the opinion she could take down the whole Angband mob just by lecturing them for an hour about bookkeeping.”
Idril shrugged. “Probably, yeah.”
Tuor decided he liked her.
Chapter End Notes
Honestly, coming up with last names for everyone was absolutely the most fun part of writing this.
